FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Note: Sorry for being so late in getting this out. ^.^'''''''

The next morning Ezra found himself tightly wound together with Luna, facing her front. She had an extremely contended look on her face--a wide smile, calmly closed eyes, and a calm, steady breathing pattern. Could Digimon dream? It certainly looked like she was dreaming...what might she have been dreaming about? What would the purpose of that subroutine be? To humans, sleep was a necessity; it prevented them from becoming insane; but Digimon were much more perfect organisms, weren't they? Wondering just how deep her sleep was, he reached out with his hand and flicked her gently on the ear. She twitched, and her ear flopped around in response, but she didn't wake up. Instead, her hold on him tightened and a small sigh emitted from her lungs.

"Luna?" he asked, shaking her gently. She didn't do anything; she slept much more soundly than he did. He looked at her sleeping form, her chest moving up and down with every breath she took, until an idea that popped into his mind flashed a mischievous grin across his face. He slid his hand under the cover, venturing between the Renamon's legs where he rubbed gently. She shifted, moaned softly in her sleep, and her smile got even wider--if that were possible. It wasn't until he actually pushed a finger inside of her that he got a reaction. Unfortunately for him, that reaction was for her to extend her claws and shove them into his arm. He winced in pain.

"Ezra!" She exclaimed, once she had come to her senses. The claws quickly retraced, and the deathgrip was quickly replaced by much less intense, exponentially more affectionate, hold on his arm as she pulled it out from under the covers. There were three large gashes across his arms that hurt like hell, but he wasn't bleeding......much.

"Heh-heh-heh..." he laughed weakly. Luna made a soft clicking noise with her tongue and set his arm back down.

"Why would you that?"

"Um...I'm horny..." he answered with a grin. A fur-covered kick to the shin was his reward.

"Was last night not enough?" she asked, her three-fingered hand moving down his stomach.

"More than enough," he replied. "I won't be able to think about sex again for at least a week."

"Oh," Luna said with deliberately faked disappointment. "Then you would not want this?" She leaned forward and gave him a long, deep kiss, only just touching his tongue before breaking away. To his dismay, her hand also made a similar retreat.

"Good." she sat up on the bed with her legs up to her chest and her arms crossed around them. From his vantage point, Ezra had an excellent viewpoint between her legs, where the blood and juices from the previous night had tainted her white fur a dark red color.

"Are you going to...wash that?" he asked.

"I would, but I did not see any lakes or other bodies of water nearby."

"You don't need one..." it took a great deal of his willpower to not laugh at her ignorance of the real world. "Let me show you something," he said, getting out of bed, grabbing his robe, and leading her into the bathroom. "Behold...the shower!" he announced, making a mock grandiose gesture at the shower.

"Shower?" Luna asked simply. Ezra stared blankly at the fox Digimon. No had ever really explained, per se, showers to him. It was just knowledge that he had. "It's like, um...rain. Yeah. Like rain. Only inside." Luna continued to stare at him with her large eyes.

"I can't explain it any more. It's a shower." She kept staring at him inquiringly. "Stop looking at me like that."

"What do, I...what do I do?" Ezra sighed.

"Get in," Luna craned her neck into the shower and looked left, right, up, down, then left again.

"I would rather not."

"Why?"

"I do not understand. I am...afraid." Ezra blinked back his disbelief.

"You. You are scared." She closed her eyes and nodded once. "You are scared. Of a shower." She nodded again.

". . ."

"It is new to me..."

"What about cars? Buses? Street lamps? Power lines? Those are new to you, but--"

"They are not."

". . ."

"Can you do it with me?"

"I suppose. Just don't blow up my bathroom while I'm inside it..." he was joking, but he had never thought of showering with Luna before...evidently neither had she. He felt kind of stupid as he explained the hot and cold water and how to change it.

