A Girl and Her Ball of Cat Hair [Closed]
Jul 17, 2014 7:57:06 GMT
Post by Eika (叡樺) on Jul 17, 2014 7:57:06 GMT
bit by bit
i'll take back my hue
i'll take back my hue
It took Eika a fair amount of time to finally get back home―the egg was heavy even for her, and her house wasn't terribly close to it (thank goodness―the neighbors would move out because they'd be too polite to complain about the eyesore). She came in, closing the door after her. Her parents were almost always working, so she was used to being alone in the house. Thank goodness―she normally didn't try to bring in strays, but this egg was going to die on its own and she didn't want to be held guilty for it through negligence.
She sat down and set her backpack and net beside her, carefully taking out the towel-covered egg and unwrapping it to look it over. The egg still bore no cracks on it, which was a bit of a surprise to Eika even still―she was running pretty quickly even though there was a towel protecting it. She breathed a short sigh of relief as she looked the egg over once again.
Oh, no―there was a crack! Maybe she didn't notice back at the river, or maybe she didn't look over the egg as much as she should have just―
crick.
"Wha―?!" she yelped as the egg cracked further and further―quite audibly at that―almost as though something was trying to jump against it―wait wait wait wait wait, was this thing hatching? This thing was hatching in her lap! She watched in a bit of a panic as whatever the egg contained thrust itself against its shell again and again in an attempt to free itself.
Finally, the shell of the thing fell away in her lap and seemingly vanished, revealing the thing which once inhabited the egg to be a little ball of coarse, black fur, topped by two little bear-like ears and looking around with a pair of yellow, beady eyes with no apparent pupil or sclera. It looked around the surroundings before it noticed the lap it was in, noticing the person to which the lap belonged just after. It took a second to let out a little sound―almost like a meow and almost like a baa. She took a second to look at it, noting the little thing's anatomy.
"It's CUTE," she deemed, picking it up in a big squeeze of a hug. "Hello, widduw guy!" she cooed, holding the little thing up with a big goofy smile on her face. "Hi! Oh, you're supposed to name pets, right? I'm gonna name you MAMORU! Hi, Mamoru!" Her absolute elation at her apparent pet's birth completely hid the fact from her that this thing was like nothing she saw before. It was definitely alive, but it honestly had the anatomy of a plushie. Really, how was this thing supposed to get around?
The little monster opened its mouth to yawn wide, then bit down on one of her fingers to begin to nibble. The poor thing barely had any gums, and it honestly didn't pack a very powerful bite either. "Oh, are you hungry, Mamoru?" she asked. It was only when she posed the question that she realized―she had absolutely zero idea of what the poor little guy was supposed to eat!
She picked it up and held it in her arms as she went over to the kitchen to open the fridge. Her parents would probably frown upon her trying to raid the fridge like this, but she had to find something for the ball of cat hair held in her arms. "Uh... hmm. You probably wouldn't want to wait for something cooked..." She paused before taking out a box of grapes. "Here, uh―one minute." She set the little monster down next to its meal and began to shuffle through the rest of the fridge, looking for something else to take out before she heard a sharp and crinkly crunch from where she left the cat hair monster.
She looked over and noticed the giant hole in the plastic grape container, as well as the munching her little pet was doing right next to it. She took a bit to give the munchy little monster a look of uncertain surprise. "Uh..." The little monster opened its maw wide, wide, way too wide before crunching down on the next third of the grapes, chewing for what had to have been far too short a time before swallowing and devouring what little remained of the fruit.
She decided to just―close the fridge.
With an exasperated sigh, Eika decided to pick the little guy up and move it over to her room, where she sat down and set it in her lap to stroke its head (or entire body, as the case happened to be). "You're a handful," she told it, receiving a baa-meow in response. "Really... Can you even digest plastic? And on that topic, where's even your stomach? Are you just a big mouth with eyes or what?" She had so many questions and exactly zero of them were being answered, it seemed.
She began to wonder if there were others that might know about the strange egg. Maybe it could learn Japanese. Or maybe it was smart enough to learn English, too. Maybe it could teach her―she was lagging behind in grades in her English class. None of the grammar made sense. Oh, if she couldn't learn English then maybe this thing couldn't either. Could it even learn a language? Oh, her thought process was just meandering now, wasn't it...
