//------------------------------//
// 273. Glum Slums Soldier. 
// Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! 
// by Darkonshadows 
//------------------------------//

-Digital Realm, Server City, Slum District, Pom-

Well I told our story first of how we got here and what we were doing before being dragged into the area between worlds that was full of danger.

There weren’t many people around, then again Digimon weren’t exactly sounding like the most civilized people from the way Canard described it. He’s told us the story of the electromagnetic worm that got him and if he survived… well… Dolly looked hopeful at least.

Hearing Canard’s story up to this point was rather harrowing from his brief overview of how he got here, he was jumping through digital worlds looking for an exit that didn’t lead into another digital realm. So far he has been less than successful.

So we’re in a realm of pure information… Fred the Demon, being a knowledge based dark entity, would become something of a functional god here. I should warn Oleander about that if I ever see her again.

“What are the chances of a Digimon surviving a similar situation?” That was the most important question to us.

“Somewhere between zero and one percent, which is ironic considering where we are is made of information derived from ones and zeroes in a sequence. Learning Binary took me a while, but I’ve had plenty of years to study it.” That… was… extremely disheartening Canard. The muscular duck at least was honest and forthright. “Reality based electromagnets are fairly dangerous to Digimon and can weaken them greatly or even kill them depending on how powerful they are. However if a Digimon does an electromagnetic attack it’s basically replicating the effect of electromagnetism via launching information based on an approximation of what an electromagnet would do. Digimon attacks can get a bit iffy when it comes to functionally following physics and Digimon can be quite dangerous because of that. They are far more than information and energy than actual mass. One thing is for certain… if you want to outright kill a Digimon to a point they can’t reincarnate into an egg for a fresh new start on life, then destroying their core before they derez or break apart completely into the reincarnation system will prevent that.”

“Canard is right, never expect any consistent physics from us Digimon… we can kind of become like living ghosts when manifested in a reality outside digital realms if we were good enough at controlling our physical forms. The big issue for us Digimon is that we can’t survive outside digital realms very well without lots of energy. I think that’s the reason Digi-destined will always win in a Digimon battle outside the digital realms, because the Digimon parter gets stronger with a shared bond through spiritual power, whereas Digimon that don’t have a partner will have limited resources to work with outside a digital realm. In fact, manifesting in reality pretty much drops our capabilities by a quarter or a half. Most Digimon even downgrade a level trying to manifest in reality due to having to compress our data and energy into a more physical solid state form.” So far Sami was our expert on anything Digimon related and whatever she said was likely to be the truth. She doesn’t have a reason to lie. “In the digital realms like this one, we are at our strongest because of home field advantage, we can even drag portions of the digital world to overlap reality if we try hard enough, but fusing a digital realm to a reality has been noted as being a very bad and horrible thing to do. So… how bad off was Dalmamon?”

“In the middle of the remaining parts of him melting from the virus, lost most of his body and he threw himself bodily into the electromagnetic worm.” While I hadn’t been there, Wildwing’s vigilante heroes team, The Mighty Ducks, had seen him in his final moments. 

“Yes, that would be a true deader than dead situation for a Digimon at best, especially with the virus geared for killing something like us. At worst there would be something like junk, frag or bug data left of him from what you described of the virus sounding like the D-Reaper that plagued one of the digital realms and was allowed to manifest in reality in such a way that caused all sorts of trouble. Junk data is basically chaotic nonsense information tangentially related to anything Dalmamon could have known and probably can’t feel pain. Frag data would be more viable for at least something approaching a partial recovery of at least a memory, maybe two, and could feasibly feel some pain if it was locked in a loop of endless agony based on the memory. As for being rendered bug data… well bug data would be a nightmare and a half if you were self-aware and couldn’t do anything about the data, it’d be like having cancer that you can’t die from and being covered in constantly bubbling, blistering and breaking bleeding scars for the rest of your life. I don’t think anyone would want to live like that.” Thanks for the mental image Sami, I didn’t want to go to sleep tonight anyway. “As one can imagine, the bug data thing might leave some capability for Dalmamon to actually be recovered in some capacity, but he would never quite be the same.”

-???, some random guy named Wade Wilson-

Ah-choo!

