Cavan Maynard
New York || MorningA sequence of loud beeping noises pulled Cavan from his sleep, and he instinctively reached for his phone. At the same time, two things happened: There was a loud snarl and bump, and Cavan remembered the digimon in his room.
Shooting up from bed, he grabbed his phone, tapping at it rapidly as he looked around for Tunomon. The digimon’s growling advertised his position in the corner of the room, where he’d flattened himself, teeth bared as he glared at Cavan.
“What is that?” he snarled, his eyes zeroed on Cavan’s phone.
“Woah, calm down,” Cavan said, flashing his palms, his phone raised in one.
“This is a phone. My phone,” he said, indicating the device.
“I had an alarm on it is all. I must’ve forgot to turn it off last night.” After another second of thinly-veiled suspicion, Tunomon relaxed slightly.
“Okay,” he said, though his eyes still lingered on the phone. He was interrupted, however, by a loud growl emanating from his stomach rather than his mouth, and he met Cavan’s eyes with no small amount of annoyance.
“So,” Cavan said, grinning,
“breakfast?”Given that his family was usually on his sister’s schedule and his sister’s school was both farther and earlier, he was usually alone by the time he woke up. This, though, suited him just fine; breakfast was waiting in the kitchen, a little cold but in no way rushing him out the door, and he could even sleep in or bring a digimon to the kitchen if he wanted.
Now seated across from each other at the small, rectangular table whose four chairs perpetually touched, Cavan and Tunomon looked at each other, one shoveling pancakes down with a fork and one inhaling them straight from plate to fanged mouth. The details of the previous night had come back to Cavan by now: Sometime during the early AMs, he had, in hopes to end the standoff, suggested a truce until the morning. The terms—that each party stay in their own corner of the room—had been simple, and both parties had found them palatable enough to bunker down for the night. And, after attempting some last-minute discussion in the dark, Cavan had been informed that Tunomon could see and bite perfectly well in the dark, cutting the peace talks short.
“You sure you wanna be called ‘Tunomon’?” Cavan asked, reaching for more syrup.
“What do you mean?” Tunomon asked, licking his syrup-encrusted lips. His eyes were narrowed, but they were on the syrup bottle rather than on Cavan.
“I mean, every Tunomon is a Tunomon. Don’t you have some sort of nickname or something?” He offered the open bottle out to Tunomon, then reached over and gave the digimon’s pancakes a healthy drench of sugary goodness when he got somewhat of an affirmative nod.
“Something you call yourself that you can’t call every other Tunomon.”The Tunomon chewed as he stared at Cavan, then swallowed.
“A nickname? What’s that?” he asked.
“Is that like ‘Cavan’ because that sounds dumb.”“Woah, okay dude,” Cavan said, brows raised. He’d gotten remarks on his name before, mostly about how it was basically ‘Kevin’ spelled weird, but he’d never had much issue with it. It wasn’t a bad name. His bros were chill with it, chicks dug it, and he’d never met another dude named it so that was that.
“‘Dude’?” Tunomon echoed.
“Is that a nickname? Or an insult?” At the last question, Tunomon’s confused expression had morphed into a threatening one, and fangs were bared so quickly Cavan had to raise his palms again, fork, syrupy pancake, and all.
“What? No, it’s,” Cavan floundered for words for a moment, then shook his head, sighing.
“Never mind. But ‘dude’ is not an insult, so chill, dude.”They ate in silence for a few seconds, alternating between staring at each other and their plates when they met each others’ eyes on accident before Cavan decided to take another stab at conversation. The Tunomon was living in his house, after all, so they’d have to get on talking terms at some point.
“So what brings you to this part of town?” he asked, spreading the syrup in his plate over a freshly unlayered pancake.
Tunomon gave him a funny look as he chewed.
“I don’t know,” he said at last.
“I don’t remember.”Cavan nodded slowly, processing the words. If Tunomon didn’t know how he got here, that meant no one did. Or did it?
“Wait.” His fork clattered onto his plate as he made a dash for his room, grabbing his laptop before returning and plopping the device onto the table. It took a few minutes to skim through all the messages since he’d last logged on, which seemed to be centered around the raid happening in just over an hour, but sure enough someone had said something relating to his current situation.
“Reading you loud and clear over here, Apollo,” Cavan said, grinning as he got to work typing out a reply.
“What are you doing?” Tunomon asked, hopping over to the laptop on the table.
“Is that a black Weregarurumon?”“Yup. I call him ‘Ollie’,” Cavan said proudly, then paused, looking at Tunomon.
“Can I call you Ollie?”He got a very unamused and rather unfriendly look in response.
Alice Takigawa
Tokyo || Night“Oh!” Alice’s brows went up as a message popped responding to Apollo.
@ApolloKnightu talkin bout the digimon rite
“Oh my—did he just,” Alice glanced at Doru beside her on the table, and the digimon looked back at her, tipping his head.
“Did he say something wrong?” he asked.
“Wrong? He just announced to everyone that he found a digimon. Hm, let me think if he did anything—of course he said something wrong!” she said, finishing with a huff as her fingers flew over her keys.
“Of all the people, him? I mean, Ollie’s a nice guy, but he’s just… so… Agh! I just didn’t expect him to find a digimon too, you know?” She looked at Doru, then reached out to rub his head.
“Like Apollo, sure, that makes sense. Apollo’s a great leader, and if anyone’s deserving of a digimon it’s him, but Ollie? Really?” She shook her head.
“He’s gonna get caught and his digimon’s going to get killed and—”“Arisu-chan?” her mother called, knocking on her door. “It’s late. Go to bed soon!”