She sighed and continued to pet the ball of fur. "You know, I wonder what you grow up to be." Maybe it was going to just grow to be a really big ball of cat hair. Or maybe it was like a tadpole and it would grow limbs or something. She heard horror stories about people who took in baby crocodiles and then flushed them down the toilet when they got too big to take care of, but then again, this thing looked nothing like a baby crocodile. (And besides, flushing entire adult crocodiles down the toilet would clog it. Poor croc.)
On the topic of taking care of Mamoru, what was she going to do on the topic of her parents? There were several hours in the night that the little furball had to cause havoc, and there were about 30 minutes that her parents could question her about Mamoru, of course assuming that they didn't choose to wake her up. She had no idea how they'd react to the little fluff ball, and even less of how to explain about what it was. What was she going to say? "Oh, I picked his black-and-blue-swirled egg from the river and now he's eating half our fridge? Sorry, Mom and Dad?" She was going to have to find a new family if she tried to pull that. Oh, this was terrible―this situation was just terrible.
Her new pet seemed to know the best ways to get her to stop getting so carried away by worrying―the method used being starting to shine like the sun in July, of course.
"Waaaah!" she wailed, nearly throwing the poor little guy across the room but managing to stop herself by a hair's breadth, until her ball of cat hair stopped shining to reveal―something entirely different, in fact. It was flesh-pink with little ribbon-like ear things coming from its body (which was still probably only a mouth and eye-organs), with much more noticeable eyes and tiny little baby fangs jutting out of its mouth.
It turned (somehow) to look up at her before saying, "...Hi."
"Wu―wwwuh―" she stammered, unsure of how to react. "Wuhwuh-wuhwuhwuhwuhwhat's going on!? Who are you what are you?!"
"I'm a Koromon," he said simply. "I'm a Digimon."
"A―a Digimon?!" Eika echoed panickedly. "You're a what now!? What!? What's going on?!?"
"A Koromon," he repeated patiently. "I'm a Digimon. We come from the Digital World, and you got my Digitama, which is what Digimon are born from."
"Wuhahahah what!?"
The Koromon shook his head (which ended up with it shaking his entire body through some manner of locomotion Eika was entirely unaware of since it was more or less just a giant head). "Maybe digest the fact I Digivolved first, then I'll explain the nitty-gritties."
"Uh... um... Digi... volved? I-is everything from your world prefixed with "digi"?! Do you have digi-homes and maybe digi-people!? No, wait, your digi-people are Digimon! Whoa gosh!"
Koromon sighed. "Look, just―" He stopped to sigh again. "I'll just let you freak out and you can have a better explanation when you're calm."
"Uh... w-wait, Digimon, right? Do they all do the lighty-explody thing you just did!?"
"That's Digivolution, and yes. I can't think of a single Digimon that doesn't Digivolve."
"Does Digivolving learn you how to talk? If you Digivolve again, can you help me with my English homework!?"
"...No?"
"O-oh, okay... uhhh, s-so I know you just ate, but do you happen to still be hungry?" she asked, scratching her cheek awkwardly. "You kind of ate all the grapes in the house with 3 bites, but I don't know how big your stomach is..."
Mamoru looked up at Eika curiously. "You're saying that..." he trailed off in a manner suggesting Eika expand her statement.
"Uh... like, do you want me to get you some food or something?" she clarified.
The Koromon's eyes seemed to grow big with some sense of surprise or maybe awe, Eika had a hard time telling. "...Yes, food would be nice," he decided. "If I might beg and choose, may I ask for a meal containing some sort of meat?"
Eika smiled widely. "That's A-OK with me, Mamoru! How do you feel about curry? My family has at least maybe 10 of those vacuum-sealed bags in stock at all times, pretty much!"
Mamoru did his inexplicable nodding thing. "That would be excellent, if you don't mind sharing your food."
"That's perfectly fine!" She picked Mamoru up and moved him over to the counter where she got to putting some hot water on the stove to begin preparing Mamoru's meal. "So, uh, tell me a little bit about you and Digimon, I guess!"