“A sneeze…. I must be getting a random cameo in a fanfiction somewhere… awesome!” I said wearing my nice red suit and all my thinking boxes floating around me dancing in glee.

“Do you want a Cherry Chimi Changa or a Chimi Cherry Changa?” Asked the similarly red suited quadruped that came in with a grin hidden under her mask and a mass of wild pink curly hair.

“Why not both Pinkie Pool?” I said with glee.

“Oh my goodness, you’re so right!” Pinkie Pool stated with equally sheer joy. “Also do you think we’ll get Negasonic Teenage Warhead to make an appearance before this scene transitions back to the…”

-Digital Realm, Server City, Slum District Hideout, Pom-

“I’d take it! I don’t mind my family members having issues… a lot of us and I do…” Dolly kept trying to keep her exuberance up, but I can feel she doesn’t want to give up on Dormarch.

“Dal… Dormarch, had a healing ability called Cure Liqueur, would that… have aided him in staying alive in any capacity?” The unique ability to heal himself from injury was one of the things Dormarch was capable of.

“A Labramon based utility program? Well that’s curious. With the way you described the virus working on him, it would have only vaguely slowed down the virus. It wouldn’t stop it’s spreading at all. Still restoration and optimization of lost data would have to be impressive if it could even keep up with him falling apart. It wouldn’t have helped as much as you think it would, if he were injured by Digimon or reality based attack, then he’d be mostly fine if he doesn’t run out of energy or his body doesn’t do something like cannibalize itself trying to fix the major damage.” So what you mean to say Sami, is that because Dormarch was manifested he was incapable of building up the necessary energy to keep using his healing ability to slow down his imminent demise beyond a certain point and prioritized saving everyone he could. Like a good boy… he succeeded… “If any part of his data actually survived that to make it into the digital realms… it would be sitting somewhere in a near infinite amount of realms or it would be recycled into something else like a street sign or into being a sliver of a sliver in another Digimon. The chances of running into that data specific bit of data would be so infinitesimal… well I’m sorry for the loss of your partner, child and little brother. Where were we again?”

“I believe we told our stories. While we don’t know the Joltik’s story specifically, I don’t think he can actually talk enough to tell us it or why he decided Dolly was a comfortable looking dog to sit around on. We know each other’s names and…” I was going to continue and was ignoring Dolly’s downtrodden and still rather defiant look, but was rudely interrupted.

“You don’t know mine yet, I’m Tsukaimon PV, the letters stand for Pilot Variant! I would ask for an apology for my lost network traveling vehicle… but you saved my life as much as I saved yours and I got to see a Chaosdramon X and live, so we’re pretty much even.” It was the purple guinea pig monster with the bat wings for ears. “Whoa, is that a Commandramon, aren’t all of you guys like… dead?”

“No, I’m very much alive thank you! Also there are plenty of other Commandramon that are still just as alive too, not for the lack of many trying to bring me or this yahoo down. I prevented a lot of ambushes on my partner trying to follow him around.” Sami stated blandly while gesturing to Canard, the Puckian simply crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “I guess it’s my turn for a story…”

“Can you tell me where your motorcycle came from first?” Canard seemed rather insistent to hear that first.

“That’s not a long story, I watched you build your own stuff from scrapped together digital information, metal and some elbow grease. I figured it couldn’t be too hard, so I tried my hand at building something personally… it went a far sight better than my first day of combat at least.” Sami Soldier the Commandramon motioned to her bike. “This is the Tron Cycle mark number Sixty Four.”

“What happened to the first Sixty Three?” It was obvious from the grimace Dazzle, but I’m guessing not happy things.

