//------------------------------// // 289. Server City Ransom Pt. 14. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -???, ???- “I don’t know about this X, she doesn’t look like a reploid… in fact she seems to be biological despite somehow made entirely of diamond and the fact that she’s imbibing alcohol and barfing up molecular acid rainbows at the same time is quite disturbing on a number of levels… and she just melted an entire reploid into metal slag. Now there’s a horrifying image I won’t be able to ever delete.” My mind was blaring with warnings about unicorns, bicorns and any quadrupedal four legged horse like entity that had horns. I was also getting a video recording of a similar or even the same diamond pony with a shotgun that I was seeing right now, it read ‘do not mess with’ multiple times across my vision and wouldn’t stop until I looked away from the diamond bicorn slowly wreaking havoc through every maverick machine in her path. Even Duff McWhalen hadn’t last a minute under the barrage of colorful shots coming from the shotgun that made cute horsey noises every single time it fired. “Also there’s something very familiar in my memory banks that’s giving me constant warnings to not go anywhere near her for some reason, it’s blaring that constant warning that I wouldn’t survive going near her whenever I even so much as glance at her. Something about… stealing Dustman and ruining an entire plan?” “She could need our help though Zero!” X tried, my blue armored robot friend was quite watching what the biologic diamond horse was currently doing was he? “Also she seems familiar to me too for some reason. Why is there black box data in me telling me to help the bicorn from behind and to not be in her way?” “X… she’s stomping the mavericks into little puddles of oil and parts by herself, she’s even laughing and enjoying herself doing it too… and she’s just stolen a ride armor out from under a maverick, I think they are all doomed at this point honestly.” I stated plainly at the wake of destruction left behind by the two horned unicorn after she pulled herself out of the sea after getting into fight with a giant robot whale. That she didn’t drowned was my first sign that we probably shouldn’t bother the possibly magical beings, we’re basically robots and we’re not supposed to think of magic as being a logical conclusion to anything… yet my head kept screaming not to bother the bicorn. “Wow… I’m kind of feeling sorry for anyone going maverick right now.” The ride armor was now currently totaling everything in its path as we stood here watching the destruction as the diamond horse gleefully laughed like a maniac. For some reason the laugh is haunting my nightmares, as if I had blocked out meeting them before at some time in my life. Something that terrified me down to my central data core that passes for a soul. “Excuse me, I’m Kitty Android or Kityan for short, are you going to fight that Velguarder unit down there?” Turning to the cheerful voice, I saw a short, bipedal cat eared machine with twin energy pistols in each hand. She was pointing with her right pistol towards the distant ground where a familiar wolf mechaniloid could be seen. “I’ve apparently been assigned to capture a fun robotic wolf by master Oleander and that one seems to be in vicious enough to be in need of reprogramming!” “Wait, what’s Sigma’s Velguarder doing here?” X asked looking worried and wide eyed that Sigma’s traitor hunting mechaniloid wolf was around. “Doesn’t matter, I’m going to go catch it for Mistress Oleander and Master Fred!” That’s when the… well I didn’t think she was a reploid, something was very off about the female feline machine, launched off the nearby cliff. The cat android flipped and started gliding with what I was reading as photonic energy coming from her feet in a strange output that made me feel oddly calmer just staring at it. Calmer than I have in a long time as she started down towards the wolf tracking down another reploid that managed to either free itself from the Sigma Virus or just turned against Sigma for whatever reason. It really didn’t matter which, it was always chaos we had to settle as maverick machine hunters. “Oleander… that sounds vaguely familiar to me too… why do I feel like I’m going to have nightmares about a book now?” X, I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that name before too and that it’s somehow caused some weird effect on our history. “Huh… Light Code: Heroic Dark Unicorn, do not proceed with current mission?!” “Woohoo, this is my new favorite toy!” I heard a female voice shout, coming from the direction of the diamond bicorn I was most certainly not avoiding even looking at. -Digital Realm connected to Ransei, west of the digital meat plantation, south of Octomon’s Bungalow Beach, a few digital hours later, Pom- So we were quickly caught up with weeks of missed