"Hmm." Mamoru paused. "Digimon are virtual monsters living in what I'd assume to be an alternate universe. The closest Digimon I've seen that would fit you is maybe Angewomon, but those are very rare and you're, if I might be rude, not quite as graceful as they are."
"Nope, don't worry! I'm a huge shut-in anyway! What's Angewomon? Oh, is there a naming theme with this "mon" thing?"
"You catch on quickly. Yes, there's a naming theme with all Digimon species. I'm a Koromon who Digivolved from a Botamon. All Digimon come from some sort of data, as far as I can tell. Some Digimon have cloudy origins, while others are more clear-cut. Most are pretty clear-cut, actually―it's only mostly sub-Rookie levels that are hard to pin down."
"Ooh, what's a Rookie? And what data do you come from, do you know?"
"Digimon pass through certain stages―I'm currently an In-Training, whereas I came from a Fresh and will become a Rookie. What follows is Champion, then Ultimate, then Mega, and I've heard rumors about stages above that but don't put all that much worth into those―Mega Digimon are already nearing the strength of physical gods, and I doubt a Digimon could get much stronger than that. As for the data I come from, I don't quite know."
"Oh, cool! Are Megas, like, super rare because you guys die or something before you reach that stage?"
Mamoru gave Eika a bit of a strange, possibly-offended look. "No, of course not! Forms aren't an effective gauge of how old a Digimon is. Some Digimon prefer to stay in forms below their limit, and some Digimon can play around with the rules to achieve even Mega in the time it'd take most Digimon to reach Champion."
"Oh? They play around with the rules? How do they do that?"
"First, I'd like you to check your person for any electronics you might have," Mamoru replied vaguely.
"Huh?" Eika felt the pockets of her sweater, pulling out a strange device where she thought she would have pulled out her phone. "...what's this? Did my phone Digivolve too or something?"
"That's the loophole I'm talking about!" Mamoru replied excitedly, pausing before he got too excited. "...Ah, my apologies. Yes, that's what I mean by playing around with the rules. Really, I thought this was just some rumor instead of something that actually happens in reality," he mused. "My apologies for trying to pass off conjecture as fact. That thing in your hands is a mythical Digivice, and it seems that my relationship with you has given you it, if all the rumors about it hold true of course. With it and our further bond to come, you can help me reach unimaginable heights. Ah, really, I feel quite lucky."
"A Digivice, huh." Eika turned the device around in her hands, deciding to postpone mourning her phone. "You Digimon really like naming your things "digi" and "mon"."
"Yes, that's just something that happens," Mamoru replied.
"So what happens now?" asked Eika. "I don't see monsters like you around Shibuya often. You guys come from the Digital World―you mentioned that earlier, right? Do I have to go there now or something?"
"As it so happens, yes. Now that you've become a Digimon tamer, I want to capitalize on my fortune and get to the Digital World as quickly as I'm able. Sadly, I doubt I'll be of much use as I am, so I'll need to regain my strength." He paused, licking his lips (which ended up being this kind of ridiculous maneuver where his tongue nearly wet half his body instead of just his chops). "Rookies are more or less the base Digivolution where Digimon go out into the wild from wherever they happened to be hatched. I think I'll be ready to go out when I regain my strength enough that I can Digivolve to my Rookie form." He nodded. "Yes―when I Digivolve again, then I'll show you to where you can get back to the Digital World."
"Oh, okay. That's fine." Eika took the water off the stove and began to prepare Mamoru's curry. "So I'm a tamer? What does that entail?"
"Admittedly, not much. All I'll have you do is stay safe when I have to fight another Digimon, and I'll take care of the rest."
"Sounds manageable, alright. Well, that's most of the questions I had. Say, how will you look when you're a Rookie?"
"Well, we'll find out, won't we?" Mamoru hopped over to the section of the counter Eika was using. "When will that be prepared?"
"In a little bit, hold your horses―or, uh, Horsemons, I guess," Eika replied.
"There is no such thing as Horsemon, but I won't penalize effort," Mamoru retorted coolly.
The two stayed silent for the rest of the time the curry took to be prepared, whereupon Eika poured the result onto a plate and offered it to Mamoru. "Here. Uh, I'll be right back, actually―I'll be out for a little bit, I have to run an errand or two. Don't break anything while I'm out, okay? Should I leave the fridge open or...?"