“Well the first half of my attempts became Machmon… the second half was me trying to recreate Beelzemon’s summon capable digital motorcycle known as Behemoth from scratch until I got a cease and desist from at least twenty instances of him. Didn’t know the guy went Deva… anyway, really didn’t want a shotgun to the face, but I kind of want to recreate his shotgun for my personal use. That and Behemoth had a mind of its own and I was coming dangerously close to creating a second roving gang of highly dangerous two wheeled murder vehicles.” That the implication that you already made one roving gang of two wheeled murder vehicles was a terrifying thought in and of itself Sami. “So I worked from an angle that won’t try to come to life and kill me. I eventually ended up with working motorcycles, but for some reason they kept creating solid walls of light data behind them wherever I drove. It was really inconvenient for wanting to go back the way you came. I eventually found the problem causing the wall creating function and fixed it, now I’m thinking I should have left that feature in and put a switch in to toggle it as a defensive measure. In any case I made my Tron-C-64 capable of being summoned like my DI-Sixteen Rifle, made sure it didn’t develop anything like a personality, sentience or sapience that would want to maul me to death, made it easily modifiable to take on any shape as long as it is generally a motorcycle and you program the shape into it. So far I’ve already programmed ‘open air’ for fun rides, enclosed for weather or limited armored protection, submersible mode for quickly escaping the digital sea if I ever get stuck in there, let me tell you that one took me months to figure out, then there’s my attempts to recreate a new version of Behemoth… I somehow ended up with a weirdly three wheeled motorcycle I’m naming ‘Fenrir’, that was the one I used on the highway. Plus it’s readily portable as I can fit it in my jacket and I’m even thinking of marketing this beauty to Yggdrasil Digital Innovations!”

Reaching into her bike, Sami pulled something, her claws came back with simple looking rod of metal and the bike disintegrated or folded back into the rod. It was kind of hard to tell what just happened there. She tossed the metal rod out and it transformed back into a different motorcycle that was almost flush with the ground.

“That light wall thing would have been more helpful when we were being attacked by that Hiandromon… speaking of that guy, he’ll likely be back once he’s recovered from his wreck.” Canard was checking his puck pistol over as he talked. “Don’t know about his mech though.”

“Well it’s a vertical wall that follows the bikes movements and not horizontally placed behind the bike, the mech would have been able to easily keep the wall between its legs or it could step over the wall entirely… would have been useful against other things though.” Sami smiled at Canard and all she received for it was a few grumpy grumbles from him for it.

“So… you’re story Ms. Soldier?” Definitely wanted to know more about Digi-destined even if I was a, ‘supposedly enough’, nullified one.

Maybe Canard would be friendlier to Sami if he knew more about her? I already know why he would have a distaste for lizards, especially if some took over your planet and enslaved your people for a while.

“Please, just call me Sami!” She looked to be collecting herself for it. “First of all Commandramon like me, as I may have stated previously, are entirely disposable. It’s more sufficient to say that we were quite literally made to die and do so at an obscene rate hoping to be at best a distraction for the more dangerous foes we faced. That or if a shining star was on us on a particular day, we’d actually succeed at an objective without the need for backup.”

“That’s an interesting way to start things off Sami.” While there wasn’t a frown, I could feel it from where I was sitting next to Dolly and she picked on it as well. Even Lit was looking at Sami.

“The three things Commandramon had going for us upon our creation is our stealth chameleon skin, a cheaply made Digital Infantry Sixteen model Rifle and the ability to digitally generate bombs hazardous to just about everyone and ourselves. Me… I eventually found a fourth and fifth thing that made me survive longer than most of my peers, one is innovation in the face of death and the other was an ability to question any given orders.” To prove a point, Sami faded into the background of the slum room we were squatting in, she blended in with the brick work of the building fairly well before she reappeared. I think she was on par with a Kecleon, she can still be noticed if you’re looking for her. “So we were created for secret operations and fighting small wars, however I was lucky to be in the thirteenth set of one hundred Commandramon. Mind you all the previous Commandramon were killed, destroyed or just went missing in action under quite horrible impossible to survive scenarios.” 

There wasn’t much life in the city or at least if there were it wasn’t being loud. There were possibly dangerous Digimon around that could attack us, there were also possibly a few that were friendly ones we could befriend like Tsukaimon PV. The slums were like this when we got here and we had a place to camp out for the night in an unoccupied building before we started looking into solutions for getting back to Ransei.

The building at least had working toilets, a refrigerator and for some odd reason an exceedingly strange vending machine with unusual things in it. We didn’t have Digi-credits to get anything from it and none of it looked like food.

“So your something like test tube digital entities and not born from a Digi-tama?” Canard actually posed that question. “Digi-tama are the eggs that hatch into Digimon, it’s how they reincarnate.”