“Okay, Okaa-san!” she called back, relieved when she heard footsteps leading away from her door.
“My parents usually tell me to go to sleep when they’re about to sleep themselves,” she explained, shrugging.
“I don’t though.”“It is fairly dark out,” Doru said.
“Please, it’s not even nine,” Alice said, then paused her typing.
“Well, here goes nothing. Right?”“I’m sure you’ll do better than Ollie,” Doru replied.
“Though why does this ‘chat room’ look different from the other one?”“This one’s private, which is exactly why I’m going to do better than Ollie,” she said, smirking.
“Okay,” Doru said, and the message was sent.
@StarWatching Let’s use a private channel to talk about the ‘meteors’, okay? Or do you want to just tell everyone, O11ie ಠ_ಠ
“He deserved that call out,” Alice said, crossing her arms and sitting back in her chair. Doru looked at her with some alarm.
“Call out? Alice, are you arguing with someone in this ‘chat room’?”Alice’s brows shot up.
“Arguing? No I’m not arguing with Ollie, I’m just letting him know that he did something dumb,” she said. Doru gave her an unconvinced look, and she sighed, waving at the laptop.
“Look, Ollie’s not the brightest member of the guild, okay? Not by far. And, again, he’ll probably get his digimon killed somehow, so really I’m doing us all a favor by calling out his stupidity early”—her laptop dinged—
“and well, he responded so he isn’t mad, okay?”@StarWatching chill maus
Alice blinked, then read the message again.
“Um, Alice—”“Oh it is on!” she said, fingers once again flying over keys as she typed out a more strongly worded reply. There were certain types of people that got to her, and one of those were people like Ollie who were too laid back for their own good, and if he thought he could brush over his mistake with a misplaced ‘chill’ he had another thing coming.
“Alice, I really don’t think you should be sending messages when you’re so mad,” Doru said, tapping the closest of her hands hesitantly.
“Yeah, just give me a second,” she said, not really hearing him. What she did hear, though, was another message notification, and she paused mid-sentence, again surprised.
@ApolloKnightYeah.
“Ephie?” Alice buried her face in her hands.
“Why?” she whined.
“Why her?”“Um, who is this ‘Ephie’?” Doru asked.
“Some leech who joined the guild because she realized she had to in order to get items,” Alice growled, deleting everything she’d typed at Ollie. Suddenly he wasn’t the priority anymore.
“Of all the people, her?”“I feel like you don’t like many people in this guild you’re in,” Doru said, frowning as he sat down on the table beside her.
“Oh, I like people. I like Apollo plenty. It’s just these two I have a problem with,” she said, adding Ephie to the group chat she’d started.
“But I guess I’ll have to be the mature one in the situation because Ollie’s clearly incapable of doing it and Ephie’s too busy trying to look cool to do it. Alice, being the mature one. How new, how novel a concept.”@StarWatching Everyone welcome Ephie to the group (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ
A response from Ollie came within seconds.
@StarWatching hey ephs
Her brows shot up. Ollie knew Ephie? Last time she checked, Ollie barely played these days, and Ephie barely talked to anyone.
@StarWatching Hey
Alice sighed.
“She really pisses me off.”
Afton Reimer
Los Angeles || MorningHalfway through brushing her teeth, Afton’s laptop dinged, and she walked over to find that she’d been dragged into a private group chat with three other people. ‘StarWatching’. One glance at the member list—and the chat history—told Afton all she needed to know, and she had to actually pause her brushing to weigh her options. On one hand, ApolloKnight and Ollie were reasonable people. On the other, Doormaus was annoying enough for Afton to have considered leaving the guild on multiple occasions. Combined with Synchai, raids tended to get nigh unbearable, and she’d been hoping to avoid them both for as long as possible. Unfortunately, it now seemed that she’d have to deal with Doormaus a more frequently than she’d ever wanted to.
“What? Is something happening?” Hopmon asked, jumping up and down beside her. She held up a finger to her lips, then reached down, picking the digimon up and putting him on her chair.
“My dad’s in the kitchen, remember,” she said, sending her reply to Ollie. The guy was nice. He kept to himself and therefore out of trouble, which was more than what she could say for some other people.
“Yeah, but what’s happening?” Hopmon asked, though this time more quietly.
“Afton?”“Some guild members found digimon too,” she said, then resumed her brushing, walking back towards the bathroom, Hopmon on her tail.
“There are other digimon here? On Earth?” The excitement was clear in Hopmon’s voice.
“That means I’m not alone! Where are they? Can we meet them?”“Not sure,” Afton said, rinsing her mouth, then cleaning up.
“Probably not.”“What? But Afton, we have to! How else am I going to get back to the digital world?” Bouncing up and down seemed to be Hopmon’s way of expressing his distress, and Afton bent down, placing a hand on the digimon’s head until he ceased his hopping.
“No bouncing. It’s loud,” she said, straightening,
“and I don’t know, but I have to go, and you’re staying here. Quietly. Don’t make a mess or go outside,” she said, grabbing her bag from her chair and fixing her hair in front of the mirror. Today felt like a cupcake earring kind of day.
“W-what? Where are you going? Are you going to leave me here? Alone?” The hopping resumed, then ceased when Afton looked down at Hopmon.
“Yeah. Handle yourself, Hopmon,” she said, then headed for her bedroom door.
“I’m going to close this door. If anyone opens it, hide in the closet and don’t make a sound or I might never see you again.”“What? What do you mean? Afton!”For someone who claimed he was considered pretty strong in the digital world, he sure did whine a lot. But at least he listened. If he didn’t, Afton would have to skip school, and she didn’t have an excuse to do so yet.
Remram
Achronum