He turned on the water; Luna's first reaction was to flinch at the water, then to laugh softly at herself for a few moments. Ezra watched the effect the water had on her fur with a great deal of interest. Even though he was behind her, he could see how much the water running down her body amplified her strong, sexy physique. Something in the back of his mind wanted him to make a joke to himself about curves and coefficients, but the rest of it was far to occupied trying to picture what she looked like from the front.

The corner of his eye spotted an unopened bottle of shampoo lying on the shower rack. Ezra grinned, reached out for the bottle, and poured it liberally over her back. She didn't stop him, but she did ask what he was doing.

"Shampoo," he answered simply.

"...sham-poo?"

". . ."

"Ezra, we are not taught --"

"I know, it's just..." he grinned, rubbing Luna's shoulder with the lather. Her tail--which had pushed between Ezra and the wall of the shower, was next. While tracing the shape of her upper back with, it crossed his mind that there was much more muscle to her tail than he would have thought. It took a little bit longer to do than he anticipated. He slid his arms around the small of her back and around o the flat surface that was her stomach. When that was done, he gathered more shampoo for what he had set as his next task--the large tuft of white fur on her chest. That was by far he most difficult part, but it was also the part that he enjoyed the most. Evidently, while he was busy with that, Ezra had figured out shampoo, and was applying it to her lower reasons that Ezra had been saving for after her chest. Once he was finished with her, she turned around to look at him, presumably wondering what she was supposed to do next.

He was now looking at a sight he was reasonably sure no human--or even Digimon, for that matter--had ever seen: a Renamon, soaking wet, covered in head to toe in strawberry-scented shampoo. He wished he had a camera on him to capture the moment, but he didn't.

Instead, he gave her a small nudge, pushing her body under the running water to rinse off. They stepped out of the shower, and Ezra briefly admired his work before turning around to get a towel for her. Apparently, she had her own ideas on the matter of drying off, because at that specific moment, she did so herself...manually. From Ezra's perspective, she didn't so much shake the water off as she did cause the water to no longer be on her body, and be on the walls of his bathroom instead. She gave him a sheepish smile with her new, shining coat.

"Well, that was beyond doubt the most...interesting shower I have ever been a part of."

"It was my first."

"I noticed... are you hungry?" he pulled some clothes, including aeth1mong them a Digimon t-shirt that he had at a convention as a prize some time ago. The irony didn't even cross his mind.

"Who are they?" Luna asked, staring at his chest. "Other tamers and their Digimon?"

"Who?" he looked down at his shirt. "Oh. They're characters from the Digimon television show."

"What?"

"The issue is complicated, and life is short," he said with a smile."

"You said that before. Is it a well-known phrase?"

"Not outside of either this house or an institution," he grinned.

"I see." Ezra laughed. One of these days, he would have to give her a lesson or two in human history.

"Anyway, are you hungry?"

"I am."

Now fully washed and dressed (Luna had replaced her gauntlets at some point unbeknownst to him), Ezra moved through his small flat in the direction of the kitchen to to make.....lunch? It was 2:00 in the afternoon?

"Vell, look who's avake...you two've been asleep since I got back last night." Gustaf was in the living room, surrounded by pieces of paper with circuit diagrams and assorted electronics stuffs. He looked up from whatever he was soldering--his eyes quickly scoped out the shirt he was wearing, which elicited a wide grin.

"Do you haf any idea how ironic that is?"

"Yes, I do," he grinned back.

"I think I still haf mine from...Luna, did you do something with your...fur? It looks wery...shiny."

"Shampoo." Ezra answered for Luna.

"She knew vhat shampoo--" Gustaf's eyes flitted over Ezra's own wet hair. "Ah. Ja. Ja, of course..." That was rapidly becoming the young German's trademark saying. He quickly returned to the board he was soldering components to.

"You're going to have to get used to the idea sooner or later, mein freund." he said, putting an arm around Luna's waist.

"I'm vell avare of zat, Ezra. It ist not...that..."

"We've had this discussion already."

"Ja, und I realizehat I vas wrong, but..."