Mamoru had to finish his mouthful before answering. "No, just leave the door to your room open if possible. I think I'll have to take a nap to try to hasten regaining my strength."
"O-oh, okay. Well, see you, then!" Eika went out to check whether the door to her room was open or not―it was―then left her home.
She sat down and set her backpack and net beside her, carefully taking out the towel-covered egg and unwrapping it to look it over. The egg still bore no cracks on it, which was a bit of a surprise to Eika even still―she was running pretty quickly even though there was a towel protecting it. She breathed a short sigh of relief as she looked the egg over once again.
Oh, no―there was a crack! Maybe she didn't notice back at the river, or maybe she didn't look over the egg as much as she should have just―
crick.
"Wha―?!" she yelped as the egg cracked further and further―quite audibly at that―almost as though something was trying to jump against it―wait wait wait wait wait, was this thing hatching? This thing was hatching in her lap! She watched in a bit of a panic as whatever the egg contained thrust itself against its shell again and again in an attempt to free itself.
Finally, the shell of the thing fell away in her lap and seemingly vanished, revealing the thing which once inhabited the egg to be a little ball of coarse, black fur, topped by two little bear-like ears and looking around with a pair of yellow, beady eyes with no apparent pupil or sclera. It looked around the surroundings before it noticed the lap it was in, noticing the person to which the lap belonged just after. It took a second to let out a little sound―almost like a meow and almost like a baa. She took a second to look at it, noting the little thing's anatomy.
"It's CUTE," she deemed, picking it up in a big squeeze of a hug. "Hello, widduw guy!" she cooed, holding the little thing up with a big goofy smile on her face. "Hi! Oh, you're supposed to name pets, right? I'm gonna name you MAMORU! Hi, Mamoru!" Her absolute elation at her apparent pet's birth completely hid the fact from her that this thing was like nothing she saw before. It was definitely alive, but it honestly had the anatomy of a plushie. Really, how was this thing supposed to get around?
The little monster opened its mouth to yawn wide, then bit down on one of her fingers to begin to nibble. The poor thing barely had any gums, and it honestly didn't pack a very powerful bite either. "Oh, are you hungry, Mamoru?" she asked. It was only when she posed the question that she realized―she had absolutely zero idea of what the poor little guy was supposed to eat!
She picked it up and held it in her arms as she went over to the kitchen to open the fridge. Her parents would probably frown upon her trying to raid the fridge like this, but she had to find something for the ball of cat hair held in her arms. "Uh... hmm. You probably wouldn't want to wait for something cooked..." She paused before taking out a box of grapes. "Here, uh―one minute." She set the little monster down next to its meal and began to shuffle through the rest of the fridge, looking for something else to take out before she heard a sharp and crinkly crunch from where she left the cat hair monster.
She looked over and noticed the giant hole in the plastic grape container, as well as the munching her little pet was doing right next to it. She took a bit to give the munchy little monster a look of uncertain surprise. "Uh..." The little monster opened its maw wide, wide, way too wide before crunching down on the next third of the grapes, chewing for what had to have been far too short a time before swallowing and devouring what little remained of the fruit.
She decided to just―close the fridge.
With an exasperated sigh, Eika decided to pick the little guy up and move it over to her room, where she sat down and set it in her lap to stroke its head (or entire body, as the case happened to be). "You're a handful," she told it, receiving a baa-meow in response. "Really... Can you even digest plastic? And on that topic, where's even your stomach? Are you just a big mouth with eyes or what?" She had so many questions and exactly zero of them were being answered, it seemed.
She began to wonder if there were others that might know about the strange egg. Maybe it could learn Japanese. Or maybe it was smart enough to learn English, too. Maybe it could teach her―she was lagging behind in grades in her English class. None of the grammar made sense. Oh, if she couldn't learn English then maybe this thing couldn't either. Could it even learn a language? Oh, her thought process was just meandering now, wasn't it...
She sighed and continued to pet the ball of fur. "You know, I wonder what you grow up to be." Maybe it was going to just grow to be a really big ball of cat hair. Or maybe it was like a tadpole and it would grow limbs or something. She heard horror stories about people who took in baby crocodiles and then flushed them down the toilet when they got too big to take care of, but then again, this thing looked nothing like a baby crocodile. (And besides, flushing entire adult crocodiles down the toilet would clog it. Poor croc.)
