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Chapter 5 - What Comes After Cookies
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"Where'd you get that?" I asked Meikitmon. Mia finished her little dance and sighed. The ground rumbled. We had popped out near where I had impacted the dirt not three hours before.
"There was a table with cookies on it that we passed," Meikitmon explained, wolfing the dessert down.
Of course. That explained everything. I turned to Mia.
For her part, she had bags in her eyes, pulled a couple of cookies of her own out of her pockets, and proceeded to inhale them. The crumbs and mashed chocolate cops that would be in her pockets…
Kids.
Call it mom-brain, but beyond my concern that an eight year old possibly had enough power to fight with beings of godlike power… Was the niggling worry about how painful it would be to get the chocolate chip out of the pockets. Eh, I'd probably just let them be.
Washing machines were pretty great inventions. There was no knowing how long it would be, until she got to change of clothes regardless.
Her stomach rumbled, "Awe, I'm still so hungry," she said.
"We are too close to the blast zone," I told Mia.
There was zero chance any of the kids had washed their clothes or done other upkeep. That thought went on the shelf. The ground rumbled again, a giant beam of red splitting through the grey in the sky.
Mia, for her part, despite the roars and growing explosions in the distance, cookie eaten, complained about not having milk.
Then, basically glomped me, shoving her face into my side. Little bits of chocolate chip stuck to my fur as she let go to stretch and yawn like she was about to lay down. We hadn't gotten enough distance from the battle yet. Whatever the possessed Skyler had done, that castle was probably littered with traps.
"Come here," I said to Mia. "I can't have you sleeping on the ground."
We still needed an actual base of operations. Mia paused, then looked at Meikitmon, digivice in-hand.
"Oh. Uh, We should probably wait until later…" Meikitmon said, looking sheepish.
Mia, clearly still incredibly exhausted, just shrugged.
"I uh. I get a little… weird, when I evolve and there's nothing to fight."
Like Mia, I just shrugged. If she got stupid like some of the digimon in Tamers did, then it was probably for the best, especially with her Tamer basically out of action. Though, I didn't think that Adult-level would be anything too stupid.
In either case, it didn't matterI I hoisted Mia up and she locked her arms around my neck. It was a not odd how naturally kids would take to hugging and trusting a total stranger, but that was probably just the 90s news network's "Stranger Danger!" bs talking.
Giant red beams and additional rumbles lit up the grey sky from the direction of the castle and cut a hole through the clouds. I used my left arm to keep Mia steady, then grabbed the remote with my other.
Remote in hand again, I fumbled with the buttons a bit until a new portal opened. Mia hanging on to me, Meikitmon and I stepped through the portal, a huge series of blasts and breaks in the sky as beams of white angelic light turned the grey, dull area into day in the distance.
Our portal blinked out of existence, presumably because the plane was purged of whatever the possessed-Skyler had done to "hack" the place.
"You!"
~~~
Brandon took in the carnage around him, missiles and explosions flying around them. He was starting to get annoyed. The Infermon should have been devolved or reduced to data by now.
"Something isn't right," he said, quietly as he and the other boys stared the demon virus-type down with their digimon. They should have been able to put it down when it was just a chrysalis.
"Well yeah no duh," Andrew said. "It's still getting stronger. I'm going to need to punch it again to evolve MachGaogamon."
"It's gotta be getting data from somewhere deeper in the castle," Kevin said, adjusting his glasses. "We've fallen into a trap."
"What's the point of a trap? Our attacks are still pushing it around!" Andrew yelled over the growls as each digimon member of the team took turns trading punches. "Man, that Renamon-thing shows up out of nowhere and doesn't even bother trying to put up a fight. Then it runs off with Mia!" He complained, dodging a falling black stone coming out of the ceiling.
Brad dove out of the way of a stray red beam, "Pay attention!" he shouted at the other humans on his team. The room and walls were groaning. "The castle is going to come down," he stated. By now, the Infermon they'd been fighting for the last minute had managed to delete a horizontal layer of the walls in the room they were in.
As its head vented off steam, the team's digimon took the opportunity to close the gap and keep it busy. "Stay focused on the fight in front of us!" Brad said, rolling himself up off the floor.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
You don't embark on a mission and then let team members run off.
He'd have to cook up a way to send Madelyn and Andrew back home, so he could rescue Mia without the constant squabbles. He'd berate them for letting Mia run off later.
~~~
Madelyn held a strong exterior, her face in a scowl as she followed Angemon out of the building with Skyler rising out of unconsciousness. She had tried to prevent a situation exactly like the one she found herself in. She had tried to prevent Mia from joining evil like she was clearly about to do.
She had the temptation to kick Skyler's digivice out of the way.
She could feel Angemon's frown.
She didn't.
She did not kick it out of the way.
"Are you going to lecture me, too?" She asked.
"Madelyn." He said. She waited for it. It was an unfair question of her to ask him.
