My Little Digi-Cat

by Lucky Star Kona-chan

6: I want to trust you

Author's Note:

Chapter 6 is here!

For some reason I think I'll screw up this revelation at some point.

Anyways, like always if there is any mistakes let me know, I would like some opinions but I won't force you to do that.

So with nothing else to say, Lucky Star(Kona-chan), Out!

Tailmon begrudgingly carried Rainbow on her back as they were walking towards Twilight’s castle, she was feeling this way not for carrying Rainbow or by the whispers of the ponies around or because Rainbow was nibbling on her ear and almost strangling her by hugging her neck.

No, she was annoyed for a different reason.

“Derpy, can you please get off!?”

Just as Rainbow was on Tailmon’s back, Derpy was on Rainbow’s back giving Tailmon a bigger load to carry, “But Kitty… I’m so comfy here.”

“I don’t care, just get off. I’m feeling really weird already by having this thing nibbling on my ear.”

Twilight giggled, “Oh come on, Tailmon. Don’t you think is cute? She’s looks so peaceful on your back."

Tailmon glared sideway towards Twilight, “don’t push it, Twilight. Or do you want to end up the same way, perhaps?”

Twilight put a hoof up defensively, “I said nothing.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought.”

Tailmon then glared at the ponies around, all of them freezing in place and not daring to move a muscle.

She smirked, “Well, at least they know their place in the food chain.”

Derpy sighed, “Kitty… that’s…”

“That’s mean?” Tailmon intersected.

“Yes, that. Can you…”

Tailmon cut her off again, “nope, now get down.”

“But I don’t wanna!” Derpy whined.

“Twilight,” Tailmon called without looking at her, “could you be so gentle…”

“Sure, but you better tell me some things when we get to the castle.”

“Sure, sure, but remember that I’m free to ignore any out of boundaries questions.”

Twilight seemed to accept the deal, “fair enough,” then she levitated Derpy out of Rainbow’s back and put her back on her hooves on the dirt path.

Derpy was not happy with that, “aww… you meanie…” but didn’t complain much after that and walked at Tailmon’s side.

Both of them exchanged smiles, they knew too well this was just another friendly quirk of their relationship.

Twilight didn’t get it though, “why do you keep doing that?”

Then Derpy and Tailmon said in unison, “Because we’re friends.”

The rest of the walk was used for random chattering, stating the obvious and more trolling by Tailmon.

---

They left Rainbow in one of the rooms after prying her off of Tailmon’s back with some difficulty since she didn’t want to let go for some reason.

Tailmon massaged her aching neck, “for wanting me to disappear she sure was adamant in not letting me go.”

“Who knows, maybe she actually likes you,” Twilight joked.

Tailmon rolled her, “Your jokes are terrible too Twilight.”

But Twilight just waved a hoof dismissively, “I’ll let it slide for now, since you promised me to tell what I wanted.”

“Let me make some lunch for Derpy again and we can do that, can I use your kitchen?”

“Sure, but you don’t have to do that, I can always ask Spike to make something quick for us.”

But Tailmon refused by shaking her head, “You don’t get it Twilight.”

Twilight was confused, “Get what?”

Tailmon let out a light laugh. Then looked at her, “what it is to be my friend,” she looked at Derpy who was sitting some feet away staring at the decorations, “come on, Derpy! I’m going to make you something yummy!” she said enthusiastically.

Derpy’s eyes lit up, “Yay!”

The two then walked off the room and in direction of the kitchen.

Then Twilight noticed something, “Hey! How do you know where my kitchen is!?” she followed them.

---

Half an hour later.

The group was in the library, Tailmon sat in one of tables in front of Twilight.

Derpy was at Tailmon’s side happily eating a Russian salad; she was full of glee, “Thish ish sho good!”

Tailmon smacked her in the forehead lightly.

“Ouchie…” Derpy rubbed the area with her hooves.

“Don’t speak with your mouth full you dummy.”

Now this got Twilight curious, “hey, can I…” she didn’t even finished the sentence as she tried to levitate the fork with some of the salad on it in her direction.

