Slumming it

[Colbie Perez]

Kyle seemed to snap back to reality, shaking his head and taking the phone from Colbie's tiny hand. He still seemed a bit out if it, mumbling when he had been speaking so clear before. Colbie had to strain her ears to catch the Japanese and translate it to herself. It was always harder to understand when the speaker was fluent and could just rattle off on tangents, or spoke so quietly you could barely hear a word they were saying.

The young man's eyes darted back and forth behind his glasses, and Colbie suddenly felt wary. He wasn't going to try anything, was he? He had been such a proper gentleman before...She gripped her pack tightly. Was her new phone valuable or something? Did he want to steal it? Well...He had helped her this far. If he tried to run with it, he'd bee in for a surprise. The thickset girl might not look like much, but she was a fair sprinter. That and she had some heavy textbooks in her bag.

”Here.”

She held out the device, umber gaze locked on it, muscles tensed as they walked. Hmm, this street looked familiar. Oh! She had visited that electronics shop! It had one of the old fashioned displays, with all the tvs and computer monitors out in the window. She paused, eying a fifty inch tv appreciatively.

[Kyle Summers]

He took the digivice off the girl and inspected it more closely. It looked identical to his save for the colour variation. Did this mean a digimon would pop out soon for her - his digivice works for Luce, he swipes a card and Luce seems to get, well, buffed or something. He looked at the latina girl, still judging whether or not he should let the secret out - even though the girl had a digivice didn't mean he wanted to put such an amount of power in her hands. But she looked nice enough...

He sighed and reached down and slipped his own off his belt, bringing it up beside hers. "This...is what I call a 'digivice'." He explained. "A few days ago one of these appeared to me, along with some cards. A couple of hours later a...creature, a 'digimon' appeared, coming out of my computer...along with a second one that tried to kill me... This here is...well, I dunno what it is. So far I know we use the cards to, sort of buff a digimon...or something" He ran out of steam towards the end - once he had gotten through telling his story about Devimon he wasn't 100% sure of everything else, it was sort of trial and error, and just learning over time what the digivice does.

He looked back up at the latina girl. "And you probably think I'm crazy now" He said, handing her device out for her to take.

[Colbie Perez]

As they walked, Kyle slipped his hand down to his waist. Colbie didn't really notice, because she was still pretty enthralled with the TV. She wasn't the best at Math(understatement of the year), so it was taking her a moment to convert the price from yen to American dollars. Maybe the tv would be cheaper here than in America?

Her rather insignificant musings were interrupted when Kyle held the weird phone out in front of her face. Her broad nose scrunched in confusion, and then her face became slack. His phone...It was the same as hers? Except...He had let her use his cell. Why would he carry around two? This was so weird...Like one of those Sci-fi movies she watched...

Colbie was imaginative. She was accepting. She read all sorts of Sci-fi and fantasy. This happened to the protagonists all the time. The character runs into someone who has more experience with whatever is happening to them and sort of explains everything. One would think the girl would be more accepting. She wasn't. The brown skinned girl listened intently at first, but the disbelief quickly became evident on her face. By the end of the boy's explanation, she was snorting and trying to hold back chuckles. She couldn't help the smile though, which was full of teeth. She took a step back from the tall westerner.

"Ooohkay Kyle! Well, thank you so much for your help, I really appreciate it. If you could just, um, give me my phone back... I can find my way from here, I recognize the shops here. You can go and have a great night."

She smiled tightly, eyes darting everywhere, hands shaking a little. Great. Ended up prince charming was crazy. Gratefully she took the device, carefully avoiding the taller man's gaze.

"Um, just a lil' bit Kyle. But that's okay, because I'll get out of your hair."

Colbie nodded her head, short ponytail flopping as she mumbled a quick goodbye and began to scurry away.

[[NPC]admin]

The electronics store they were passing by was unusually crowded today - there were always quite a few potential customers around, since in Japan people loved electronics and technology, but today there were quite a lot of them. Maybe because of the "two-for-one deal" on the older model of TV-sets they did not manage to sell. To get at least a little bit of money from those, the shop owners decided to lower the price. That, as it showed, was working - everyone wanted to get two for price of one.

The TV-sets, despite being outdated, seemed to work perfectly - they displayed all the variety of colors as good as the newer models, their only crime was that they were a bit outdated, that's all. Heh, if TV-sets were sentient, they'd feel very sad because of such under-appreciation. But we'll leave the semantics alone for now, alright? Because ... something was about to happen in this humble store...

One of the TV-sets that was switched on to display it's functionality, for some reason, started to act weird... All other sets were displaying a colorful butterfly image, to show all the capability to display bright colors. This one was showing something colorful too, only ... not what the others showed. It started off as a dot on a blue-ish background with green stripes, which gave a sort of matrix-feeling to it. The dot grew and grew, until it was possible to see that it was not a dot at all.