"It's alright," he interjected. "I don't expect you to understand it. Hell, I don't understand it..." He removed his arm from Luna's waist and one again began to move in the direction of the kitchen, leaving the other two alone.

* * * * *

Luna knelt down in a free spot next to Gustaf. Before she had become involved in Ezra's life, they had apparently been quite close; and now her being here had somehow come between them. A pang of guilt rang through her body. She was no good at handling this kind of thing.

"Luna, I vant you to know..." he stopped mid-sentence, looked up at her, and sniffed the air. "You smell nice." Everyone else but her seemed to share that sentiment. She found it nauseating. But that was beside the point.

"What?"

"I...It ist not the thought of you and Ezra together that bothers me. Zat ist something I can accept. It is you and Ezra...together...that bothers me." Luna tried to understand what he was saying, but no matter how hard she tried, she failed.

"I do not follow." Gustaf put down the long, heated instrument in his hand and looked back to her with a sigh.

"No, of course you don't. Digimon haf had the capability of existing here in this world for a little ower four years. For three und a half of those years, I haf dedicated my life to discover a vay to bring them here. Ezra is a software engineer--he studies them from the standpoint that one would study a program--or at least, he did," he added quickly when she twitched. "The point is, for his purposes, it doesn't really matter vhat format the data is in. I, on the other hand, am a physicist. I can't use abstracts. Vhat I vant to know, I haf to have a digimon here to measure. And for Ezra to become a Tamer, to have such a vonderful oppurtunity..." Gutaf's voice trailed down to a much lower volume.

"There are many Digimon who would like to escape the daily rigors of the digital."

"Ja, vell, I don't any."

There was an awkward silence between the two of them. The young Renamon really had no idea what force paired Digimon with their tamers, why they did it, or especially how. She wanted to say something to reassure Gustaf that his time would come, but she didn't know that for sure.

"So...what are you doing anyway?" she asked in an effort to divert the conversation to a different subject. In an effort to make herself look interested, she picked up one of the...things he was building and turned it over and over in her hands.

"I am trying to make the Digivice force other objects into being. At first, I began by trying to figure out where the energy for the process originates, but I can't measure that unless I actually stand there and watch an emergance occur."

She nodded like she understood.

"I turned then to interfacing with the device itself, assuming that it has its own method of as doing it."

"Then what is this for?"

"To control the process. I vould vant to be able to create specific things. This vould let me do that."

Was he talking about converting the stray packets of data that swept through the digital world into objects here? She was about to point out that they had their own uses where they were, but Ezra interrupted by bringing in a tray of teas and toast, munching on his own quite skillfully as he did so.

"What is all this crap, anyway?" he asked between bites, setting the tray down. Luna picked up one of the cups filled with brown liquid and sipped at it cautiously. It tasted like water that had been boiled with plants it, which she later found out was exactly what it was.

"She had asked that....I'm trying to develop a control method for non-bioform emergance."

"I hate to be the one to tell you this, mein freund, but to do that, you're going to need much more than the things you can buy at Radio Shack."

"How about your digivice?"

"That's...not what it is for."

"How do you know?"

"I don't, I just..." her mate's eyes squinted for a few moments. "Go ahead. But if you overvolt the serial port, I'm not going to be happy. It's not like I have a parts list for it. or a manual. Hell, I don't even know how long it's power source lasts..."

Their conversation rapidly turned to things that she couldn't begin to understand. Slowly drinking cup after cup of tea, she began to think about what it would have been like if Gustaf rather than Ezra had been her tamer. Would his outlook on Digimon have changed, like Ezra's had, or would she have remained nothing more than a set of routines, functions, and data to him? Would she ever have discovered her slid-digivolution form? She certainly never could have pictured herself actually...mating...with Gustaf, although she did feel sorry for him.

"Luna, your gauntlets. They are inorganic, ja?"

"Excuse me?"

"They are not a part of you."