Tailmon stood on the table, “I’ll be taking this, yoink!” she snatched the fork out of the magic.

“Hey! I just wanted a little taste,” Twilight protested.

Tailmon gave the fork back to Derpy and crossed her front legs, “You didn’t even asked, I never thought royalty would be so unrefined.”

“I was about to, but you interrupted me!”

“Oh right, I should have waited until you stuffed your face with it, how rude of me.”

Twilight frowned, Tailmon stared boringly and Derpy kept eating her meal.

Twilight groaned, “Alright, I’m sorry. Can we please go on with the plan?”

“Finally,” Tailmon sat on her chair again, “well, what do you want to know?”

Twilight cleared her throat, “Well, let’s start with, what are you Tailmon?”

“A Digimon.” That was the only thing Tailmon said.

An awkward staring contest took place for a moment.

Until Twilight decided to speak again, “emm… do you mind elaborating?”

Tailmon sighed, “The complete term would be Digital Monster. We are creatures from the Digital World, we share almost all the same base characteristics with any other being of any other world, the only difference being that our bodies are not made of flesh like yours, instead ours are made of data.”

“Data? What do you mean by data?”

Tailmon poked her chin with a claw, “basically, data is just a big binary code that defines our appearance and abilities. The entire Digital World is made of data as well, changing anything in the line of code would transform a Digimon or any object in the Digital World quite drastically depending on how much the code changed, fortunately every being capable of modifying the code has been dealt with at their due time.”

“Does that mean if anypony discovers how to change the code they could even be able to create other Digimons?”

“In theory yes, but only the gods can create totally functional Digimon.”

This got Twilight confused, “What do you mean?”

Tailmon took a napkin and wiped Derpy’s messy face before continuing, “Non godly beings tried to create Digimon before, but those ended up being soulless puppets, since they weren’t created properly, most of these created Digimon end up as corrupted counterparts of other Digimon generally adopting a black coloration, those who don’t lose their essence become evil instead. Digimon who are affected by a virus could also end up converting into corrupted Digimon if they don’t get treated.”

“What reasons did those individuals had to create Digimon?”

Tailmon snorted, “what else would it be, Twilight? For war, of course.”

“War?” Twilight got a little worried.

Tailmon nodded, “they tried taking over the Digi-World, hordes of corrupted Digimon would invade territory upon territory to eliminate any possible threat. Those who weren’t wiped out would be infected by the virus and become corrupted or simply pass away depending on their level of resistance to it.”

Twilight stared in shock, “How horrible…”

Tailmon took a glance at her gloved paws with a sad expression, “yes…”

Twilight was a little afraid of the next question, “h-how many Digimon were cured?”

Tailmon closed her eyes as if deep in concentration, “there was only one case of partial recovery from the virus, at least from the area I used to live in, I was never told about how the other areas fared with it.”

“I-I’m sorry.”

Tailmon shook her head with a melancholic smile, “don’t be, war is cruel, that’s a fact. My village was very small and I was the only champion level Digimon on it, which in consequence made us an easy target for the attacks.”

Twilight felt in some capacity the sorrow in Tailmon’s words, this made her think of a terrible possibility, “Tailmon… is your village ok?”

Tailmon’s expression became somber, “My village is no more Twilight, as far as I know only a couple of Nyaromon from my village survived, and only because the forces of Álfheimr happened to pass by that area.”

“Does that mean…”

Tailmon nodded slowly, “if it weren’t for Konata and Rinna-sama’s mother the entirety of my village would’ve been wiped out completely and…” she looked down to her paws, “I wouldn’t be here now.”

Derpy hugged her supportingly, but said nothing.

Tailmon closed her eyes as she put a paw on Derpy’s embracing leg, “thank you, Derpy.” She looked at Twilight, “can… can we change the subject?”

Twilight was taken aback; it’s the first time she saw Tailmon in a vulnerable state, “of course.”

Tailmon nodded thankfully.

Her mind then drifted to another detail, “alright, you mentioned you are a champion level Digimon, what does that mean?”

Letting out a stressed sigh Tailmon calmed down, “ok, champion level refers to the adult stage in a Digimon’s evolutionary status.”