“Anyone with enough data know how can cobble together enough coding for a spark of life to take and whatever you coded will take on a life of its own when it becomes a Digimon and a lot of coding for Digimon comes from Mythology. So no I’m not a natural born Digimon, but I’m still a Digimon all the same regardless of my birth… among the cloned legions of my brothers and sisters.” Sami hugged her rifle to her chest and sighed. “All the previous Commandramon before my group were poorly coded. Their stealth skins were glitchy, their guns would jam at inopportune moments based on the Commandramon’s stress level or wouldn’t even fire at all. There’s the worst of all when a Commandramon tried to use our signature DCD Bomb attack. Our DCD Bomb attacks can come in a variety of explosive devices depending on the Commandramon, some of the prior numbers before I was born self-destructed taking a lot of others with them in training before ever seeing combat as soon as they generated their explosives. I’m one of the lucky few that had enough time to recode my gear to fit me personally. I can summon my rifle and recode it to fix any damage to it whereas other Commandramon were not so lucky. My particular DCD Bomb attack is remotely detonated explosives based on a shaped C-4 charge… unfortunately my detonator as I’ve recently found out can be signal blocked, but when it isn’t I have a powerful explosive that won’t go off in my face as soon as I generate it.”

I winced at the idea of having a power to generate explosives and can imagine that going, horribly, horribly wrong. Even Canard looked upset at the idea of a bomb going of near someone he liked.

“Reminds me of how many close calls Tanya got into when taking down those Rex Drones.” Muttered Canard.

“Continuing my story. My people are basically poorly made soldiers using data from commando training, sure it ensured disciplined based trains of thought… but it didn’t exactly raise our living conditions or life expectancy a single inch. Don’t know why I’m even sticking with the color blue… guess it’s just me being nostalgic for old friends.” Slowly Sami’s skin and gear turned a somewhat bright orange color, she had a small smile when doing so. “Much better, orange is my favorite color and I’m glad I recoded my stealth abilities to let me control my color in a semi-automatic manner instead of the effect being entirely automatic and most importantly to my continued survival… slow. It’s what killed off a quarter of the hundred I was part of.  I quickly figured out to never trust the organization that created me with any information about the situations they kept putting us into, where we would basically be slaughtered because of bad information.”

I can’t even begin to imagine what that must have been like.

“My group specifically lost half our numbers to a bunch of natural born baby Digimon, couldn’t ask for a situation to go more pear shaped or badly than that. Considering the fact that we were armed and the baby Digimon weren’t… one would think seventy five Commandramon could screw in a lightbulb on that situation, but no…. everything went into the digi-toilet that day as my particular people became the laughing stocks of our organization. We were literally eaten alive by what are functionally babies with barely any fighting ability whatsoever. Again Commandramon were made to be ‘Disposable’ so if the information from the organization behind us was as bad and horrible as that, we’re going to find out real quick like and nothing of great value will be lost. It’s just a few Commandramon they’d say, we can always throw more at the problem. At least the guys who were watching us die in droves behind us with basically weapons pointed at our spines would get out of any situation perfectly fine, because they were far more important than we ever were. Basically we’re created on survival of the fittest and the fittest get rewarded with even worse, I learned to injure myself on purpose just avoid ‘that’ fate.” 

That was a lot of bitter resentment, Ocellus didn’t even need to be here for me to feel that. Sami probably needed therapy as much as I did… also what organization sends that many dragon lizards armed with weapons like what Sami has after babies and somehow still fails utterly and horribly as to lead to being eaten alive by them?

“Can you get on to a much cheerier subject like how you got the Digivice, that thing seems to make you very happy.” I knew a lot of the stuff we’ve been talking about, including Dazzle’s history in Viperia not being great, was rather depressing. It was Sami’s history that was taking the cake and running with it even more. 

Oh my goodness… are we actually forming an impromptu a therapy group here!? Well at least everyone here is friendly... enough.

Dolly hopped up onto her paws and carefully placed the sleepy Lit on my left hind leg and went over to be friendly and affectionate with Sami and battle scarred soldier really seemed to appreciate the positivity.

