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Post by Johan Walker on May 20, 2022 4:52:16 GMT
Dokamon was in pure agony right now. The type of dance he was doing wasn't even his idea; it was Johan's. Johan just insisted that Dokamon do this specific type of dance for Asahi, and it took a LOT of convincing for Dokamon to even begin to agree with the idea. Now that he was actually going through it with though, and seeing Johan, Tadayoshi and Asahi all laugh at him like that was a lot of humiliation for him to bare all at once. He struggled to hide his blush of embarrassment but thankfully still managed to keep up the lifeless hologram act.
I am going to get you back for this, Johan.
Tadayoshi then stepped in once Dokamon stopped dancing, explaining that he was given one of the devices by Johan because he wanted to try making YouTube videos with the holograms. The lie was completely on the spot and not the story Johan wanted to go with at all, but thankfully Tadayoshi simply summoned Commandramon before any questions could've been asked. That was close...
Of course, Commandramon was as good at the act as Dokamon was, fighting urges to blink and slowing down his breathing much like what Dokamon was doing. Tadayoshi "made" Commandramon do simple stuff like walking forward closer to Asahi, impressing the bully to no end. He was mostly impressed by how realistic it looked. "I'm a perfectionist, and I didn't want the holograms to look out of place at all. Had to search for references for the gun in a private tab, hopefully the government doesn't put me on a watch list now because of it..."
Asahi asked Johan how he got the holograms to look solid, before he poked Commandramon and caused the soldier dinosaur to slap his hand away like a child reaching for cookies before dinnertime. Johan's heart skipped a beat at that moment in time, but thankfully his brain was working overtime and he came up with an idea. "Because they are solid. When I say the holograms have mass, I mean that they can interact with the world around them and we can interact with them in return. Because the gun on this particular hologram is so realistic, I didn't want people to try and take the gun for themselves. I programmed it so that it, above all else, protects its weapon from any outsiders. It's probably best you don't touch that one, if I am to be honest."
Okay... hopefully, that explained it well enough. If Asahi bought that explanation, then hopefully there wouldn't be any problems moving forward, right? Well unfortunately, bodies like to betray their owners sometimes, and the same goes for Digimon.
Groooowwwwwwl~
Oh crap...
Dokamon's stomach growled. Loudly. It was his fault for having a lighter lunch than the blue Digimon was used to that day. Still though... the bully could've clearly heard it. If Asahi figured it out, there would be no going back now. Johan knew he had to take the fall for this one. "Sorry about that," said the young man as he held his stomach. "That was me; I didn't have enough to eat at lunchtime."
Meanwhile, Zero was still busy sifting through dozens upon dozens upon dozens of useless images and videos. Unfunny meme jokes, cat videos, awful selfies, a LOT of awful selfies... he couldn't help but wonder why this kid had so much junk on his phone. Finally though, he found what he was looking for. The AppHackmon couldn't help but laugh at the title of the video, though. It was simple and to the point, at the very least.
Once he deleted the video though, he found that the entire kid's library was backed up to a cloud server, along with a lot of other funny and questionable things. "I'm just gonna do this... yeah," Zero muttered as he downloaded the funny Sailor Moon costume picture into his own data. It could be used as leverage later, he thought.
But then Zero found something peculiar... there was another device connect to this cloud server. A tablet that was miles and miles away, but also held the same file locally. "Huh... guess the bully was smarter than I thought. Not smarter than me, but you take what you can get." Of course after deleting the copy of the video in the cloud, Zero would mosey on over to the tablet next to do the exact same thing there. Hopefully this tablet would be the last of the video...
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Post by Tadayoshi Teppei and Silence on Aug 8, 2022 22:54:53 GMT
It's probably best you don't touch that one, if I am to be honest. Asahi did not take the advice. If anything, being told not to do something only made the bully want to do it more. The brute reached for Commadramon twice more and was duly punished for it. The third grab turned out to be one too many; Commandramon's punitive swipe came with some force this time, enough that his claws inadvertently left streaks of red down the length of Asahi's hand that even drew some blood. Asahi uttered a string of curses and grimaced as he wrapped his hand in his own shirt. "Freakin'...! 'Holograms,' huh, nerdface?" The boy scowled at the two digimon keepers, showing his teeth in a half-pained-half-agitated expression. "Everyone knows holograms aren't solid, and I never seen one get hungry neither." Apparently, he believe his own ears over Johan's claim regarding the stomach growl. "Just quit the act already, morons!" Zero could be confident now: he'd followed the trail of the video as far as it would go. It had not been transmitted to any other devices nor the open internet. However, basic due diligence revealed that wasn't the entire story. From the tablet, there had been communiques about the video sent from its basic messaging app to another belonging to one 'Kokoro.'ASAHI: i swear that kid knows smth ASAHI: wierd stuf hapens arnd him since he fell in SR and disappeared, came back nxt day like nthn happened
KOKORO: Like what ASAHI: hes late leaves early ASAHI: wierd stuff hpns at school when he does ASAHI: now wierd stuffs at my house i cant sleep, TV turns on, lights don work, creepy voice talks about hating bullies KOKORO: What like a ghost? ASAHI: idfk but i only pick on one kid, and only 'cause he keeps coming back at me with this shit after school hes gotta know smth
The last message was sent two hours before the time stamp on the video. "...Do you think I'm stupid? You can't touch a hologram!" The boy appeared ready to throw a fist, only the injury on his hand stung him when he tried to clench it. Nonetheless, he was stubbornly angry. "Now I wanna know what the hell those things are and where the fuck they came from!" Through it all Commandramon dutifully stayed in character, but Tadayoshi was doing a poor job of hiding his mounting anxiety. He begged Johan with eyes for something, any way out of this bind.