"How would they be?" she asked, a little confused. "They are an indication of my status as a warrior, handmade from--"

"Vell, there you are, Ezra. It's been done before...just including a bioform as part of the...package." Luna phased herself out of the conversation again, this time for different reasons. Something was starting to make her nervous, but she didn't know what. It was a bothersome feeling somewhere in the bak of her mind that she couldn't quite nail down.

"Are you alright? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I...I do not know. I sense...something nearby."

"Another Digimon?" Ezra quickly retrieved his digivice from the mess on the ground.

"If it is...it's big."

* * * * * *

In pitch darkness, a monitor flickered to life to display a location tracker. Two more monitors flickered into a dim glow, displaying similar, more detailed information. The dim light from the screens lit up bits of the room and its contents; various editions and translations of the Bible, the Torah, the Qu'ran, obscure religious and occult reference manuals, musty scrolls, garlic, bars of silver, tubes of quicksilver mercury, rods of solid electrum, bars of silver, rods of gold-plated electrum, occult ritual devices and descriptions, even gunsmithing and ammo-loading equipment.

The light from the heavily dimmed monitors also vaguely outlined the figure of a man. The outline, making the only noise in the room, stood up and collected some of the items in the room, beginning with a number of tubes of quicksilver, and ending with two Colt 1911 longslide semiautomatic pistols. With those, he would eliminate his prey. With those, he would go on the hunt. Sliding the two pistols into their holsters and everything else into assorted pockets in his coat, he kissed a silver cross around his neck and began his hunt.

A new type of demon on Earth was his target. Digimon. That was his prey. Their destruction was his mission from God. His instruments were the items that had been used demons for hundreds of years, along with a few new things God had provided him with. He needed not the counsel of others; his actions were not subject to review. He was an instrument of God, just as the guns in his pockets were his own instruments. He was nothing more than that--a gun. He could load the magazine, pull the slide, and aim but it was God's will, not his own, that sent these demons back to the pits of hell where they belonged.

Rest was not an option. Not when the very kingdom of God was in danger. Even while he was outside, the shadows seemed to stay with him and follow him, rather than other way around. None of the people on the street that he passed seemed to take notice, nor did they mention anything about him wearing the long flowing garments of a Catholic priest outside in the middle of the summer. Maybe they knew that God was his patron, and thus required no explanation. Maybe they were agents of evil, and would report back to their devilish lords and masters his position and activities. No matter. If that were they case, then they would be someone else's problem. The only thing he needed to attend to was the extermination of demons on Earth.

* * * * * * * *

"This way!" Luna's voice yelled at him, but her tamer and mate could only see a small flash of yellow out of the corner of his eyes. And since neither Ezra or his German counterpart were particularly athletic, combined with what they were trying to keep with, any physical endurance they had was quickly sapped by the running.

"Do you really think this is wise?"

"Someone needs to stop it." Her voice, from somewhere in the vicinity of above his head, had all the air and tune of an overrated heroine in a bad action movie. "Turn here!" The yellow blur disappeared around the corner of a building.

"Where are we going?" There was no answer to his question from the yellow blur, but there was one in another form. Completely encompassing a small gym building was a white, misty fog; Ezra knew all too well what it was: A digital field. He also knew what it meant, which was for more important: something was bio-emerging.

"That field is huge," Gustaf commended. "Are you sure you want to fight whatever is in there?"

"I have to try," was her determined answer. "Ezra?"

Ezra looked from the digital field to his eager digimon. Eager wasn't really the word, thought...the look in her eyes was not one of eagerness or anxiety. It was one of purpose.

"Alright," he conceded. "But if you can't handle the situation, then you run." There was no response. He knew her well enough to know that pressing the matter further wouldn't have gotten him one. "Let's go. Coming, Gustaf?"

"Naturally. I need the readings." he grinned, displaying a retractable dish device for his benefit. The programmer-turned digimon tamer - turned digimon's mate fumbled in his pocket to make sure his deck was there, then followed Luna into the gym.