“Sure thing, but I have to tell you about why I had to injure myself. You see the Commandramon that were successful at surviving the first minute of any form of combat, without a comically acquired injury, were looked on as geniuses. Frankly I am of the belief that those Commandramon wised up, but didn’t do it quickly enough to avoid the ‘Forced Digital Evolution’ program. One that was specifically designed to avoid creating a Skull Digimon, basically a Digimon that resembles something dead or dying with ridiculous haunting amounts of comically karmic dark power bent on tearing the world around it down.” Shuddering and hugging herself while rubbing at her own biceps with her claws, Sami looked around wearily and then started petting Dolly much to her appreciation. “The more successful and brightest Commandramon were taken and had their coding butchered to make them as soulless as those Machinedramon you probably saw sitting around coming on the way in. The butchering turned them into a slightly more elite version of Commandramon called Sealsdramon. It ruined the Commandramon’s gun coding and stealth, but gave them increased viciousness, deadly digi-knife fighting skills and speed. This was a very bad thing given some of the Sealsdramon went crazy and one in particular started counting how many Digimon they killed and racked up quite a body count hoping that someone would eventually end their suffering, that guy in particular started with the scientists that forced that form on them. Don’t know what happened to that guy, but being driven to madness was better than losing your emotions completely. Another Sealsdramon accidentally created a new Digital Evolution and became a Tankdramon after eating a Tankmon’s data for survival reasons, cannibalism is not unknown to Digimon even if we don’t necessarily need to do so.” 

This was getting quite long winded and even further depressing sounding if Cannibalism was coming up as something that sounded normal for Digimon to do.

“Thus another can of worms was created in a bid for power as our organization started forcing Tankdramon into existence. Sealsdramon arguably had it worse than us as those butchers continued to evolve the emotions out of them, but they were arguably more competent in a fight so that much was a success given how they were made. I have a copy of that particular digital evolution line put into my coding before I was even made and I haven’t touched it once, I’m hoping that I can force something else.” Sami was shivering at the thought. “Can’t get me to turn into a Sealsdramon or a Tankdramon with a ten foot pole without a very good reason for it. Even if it won’t actually take away my emotions like it did to all previous test subjects or so ‘they’ told us, but I’m not willing to trust that the organization that made us to have our spiritual and mental health in mind when it threw us at problems and abandoned us on the field of battle sometimes when we were only halfway dead and bleeding out data.” 

“How can you sound so cheerful in what sounds like a normal day in Viperia?” Sending a worried glance to Dazzle, she motioned to me that everything was okay even as she grimaced in thought. “Backstabbing can be somewhat common there.”

“Because of crossing paths with Canard here was the best day of my life, probably one of my worst too… eh, it evens out really. I want to think I have a purpose beyond what I was created to do beyond run forward, hope that my gun works and to not die in a fiery explosion from an exploding snowball launcher wielded by a polar bear Digimon or my own bodily generated explosives.” The grin Sami had on her face was unusually cheerful as she continued to hold Dolly in a gentle manner. “It was all on a day like any other under the organization in the moderately tyrannical rule of the Metal Empire that created us biological Digimon clones, only to modify us into killing machines by forcing an evolution when we proved more useful or adept at combat than the others. Quite literally like what the Machinedramon and Guardromon were made to do when it comes to firewall security, except Machinedramon are a lot harder to control than we were. Also Guardromon and Machinedramon were actually quite necessary to prevent outside forces from immediately destroying a freshly created world like this one, they are basic defenses of every digital realm more often than not. What we were made for was lab rats and horrible experimentations. Imagine my surprise when I first saw something that wasn’t a Digimon trying to kill me and I wasn’t trying to kill them.”

“Hm…” Sounds like Canard was finally interested in the story of how Sami came to start following him around like a cute little happy puppy.

“I could use something to eat if I’m going to listen to a long story…” As soon as I said that two digimon entered the room. One was a black cat in a helmet and coat with a sleeping cat head symbol on his helmet and the white cat had a similar outfit with a Red Cross symbol inside a white cat symbol on her white helmet.

“Heard some new people arrived in Server City, did someone say they needed something deliv… wait... Sami?!” The two cats that walked in looked surprised to see Sami, the one talking was the white helmeted and outfitted one. Despite being orange, they had recognized Sami immediately. “Heh, one of the toughest Commandramon alive is still among the living… kind of amazing to see you really. Thought you went out taking a Raremon down with you.”

