Last Train to...London? Clarksville?

    Today was yet another day of exploring with a Digimon. Maia had decided to take a little trip, via train, to try to find safe places for Kyaromon to exercise without being noticed. So far, around her house did not seem so lucky. Though, Digimon sure did make a nice conversation piece, apparently, considering she had already met two new people in the short span that the little alien had been delivered into her life. What happened to the good days, where she could just sit on her computer and not worry about drool on the monitor?

    Earlier in the morning, though, the tamer may have made a mistake. She had decided to do more research on a place called the 'Digital World', or whatever it was, and had found a webpage about there being an area in the train station that could take her there. She had dismissed it as a daydream, though, as when she googled it later, she couldn't find it. Either that, or maybe the government would delete those kind of posts online. Who really knew? She still wasn't even sure if Digimon qualified as legal pets in Japan. Or anywhere in the world, really, for that matter. Little did she know that Kyaromon could read, and had become progressively more annoying as they looked around for the correct train to take.

    "But we're so close!" Kyaromon whined, from just inside of the blonde's bag. Of course, she ignored him, pretending that the digimon was a doll. "Maia, please?" the puff began again, only to receive further silence. "Fine! I'm going to find it for us," was all it took to snap the girl's attention to the creature, who was now crawling out of her bag. Before Maia could even get a word out, the little demon bolted between feet in the crowd of people! What in the world was he thinking?!

    Trying to move through the people waiting for the next train, Maia began to panic, "Wait," she hissed, trying to keep sight of the in-training's tail as he hurried under everyone's feet. "Sorry, sorry!" The tamer murmured, trying to avoid running into people, but she still kept bumping shoulders or stepping on shoes. The little monster was going to get an earful for this! Finally, the crowd cleared up, significantly, and Maia found herself in front of a closed gate, with Kyaromon sitting, gleefully, on the other side.

    "I found it!" he chirped, tail swaying.

    Oh, he was in so much trouble! The girl didn't even know how to think straight right now! Looking around for a way in, she found some sort of scanner, and began to prod at it. "This is not safe!" Maia insisted, glaring toward her digimon, before hitting the scanner with her open hand. "I need to open this stupid gate!" Still, nobody seemed to notice her. If this really was the train to another world, though, maybe it required a special key? Reaching into her pocket, a purple-gripped Digivice was revealed, and barely brought near the scanner before a happy 'beep!' was made, and a click of the gate unlocking. As soon as Maia had pushed the gate open, though, Kyaromon was on the move again! "Oh, no, we are not playing this game!" she groaned, still trying to hurry after the tiny thing. In fact, this chase had already gone on long enough that she hadn't even noticed another person had stepped past the gate.

    That is, she didn't notice until Kyaromon shouted, "you'll never catch me!" before jumping right into a person's back. And, to top it off, the person noticed something had hit them. As Maia's heart felt like it was sinking, Kyaro only made it worse, beginning to scramble up to the stranger's shoulder, shouting, "why does that guy's Digimon get to go on the train, but I can't? It's not fair, Maia!"

    Out of all of this, all the tamer could do was hurry toward the other person, and try to reach for her digimon. "I'm so sorry!" she began, as Kyaromon already was trying to work his way toward the stranger's 'toy.' There was nothing on the guy that could look like a digimon, right? What if Kyaromon had just made a huge mistake? Could she pass him off as a stupid rabbit or something?

    "N-no. Not quite," the tamer would begin at the stranger's first statement on what a 'Digimon' could be. Within this time, she managed to sweep Kyaromon off of the other's shoulder, and was trying to contain him in her arms, despite his grumblings and wiggles. If this guy wasn't a tamer, how did he get into this area that was only meant for special people? Oh. It clicked. Maia had never closed the door. Hopefully there wasn't some sort of rule on that. On the... semi-bright side, it seemed this person was actually a tamer! On top of that, a very new tamer, which really might not be a bright side at all.

    Kyaromon even seemed a tad alarmed by the sudden talking to himself about keys, after the other in-training had spoken. It only turned to excitement, after the other 'Mon announced an attack to the sky. "What're you doing? What're you doing?" the brown fluffball asked, excitedly. He began squirming and stretching, trying to get out of his tamer's hands and to a better point to view the other Digimon. Then, he corrected himself, shouting a, "why are you doing?" It was a good question, even Maia supposed. Though, if Kyaromon's 'attacks' were anything to go on, it was purely out of excitement, rather than anything else. She had never even seen an 'attack' used in violence. Unless violence included to her home, due to excess energy.

    Another bright side seemed that the new tamer was totally accepting of the bubble-blower. But, he paid money on the thing? Surely, that would only be the start of it. "If its stomach is anything like Kyaromon's," or one of her neighbor's twin digimon, for that matter, "you're going to have a hard time keeping your snack money for yourself," the girl pointed out, partially joking. "Good thing you like it, too. I really don't think you can actually get rid of them once they stick." This boy was handling getting a little alien so much better than the blonde had. She had thought she was going to pass out when an egg arrived at her house! "Also, 'Monster' is very accurate," she pointed out, getting a better grip on her own Digimon, "from what they say, Digimon is short for Digital Monster, after all." To this, Kyaromon even nodded.