fighting and action by the five Commandramon that were working with Uver to hold the southwestern slums where we came in at. I think we were the only faction that seemed to be trying to fight the gangs actively, well in so much as making sure digimon can actually move through the city without being accosted constantly. At least Uver was giving the local citizenry some sign of peace or safety. The neutral territories were defending themselves quite well and Ogremon’s guys were not being sighted in great quantities aside from being a constant nuisance to traveling between areas of the city. Dazzle being evolved was the biggest shocker, but she seemed okay mentally having spent time with Sami and Frizzle working out some of her issues with her being a bit larger than normal among her species. I’m glad I wasn’t involved in their sewer adventure to rescue Hea-Gatmon, because it sounded awful in numerous ways than getting stuck somewhere at the cost of nearly an hour of real time in Ransei. I think we got the better end of the deal with ending up inside the Game Cube. “So I couldn’t uninstall the B-loader and had to reinstall my M-loader function, so now my bazooka can fire soporific bread loaves and high explosives.” Sami seems to be happy that Canard was back, but was still somewhat unhappy about the fact that her bazooka was slightly messed up in having to stop a rampaging Frizzle. Still firing soporific bread loaves could be useful, it would certainly be helpful if Frizzle went crazy again and I was still wary of that happening. Frizzle was a bit upset that I was trying to keep my distance, but everyone knew why and we’d be fine and if we weren’t… we’ll just simply find a way to be. “Don’t honestly know what makes this Ultros guy so weird, but he has the information we want and we couldn’t exactly hit his holdings until now. Not without you guys at least.” “So what’s the hold up here?” Dolly asked as we sat here on the beach looking towards the north along the beach at the majority of Octomon’s territory, the beach bound building in the distance was large… but small for an Octomon apparently. Bad weather wasn’t a problem here, digital world had weather regulating system and if there was a forecast of good weather, then it was bound to happen with one hundred percent accuracy. It was apparently cloudy or sunny all week. “We’re looking for traps Dolly.” However if a normal person were looking at the stretch of beach to our north they would only see flat sand. Perfectly flat sand doesn’t exist, not even here. It was kind of a red flag for us and I could only notice some of the traps along the beach, mostly the hidden mines. The Monitamon might have even been responsible for the mines back when Frizzle was chasing us through the southwestern part of the city. “We’re trying to work out what all the traps are in the way to reaching the Beach Bungalow if that’s what your companion is asking about. Also the Monitamon have been a big problem recently as they’ve been getting better at fighting us off the more they know about us, they certainly have their acts in gear making it hard to approach this particular Octomon at all. Also the Hi-Vision Monitamon has been reportedly been in trouble with Ultros for hurting Pom, apparently there was a miscommunication and something about a bikini? We didn’t get much, as the Monitamon are kingpins when it comes to information gathering and holding, it’s a surprise they even let that much slip.” Sami shook her head. “I don’t know why anyone would wear one of those things anyway, no protection whatsoever aside from a flimsy amount of cloth and it’s not a very pragmatic covering. It makes me wish I had powered armor more protective than my current gear, but I wouldn’t go Sealsdramon for it. Maybe I can make a powered armor suit like the one Hi-Andromon has… or just steal his if it’s still in the waters to the south of the city. Maybe I could commission Uver to retrieve it? Also it’s not like we Digimon have genitalia to hide.” I would comment on Dormarch being male and having the matching canid biology, but he did have an entire hospitals worth of medical data in his head when he was started up and probably managed to match his biology to some real world anatomy from it to that of his appearance as it was. So maybe all Dalmamon actually copied that information, being informational beings created by this realm, okay… I think I was thinking too far about this and need to cut my train of thought… We already have an idea of what Monitamon were like, they were good at monitoring places and sharing information between themselves. Dolly has been calling them those ‘TV headed ninja guys’. They knew how to work together effectively and aside from a few gaffs involving us, they’ve learned what we were capable of and how to deal with us more effectively. I haven’t personally seen the effects of this yet, but the