- Hey, what the hell is wrong with this TV set? - one of the customers asked curiously...

And then there was an explosion, that trashed a third of the shop with glass shards and ruined electronics. Screams of fear, pain and panic followed...

[Kyle Summers]

Yeah, she didn't believe him, was actually laughing...which was a little bit infuriating. But he couldn't fault her - he would have thought the same thing in his pre-digivice days. The girl was looking at him now, in that 'you're kinda crazy and I wanna get away from you' sort of way. Again, he couldn't fault her. Yet. "Alright, fine. Leave. Come find me when things start to get weird."

And how prescient his words were! Because not ten seconds later, after he himself had turned and started walking off in the other way, the window of the electronics shop they had just been infront of exploded outwards. Naturally Kyle spun back to look towards the source of the sudden noise - but he didn't see any fire or smoke, not the kind that would be expected off a bomb...so what the hell happened?

The teenager moved back down the street, towards the shop window, and peered around the wall of the opening. He didn't want to be agrophobic or fatalist in thinking it was another digimon attack - they fucked with electronics - but the thought did flash across his mind.

[Colbie Perez]

The poor guy actually believed the nonsense he was spouting. Oh well, time to call Mrs Takashima and tell her that she was late. Again. Ugh. How did someone dial a number on this thing?

Colbie wasn't the most cell phone sage teen in the world. The only things she knew how to do were simply text or call. The newer touchscreens and other models completely flummoxed her.

As the Latina fiddled with her new device, a surge of sound reached her ears. She screamed, ducking and grabbing her head. Eyes wild, the plump girl glanced behind. Had a friggen bomb exploded?

Trembling, the seventeen year old stood, swaying with indecision. Colbie was the first to admit that she was a coward. Once there was a gas leak in her house back in the states and her family was told to evacuate. Who do you think was the first person out of there? Still, Kyle had helped her out, the least she could do was check on the lunatic and maybe call the police. Not that she knew the number to the Japanese law enforcement office...Was 911 universal?

Keeping her frantic worse scenarios running through her mind kept the young woman calm, as she jogged over. Broken glass littered the sidewalk, inside it looked even worse. People were yelling and screaming, smoke billowed out and general chaos reigned. Colbie had half a mind to run away, get with the mob mentality. But her conscious wouldn't let her leave without confirming that Kyle was ok.

Oh! There he was! He was easy to spot, being taller than most of the residents of Japan. The idiot was peering into the massive hole made by the explosion. Didn't this guy have some self preservation instincts!?

"Get away from there!"

Instead of, 'are you okay?', escaped her plump lips. Did he know what happened? Did he set off the bomb? Crazy people did crazy things...Ugh, she would never be allowed out of Ian's house again after they heard of her shopping adventures!

[[NPC]admin]

Gabumon did not realize what was going on... It was so very blurry, so confusing. First he was minding his own business in the forest he lived in, playing with his friends and whatnot, enjoying himself and relishing in worry-ridden existence, and then, suddenly, it all changed drastically in a matter of minutes. There was no forest, no friends, no nothing! Only screaming, shouting, smell of something burning and smoke.

- Monster! Monster! - he heard the screams, as his vision became less blurry, and he started seeing silhouettes. The digimon lend his hands towards them, helpless, and confused, wishing to know what was going on, but received no compassion, rather more frightened screams, and the unrelenting mantra: "Monster! Monster!"...

- Stop it! Please! I am not a monster! - the poor creature pleaded, tears appearing on his eyes, but to no avail, his plea fell of deaf ears - the people were still scared, horrified, and made haste to run away from the ruined shop. Some were wounded by shards of glass and explosion, and yet they ran too, even though blood was dripping from their wounds, and they left red trails on the floor and the ground.

- It's THEM! The freaks are returning again! - suddenly, out of the myriad of frightened voices, one more decisive was heard, and the digimon turned his head to face it. As his vision cleared, he saw it was ... an old man, but there was something about him - he was not frightened, but rather ... enraged. And in his hand the man held a sharp shard of glass as a weapon. The digimon guessed his intentions, ... and ran. Where? Anywhere really.

- Get him! - the old man shouted as he ran in pursuit, but no one followed, everybody else was just too scared and confused. The Gabumon dashed along the street, maneuvering between people, and slipped right in between Colbie and Kyle before running into the backalley they came from not too long ago. - Aaaa! Please don't kill me! - the gabumon pleaded again as he kept running away from the old man, who was frantic.

- Out of the way! - the old man shouted out, and pushed through the pair, in his hot pursuit of the digimon, being armed with only a shard of glass. And he was running pretty fast, gaining on the creature that tried to avoid him so desperately...