It was a very...empty gym, filled entirely with a basketball court. The bleachers along one side had been retracted into the stans and lay dormant against the wall. Stray basketballs littered both the polished floor and the rows of bleachers that had been extended out for people to sit in. For everything that was there, there was one thing conspicuously missing -- the Digimon that was bio-emerging.

Luna took two steps forward, leaving her in the middle of the small circle in the center of the court. her head turned up and her nose expanded -- she was sniffing the air.

"Anything?" he asked.

"No."

" Soul Blade!" a voice echoed through the room. ezra's eyes weren't good enough to track what happened, but they registered an explosion where Luna had been standing. Luna, however, was there no longer to be hit by the attack. His eyes searched the room, looking for his own Digimon. Great. Now he didn't know where either one of them were.

" Diamond Storm!" The primary attack of Renamon flew over his head. They converged on ... something, but a series of flashes and metallic noises later, there was nothing there, and every bit of Luna's attack had been deflected off into the wall. Luna landed directly in front of him and growled in frustration.

"Maybe this will help..." he fumbled in his pocket, eventually locating the card he was looking for. "Speed, activate! Digimodify!"

"Luna jumped into the air, going up into the darkness of the rafters. He could only barely make out a small part of her target--a small sliver of shining metal that didn't fit what it was around. That sliver of metal grew longer, flipped around and pointed directly at Luna, who manuevered around in the air, setting herself up for a counter if stabbed at

" Wisteria Punch!" Her hands glowed with a blue fire and lashed out at the mysterious Digimon. It's sword flipped over twice, revealing the flat end of its blade, which it used to deftly block the punch and lock Luna's right arm across her chest.

"No matter how fast he makes you, I'll be faster." The voice answered. The sword flipped around again, now with its sharp edge against Luna's hand and cut. He could hear her gasp of pain even as her blood landed on the polished floor next to him. Why was it that this only hapnneded when he did something to help her?

"I don't think zat helped much, Ezra..."

"I know!"

" Soul Bla--" The sword twirled around through empty space, gathering purple energy around it for another attack.

" DIAMOND STORM!" The flurry of precious stones interrupted the attack. Every sliver was struck by the twirling sowrd, making a distinctive noise every time. One sounded different than the rest, though; rather than pinging and being batted off into the walls, ceiling, or floor, it shattered and sprayed the target with something that loked like melted silver or pewter. The hissing noise that ensued permeated the room, followed by an agonizing scream from Luna's opponent. He looked to Luna, who had just landed back on the round, only to see that she was just as confused about what had happened as he was.

"Vhat vas that?" Gustaf asked.

"Quicksilver," a monotonous voice behind answer answered. "Blessed in Rome on the seventh day of the seventh months." Ezra spun around to see what was behind him. It was...a priest...or at least he was dressed as a priest.

"Who are you?"

"Who I am is not important," the priest answered, reaching beneath his cossack and pulling out two extremely long pistols. "Who I serve is far more pertinent." Ezra stared blankly at the man, wondering if he planned on fighting this mysterious Digimon in Luna's stead, since she didn't seem to be doing particularly well on her own.

"You two should leave," the priest undid the safeties with two prominent clicks. "It is not safe for you here." Stepping into the center of the gym where the battle had taken a brief recess, he looked directly up directly at the Digimon.

"Pater noster, qui es in caelis..." he began reciting what Ezra quickly recognized from high school latin as the Lord's prayer, and began to fire his weapon into the rafters.

"Does he really plan on fighting a digimon with just pistols...vhile praying?"

"My guess would be yes."

The Digimon with the sword fell from the rafters, landing on the ground with only a small amount of grace. Clad completely in black, the digimon weaved in and out of the bullets flying towards him.

"You're too slow, human. Far too slow! Feel free to try again in another life!"