“Oh! What are the other levels called?”

Tailmon thought about the best way to explain it, “well, I think I should start from the start, every Digimon starts off as a DigiEgg, after hatching we enter our first baby stage which is almost identical for most Digimon since we are little blobs, some with ears, some with different coloration, but essentially the same. After some time we evolve into a second baby stage, which shows some traits of our next stages, some grow limbs, legs, tails teeth, etc, but nothing notable.”

“Why is it called evolution and not simply growing?”

Tailmon held a claw up, “because this change is not periodical, it is sudden. A Digimon will stay with their predefined appearance until they evolve, at that moment their appearance changes directly to the one of their evolved state, there is no in between transition in this situation.”

“So, that means that a Digimon in their first baby stage will just jump to the appearance of it next stage upon evolution?”

Tailmon nodded, “exactly, but we don’t really consider the first baby form as a form so to speak, because we expend so little time on it, that’s why the second baby form is just referred as baby form not counting the previous one.”

Twilight processed the information and nodded, “alright, got it. What are the other forms?”

Derpy rested her head on Tailmon’s legs, the latter caressing her mane gently.

“Our next forms are called Child or Rookie stage, we get to this form after getting stronger by any means, on this stage we have more defined appearances with fully developed limps, our height on this stage depends of our species, but we usually aren’t too tall at this point.”

Derpy let out contented sighs from the attention; then Tailmon continued, “The next evolutionary stage is the one I’m in, Adult or Champion level, after getting strong enough; we get taller depending again on our species. Rookies can achieve this form, at first they will not be able to stay on it, but with perseverance any Digimon can stay as a champion level, this applies to the next stages as well.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow, “are there levels above Adult level?”

Tailmon nodded, “indeed, there are two other levels above Adult/Champion level, Ultimate and Mega level. The height of Ultimate and Mega levels can either increase or decrease, as their power further increases.”

“What? Are you saying that an Ultimate or Mega can be smaller than a Champion level?”

Tailmon laughed a little, “Don’t think too much into it, even I don’t know exactly how that works. But it’s something that happens to Digimons.”

Twilight accepted that explanation with a nod, “I see.”

“Well, is there anything else you want to know?”

Twilight thought about it, “I don’t think so, I would ask about the virus you mentioned before, but I believe that would be a bad idea.”

Tailmon shook her head while giving an empty smile, “It’s ok Twilight, this is something I’ll have to bring it up at some point, so it’s better if I do it now and get it out of my system.”

With closed eyes, Tailmon took out her gloves and showed the back of her bare paws to Twilight.

Twilight’s eyes got wide and gasped, there were big nasty scars on Tailmon’s paws, “Tailmon… were you…”

Tailmon nodded with a serious expression, “I was badly hurt; these scars remind me that every world just wants to manipulate others for self gain.”

Twilight was about to say something but Tailmon beat her to it.

“I know I’m generalizing, but no matter where I was, the same story repeated itself. A group would find something new and will try to take advantage of it to fulfill their selfish ambitions; the only group that didn’t do this was Rinna-sama, her family and those close to them. I think you now figure out why I was so wary of you guys.”

Twilight understood her reasoning, but there was one last thing she didn’t quite get yet, “I see, but why did you ally with Kurumi, Tailmon?”

Tailmon looked away, “for a time, she was on the good side with them as well,” she said getting a shocked look from Twilight, “yes I wouldn’t believe it either if I were you, but she was. At some point she was acting off and I confronted her, she told me that she was a spy for another faction, she told me that if Rinna-sama stayed with them, one day she would get used just like it happened so many times before and that she would be safer with that other faction.”

Ashamed Tailmon looked down, and chuckled dryly, “I was so naïve back then, just like you ponies. I let her manipulate me, to fight against those who I respected, I feel so stupid…”

Twilight was panicking a little, not knowing what to do, “d-don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“Maybe the virus residue on me pushed me to go the evil side… after all my corruption never healed fully.”

“You’re a corrupted Digimon!?”