"... Madelyn." Skyler got out.
Angemon caught the glowing red beam and spun his weapon, blocking it out of the way of the two digidestined.
"What's that?" She said, bending down to listen a bit closer.
"I'm… sorry." he said, clutching the digivice in his hands.
"Don't say sorry you stupid idiot! You wanted a digivice all this time, now here it is! Help us stop that … thing!"
She wanted to blame him for turning Tsumemon into that monster. She wanted to kick him in the gut. She wanted to grab her own hair and pull it out of her scalp. But no. No, she would not.
It wasn't reasonable to criticize others about things they had no control over. It wasn't reasonable to beat on people simply because they were different. It wasn't reasonable.
It wasn't reasonable to be as mad as she was. She held her tongue.
"If you're sorry, then get up!" She demanded. That didn't mean she lowered her standards, however.
"MachGaogamon! Let's go!" Andrew shouted from the other room,
Skyler crawled, then stood up.
"Good, Skyler. That's better." She said, offering a light smile to him. You had to notice when people were putting in effort to. It was very important to acknowledge that! "We freed you from their possession. Do you know how to shut down the field protecting Infermon? We need to stop it before it gets any stronger," she said, keeping on business.
"Yeah, I can power down the field," he said.
"Okay, how?"
Skyler looked around. "The programmer I used was in my backpack."
"The Nullrenamon-thing stole it, and we can't just ask for it back."
"Below the castle, in a dungeon, is a database core. It's hooked up to an endless stream of social media data, and it powers the forcefield around Tsumemon. If Angemon uses its light power, it should destroy the core."
A series of missile blasts caused a wall to come down, and the already patchwork stone ceiling to start caving in even more.
She held up her digivice. "Angemon, let's end this charade!"
"With pleasure," he said, already changing forms.
~~~
My face turned up, and I was greeted with the sight of a giant clock with what looked like a Fantomon sitting on top of it. "You should not be here," the alarm-clock looking thing accused. I held up my arms.
"Not trying to start a fight, just find our way out of here," I told him while motioning a lack of desire to attack. I would have shrugged, if it weren't for the black and incredibly sharp blade that was very visibly similar to a key that was floating around my wrist.
A quiz: would that gargantuan god who put me in this situation have the power to create a literal keyblade and give me the powers? Or did it teleport me into a world that just happened to have a keyblade floating around. I was going to find that I could command armies of nobodies in short order.
The keyblade practically responded to the threat as the fantom-clock-thing's sewn-shut mouth opened.
"You and that girls—" it said, pointing a finger at Mia and I "— your presence in this plane clouds the timeline!" it hissed, accusing us.
"Yeah, a deity of time or whatever. Clockmon. I get it. Okay cool. I'm trying to get out of here. Can I go now?"
"You MUST leave the digital world at once!" it demanded, its mallet-looking weapon thing beginning to glow.
"Are you going to fight us or help send me out of the digital world at least?" I said, the keyblade responding to the glow and moving into a defensive position.
God, even the caretakers of time in this place had their asses up in a wad. It hadn't even been three hours since I was shoved into this world, and I was already so done with everyone and everything's bullshit.
It charged at us, like an idiot, and we dodged out of the way. I kept the blade in front of me and my other arm held Mia in place.
"Waa!" Meikitmon cried, just barely dodging out of the way. The fluff of the cloud disappeared in a tight cone around the area the gavel struck.
"I am the guardian of time!" The red-cloaked figure shouted, "And I will not allow you to disturb our peaceful world!"
"He's not listening to us!" Meikitmon said. "I know what to do!" She bounded ahead. Clockmon was in hot pursuit, but he was slow, and these gorgeous legs were fast.
"No! Come back! Don't go there!" He cried after us.
"You don't even actually exist," I taunted him. "For being a guardian over time, you are pretty weak!" I shouted back at him, mocking him.
He was spinning his gavel, the clock face was growing. I turned to pause and face him, and held out the keyblade, willing it to spin in a circle.
"Don't touch that clock!" he shouted, releasing his attack, easily intercepted by the spinning.
"What clock? Oh? This one? The broken one?!?"
A moment later, the world's background ticking stopped.
"Nooo! What have you done!?!"
I diverted what remained of the attack off into the air, and dashed to grab Mia's partner by the scruff of her fur, who cried with a "yowch!".
A coo coo bird launched itself out of the clock.
"What did you do?" I demanded of the little idiot.
"Well, I got him to leave us alone! He never leaves us alone!"
I just shook my head. Mia was still hanging on, and while not exactly snoring, her face was still shoved into the fur in my chest.
"Grraaaaaoooooooo" a voice growled, followed by a giant red dragon with a metal head, and three nasty claws with a snake-like tail emerged out of the cloudy ground.
"Megadramon has been released! We're all doomed!" Clockmon cried.
This was all just a stupid fucking dream.
Had to be.
~~~