The sword flipped around three more times in the Digimon's hand. Having found its way to the mans throat, it hovered threateningly, while the man who's life was in danger non-chalantly grinned and turned his head downward and looked toward the floor. Ezra was about to yell at Luna to do something, but before he could, a long metal rod jutted out from the sword-wielding Digimon's stomach, covered in it's blood.

"Nnnngggghhh...Gah!" The ninja-esque creature pulled itself off the impaling piece of metal, but it was too late for him to do anything else. The priest had turned around, reloaded, and was firing. Each shot he fired ran into it's target, but it's data didn't fragment--the individual bullets simply weren't doing enough damage.

"That does nozing..."Gustaf whispered. That didn't stop the priest, however. Ezra got the feeling that even if he had heard what Gustaf said, it wouldn't have changed anything. The barrage continued, and by the time the slides of his two pistols slid back and locked into their open position from a lack of ammo to process, the ninja Digimon had fallen to the ground. Ezra noticed that the shots formed a perfect crucifix on the inert body, which quickly erupted into flames for some reason and fragmented. The fragments of data floated over towards Luna, who absorbed them into her body. The cut on her hand, which had been bleeding profusely, now stopped.

"In nomine patri, et fili, et spiritus santci..." Two empty magazines fell to the floor with audible clicks, and two more were slid into their place, the loading action clicking with a deliberate motion from the priest. "Amen." He then turned his focus to Luna, giving her a very questioning look.

"I didn't know there were two of you. Where did you come from?" The gun in his left hand leveled quickly in on Luna's head, who was still kneeling down. Ezra was strongly reminded of an execution, which wasn't something he really wanted to see happen to Luna.

"What do you want with her?! She's done nothing wrong, she has no qualms with you!"

"Why do you care?"

"Because I'm her ta--her mate!"

"Her..." The priest, unsurprisingly, looked surprised, but made another deliberate action, leveling a gun at him as well.

"Then you shall suffer her fate and accompany her to hell! These bullets were forged for a demon's skull, but they will serve quite well to send a heretic like you into eternal damnation!

* * * * * *

Luna growled audiably. To threaten her was one thing. For him to threaten Ezra was something far more different, not something she would tolerate.

" Frozen matrix, activate!"

"What?" The black-robed humans' eyes and focus turned to her, but it was far too late. By the time he had realized what was going on and fired his weapons, Luna had gone from where she was kneeling to in front of her mate, and already put in motion plans to defend him.

" Thousand year's defence!" The metal projectile bounced harmlessly against the wall of ice and burst into a small flame. The human looked stunned for a few moments before regaining his composure and letting his pistols fall to his sides.

"Excellent! I haven't had this much fun since I returned from the Digital World!"

"I would not be so smug if I were you," she answered, her voice reverberating through the gym. "You may have been able to defeat my opponent, but you can not hope to defeat me now."

"You don't scare me, Demon," The man said. "God has tasked me with your destruction, and I will not be stopped in fulfilling that task."

Luna just...stared at him. He was quite obviously either insane or just REALLY didn't like Digimon.

"Although you would have my mate and I destroyed, I have no wish to harm you. Do not force me to alter my resolve."

The pugnacious human responded to her by flinging something against her ice barriers; it was the same thing that he had thrown at her now-deceased opponent. The liquid hissed against the wall of ice, and it began to melt away.

"This is your last warning." Two more vials of the silvery liquid expedited the melting of her barrier. Soon, there was nothing left, and he leveled his pistols at her again.

"Unwise." she raised her own hand. _" Winterwind! _" A blast of chill air blew the guns out of his hands, then threw him against the wall across the room.

"You're a strong one, demon. Stronger than most I've met."

"Thank you."

The human reached into his black coat-thing and pulled out another one of the long metal things he had used to impale her opponent.

"If you intend on hitting me with that, there are at least twelve ways for me to kill you before you even come close."

For a human, he moved towards her with surprising speed--even so, it wasn't anywhere near enough what he needed for him to even come close to attacking her.