On the topic of taking care of Mamoru, what was she going to do on the topic of her parents? There were several hours in the night that the little furball had to cause havoc, and there were about 30 minutes that her parents could question her about Mamoru, of course assuming that they didn't choose to wake her up. She had no idea how they'd react to the little fluff ball, and even less of how to explain about what it was. What was she going to say? "Oh, I picked his black-and-blue-swirled egg from the river and now he's eating half our fridge? Sorry, Mom and Dad?" She was going to have to find a new family if she tried to pull that. Oh, this was terrible―this situation was just terrible.
Her new pet seemed to know the best ways to get her to stop getting so carried away by worrying―the method used being starting to shine like the sun in July, of course.
"Waaaah!" she wailed, nearly throwing the poor little guy across the room but managing to stop herself by a hair's breadth, until her ball of cat hair stopped shining to reveal―something entirely different, in fact. It was flesh-pink with little ribbon-like ear things coming from its body (which was still probably only a mouth and eye-organs), with much more noticeable eyes and tiny little baby fangs jutting out of its mouth.
It turned (somehow) to look up at her before saying, "...Hi."
"Wu―wwwuh―" she stammered, unsure of how to react. "Wuhwuh-wuhwuhwuhwuhwhat's going on!? Who are you what are you?!"
"I'm a Koromon," he said simply. "I'm a Digimon."
"A―a Digimon?!" Eika echoed panickedly. "You're a what now!? What!? What's going on?!?"
"A Koromon," he repeated patiently. "I'm a Digimon. We come from the Digital World, and you got my Digitama, which is what Digimon are born from."
"Wuhahahah what!?"
The Koromon shook his head (which ended up with it shaking his entire body through some manner of locomotion Eika was entirely unaware of since it was more or less just a giant head). "Maybe digest the fact I Digivolved first, then I'll explain the nitty-gritties."
"Uh... um... Digi... volved? I-is everything from your world prefixed with "digi"?! Do you have digi-homes and maybe digi-people!? No, wait, your digi-people are Digimon! Whoa gosh!"
Koromon sighed. "Look, just―" He stopped to sigh again. "I'll just let you freak out and you can have a better explanation when you're calm."
"Uh... w-wait, Digimon, right? Do they all do the lighty-explody thing you just did!?"
"That's Digivolution, and yes. I can't think of a single Digimon that doesn't Digivolve."
"Does Digivolving learn you how to talk? If you Digivolve again, can you help me with my English homework!?"
"...No?"
"O-oh, okay... uhhh, s-so I know you just ate, but do you happen to still be hungry?" she asked, scratching her cheek awkwardly. "You kind of ate all the grapes in the house with 3 bites, but I don't know how big your stomach is..."
Mamoru looked up at Eika curiously. "You're saying that..." he trailed off in a manner suggesting Eika expand her statement.
"Uh... like, do you want me to get you some food or something?" she clarified.
The Koromon's eyes seemed to grow big with some sense of surprise or maybe awe, Eika had a hard time telling. "...Yes, food would be nice," he decided. "If I might beg and choose, may I ask for a meal containing some sort of meat?"
Eika smiled widely. "That's A-OK with me, Mamoru! How do you feel about curry? My family has at least maybe 10 of those vacuum-sealed bags in stock at all times, pretty much!"
Mamoru did his inexplicable nodding thing. "That would be excellent, if you don't mind sharing your food."
"That's perfectly fine!" She picked Mamoru up and moved him over to the counter where she got to putting some hot water on the stove to begin preparing Mamoru's meal. "So, uh, tell me a little bit about you and Digimon, I guess!"
"Hmm." Mamoru paused. "Digimon are virtual monsters living in what I'd assume to be an alternate universe. The closest Digimon I've seen that would fit you is maybe Angewomon, but those are very rare and you're, if I might be rude, not quite as graceful as they are."
"Nope, don't worry! I'm a huge shut-in anyway! What's Angewomon? Oh, is there a naming theme with this "mon" thing?"