[Kyle Summers]

Through the midst of confusion and fear Kyle heard a voice louder than the others, it's inflection much, much different than those of fear and pain - It's THEM! The freaks are returning again! Kyle looked toward the source of the voice, and saw an enraged old man...? It didn't take him long to follow the man's path of vision to see a digimon. And then the poor creature ran, the old man not far behind...wielding...something. Kyle couldn't really see through the chaos.

The blue and white digimon ran through the ex-window and off down the alleyway, and not two seconds after the old man did too Kyle took off after the pair, flicking a significant glance at Colbie along the way - I told you so.

He caught up with the old man - he did have youthful vitality on his side, though the old man could run pretty well for his age - and grabbed the man's shoulder to pull him to a stop. "Hey hey calm down!" He said, using both of his hands to pull the man to a halt, though he did get ready incase the enraged man sent that glass shard his way.

[Colbie Perez]

The noise intensified, people swarming out of the shop. What was happening in there!? Colbie couldn't really tell what the people around her were saying. It was hard enough keeping up with a native speaker in a conversation, let alone when someone is screaming. Where they screaming Monster?

Her umber eyes widened in horror as people with glass stuck in their bodies limped and ran past, heedless of the red path they left behind in their haste.Was there some kind of animal in there? Curiosity got the better of her and she tried to peer inside, just as a blue blur hurtled out of the damaged building. Whatever it was, this thing was big. Colbie lept out of the way, even as the horned creature darted between her and kyle, fur flying curiously behind it as it fled. It could only be fleeing, because a crazy old man was hot on its heels, a large shard of glass clutched in his hand. Colbie stood there, gaping.

Had the thing just talked!? Colbie could have just sworn that the furred beast had talked. She stumbled as the crazy(or brave) old man pushed by her. Almost forgotten, Kyle sprung after the pair, heading into the alley they had just vacated. The teen groaned, hands clenched around her backpack strap as she followed. She was a little pissed at the "I told you so", but it couldn't be helped. Were digimon some mutated animals or something? What did her phone have to do with Digimon? This was so creepy...Kyle had predicted weird stuff would happen, and it had...

It was almost enough evidence for Colbie to trust Kyle, except the Westerner had gone and grabbed the nut-job running around with sharp objects! This kid really had no self preservation. She caught up panting, but giving the two a wide berth. No way she was getting stabbed by a lunatic!

"Kyle be careful!"

She hissed, arms crossed across her chest as she shuffled uneasily. Something bothered her, tugged at her heart a little. The creature had been so scared...Was it still running? It could have cut itself on the glass! It must be innocent, there was no way an animal could cause that much damage to a store. She trotted further down, voice quavering and eyes squinting in the gloom.

"Hellllo! Are you ok? Come on out little guy, its ok, I promise!"

The Latina whistled, clucked softly with her tongue.

[[NPC]admin]

- Naaargh! Get away! - the old man violently plunged forward, feeling that some kid was trying to stop him in his pursuit. Foolish child, he did not know, he just did not know anything. At all. The kid managed to grab him by the shirt, but that shirt remained in his hands as it was torn by the sheer force of the plunge. Gratuitous physics, F=m*v^2... The old guy just continued his pursuit, only without a shirt this time. The only thing the kid could have seen as he ran into through the valley would be multiple and ugly scars on the guy's back - they were all hidden under the shirt...

Meanwhile Colbie's words managed to stop the poor digimon from running, at least for a little while. He did not expect to hear a kinder voice, not with all the screaming and cursing he heard so far. Maybe it was safe now? Maybe some of these strange creatures were benevolent? Maybe. Maybe not... - Is it... is it really okay? - he sounded scared, as he peeked from the small trash heap he hid behind. There was a girl... She looked alright, she was smiling, and her voice sounded kind. But what was that gaining behind? Was it? Oh no!

- Aaaaa! - the digimon screamed in horror as he saw the old man running at him with the glass shard gleaming in his hand like a sinister dagger. He turned around and tried to run away, but in vain, as the old man was too close, and delivered a blow, cutting a bloody gash through the digimon's back. Gabumon's mind was engulfed in acute pain as the man prepared to deliver another blow. The digimon wanted to live, it could not allow to be killed like that.

- Blue blaster! - it exclaimed and unleashed a wave of blue fire from his mouth. It was much stronger than usual, fueled by fright and pain, and the fire seared the old man, continuing it's way down the alleyway like if it was shot from a giant flamethrower, threatening everything it came in touch with... And the digimon ... was gone ... vanished, ran away... There was no trace of it... Using the confusion the fire gust created, the poor wounded creature escaped...