MPC 54A: Everyone's Afraid of Something!

"Guys... I don't like this..." It was a good thing Tadayoshi was surrounded by a very literal army of digimon, because the 16-year-old was absolutely terrified. "I swear something's following us." These dark woods were no friend to Tadayoshi. It didn't matter that this boy had seen bullets fly, bombs drop, and buildings leveled, and somehow it didn't help that many of the times he'd seen those things he was the one who ordered it. Now he and his party - 13 strong with him included - were simply relaxing by the campfire in the Server Woods.

"General." Renamon glared at Tadayoshi from her seat directly across from him by the fire pit. "Stop being a baby. There's no one left to follow us."

"You know, she's right," Hagurumon added, idly floating a couple inches off the ground, "That camp looks like a herd of Mammothmon ravaged it! Anyone you didn't destroy is probably running as far as they can as fast as they can." Those were big words coming from Hagurumon, undoubtedly the biggest coward on the whole team. The fact that this digimon was unconcerned had to mean something, a fact on which Renamon was quick to pounce.

"Do you see? Even the first to flee understands." Even though the fox digimon had meant that as an insult to Hagurumon as much as Tadayoshi, the gear digimon took no offense to it; they knew what they were, and they owned it. They were a little proud of it.

Tadayoshi, however, wasn't so much. He wasn't a fan of having his valor questioned no matter how keen an observation it was in truth; he'd gotten enough of that from his school peers and own father. Now he was extra defensive about his courage. The problem was it was still true. So he stuttered when he made one last appeal: "Wh-what do you think, Captain? Is it p-p-possible?" Yoshi kicked himself inside for stuttering, but it would all be worth it if the captain agreed with him.

The captain of Tadayoshi's little band might as well have been the general, really; it was Commandramon, the digimon who was already a battle-hardened veteran long before Tadayoshi ever met him. Commandramon was repulsed by the idea of being the top of the command chain, however; he preferred to think of himself more as a tool than a carpenter, for a tool had no need to make hard decisions or inspire loyalty; he needed only do his job to the best of his ability. Of course, part of his job was advising Tadayoshi, partly because of the grand difference in their practical experience and partly because he would have preferred to die to a superior opponent, not a miscalculation. Unfortunately, he didn't aid Tadayoshi's own aspirations to inspire the troops when he considered Yoshi's proposal very skeptically for about thirty seconds and concluded while sitting next to him, "There is nothing to fear. Anything that might have hostile intentions would make itself known right now, while our guard is down and we are exposed." He paused then for effect, probably to demonstrate that no such thing would happen. As it turned out he was right. "Be calm. The fact that we detect other digimon means nothing. Lots of digimon live out here peacefully - like us - and if the digimon is not peaceful, they're likely smart enough to avoid such a hard target."

Tadayoshi groaned. It seemed he was indeed, completely alone in his paranoia. After settling the matter, Tadayoshi went back to his idle activity of calibrating for the umpteenth time the iron sights on his rifle... just before picking it up, pointing it in Tadayoshi's direction, and popping off a couple of rounds. "Gyah!" the young man cried out as he hastily lay down flat on his back, watched the energy bullets fly over his head... and knock a Bakemon out of the sky onto the ground just beside his ear. That got him to yelp again and sit right back up.

"Huh. What do you know?" Renamon shrugged after this little incident and went right back to her farmed meat.

"This was a clever little one. You were even smart enough to mask your scent with mud in addition to invisibility. However, you did not account for brushing against leaves while there is no wind." Even though the Bakemon was still conscious - and groaning in pain from being, you know, shot - Commandramon casually sat right back down and dismissed the strange digimon with a wave of his paw. "All food we have is food we need. If you leave now, you'll be empty-handed but alive." Bakemon wisely took this counsel and fled back into the forest.

Yoshi fumed. "I told you! I told you a second ago, and I told you before we even came here that there were rumors of g-ghosts!"

Of course, Tadayoshi was not a full-time General. Sometimes he had to stay home and go to school and appease his father, as the young man wasn't ready to give up human life entirely yet. However, Commandramon was more than Yoshi's second-in-command; he was one of few among the party that Tadayoshi could actually call a personal friend, gruff as the dinosaur was sometimes. In this world Commandramon was part room mate, part friend, and part bodyguard, unable to completely cast off his duty. This, however, was a fact to which Yoshi's father was not privy.

So when Commandramon suddenly shouted from Yoshi's bedroom during dinner, Tadayoshi turned red while sitting across from his father in the dining room but came up with a quick lie: "I... left the TV on." At which point he politely excused himself and anxiously ran back to his room. "Commandramon! What happened?"

"There's- there's some creature on the wall! Look!" It was concerning to see Commandramon lose his cool so; this was the most level-headed digimon - or person - Yoshi had ever known. Only something truly terrifying could make the armed dinosaur so scared... or, so Yoshi had thought up to that point.

Yoshi sighed. "It's called a spider. Make friends and be quiet!"

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