“Hey Hea-Gatomon, Black-Tailmon-Uver… I was about to go into that story of how I ended up following this duck guy around with this. Wait… what are the two of you doing here?!” Sami held up the Digivice and the two cats looked at it with something approaching intense wonder. “If I remember right, my life turned around when I woke up around that time to Healer’s face. A relieving sight that it wasn’t Datamon, the little pill shaped code cracking monsters are the most well-known among those who butchered us and they were specifically supposed to be our medics.”

“If anyone deserves to have a chance like that, it’s you Sami.” The one called Black-Tailmon-Uver stated as he and his friend found us sitting around a room that, while not particularly filthy, was not exactly the greatest place to spend the night. Hea-Gatomon or Healer Gatomon had immediately started fretting over her orange friend as she started telling her story. “We’re here to check in on visitors and make sure the city isn’t destroying itself. We're kind of wary what with the large influx of strange new prototype spotted Digimon that were slated for testing here by Yggdrasil.sys... they kind of look like that biological. Also we followed this guy since he was asking around a lot about a strange group he wanted to talk to recently coming into the city and Tsukaimon are somewhat known for causing trouble… guess that’s you guys.”

The black cat gestured to Dolly who was currently relaxing happily in her position, then to Tsukaimon PV.

“Heh, sorry about drawing attention to you!” Tsukaimon PV grinned mischievously and didn’t look sorry at all.

-Some time in the past, in a different digital realm entirely, Location: ???, Sami Soldier-

“Nhnn… please tell me I’m not being patched up by a Datamon, I’ve heard horror stories about that.” That the Commandramon would be in constant pain afterwards went unsaid, I really didn’t like Datamon at all. “They never quite put your code back together correctly.”

“No, I believe this situation is much worse for you, you’ve been captured… alive. So please, don’t die at the drop of a hat like all the others did, we kind of need you!” Those were the magic words, someone needing me is the most I could ever hope for out of life. I opened my eyes and saw Hea-Gatomon the same one I would see again in the future… like right now. “Frankly you’re the only Commandramon that we’ve managed this with and it’s a miracle that you’re even talking at all!”

-Server City, Slum District Hideout, Sami-

Apparently the enemy we were being sent to assassinate were the Bancho Digital Monster Legion, we were being commissioned by Myotismon, a vampire Digimon, who also goes by the codename name ‘Dio’ for some reason. I think it stands for Digital Invasion Officer and was the primary chaos maker in that particular digital realm.

I was under the care of Bancho Leomon portion of the legion for quite a while surviving day to day after they patched me up, Bancho Leomon also called himself codename ‘Jostar’ and I wasn’t about to parse that one out. Things were quite weird back in those days and I got up to some pretty bizarre adventures. 

I also started helping Commandramon like me break away from the organization that kept making more of us, they went through at least twenty five batches of Commandramon further after the first thirtheen. Yet they never got more advanced than me because I actually worked my own coding like a muscle into something amazing. The guys that created us really should have been valuing intelligence over feasible direct fighting prowess.

Every Commandramon I rescued eventually turned into a rebellion of our manufactured Agumon-like line, Agumon is kind of like the basic of most basic Digimon to exist and is a good line to compare everyone else against.

That those Commandramon were primarily all under my command didn’t need to be said and they lived far longer for it too, at least long enough for the Bancho Legion to put us into the Digi-tama system. We weren’t even previously given chances to reincarnate into a different Digimon, again ‘disposable’ was the word for us. Bancho Leomon didn’t like that tyranny and got us hooked up to the system… at least tentatively.

Caused a large influx of Digimon, also another realm replicated the cloning practices and got stuck in something called the X-Project after trying and succeeding to recreate Digimon in vast numbers comparable to the vast number of Commandramon that reincarnated straight into being easier to kill Commandramon that now had baby forms… but that was life for us.

Really nasty piece of work that X-Project, arguably worse than our lot in life as that was a genocidal rampage of epic proportions that killed more than ninety eight percent of the population in that particular digital realm and the survivors were moved to a different realm. So yes, I would think Chaosdramon X was a part of that genocide… they just refused to die from it. We Commandramon were lucky enough to not be a part of that mess and had our own problems.