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Post by Johan Walker on Aug 9, 2022 2:46:36 GMT
Everything was falling apart so fast and so efficiently that Johan couldn't even believe it. Despite Johan's warnings, it seemed as if Asahi just deliberately wanted to go against what his classmate had said and continued touching Commandramon three more times, with Commandramon himself getting more and more angry until he inevitably scratched at Asahi's hand, managing to draw blood. "I told you not to touch that one, what did you think was going to happen?!" Johan angrily asked when Asahi reasonably(?) got upset.
Though thanks to that incident, as well as Dokamon's stomach interrupting the demonstration, Asahi clearly wasn't going to believe that the Digimon were simple holograms anymore. Not only that, but he was demanding to know what they truly were. Dokamon and Commandramon were still staying in character, but Tadayoshi's expression said it all: he was anxious, and he was looking towards Johan to get them out of this bind.
And he's supposed to be my senpai? Johan thought as he sweatdropped.
Meanwhile, Zero had managed to find something very, very interesting. He managed to find messages about the video between Asahi and some rando named "Kokoro" on the basic messaging app. Zero cringed when he saw how deliberately bad Asahi's grammar was, but it did reveal that Asahi had been suspecting Tadayoshi for quite some time. Seemed to be usual stuff... at least until Asahi's second to last message.
Wait, a ghost?
Naturally, the AppHackmon had to investigate further to find the root cause of this. And what he found was honestly sort of unsettling. To sum it up, Zero detected that Asahi's home's Alexa, smart TV, and many other internet-connected devices are doing things without any input from a user: powering on and off, playing scary sounds like screams and roars, alarms going off, files disappearing, and more. Some things with mics enabled have recorded a voice resembling a demon crossed with a small child admonishing someone with ghostly lines such as, "I don't like bullies," and, "You know what you did." The voices didn't come out during all hours of the day, though... only late at night and early afternoon.
This goes way beyond a mindless prank... someone may actually be out to get this kid. Finishing up what he came here to do, his claw cables retracted back to Zero himself, snapping the hooded hacker back to reality... where it was clear as day that Johan, Tadayoshi and the others were not having the best of times convincing Asahi that what he saw wasn't real. "At least they distracted him well enough."
Johan's brain was going into overtime with how much his mind was racing, trying to think of a way out of this. He was debating just giving up and telling Asahi everything... but no, he couldn't do that, Tadayoshi would never forgive him. Thankfully, it wouldn't be Johan who would reveal the secret to the bully.
"Give it up, guys, the problem is a lot bigger than we thought," Zero said as he casually walked on over to the group, firstly focusing on Dokamon and Commandramon. "Great performances from the two of you, by the way, though I have some notes. Commandramon, it doesn't matter if someone's touching your precious gun, don't smack the kid away. Dokamon, eat a sandwich or something before you do missions like this. I heard your gut all the way from my hiding spot." Finally, he looked up at Asahi himself...
"Loved your Sailor Moon costume," Zero would say, giving the bully a big thumbs up.
Johan and Dokamon went off-white just from how speechless they were... Zero was about as subtle as a boulder.
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Post by Tadayoshi Teppei and Silence on Aug 13, 2022 1:29:35 GMT
"Zero!" Apparently it didn't matter to Commandramon that the jig was up. He still scolded the hacker for his blatantness and flashed him a dirty look to go with it.
Dakota the Strabimon couldn't help himself. From within the Loader he made his amused voice clearly audible. "'Sailor Moon costume?'"
"Quiet!" he was instantly shushed by Jazamon.
Even Tadayoshi's curiosity overrode his anxiety. "Wait, what does a costume have to do with-?"
"There's no sailor moon costume!" Asahi finally denied at the top of his lungs, though now it was his turn to show some trepidation. The bully's cheeks instantly flushed red, and his body language became more defensive.