"_Then you leave me no choice. Frigid Exclamation! _"

Three large spikes of ice formed in front of her and flew at her enemy. Sliding through his black garments, he slammed into the wall, impaled against it by two of the long rods of solid ice in his arms, and one of them in between his legs, only a few inches from where it could have caused a great deal of pain.

Luna gave a small sigh of relief. He wouldn't die from that, then. He would just be in a great deal of pain until someone let him down from there.

"Luna?"

"He will not escape by himself." She said, turning her back to the human. Ezra said something else to her, but she wasn't paying attention. Why did he wish her ill? She hadn't done anything to him, she hadn't attacked him. She hadn't even attacked the other Digimon while he was fighting it. Maybe that was why, he was expecting her to help him...but that hardly warranted wanting her dead. He couldn't have absorbed the data anyway, what would he have done with it?

"Humans don't always make sense," her tamers voice said to her. "it's one of the sad truths of the world that you're going to have to accept." He must have noticed her confused look as she stood there, staring at the floor of the building.

"I know that. But this is different."

Still quite conscious, the human gave her a long glare before she turned back around to walk out of the building. She knew that she had done what she had do, but at the same time, she felt guilty for what she had done to the human. It could have been worse, she told herself--what if she had missed and killed him outright? Would Ezra have been angry? A quick glance at her new mate revealed that he didn't look happy, even now. Gustaf, however, was far too absorbed in reading whatever was in the palm of his hand for her to garner anything about what he thought on the matter.

"Ezra...there was nothing I could do." she pleaded her case.

"What?" he looked up at her.

"The human. I had no other choice."

"I know."

"Then why are you angry?"

"I'm not--well, not at you."

"Then at whom?"

"People...for being so narrow-minded. Him," he gestured back at the entrance of the vacant building on the vacant street, "for doing what he did. But not you."

A small smile formed across her face, and she put her hand on his shoulder. He flinched--she kept forgetting that she was quite cold in this form--but didn't pull away.

"Luna, tell me something..."

"Anything."

"Why did you have to come here?"

"I do not know. It was...an overwhelming urge. I can not explain it."

Luna's explanation of the sensation easily took them the rest of the trip home, until she jumped onto the couch in Ezra's living room. She hoped that human wasn't hurt too badly.

* * * * * * *

At the moment, that human was still where he had been left by the Digimon. She was strong. Exceptionally strong. With the equipment he had brought with him, there was no way he could have defeated her. He had things he could use, certainly, but he would have required more time to secure them, prepare them for use, and renew the blessings on them. He would be sure to to be fully prepared the next time they met, however. And they would. He would make sure of it.

The door at the front of the gym building flung open. At first, he thought it was the fox-esque demon come to finish what she had started with him. But it wasn't. It was a combination of uniformed police officers and a number of men and women wearing what looked like very expensive business suits. DDTC. The priest often found his work being second-guessed by thee incompotent fools. They thought they could use the demons. They thought they could study them, and change them into something else. He knew better. He knew that was possible.

"This is it! This is where it emerged!"

"Quick, get the spectra imaging equipment, we might get a trace!"

"Did we get any data on emergence?"

"Uh, not much, it was pretty elusive, sir."

"Well, get it for him, then!"

"I'll get right on it!"

"Uh, Captain..."

"WHAT?"

"Over there."

"Oh my god...it attacked a priest!"

"Someone get him down from there!"

"He's nailed to the wall!"

A mass of officials of the uniformed variety all ran over to him. A medical team, three hours, and a a lot of work later, he was freed from his captivity against the wall, although not without experiencing a considerable amount of pain in the process.

"There's only superficial damage to the bones," they told him after examining an x-ray they had just taken. "Surprisingly enough, you won't even need to be hospitalized, Father. Just try to refrain from any strenuous physical activity for the next few weeks, and you should be fine."

"Thank you, my child."

"We're going to have to ask a few questions, uh..."

"Father Augustus Erden."