I flip up my visor and try to bring it to my mouth for a big ol’ bite, but it’s too big and won’t go in through the opening. Hum. Considering it’s comprised of data, I should technically be able to just crack it open like any other living creature. I kind of want to just karate-chop it open with my gauntlet, but if I get coconut juice in there, it’s never getting out. Probably. I actually don’t know how this works, so I might be able to just wash it normally, but I don’t want to take the chance.

“Haha, stupid virus, cannot eat hard fruit!” the alien jeers from above.

Sh-, shut up! And I’m not… I bite my own tongue.

“Not virus.” My voice still feels wrong. What, so he doesn’t think I can eat a coconut? Oh, I’ll show him…! In fact, with this, I can show him just what such comments can do to his head.

I shove my gauntlet into the coconut, easily bisecting it and making the coconut milk spill out all over my chest and cape.

“Hahahaha! Hahahahahaha!!”

I shoot a glare at the accursed alien, but it doesn’t stop laughing, in fact only laughing harder. It’s to the point where it’s actually spasming in its binds. Growling to myself, I take a big bite out of one of the coconut halves and start chewing. Chew chew, chew chew.

Chew…

“Pweh, pwehh!” I spit it out with great malice, my body and soul both rejecting the accursed piece of hairy, tough, malignant fruit. It is, quite literally, the worst thing I have ever tasted. In pure desperation, I fall to my knees and begin shovelling sand into my face. It actually does work somewhat in abating the taste, and after a few seconds I start spitting it out as well. Apparently, just because something is technically data doesn’t mean I can just eat it. “Haaah…”

“Hahahahahah! Stupid virus! Stupid virus! Think a virus can eat like a data? Hah! Stupid, stupid!”

Grrrr…!

Before I know it, I’ve ascended back up the tree, my legs and tail hooking around the trunk as my arms shoot out, my right grabbing him by the throat and the other only millimetres away from where his jugular would me. One flick of the wrist and he’s gone, nothing but pixels. It wouldn’t even be hard.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

But he grins at me. He just grins at me. “And you say you not a virus?”

I let go of his throat. My stomach grumbles. Whatever of the coconut that slipped down certainly isn’t sitting right.

Deftly, I leap down from the tree.

“Well?” the alien says. I glance up at him. “Let me down now, yes?”

Let him down? I scoff. I’m sure he can get down on his own accord. Besides, I’m sure his blaster will rematerialise eventually, so it’s only a matter of time.

In the meantime… I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that pinecones are edible. Look, if I can’t eat coconuts, that doesn’t necessarily mean I can’t eat anything not alive at all. It just means that coconuts are weird. I think I read something somewhere about how brown coconuts are inedible and the green ones are alright. Then again, the coconut I ate was green, but it might just be my eyes.

It doesn’t mean anything. I can still be a data-type.

The pine forest is eerily silent now that the alien is incapacitated. Finding a pinecone isn’t too hard, but eating it is. Much like the coconut, it is almost inedible. Almost. If I just close my eyes and force myself to chew, I can barely tell it tastes like wood and tar, and the splintering texture is almost ignorable.

Gulp.

Ugh… That was…

My stomach grumbles again. That… doesn’t feel right. M-, maybe I just haven’t eaten enough pinecones? While I’m at it, I might as well give the rest of the ‘food’ wares a try. You never know, right?

But, as might be expected, once the sun falls, I’ve gained nothing but several mouthfuls of inorganic materials and a hell of a stomach ache.

U-, ugh… I can barely walk. I feel like puking, but I don’t know if digimon can even do that. Considering that I’m only ingesting data, would puking it up be tantamount to deleting it, or rejecting it? I actually don’t know, but by this point, I’m ready to try anything.

I… I don’t think my body is meant for fruit, or pinecones, or sand. I wish it was, I really do, but…

I freeze in place. Darkness has fallen, and so the sound of shopping cart wheels return, clattering down the now-decrepit aisles. I’ve plundered all of the ‘food’ shelves. There is nothing to be bought. To reiterate my current position, I’m on the ground. Where a bunch of humanoid shadowy things are currently materialising left and right.

Okay okay okay I’m going-,

Something grabs after my tail and I feel the little wave of wind chasing me as I leap up into a tree, scaling it easily and quickly. Once I’m up and safe, I can look back down at whatever was trying to get me, but there’s nothing there. Not even the shadows. In fact, the sound of shopping cart wheels have stopped as well, making everything feel eerie and quiet. Well, they haven’t stopped completely. It’s just that they’re so far away I can’t tell if they’re there at all.

Something here doesn’t sit right.

I leap to the nearest tree, towards the fading sounds. After a few similar leaps, I decide to just go down on the ground since there isn’t anything there anyways. The sound of shopping cart wheels becomes louder and louder until I reach the edge of the forest, where it turns into beach and sand. Then, the sound stops completely.

I push my way through the brushes. There, illuminated by the blue light of the man in the moon, I see the shadows crowding around a certain coconut tree.

Man, did the alien always look so thin? He almost looks anorexic.

“S-, sorry, customers…” he mumbles down at the massive swarm crowing beneath him, their thin, wiry arms stretching up towards him with no luck. It’s such a weird sight, because the shadows instil a primal sort of fear-of-the-unknown in me, but seeing them all trying to rescue a pale alien from the top of a coconut tree just doesn’t work. It’s almost comical, and I would probably laugh if it wasn’t for the fact that the alien’s eyes just fell on me. “Ah, cursed virus!”

Ah. Oops.

The shadows turn towards me as one.