Commandramon were certainly having problems with them prior to us coming back. “So… this Ultros… you said he was a purple Octomon, what are Octomon normally like?” We were going to sit here and wait for all the traps to be mapped out by our spotters among the five Commandramon that were helping us attack Octomon’s holdings. They really didn’t have a stake in this, yet they were still here for Sami Soldier as friends, companions and colleagues. There was also Metabee and Rokusho. Given Metabee was hanging out with us, we didn’t need to ask for his help. While Rokusho had wandered off to look around the city on his own. The two were very much night and day, but they were friendly at least. The only reason we had to attack Octomon’s holding, was for information or to possibly free up the ferris wheel for the young Digimon that liked to ride on it. The Karaoke bar, that nobody was using, was not something of great importance as the Commandramon have already confirmed it doesn’t have a secret basement and it’s basically a thing that Tempomon might like to run on his off days. In fact, these Data Diver gang guys didn’t seem to be searching to expand anymore and seem to be perfectly happy with their beach side territory, aside from helping Etemon do whatever it was he was doing… they don’t actually sound as evil as the other gangs. Aside from Ultros sounding like a pervert, but I haven’t personally heard the guy talk yet. Ogremon and Goblimon were so obvious about being evil, but were currently tied up with the Pink Troopers having stormed the southeast slums after the Game Cube lifted and have taken it over immediately because the Basher Bullies took their junkyard. I wouldn’t bother dealing with those two factions attacking each other, Pink Troopers seemed chaotic neutral and didn’t care much about surface dwelling Digimon or anyone else so long as their turf wasn’t messed with. The Basher Bullies were regretting taking the junkyard from the Pink ‘Pooper’ Troopers right about now from what we’ve been hearing. “You mean beyond the whole 'beach ninja' thing we’re dealing with here?” Sami took a relaxed position on her beach chair as we continued to sit here and wait for the Commandramon to finish scouting the area for as much information as we could get with their digital binoculars. The Data Divers could have reportedly done this job in five minutes, we’ve been here for more than an hour and the Commandramon were carefully looking over every square meter of sand. “Octomon, as the name implies, have eight limbs with some with varying differences like grasping claws, a blade at the end or a normal tentacle. They are good at short and mid-range battle, with some long range capability thrown in with some digital weaponry they possibly stole off some Vademon, er… tentacle alien Digimon with somewhat large brains known for making fantastical stuff. An Octomon can multitask fighting entire groups quite effectively, we need at least more than eight people to give them some real problems. If this one is as big or unusual as stated, given they are usually primarily red in color and this one is purple, then at most we should be very wary of this one being a nastier variant type. Otherwise on land, they are quite slow mobility wise and we’re not fighting Ultros in the water, it would be exceedingly dumb to do so. The Monitamon known as the Data Divers gang are the major issue here, they already know we’re coming and are scoping out their territory to launch an assault on Octomon’s holdings or at least try to pry information from him. Information is a major resource fort them and they have more of it than we do.” “Could we possibly converse with this Ultros peacefully? He didn’t try to assassinate me on purpose, though I’m not defending the fact that I still took a knife that was apparently poisoned for digital entities to the shoulder.” Even if the thrown knife had poison that would effect a biological, I was still wearing my Pecha scarf. Not that that was a known factor and the Hi-Vision Monitamon still tried to kill me. “We have Digi-credits, maybe we can afford a price they ask for peaceably?” “Yeah, maybe an option, but the Monitamon have had it out for our group since Etemon started the whole Backspace System conspiracy thing that’s going on here. I’ve looked over two separate instances of the Backspace System and I’m still coming up blank for what Etemon could get from selling them aside from the Digi-credits and good publicity, because it seems to be entirely benign... aside from the massive loss of Digi-credits from the pockets of the wielder. Still far better than the information loss of reincarnation or being digitally consumed.” Yeah, which was why you were still trying to figure out some things Sami and even I only had a few suggestions to try thinking about, but they weren’t quite warranted yet until we know there’s something