"You catch on quickly. Yes, there's a naming theme with all Digimon species. I'm a Koromon who Digivolved from a Botamon. All Digimon come from some sort of data, as far as I can tell. Some Digimon have cloudy origins, while others are more clear-cut. Most are pretty clear-cut, actually―it's only mostly sub-Rookie levels that are hard to pin down."
"Ooh, what's a Rookie? And what data do you come from, do you know?"
"Digimon pass through certain stages―I'm currently an In-Training, whereas I came from a Fresh and will become a Rookie. What follows is Champion, then Ultimate, then Mega, and I've heard rumors about stages above that but don't put all that much worth into those―Mega Digimon are already nearing the strength of physical gods, and I doubt a Digimon could get much stronger than that. As for the data I come from, I don't quite know."
"Oh, cool! Are Megas, like, super rare because you guys die or something before you reach that stage?"
Mamoru gave Eika a bit of a strange, possibly-offended look. "No, of course not! Forms aren't an effective gauge of how old a Digimon is. Some Digimon prefer to stay in forms below their limit, and some Digimon can play around with the rules to achieve even Mega in the time it'd take most Digimon to reach Champion."
"Oh? They play around with the rules? How do they do that?"
"First, I'd like you to check your person for any electronics you might have," Mamoru replied vaguely.
"Huh?" Eika felt the pockets of her sweater, pulling out a strange device where she thought she would have pulled out her phone. "...what's this? Did my phone Digivolve too or something?"
"That's the loophole I'm talking about!" Mamoru replied excitedly, pausing before he got too excited. "...Ah, my apologies. Yes, that's what I mean by playing around with the rules. Really, I thought this was just some rumor instead of something that actually happens in reality," he mused. "My apologies for trying to pass off conjecture as fact. That thing in your hands is a mythical Digivice, and it seems that my relationship with you has given you it, if all the rumors about it hold true of course. With it and our further bond to come, you can help me reach unimaginable heights. Ah, really, I feel quite lucky."
"A Digivice, huh." Eika turned the device around in her hands, deciding to postpone mourning her phone. "You Digimon really like naming your things "digi" and "mon"."
"Yes, that's just something that happens," Mamoru replied.
"So what happens now?" asked Eika. "I don't see monsters like you around Shibuya often. You guys come from the Digital World―you mentioned that earlier, right? Do I have to go there now or something?"
"As it so happens, yes. Now that you've become a Digimon tamer, I want to capitalize on my fortune and get to the Digital World as quickly as I'm able. Sadly, I doubt I'll be of much use as I am, so I'll need to regain my strength." He paused, licking his lips (which ended up being this kind of ridiculous maneuver where his tongue nearly wet half his body instead of just his chops). "Rookies are more or less the base Digivolution where Digimon go out into the wild from wherever they happened to be hatched. I think I'll be ready to go out when I regain my strength enough that I can Digivolve to my Rookie form." He nodded. "Yes―when I Digivolve again, then I'll show you to where you can get back to the Digital World."
"Oh, okay. That's fine." Eika took the water off the stove and began to prepare Mamoru's curry. "So I'm a tamer? What does that entail?"
"Admittedly, not much. All I'll have you do is stay safe when I have to fight another Digimon, and I'll take care of the rest."
"Sounds manageable, alright. Well, that's most of the questions I had. Say, how will you look when you're a Rookie?"
"Well, we'll find out, won't we?" Mamoru hopped over to the section of the counter Eika was using. "When will that be prepared?"
"In a little bit, hold your horses―or, uh, Horsemons, I guess," Eika replied.
"There is no such thing as Horsemon, but I won't penalize effort," Mamoru retorted coolly.
The two stayed silent for the rest of the time the curry took to be prepared, whereupon Eika poured the result onto a plate and offered it to Mamoru. "Here. Uh, I'll be right back, actually―I'll be out for a little bit, I have to run an errand or two. Don't break anything while I'm out, okay? Should I leave the fridge open or...?"
Mamoru had to finish his mouthful before answering. "No, just leave the door to your room open if possible. I think I'll have to take a nap to try to hasten regaining my strength."
"O-oh, okay. Well, see you, then!" Eika went out to check whether the door to her room was open or not―it was―then left her home.