“Partially, you see these patches of black fur on my ears and tail?” she asked getting a nod from Twilight, “these are supposed to be purple, my eyes were supposed to be blue, and my gloves supposed to be yellow with purple stripes, all of these are the effects of my corruption. Their method only stopped the corruption; they told me that if they were to find me earlier they could have been able to cure me totally.”

“At some point they said they wanted to try something experimental, to try and get me back to normal, I refused since I know that once the virus settles it cannot be removed. I could’ve tried but I also decided to wear this corruption as a mark of my weakness.”

“Weakness?”

“I was weak; my village got destroyed because I couldn’t protect it.” Tailmon lay on her chair looking at the ceiling.

“Don’t blame yourself, it wasn’t something you could control, Tailmon,” Twilight tried to reassure her.

Tailmon smiled without averting her gaze from the ceiling, “You’re a good pony Twilight, I’m sorry by the way I treated you in the past. Maybe I was wrong about all of you, but I still have this voice in the back of my head that tells me one of you is not to be trusted, maybe it’s the corruption on me but I can’t help but trust it.”

Twilight smiled with empathy, “don’t worry Tailmon, I’ll help you in any way I can, you’ll see that all of us have good intentions, maybe some will take longer to trust you, like Rainbow or Applejack. But I’m sure they will warm up to you in the long run when they get to know you like this.”

“Maybe you’re right, but I won’t hold it against them if they decide to keep that hate for what I did.”

They stayed in silence for some minutes just relaxing, Twilight even asked Spike to make some tea for them.

After about twenty minutes of thinking about everything they spoke before, something clicked in her mind, “Taillmon.”

“Hmm?” Tailmon replied half asleep.

“You told me before that I had to be careful about what I ask, but you told some quite personal things about you…”

Tailmon kept her eyes closed, “because I want to trust you, Twilight. If I never let my guard down I could hurt someone important to me,” she stroke Derpy’s mane, the mare happily sleeping on her lap.

“You want to trust me?”

She gave a bittersweet smile, “Yes, I even want to trust Blue, she reminds me of myself from a long time ago, I would get mad if things didn’t go my way and even hurt others out of frustration. As you probably figure it out, I’m also quite protective of those who I hold dear, I know I said I held back because Derpy wasn’t really that hurt, but I fought against myself to not beat Blue up even more. She being annoying didn’t help much.”

Twilight giggled awkwardly, “well, she can be quite impulsive sometimes, I’m just glad you didn’t hurt her badly.”

“Don’t mention it; I will not hurt her as long as she doesn’t repeat this again.”

---

Hours have passed since they started talking, and it was almost evening already. Tailmon didn’t want to wake up Derpy, so she carried her home, Twilight waved them good bye.

“She’s not that bad, don’t you think so Rainbow?” Twilight asked to the pony at the door.

“Shut up, Twi. I still don’t trust her.”

“But she wants to trust you; at least she’s making an effort Rainbow. The least you can do is consider it.”

Rainbow averted her stare from Twilight, “you guys are not being fair…”

“Her entire village was massacred Rainbow, she was infected by a horrible virus, and had to see the same situation happening over and over. Sure her past doesn’t change what she did to us, but we don’t know how she feels with that trauma present on her mind.”

Rainbow got out of the castle and went to Twilight’s side, “I don’t know Twilight…”

“Rainbow, you know that it’s not her fault that Konata and Rinna had to go back to their world. She protected me Rainbow, and even when she complained a little, she still carried you here. Look Rainbow, we can become Tailmon’s friends, but only if she’s shown compassion and kindness, and with time she will show us the same in return.”

Rainbow seemed conflicted and without another word she flew away to her house.

In the distance the watcher sat in a tree branch big enough to support her, “Tailmon is progressing, I was worried with that confrontation and that I had to intervene, but the some of the locals fortunately were able to get her to stop. I’m surprised she’s opening up to them, it will be interesting to see her development here,” satisfied she closed the notebook and went away.

Comments

[Speckle]

"hugs Tailmon"
Now I know why Tailmon's coloration was off. Gosh, that's horrible. At least she's fighting off the negative parts for the sake of her newfound friend.