up with the systems aside from trapping Digimon in specific areas they label their home base to return to upon the systems activation. Etemon doesn’t seem to be trying to own the entire city, but he did give the gangs the capacity to hold territory and set them on people to actively sell his product as something that works. At least I know for certain Etemon didn’t make the Backspace Systems, he’s just selling them. Surprisingly enough, Etemon is actually doing his job as an advertisement program despite starting the whole issue with these gangs in the first place.” “If I may interrupt your casual conversation ma’am. Our flatbed can take a lot of punishment, but we can’t in good conscience try to drive it onto the sand through that specific area with so many traps. There’s mines of at least three identifiable types as far as we know, dug out spaces for hidden Monitamon ambushers and there’s even something big buried in the sand that we probably don’t want to go near. It may be a tank or a similar combat vehicle of some sort and we only know this because it’s slightly hotter than the surrounding sand and giving off enough energy that it obviously screams danger. There’s a lot between us and the Beach Bungalow where Octomon is currently, he hasn’t left since it was establish and they are quite prepared for us.” Which according to the Commandramon means we probably need to launch something of a probing attack to lure out the large thing to see if it was worth trying to push through it. “We can try to open communications with them to see if they will sell the information openly. We know they are not personally big on offensive power individually, but I can tell whatever they are definitely hiding in the sand... it's big and something we absolutely don’t want to mess with.” “Can you park the vehicle near here and let us use it as a retreat point?” Sami asked. “We can do that for you, but the guys and I know for certain that something smells here and we would rather you didn’t figuratively test the waters yet. When I say smells, I don’t mean like the sewers of Server City did when we were down there.” At comment from a Commandramon, I noticed Sami, Frizzle and Dazzle cringe. “Yeah, well, we didn’t like the sewers either. Not a mission I would want to do twice unless I had to, even if I owed you all a huge favor.” “You guys being here and acting as long range support is good enough for me.” Sami stated with a slight frown on her face as she looked towards the bungalow in the distance. “Though I still want to know why you are so eager to assist me personally.” “Well for one, you did give us the data on your bazooka and there’s the fact we respect you as a legendary Commandramon… one that apparently became a digi-destined on top of being one of the most memorable Commandramon in existence that is one of the earliest surviving iterations of us. Keyword being 'surviving' there.” The other Commandramon had been working on their own bazookas when we came back, they weren't quite finished yet. “That and Uver brought us in with you as the selling point. As friends that needed our help and something interesting for us to do was just as important caramel icing on the gooey warm freshly baked cake for us.” “So should we go forward and try to draw out what they have buried in the sand in preparation for us or should we try to contact them first?” Drawing our attention to him, Canard was quietly waiting on us to make a decision. “We’re all a team on this, we should act like we have some functional cohesion here.” “Contact, we should at least try to talk before we resort to violence.” Of course we were going to end up resorting to violence anyway at some point, but I wanted a little hope that we could try to come to an agreement where that didn’t happen. “I’m for whatever.” Off to the side Dolly was quietly building a sand castle. “Dolly basically says she’s not making a decision on this.” I followed up. “Contact, the enemy knows we’re here, might as well try the peace option before we fight.” Dazzle seemed to be with me on this, she was busy playing with a whip of fire and practicing her 'Fire Lash' technique so she would avoid hurting us later by accident. Frizzle pointed to Dazzle and nodded, basically just a ‘what she said’ gesture. “I’m okay with trying to contact them peacefully.” It seemed Sami agreed and the Commandramon were open for trying. “Now if someone can tell me how we’re going to do that.” There was silence that stretched out as Dolly continued to build a sand castle in the background. “I could go over there and simply ask…” I received multiple frowns as I pointed towards the north “Yeah, no, not happening Pom!” Dolly immediately reacted negatively to the idea, yet still kept sculpting a sand castle and was looking at something in the distance. Looking to where Dolly was, I saw a Monitamon a fair distance away building a