"Hey, man, there's no shame-" Whatever Dakota wanted to add to the conversation was muffled and unintelligible, as Tadayoshi covered the Loader with his hand in order to block the sound.
"Just drop it, OK?" the bully demanded before turning his scowl at Zero. "It's you, isn't it?" he demanded of the hacker, "You're the one screwing with me! You and this kid, and his friend and you - monsters! You're all in on it!"
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Post by Johan Walker on Aug 13, 2022 1:51:11 GMT
Johan and Dokamon were both as ticked off as Commandramon was about the hacker just up and revealing to Asahi that he existed. Well, almost, since both of them clearly knew that the whole thing was up anyways, but Zero still could've played it a little better, they thought. "And here I thought this was all going to go over so well..." Johan said with a sigh as he crossed his arms.
Now that Zero had mentioned a Sailor Moon costume, that part would now be on everyone's minds for the time being, even Johan and Dokamon. "What is a 'Sailor Moon,' precisely, Johan?" Dokamon asked in his usual monotone fashion.
"It's an anime about a group of middle-school girls that transform into magical superheroes," Johan explained to his robotic partner before looking at Asahi, a big smirk on his face. "I didn't think a bully like you was even into Sailor Moon, Asahi." At least he and Tadayoshi had some ammunition against him if he tried messing with either of them again. It seemed that Asahi wanted to drop the whole subject entirely though. He turned over to Zero and accused him of messing with him, with Johan and the others in on the joke.
"Relax, all we wanted was to get rid of your video as much as possible," Zero explained. "Thing is, we didn't exactly trust you to stay true to your word about the video, even if we did tell you the truth... which, as you can see, we didn't even try to do. But we 'monsters' kind of have to remain hush-hush, and you blabbing about us on the internet is kind of the opposite of that."
"Then why did you elect to reveal yourself to the human?" Dokamon asked.
"'Cuz a Digimon's already hunting him."
"What?"
Zero nodded. "I was on the cloud and I saw some messages he was sending to a friend of his. He said something about weird stuff happening to him at home, and he thought Yoshi here would know something about it. Long story short, someone's messing with internet devices in his house, making really freaky sounds and being cryptic with messages like 'I don't like bullies.' Clearly, someone's been seeing how Mr. Popular here treats people and wants to teach him a lesson."
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Post by Tadayoshi Teppei and Silence on Aug 13, 2022 2:55:43 GMT
"Get rid of-!" While Zero explained the situation to the rest of the group, the brute of a student turned his attention back to his mobile phone. He immediately dove into its library and became consumed with the task of scrutinizing it for the video. The longer he searched, the more his teeth gnashed.
"That can't be." Tadayoshi immediately denounced Zero's theory. "The only people I know who know about him are Colin, Sophie, you, and all your partners. I know Luke and Bellamy can be wildcards, but they would never stoop to this level. Neither would-" Tadayoshi hesitated as he glanced at Zero. Momentarily, he reconsidered his position. In the end, he followed through with, "-neither would any of you. That only leaves..." Tadayoshi was reluctant to finish the insinuation, but the accused were quick to line up and defend themselves.
"I'm happy to help, but you told me not to and I didn't."
"I would never!"
"Not us-
"-but-"
"-this-"
"-guy-"
"-sounds-"
"-awesome!"
The MetalKoromon cluster beeped in a long, low tone of denial.
"Like I ever get to leave the base."
"It's conduct unbecoming."
"I'm sure it wasn't him."
"Wasn't him neither."
"How would I even hide?"
Deckerdramon huffed, feeling no need to deny anything. Tadayoshi was inclined to agree.
Kamushi the Searchmon's denial came delayed, partly because everyone still in the Loaderspace had turned their eyes upon him and gave him pause. "...What'ZZZZZZZZ everyone looking at me for?" The stern looks only abounded. "I got better thingZZZZZZZZ to do!"
"How many of those freakin' things do you have?" Asahi growled as he gave up his search for the video. "Shit, you know why I gotta fuck with you? 'Cause your little monster buddies gotta keep comin' back for you. This doesn't end 'till I can get some goddamn sleep. Hell!" The bully had just gotten the idea to simply go right back to taking video, right now, in front of everybody. "How do you all wanna end up on TV, huh? That what you want?"
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Post by Johan Walker on Aug 13, 2022 3:15:06 GMT
Zero had to admit... seeing Asahi desperately searching through his phone for that video and getting more and more angry while doing so put a devious, if hidden, smirk on the AppHackmon's face. "You can stop wasting your time finding it. While their little show didn't convince you, it did a good job of distracting you while I snuck in and thoroughly made sure that that video doesn't exist anywhere. I'm nothing if not thorough with my work."
Tadayoshi immediately rejected Zero's claims, however, stating that only Colin, Sophie, Johan and all their associated Digimon knew about Asahi, and that none of them would stoop to his level. Well, he took a look at Zero and momentarily paused before stating that he wouldn't have done so, either. "Ouch," Zero deadpanned, knowing exactly what was going through Tadayoshi's mind at the time. Of course, all of Tadayoshi's army denied being the accuser, as well.