    But, the little Digi was still scrambling to get to the other, "are you going to the Digital world? Have you been there? Do you want to adventure with me?" Surely, if given the chance, Kyaromon would ask more than a million questions at once. Maia, however, wasn't having any of it, and began trying to cover his face and mouth with one hand, while balancing him in the other. He was really a handful.

    "Ant-iq-mon," Kyaromon slowly pronounced, looking at the strangers. Well. One stranger. He knew the other's name, so they weren't strange anymore! That's how that worked, right? Oh, it wasn't like the brown fluff really cared, it was how that was going to work now! With a shake of his body, he scrambled up his tamer's arm, to perch on her shoulder. She wasn't particularly tall, but he knew he wouldn't be able to get away with being on her head right now, so there was no point. Excitement prickled at his fur, though, when someone finally agreed to go on an adventure! Everyone else told him that he was too little!

    On top of that, the train was coming up, and the Digi found himself in a perfect position to play on the events. As soon as the doors would open, he was going to bolt into the train, so Maia wouldn't be able to stop him! "Follow me!" the in-training insisted, as his tamer began to clearly panic again. But, the puffball was trying to make it sound cool by adding, "just for the afternoon should be perfect!" He'd rather longer, but baby-steps, right?

    But, Maia had gotten a new distraction when the stranger went to grab his phone, starting with a "oh, wait!" but, it fell short when he pulled the digivice out. "Please," she groaned, "tell me that your phone is still in your pocket. You might have to buy a new one. I guess gadgets are pretty good at turning into those." She should have thought to warn him sooner, but everything was happening so fast! And trying to keep an eye on her Digimon and a new tamer was actually pretty difficult! "I'm so far from being an expert," she mumbled, rubbing her forehead for a second. Heck, she was still pretty new to this, herself! She had just asked a lot of questions to anyone who could answer them!

    "Your digimon is right, though. That's called a Digivice, and you do not want people seeing it," she started, looking at the item, "just like you need to keep Antiqmon hidden, actually." That part might be hard to explain. "I guess they pass pretty well as dolls and stuff, so as long as it holds still when you're in public, you can probably get away with it."

    Before the tamer could speak any further, Kyaromon brought her back to realizing that this was not some stationary, safe place, like her house, or the forest even was. There were moving objects involved. "Choo, choo!" Kyaro shouted at them, standing just inside the train, and causing Maia to jump a little, hurrying toward the Digimon. "We'll be taking off soon! Antiqmon and friend, come on! Adventure starts now!" he would insist, bolting further into the train car, so that Maia wouldn't be able to drag him out too quickly.

    "Hey! Why are you allowed to invite strangers over, but I'm not?" Kyaromon shouted, finally getting yanked out of a corner by Maia, who turned around to see the doors close. Great. The little digimon had succeeded in trapping her. This was going to be a whole new argument later.

    And, on top of that, the other tamer didn't seem to take the little digimon seriously about going to a different world. Hearing Antiqmon even point out to the other something along the lines of him playing stupid, the girl decided not to bring the subject up, herself. "I hate to break it to you, but you might have just caused your mom some concern," she pointed out, softly, taking a seat near the boy. He seemed to be stressing out, finally, so Maia was trying to make it a point not to stress out, herself. With Kyaromon on her lap, though, her hands were free, so she had already begun rubbing at her wrists, uneasily. She had really hoped to wait to go to the Digital World until Feli had, since he had a plan of being above rookie level for this. Thinking about it, that posed a new question. "Antiqmon," she paused, as her own Digimon nudged his way under her hands, "what level are you?" It wasn't like a human would know immediately. Chances were, the little monster wasn't any higher than Kyaromon, but there was wishful thinking involved here.

    "You guys don't have to worry! I'm here to protect you!" the little alien announced, trying to comfort the tamers in some way. At least the other Digimon didn't seem to mind the situation! Though, what could an In-Training really do to help anyone? "Plus, the train shouldn't take us anywhere dangerous!" he insisted.

    To this, Maia glanced down, obviously irritated, but steadying her voice, "what do you even know about the Digital World? You were born in my house," she pointed out, with a small huff. "I wasn't born yesterday, you know! Plus! I was e-mailed! I know these things! How do you think it happened?" he countered, sounding smug. It really was a mystery how the tiny creature knew so much about everything.

    "No, you were literally mailed, a week or two ago. To my house. I tripped on your box, trust me, I know," she mumbled, lightly squishing at the Digimon's ears. It didn't hurt him, but something about it was soothing to some extent for her. "So, new tamer," she started, turning her eyes to the boy on the train with her, "it might be nice to have something to call you. I'm Maia. Who are you?"