sand castle too as competition to what Dolly was doing. It was a cute interaction at least, maybe I could talk to that Monitamon without incurring trouble? “No, your leg might look like its working fine, for the most part, but I wouldn’t want you to going that way all alone.” Okay, I apparently upset Dazzle too. Frizzle crossed her arms and shook her head. “I’m with them, as a friend we're not letting you out of our sight.” Metabee added his two cents from nearby. “Also I’m all for busting in and knocking some heads!” “Pom might have the best chance of being seen as harmless attempt to approach them though.” At least Canard was considering it. “Still wouldn’t want anything to happen to you though, you’re probably the only way I’ll eventually meet that Arceus guy in person. You’re kind of the perfect one to send forward alone, which rankles me quite a bit.” “We’ll say yes to the idea, but we’ll at least give her cover from here.” The Commandramon group stated as they broke up from talking to one another in a huddle, this was surprising. “Pom… be careful.” Sami stated after a moment. I got up, flexed my wool and sand flew out of it in a slight cloud and then started to trot forward towards the Monitamon competing with Dolly in building sand castles. It didn’t take me long to reach the Monitamon, they didn’t seem too threatened by my presence. “Excuse me… I know you’re competing in a sand castle building contest at the moment, but is there anyway we can peacefully buy the information we want from you without having to go through the whole rigmarole of beating each other into the ground violently?” The Monitamon was doing quite impressively as their castle had a moat and was sculpting parapets with careful hand motions. He looked up at me with a question mark appearing on his monitor. “Well I was wondering what would it cost for us to simply buy the information on where Etemon or the Falcomon’s leader currently is? We were just wondering if we have to actually go without the whole violence route with you guys.” The Monitamon held up a digit on his left hand in what I came to recognize as a ‘wait one second gesture’ and he turned towards the bungalow and was doing something. After a moment later, he turned back around and his face showed Etemon with an X mark and a circle on a black blob shape with a question mark on it. “Okay, so we can buy the information on the Falcomon leader, but we can’t on Etemon. Can we buy information on the one who created the Backspace Systems?” I silently asked Dolly if she could bring our Digivice over to me when I called on her. I looked to see that Sami and Commandramon were carefully holding their weapons, making sure they were pointed downwards. Another gesture of 'hold on' and the Monitamon turned from me and made several gestures. He turned back with a green circle on his screen. “The information on who the Backspace System creator is and the Falcomon leader, how much would both of them cost together or separately?” Another gesture to wait and they went back to working on the sand castle. I sat down and started to play in the sand myself while I waited for an answer to the question, apparently they weren’t going to sell out on Etemon, but the aerial gang and the creator of the Backspace Systems? They are somewhat open to negotiations apparently and I was a little surprised about that. -Bungalow Beach, bungalow, Ultros the purple Octomon- “They’re here, can you get me an image of those cuties?!” On screen I saw the wary adorable figure that was called Pom. Slight injury to her right leg, but my goodness she was exquisitely adorable to look at playing in the sand in spite of the all those hidden scars she has! Hi-Vision Monitamon didn’t kill her, but he was still on my list for the next week or so. I focused on the Guilmon next, she was a cute, battle hardened, bread thirsty, monstrous lizard. She was quite a honey and a quiet one to boot! Her actions definitely spoke louder than words. There’s a lithe large black and purple lizard with the stylish pink highlight markings along her chest and belly, she looked like royalty with the way she held herself. Didn’t look like a Digimon, but since when would that have ever stopped me from appreciating such visions of beauty before? The orange Commandramon. Battle hardened, no sense of feminine appearance or care, screams practicality or pragmatism by existing… but the muscles looked nice enough on her. She was mostly a ‘meh’ at best though. -To the current south, Sami- Why do I feel like stuffing an octopus full of explosives for a flash fried calamari hamburger? Also felt an extremely strong urge to fire my bazooka at the bungalow, must resist urges… do not ruin the peaceful negotiations Sami… Pom might actually be succeeding at getting something from them without a big fight happening. -Bungalow, Ultros- The little canid was cute, but a bit too