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Digimon Ch.2
🕑 Added 2022-09-03 09:59:28 +0000 UTCThump, thump, thump.
I turn a staring eye toward the thumps, finding Elecmon just about done with his bottle-ing, moving back towards the play-cubes, back towards me. My eye moves frantically between the darkness of the crib and the fluffy grass below. This is it. This is what everything hinges on. Will I have courage, or will I be a coward?
I clutch my eye close, and in a movement guided as much by inertia as by bravery, I take the leap. The world tumbles around me and I open my eye to see the ground fast approaching. This is when I would usually scream and cry like a little girl, but I have no mouth, and can therefore not scream. Instead, my eye only widens a smidgen as my body crashes to the ground, only to instantly bounce right back up into the air as though I fell onto a big bed of green jelly.
Wh-, what the hell-,
I bounce once or twice more before settling back on the ground. It’s not quite jelly-like, more like a playmat at a kindergarten, or a playground. Just to test my theory, I bounce up and down a few times. Yeah, it’s bouncy. Why the hell would it-,
Thump, thump, thump.
And then I remember why I fell at all and I quickly dash into the shadow of a nearby crib. Surprisingly, I almost meld with the darkness, to the point where Elecmon doesn’t even notice me as he stomps by. In his wake, I quickly do the most sensible thing possible and begin running away. I actually move pretty fast, weaving through the cradles with a dexterity I didn’t know I had.
I get pretty far before I suddenly hear Elecmon cry, “Innomon? Innomon, where’d you go?” And even though my name isn’t Innomon (it’s Roy), I can somehow tell that he’s talking about me. Running would be fun, but I’m pretty sure the kaiju-sized porcupine would beat me in a race. In that case, there is nothing I can do but hide.
Heart in my throat (purely symbolic; I probably don’t have either), I leap up the side of the nearest crib, basically running along its side before throwing myself into its mouth, where I instantly crash into some jelly-like thing inside. Is everything here made of jelly or something?
I open my eye. Something stares back at me.
Actually, calling it ‘something’ might be a bit much. It’s like, well… I think it’s a blob of jelly? I’m not sure. It’s a little smaller than me and perfectly round, with a pair of cat-like spikes on top, like cat ears. It also has a pair of eye-like balls in front, but with no other discernible features, I can’t see it as anything but a blob of ornate jelly. I poke it. It jerks back. So, it’s like kind-of-alive-but-not? It honestly confuses me more than anything.
I poke it again, and all of a sudden it starts shooting bubbles at me. Bubbles. Really, now. What the hell is that supposed to accompli-,
“Innomon?”
His voice is much nearer now, approaching closer by the second, probably drawn by the bubbles now blubb-blubbing out of the crib. Shoot!
Damn jelly-ball, you want to get me found again?!
Pressing my ball-like hands into the jelly blob, I try to smother away the bubbles, but it doesn’t work so well. It just keeps trying to shoot bubbles at me, which obviously does nothing. It’s actually kind of annoying, and I really wish it would st-, oh, wait it just exploded into a firework of pixels. That was… weird.
Oh, the pixels just went into me.
…
…Hey, that’s actually tasty! Well, would you believe it? The little jelly-ball doesn’t taste too bad! Much like with the rotten-fish pixels, I suck ‘em all up. And now, I feel not just stuffed (absolutely immobile), but also a little stronger. It’s weird. It’s like I gained a free confidence boost, and one not confined to a bottle. 9/10, would have been nicer if it actually tasted like jelly.
“Innomon?” A voice booms from behind me. I freeze. I glance back at him. His face scrunches together in what I think is a dawning sense of horror. “Where is Botamon?”
Bota-what?
His paws grip a hold of me before I realise what’s happening. Curiously enough, he’s not staring at me, but rather at the spot where that jelly thing was in the crib. He stares at it for a solid five seconds before his facial expression shifts a bit again, this time into more obvious surprise and horror. Is he mad I stole his jelly snack? Or maybe it wasn’t supposed to be eaten at all, and was rather a bubble-maker?
“Why isn’t he reforming…?!”
Now he turns his attention back to me, glaring into my eye with amazing ferocity. I want to shrink away, but his grip is intense and I’m very small so all I can do is tremble. If I’d had a mouth, this would be the point at which I’d start apologising profusely and begging him not to eat me. But, alas, mouthless me can only stare wide-eyed as he grits his teeth, grinding them audibly before finally putting me back in the crip.
“I… I must have forgotten to feed you enough. Or-, or something.” I can’t even read what he must be feeling now, but resignation seems to be a big one. I creep closer to the wall of the crib, prepared to escape once the opportunity rises. He turns around and I go still. “Please,” he says. “Stay here for a moment. I-, I’ll try to get you something else. How about a whole, unedited fish? Yeah, I’ll get one for you, so just sit tight, Innomon.” I’m pretty sure I can hear him mumble something under his breath about how I’m just a baby and I don’t know what I’m doing, which is objectively false.