Sorry about that, I just remembered we’re supposed to be talking about me… ahem… anyway...

I one day found myself on the ground with my rifle several feet away and in grave danger.

Hey, I didn’t have my summon weapon program yet, give me a break Black-Tailmon-Uver!

Yeah, you better believe I added such a useful function to myself soon afterwards, I hardly trust my DCD Bomb attack even if I made absolutely sure it was entirely inert coming out of me. That organization was all about violently exploding!

Hey, I’ve been very careful about self-modifying Hea-Gatomon stop worrying so much! Though, yeah, a checkup would be quite nice.

So there I was on the ground, one of my Commadramon nearby refused to change into a Sealsdramon just like I did and became something worse upon recently being horribly injured… a Raremon.

A Raremon is basically the digital monster equivalent of a mythological zombie, barely alive and seeking to tear the nearest thing apart out of instinctual hunger for data to hopefully fix the mess they were in. Usually that data just makes a Raremon's hunger worse. Etymology says it all what with them be being called the ‘Raw Meat’ Monster. 

I was, unfortunately enough, the closest thing to my friend who was one of the few survivors from the original batch thirteen and he just changed into that thing. My rifle was a good twenty feet away and I didn’t feel particularly safe with my DCD Bombs that day, considering how my friend just became a Raremon.

That’s when Canard saved me, well accidentally, but I think it still counts!

He was trying to make a device to try and get into communication with anyone outside the digital realms, regardless of whatever it takes to do so. It had apparently turned into a Digivice in his hands and in his frustration he threw it out a window from the nearby building he was taking cover in from all the fighting around there at the time, it went straight into the Raremon’s skull and bounced off. 

That minor ten second distraction gave me enough time to roll to my rifle to do a mercy killing on my old friend, nobody would want to live like that and it was always best to get a Raremon while they were still fresh. They tend to grow out of control and exceedingly deadly really fast.

That’s how I came across the Digivice and found myself inexorably linked to following Canard Thunderbeak around and protecting him when he needed it. He’s quite a self sufficient tough guy already, barely needs me to act except in a few occasions like what with Hiandromon and his Mech.

-Pom-

“Explains why we found splattered Raremon data lying around the area, ugh… that was quite disgusting to clean up and we definitely knew that used to be a Commandramon. We had thought you bombed yourself out of existence, because your data never showed up as a Digi-tama like his did and we thought you were finally put to rest… aside from rumors of the Commandramon scouts that you were still a 'ghost of the battlefield', running around and following some duck guy to disappear into the various digital realms beyond while stopping to aid those in need.” Black-Tailmon-Uver glanced up and down at Canard. “... I think you’re good enough for her, a far sight better than Sami being stuck in the Bancho Legion and fighting for the rest of her life. At least you’re leading her to innovate and be something more than a soldier, which I think would be a much better fate for her at this rate. Gato and I were originally here on vacation to a new digital realm, even more so what with that lockdown in place from the Chaosdramon X that recently messed up one of this fresh realm's anchors.”

“My life may be hilariously awful, but I don’t mind following Canard around. He’s had his setbacks as well from what we’ve heard about the fighting on Puck-World and what I’ve seen of his struggles to survive in the digital realms. We’re kind of kindred spirits that rebelled and ended up in poor situations, but we’re still kicking butt regardless!” Sami giggled as she was poked and prodded by Hea-Gatomon. “As some Commandramon are known to say, misery loves company and it isn’t as miserable with a company of friends to share your grievances about life with. So what do you say… partner?”

“I don’t feel like I want to hold on to that just yet, nor do I want to take it from you since you seem to like holding onto it.” Canard was still reticent as he pushed the held out Digivice back towards Sami.

Canard seemed to lift his incredible distaste for lizards somewhat, possibly for Sami’s sake.

Sami seemed a little bit happier afterwards even with the rejection.

“So… you can get us some food?” I asked Black-Tailmon-Uver, he nodded to me.

“Anything you could possibly want, if it exists somewhere… then I can maybe find and deliver it." We’d soon learn exactly what Black-Tailmon-Uver’s unique talent was, unfortunately it wasn’t exactly useful for us getting back to Ransei where we came from. "Just give me a list and an hour or two.”