small for my refined tastes. I don’t think I could even squeeze them in any of my tentacles without immediately crushing them to death. No Hea-Gatomon and that cute nurses outfit, oh well. Would have loved to rub my tentacles up against her brilliant cared for digital fur. As for the rest, couldn’t care anything much about them aside from the fact that they might be customers. Gyheheh, I wanted to get my tentacles all over most of those sweet honeys! How to go about doing it though? “Hm… you can sell the information for that price fairly enough, but if they want to a clue to finding Etemon directly…” If anything, they direly wanted to know where Etemon was and they’ll have to come to me to get that bit of information. I can hardly wait! “Well they’ll have to come after me personally for the information on Etemon and will have to go through you to do it! At least let them know that they should make an open declaration of wanting a fight before trying to beat the information out of me, they’re being cordial at the moment so we should do the same and tell them how they can get what they want.” -A few minutes later, Pom- Negotiating prices was going pretty well, they were willing to cut some of the price for buying two bits of information at the same time and I wonder what it would take to actually get a hint of where Etemon was. “What would it take for a hint of where Etemon is on top of the current price?” I was holding the Digivice and Dolly was continuing with working on my sand castle next to me, I had the digi-credits for the information. What the Monitamon answered was surprising, free of charge? That was ominous, these guys were in the information business and I’m guessing the information was going to be so obvious it would be worthless to actually put a price on it. “Okay… I would like to finalize purchase and information exchange.” The device in my hoof lit up. “Yggdrasil.sys, will check and carry out the trade if information is of proper value.” The Digivice announce and soon the information seemed to be traded between the device and the Monitamon. “Information successfully retrieved, sending Digi-credits.” “Okay, what do we have Yggdrasil Dot Sis?” I asked as I looked at the device, Dolly lifted her right ear in my direction wanting to hear this as well. “Information is as follows according to Monitamon network. Accessing Informational Packet 1. Creator of the Backspace Systems is a local ‘Greymon Expert’ known as ‘Hakase’ who bought Etemon’s help for advertising his product, it seems to have been a complete success judging by local trends.” Okay, intriguing, we’ll need to find where this Greymon Expert was and ask him if he knows what Etemon is doing. “Accessing IP 2. Leader of the Falcomon is Raptor Sparrowmon, extra information… their bases location is to be found upwards and their gangs name is the 'Avalanche Avians'.” “Okay, that’s two good leads…” So maybe on a tall building or somewhere in the sky, I couldn’t rule out floating islands after seeing one in Ransei. Also a Greymon Expert, an expert at what… who knew? We just wanted to find Etemon, not continue being a dug in part of the gang wars going on in the city. “Accessing IP 3. Free information of how to get a ‘good’ hint to where Etemon is currently hiding, fight through my Monitamon and beat me down. Give us a heads up when you’re ready for a battle 'Gyhehehe'-Signed Ultros the Purple Octomon.” Why of course, why wouldn’t he challenge us to come after him for it? “While we cannot currently confirm all the informational accuracy, the Data Divers have given us other leads to follow up on at least.” I was about turn and go back to the still tense and waiting group, but I paused and thought of something. I turned back to the Monitamon and scrutinized him, her or it closely and even took a sniff of the air around them slightly. I think I had a good enough read on them to at least put something into motion. “Okay… this might be a long shot and you might never find the information I’m looking for and this could take a very, VERY, long time. It may even be a challenge of all of your skills… I need you to find information on something of great importance for me and you might never actually find it or it might not even be possible… but please, I want to know if you can at least try and…” I moved closer to the Monitamon and whispered what I wanted and then transferred every ounce of the remaining Digi-credits out of the Digivice to him quietly with a press of the hoof. “Also let the little Digimon have free access to the ‘ferris wheel’ ride again at least, you took that away from them. We’ll inform you, quite loudly at that, if we’ve come for a fight or we’ll come quietly if we need more information. If you can do this one thing for me… then… I will be forever grateful with just knowing whatever you come up with.” After a moment the Monitamon quietly nodded in