    "In-training suffices," Maia sighed, pulling out her phone. The signal was becoming shoddy already. Yeah, she wasn't going to be able to call Feli to try to turn this situation around, even. She'd call Kai, but realization had struck that she never bothered to see about getting a phone number. Crud. "I hoped you were higher level, but, no offense, it's pretty obvious you're not." After all, it didn't really look like Antiqmon was even capable of large amounts of mobility. Ah, well. As long as nobody died. "He's a bit... rambunctious, is all," she tried to softly defend the little alien on her lap, who had established that he, in fact, loved these ear-squishes!

    When the device pointed toward Kyaromon, it read out something along the lines of: Kyaromon; In-Training, Lesser Digimon; Attacks: Tail Swing and Body Bounce.

    To which, Kyaromon had to add in, loudly, "I'm a fluffy rubber ball and the only thing inside of me is cookies!" He just felt those were very important additions to the information on the screen. It was entirely unfortunate how stupid the tiny creature sounded, sometimes. But, Maia was beginning to expect that the In-Training was actually fairly smart and feigned the stupid. At the moment, though, she had found that the ear squishes made him not leave her lap, and had to remember this for future reference.

    Maia listened to the boy ramble off all sorts of information about himself, and raised an eyebrow, trying to think of how to respond. She could tell more and more that maybe he wasn't actually handling this 'Digimon' thing as well as she thought he was. "Down to the blood type?" she smiled, awkwardly. "Honestly, I don't even know what mine is." She looked down at Kyaromon for a moment, before amber eyes would glance around the train. "Are you... handling everything okay?" Even though she was stressed about this trip, at least she had already obtained Kyaromon and gotten moderately used to him before being thrown into a totally different world!

    "Aw, what gave it away?" Maia teased, "is it my accent?" The tone of voice she used implied that she was joking. Nothing about her could really pass as Japanese, aside from maybe her height. "I'm from Illinois," she added, to put a more specific point on what part of America she was from. Though, if the internet had said anything about how foreigners viewed the States, and their locations, she wasn't really sure if he'd even know where it was.

Hearing Antiqmon's introduction, Kyaromon had to butt in. "Wait, wait, wait! You don't eat?" the puffball gasped, almost as if horrified. "But food is the best thing ever!" To this, Maia cleared her throat a little, glancing at the tiny alien on her lap, to which he added, "Maia is, too, though. She makes me the food! Therefore, best." That was a little better, she supposed. After all, she was essentially just the puny monster's caretaker, as far as she was concerned. It's not like she ever had to do anything except for keep him out of trouble and feed him enough to make him stop whining that he was going to starve. In all fairness, though, she knew that he wasn't as hungry as he usually let on. He just liked eating.

    By this time, the other tamer had already been babbling about Antiqmon being a toy again, which caused a small amount of concern for Maia, just to try to emphasize, "just remember that Antiqmon's actually alive, unlike your toys." She wasn't going to even start to compare the Digimon to Yuuto's toys. Partially because she didn't know what any of them looked like, but mostly because she thought it might be rude to lump a living creature in with inanimate objects. Then, the subject turned back to her. "Oh, uh," she was paused, hearing his digimon comment back, and shrugged, "I used to just do computer stuff." This was met with mutual eye contact between Maia and Kyaromon, "but when someone breaks my stuff when I turn around, it gets awfully difficult." Kyaromon was not ashamed! This was proven by the fit of giggles that came from him, as he rolled onto his back in her lap. "I don't know about memorabilia," she admitted, with a shrug, "we brought most of our stuff from home to Japan, but I don't really know what kind of stuff would be considered interesting." Man, she was really sounding dull!

    But, maybe that was her intent, because Kyaromon finished his giggling to shout, "Maia's an 'artist,' you know!" to this, the girl jumped. Kyaromon didn't seem to be entirely positive that he used the right word, but it was what he was going with! "She does stories and stuff! She made me a penguin in one!" Now, he was just embarrassing the girl. "Only because you begged," she began, but was cut off again by the little digimon insisting to make his tamer look 'good.' "She drew a city's cape and stuff, too!"

    "Cityscape, Kyaro. Cities don't have capes." This was, of course, spoken between her attempts to shut the tiny 'Mon up. "And that was once. It wasn't even good." To this, the digimon flailed about, shouting, "but you said it was Chicago!" Obviously, the digimon was getting confused about words now, clearly not thinking that Chicago was a place. "That's a place, not a descriptor!" she reminded him, probably for the third or fourth time. "Well, cities need capes and Chicago should mean amazing," the creature puffed, trying to lick at Maia's hands now, to stop them from covering his mouth.

    Pulling her hands away so they didn't get wet, Maia let out a sigh, and reached into her bag, to pull out some wrapped chocolate candies with peanut butter in the middle. "Here," she mumbled, offering a couple of them to the boy on the train that had to witness Kyaromon being far too much himself. "It's candy from America. I don't know if you'll like them though, it has peanut butter inside," this, she hoped, would distract the boy from the small bickering moment between her and her digimon. Also, she felt the need to tell him about the peanut butter, since it didn't seem like a lot of places in Japan sold peanut butter sweets. Also in case of allergies, she supposed. "You could just call your Digimon Dolly or something, to make it more of a name," she added, trying to suggest a better thing to call Antiqmon than something that obviously made it displeased.