"It is possible that another Digimon simply caught wind of Asahi, spying on him and seeing what he was doing," Johan suggested. "Digimon can find a multitude of ways to be stealthy, so we can't rule out a third party that we haven't even met yet."
"I agree with Johan; while the culprit is not here, we cannot pretend that it's not possible for an outside Digimon to wish to get Asahi to repent."
Speaking of Asahi, this was the moment where he went crazy after finally giving up searching for the video. He then asked how they all wanted to end up on TV, implying that he was just going to record them all right here and now. Johan tensed up and Dokamon just grew more stern at that revelation. How were they going to get out of this one?
"Yoink," Zero said after he effortlessly took the phone out of Asahi's hands with his hacking claw cables. He held it relatively close to himself, not wanting the bully to play takesies-backsies. "I'll give this back to you when you learn how to behave. Now, why don't you be a good boy and explain to us what's going on at your house, and maybe we'll help."
"...for once, Zero's right about the 'maybe' part," Johan said with a sweatdrop, before turning back to Asahii. "But he's right, you know. We could help you with your problem if we know exactly what we're dealing with."
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Post by Tadayoshi Teppei and Silence on Aug 19, 2022 20:11:22 GMT
Asahi did not immediately give up on the phone. After Zero had snatched it, the bully took a stance like he meant to challenge Zero for it. As he worked out in his head the best move to make before actually doing it, he became quickly frustrated and ultimately resigned the phone to Zero's possession for now. Meanwhile Tadayoshi quietly considered, "I suppose... it would be our duty to help if this is digimon's work." "Chief, I hate to be the conscientious objector type," objected the Strabimon from within the loader conscientiously, "but I didn't sign up to stop good digimon performing a public service."
Commandramon cut off a couple additional voices off at the pass before they got a chance to express their opinions. "There is no excuse for a digimon to antagonize a human... no matter how distasteful we may find him." The soldier made eye deliberate eye contact with Asahi as he issued his ruling.
"If we help you," Tadayoshi still emphasized, "You must leave me alone. Forever. You must forget everything you've seen here, and you won't follow me again. Is this acceptable?"
Asahi just stood stunned now, flabberghasted at how he could have lost his superior position in these negotiations. But he had. His fists clenched in frustration, and his lips pursed tightly before he finally opened up. "You saw the texts. You know what I know. Long as you're fuckin' snooping-" He dug into his pocket, then tossed a set of keys in the boys' general direction. "-you deal with it. If it's one of your little monster buddies, this thing's all your fault anyway. I am not sleeping there 'till you fix it."
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Post by Johan Walker on Aug 20, 2022 21:58:23 GMT
Thanks to Asahi not immediately giving up his phone right away, that resulted in him and Zero briefly playing tug-of-war with the smartphone in question. Of course, Zero was stronger thanks to being a Digimon, and was still able to take the phone away with relative ease. When Asahi took that challenging stance, the AppHackmon simply gave him a "you really want to try?" sort of look, to which the bully took the smart option and stood down. "That's what I thought."
Tadayoshi and Commandramon did agree that they should help Asahi with his Digimon problem, despite protests from the rest of the army and their own feelings towards the brute. "Affirmative," Dokamon said, agreeing with Commandramon. "Personal feelings should not matter when we are dealing with Digimon cases. I cannot find a reason to turn a blind eye considering we replace Asahi with a human we don't harbor negative feelings towards." Johan stood next to Tadayoshi and crossed his arms when he made the demands to Asahi, in an effort to try and back up his co-worker. The young English man had to admit, though... it felt good seeing Asahi realize he didn't have the superior position anymore. He dug into his pockets and tossed the boys his house keys, which Johan was able to catch, before stating that he isn't sleeping there until the problem was solved. "Don't worry, Asahi, we'll handle this," Johan said, trying to reassure Asahi even a little bit. "I managed to find the kid's address while I was snooping around. I'll send the directions to Johan while I chill in the V-Pet," Zero said to the others, before focusing on Dokamon. "Except for you." "I do not understand." Zero walked up and poked Dokamon in the stomach, right as another growl was heard. "That's why. Go get some ramen or something before showing up at the house. Last thing we need is a loud sound letting the Digimon know we're there." "I mean, the Digimon is going to know we're there either way, but he does have a good point, Dokamon." "I will consume nutrients once the job is completed. I am capable of surviving without food for longer than the average Digimon." "Alright, if you say so..." Johan said, sounding a bit unsure. Dokamon and Zero would then return to Johan's V-Pet, where Zero would send coordinates to Asahi's house. "Alright, that shouldn't be too far from here... follow me, guys."
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