acknowledgement and hopped away, I turned and moved over to Dolly returned the Digivice to her. I then started heading back to Sami and the others to inform them of the information we now have. Quietly wondering if anything would come of paying that Monitamon so much to do something important for me. “Pom…” I noticed Dolly catching up to me, she immediately caught on to what was on my mind. The true longshot I just asked for might never come to pass, but it wouldn’t hurt to try and the money of this world wasn’t exactly a big focus of mine, though it was a part of the current ongoing problem. “Do you think they’ll really do that? I mean, they’re the bad guys right?” “I’m truly not sure they’re bad guys out and out Dolly. They could just be working for a bad person, they’ll obviously honor the payment and will have to try at least. I can feel they’ll do that much.” That’s what I was hoping for, if it came down to it Canard and Dazzle still had Digi-credits in their devices to spend should they need to. “I’ve also got all kinds of questions about the information they just gave us to go over with Sami and the others… the whole 'flood the city with gangs’ thing being one giant marketing campaign is a little too much to me to be fully real.” -A few minutes later, Sami- “A Greymon Expert? Oh my goodness, an Agumon Expert actually took the time out of being a complete brainiac to go out and exercise enough to actually pull off a rare digital evolution!” Provided there is such a Digimon in Server City, finding them would be relatively easy. Not a lot of Greymon running around here, if they were the type to get out there might be Digimon who’ve seen them. It explains Etemon being here somewhat, though Etemon’s business practices were definitely scummy and left something to be desired what with all the gangs running around. “Raptor Sparrowmon… okay, that’s a Digimon I don’t know about, but they sound dangerous given the ‘Raptor’ is in their name.” “We’re going to attack them aren’t we?” Canard stated a moment later. “It’s almost too good a carrot, but there’s a big stick involved there as well.” I responded, said stick was a machine of unknown quantity buried in the sand and the Octomon himself, Ultros. “I’m willing to accept that we might have to fight, but wouldn’t looking into the other bits of information we received first before we start a big fight be a better idea?” Pom stated with a slight hint of not wanting to do so. Knowing the Monitamon, they’ll be watching our progress throughout the city and we don’t know when they’ll attack us any time after we decide it was too much trouble to start a fight here for the most wanted bit of information. “I don’t relish the idea, but if they are on the up and up with the information I bought from them.” “They definitely know where Etemon is, there’s no doubt they wouldn’t being the major information brokers in the city.” One of the Commandramon brought up, because we all knew Tempomon was the lesser information specialist around and his part of the city was the safest to be in at the moment. So he gets a decent influx of knowledge from those who pass through peacefully. “I think they do business as paid, but will still hassle us combat wise as we travel around like the Goblimon.” Pom sighed audibly at hearing that they’ll continue to bother us as we moved around the city, but nodded in acceptance that’ll we’ll have to keep fighting them off. -Dazzle- Well it’s nice that we got some information, but we were in for a huge fight soon and we’d be fighting the Digimon who could use multiple elements… sure they weren’t at Pokemon levels of output, but any water attacks on me would still be quite devastating. I wonder what Pom asked the Monitamon before they started jumping away? I glanced at Frizzle and she sent me a smile that said everything would be okay, provided she could actually control herself if she were needed to go through a digital evolution again. I think I could trust her to be better this time after the time we spent together in the sewers of Server City. -Ultros- “Now just come to papa my pretties, you’ll receive a big loving squeeze from me alright!” My toothy grin was met with curiosity from Hi-Vis and the other Monitamon around looking to me curiously. They just didn’t understand the beauty of those lovely females. “If you even manage to bring me down, you’ll get your hint, but not before I’ve had my fun… can you still reach the Black Widow despite being buried?” “Of course sir, I can get back in the same way I got out." Hi-Vis responded with a salute. "It is still fully operational and ready for deployment with me as the pilot.” “Good… very good…” I smiled malevolently, I practiced it in front of a mirror and everything to get it just right what with my teeth sticking out of my body weirdly. I even rubbed two tentacles together in true excitement of what was to come to me.