MPC 54A: Total Embearrassment

MPC Name: Face Your Fear
Reward: Posts

The Bearmon was speaking to Buck, his rather overeager Tamer who today was even more eager than on most days. This thirteen-year-old boy had gone on and on quite a few times prior about some unusually special day at the end of October, but it wasn't until Buck emerged from the bathroom attached to his bedroom that the digimon thought that perhaps he might finally understand. When Buck threw the door open, he knelt down in the bear monster's face and shouted, "Boo!" Buck had emerged dressed in the garb of... a dragon.

Apparently, Buck had gone to great lengths on his costume, too. It was an impressively high-quality dragon suit, mostly red in color but black on the scales of the underbelly, complete with bat-like wings and a mouth that even moved as Buck's own mouth spoke. Even more impressive, a couple of red glow sticks tucked away inside the mouth created the effect that the dragon was about to breathe fire.

Wylde shrugged. "What? Come on!" The Bearmon innocently shrugged again in response to his Tamer's complaining. He understood the point of this whole exercise, after all: Buck had donned a disguise of sorts in an attempt to make himself appear more frightening than he did in his everyday life. Then, the young boy attempted to instill fear into the bear with this dress, though his approach was more like a noise startle than an honest to goodness attempt at true terror. "I thought for sure that was the one!"

"Are we done here?" Wylde rather unamusedly huffed.

"No! I've got one more. Hold on." On that note, Buck disappeared back into his bathroom for a few minutes, during which time Wylde had sat back on the bed. He knew Buck would take a very long while to both take off that fourth intricate costume and emerge once again with another, most likely equally or even more sophisticated attempt. The part of this farce that Wylde did not understand, however, was just why Buck was so determined to get a cry out of the ursine digimon.

Wylde understood the concept of Halloween, of course! Children, and sometimes even adults, were said to dress in the most frightening garb they could in order to scare away evil spirits, though oddly enough nobody, even the children, actually believed in the existence of these spirits at all. When he asked, Buck had explained that this was really more of a pretext and that the real purpose was a little good, clean fun (and that the sugary treats acquired through the process of soliciting them door to door were certainly a strong motivator, too).

When Buck next emerged, it was with a cry of, "Rawr!" that he announced his final attempt to get a fright out of the ursine digimon: a grizzly bear costume.

Wylde rolled his eyes and sighed. "Yeesh! You're one tough guy, Wylde," Buck admired as he used his rather awkward paws to fidget with the head of the bear costume and, eventually, managed to get the head off. "How am I supposed to win the school costume contest if you won't tell me which costume is scariest?"

"Why did you think I would be frightened by the real world version of myself?" was Wylde's calm, cool, and quiet rebuttal.

"I, uh... I thought..." Buck didn't end up finishing that sentence, but his hesitance to answer gave him away. Buck looked down, smiled awkwardly, scratched the back of head, and turned his body slightly away, trying to distance himself from the Bearmon and his question.

In response to that, Wylde did something he rarely, did: he grinned mischievously. He got Buck's answer without hearing it, and the young boy's reaction really confirmed the answer for Wylde. When the Bearmon showed off his dagger-sharp teeth, especially those extra long fangs that protruded past his bottom lip, he chuckled maliciously. "You think I'm scary, don't you?" Buck swallowed.

"I mean... you don't scare me, but when I was 10 Dad and I were hunting and a bear charged out of nowhere. Dad shot it dead before it could reach us, but it was still the scariest thing I've ever seen!" Hunting, luckily, was also a concept with which Wylde was familiar and even in agreement. Sure, he came from a world where meat was grown out of the ground, but when this essential part of a healthy diet could only be gained one way, who was he to question that need?

That all was how Buck ended up lined up onstage with many other kids similar in age dressed in many other costumes. "And the winner is..."

As a drumroll began (apparently, someone had actually brought a snare drum just for the occasion), Wylde had two of his claws crossed in front of him while waiting behind the wings offstage, seeing as they supposed he could blend right in at a costume contest. The truth was, in their short time together, Buck had proven himself loud, overly energetic, and loud, but he was also courageous, fearless (when it counted, at least), curious, and loyal. He had become the Bearmon's friend, no doubt about it, and so the ursine digimon truly hoped that his boy would win the whole contest.

"Oh! What are you doing here?" The girl who asked Wylde that was a much older one than Buck, probably about 17, and was not dressed in any costume. "Aren't you going out there, little boy?"

Apparently, Wylde's very deep voice was not enough to convince this girl that he was not, in fact, a young little boy. "Go, on, don't be shy! You look great!"

"Wait!" Too late; Wylde was promptly shoved into the line and bumped straight into Buck. The young boy (the real one) then watched as the Bearmon awkwardly took the place in line he pretty much had to now, but he didn't look quite... comfortable. In fact, he looked quite nervous as he stared out at the crowd of kids and parents of the auditorium. He was breathing pretty heavily, too, and looking to the side like he didn't want to see them.

In short: it was textbook stagefright.

That was when the announcer concluded, "...the bear costume!" Buck almost cheered right there on stage, but then it was clarified, "The one on the right with the hat!" That wasn't Buck.

Wylde gasped and began to fairly severely hyperventilate. His eyes were wide. As the girl from before smiled and draped a gold (OK, gold-painted) medal around Wylde's neck, his eyes rolled up into the back of his head. Suddenly he felt so dizzy... and he stumbled right over the edge of the stage.

Concerned as Buck was for the safety of his friend, in his head he couldn't help noting with a little humor, Heh... I guess he is scared of something.

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