Ruins Fusion Frenzy Pt.12

Beeku:

Faith was neither a doctor not a psychiatrist, but she still knew that hearing voices was a bad thing. "That sounds like you're alright for now. Very well then" She smiled to assure him "We can depart whenever you're ready. There's always another day to try and look up a solution" Nothing could be achieved if they sat here forcing an answer. She looked to her partner for answers

"Well good fer ya" Lapis' gravelly voice sounded condescending. "No voices, yep I'm sure yer all better now." his rolled his eyes. "As soon as ya let yer guard down dey'll leak into yer dreams and punish you. Ya won't have a single waking thought without flashes of enemies and hallucinations." Lapis was speaking from experience of course. "My advice is, do not go far from yer tamer's shard. Dat light from it is wuts protectin' ya fer now. It's creatin' yer mental barrier. Da moment she needs ya to skeedadle, ask for her ta give it to ya" 

Lapis demonstrated by picking up the light shard. Lapis untied his orange bandana and placed the shard in the middle of the square, folding it diagonally to form a triangle. From there he folded long the long edge to create a hem/pocket for the shard to rest in. Lapis finally tied his bandana on. The area where the light shard was rested above his throat. The soft light still showed beneath the cloth. "Until yer able ta say yer not infected, dun give it an inch, because that's da deadliest mistake ya can make as a crocutamon. Any minute ya can wake up as a different digi, and dat my friend is when yer beggin' fer death. No turnin back" Lapis had given up any hope of reverting back to his cabbitmon state. 

VelkynKarma:

Emily looks vaguely ill the longer Lapis expresses his opinion on the matter and gives his advice on how to best counter it. Crocutamon’s ‘infection,’ so to speak, isn’t nearly as bad as Lapis’ obviously, but the way he describes it is still pretty terrifying. There’s no way in hell she wants that for her Digimon. 

Crocutamon doesn’t exactly look happy either as Lapis goes on. His perked up ears slowly lower until they’re flat back against his skull, and he scratches nervously at the ground with one paw. “Great,” he mutters, when Lapis finishes. “I’m basically never gonna sleep again.” 

“We’ll figure something out,” Emily assures hastily. After watching Lapis wrap up the Light shard in his bandanna to wear it safely close, she adds worriedly, “Do you think my Knowledge shard will be any good to protect him, though? The Light shard has traditionally been used to hold back taints and shadows. Knowledge has never done anything like that, at least not so far as any of the records I’ve read have indicated…” She frowns in frustration. "Ugh, I wish I could get my hands on some notes or code scripts or something for this thing. It's the only way I know how to fight this stuff. That's where my shards do shine."

Beeku:

"Actually Emily I can actually confirm it's not something exclusive to a light shard" Faith spoke up. "My cousins have to do the same with their digimon, and they have a love and Hope shard respectively"
"Wut Fai said" Lapis pointed his digit at his tamer over his shoulder. "So long as ya dun do somethin' dumb Cat-dog'll be fine. I thought I wuz a gonner when da temple started eatin' at Fai's light. Also da dark ocean, and dat time when-"
"Give me a bloody break. After all I've been subjected to I'm entitled to have moments of self doubt" Faith was very exasperated with her partner. She crossed her arms and huffed. 

"Meh." Lapis grinned at crocutamon "So just be careful. Dun drop yer tamer on her head or sumthin' cuz that'll weaken it. Dun see why ya'd fuss so much though. Ya have yer beads dun ya?" Lapis remembered how the spirit beads repelled him and the virus for the most part. 

VelkynKarma:

Emily looks a little relieved at Faith’s reassurance, and Lapis’ agreement. “Well, at least I can do something to help, then,” she says. She carefully plucks one of her multiple shards free from the ring on her belt loop and pulls Crocutamon a little closer (just in time, as he starts bristling in annoyance at the ‘cat-dog’ comment), before carefully tying it onto his collar next to the gold tag. “There. Hopefully that’ll help for now, since I don’t intend to do anything unintelligent in the near future.” 

“I don’t think you’ve ever done anything dumb ever,” Crocutamon agrees, looking considerably more cheered. “And I promise I won’t drop you on your head like Lapis says.”

“Really not worried about that part,” Emily assures, patting him on the head and scritching his mane. “I know you wouldn’t do anything like that.” 

Crocutamon blinks at Lapis mentioning his spirit beads, and looks down at his paw with the beads thoughtfully. “It didn’t work forever,” he reminds. “When they got really mad they were able to break through. But it’ll help for a time, I guess.”

Emily regards the beads thoughtfully as well. “I wonder,” she muses. “It’s odd for a virus type to have a built-in antivirus program, so to speak…but those are obviously far safer for you than, say, a holy ring. I wonder if it would be possible to reverse-engineer the coding to help Lapis out, too…” She sighs and shakes her head. “Well that’s something to consider for a different day. For now, I think we’d best get out of here. It’ll be much easier to think these things through and find a permanent solution when we’re not sitting ducks in the middle of nowhere.”

Beeku:

"Agreed. Well? Shall we take same route back the way we came?" Faith was of course mentioning Boremon.
"Bleh" Lapis made a face. "Nuh uh, nope, imma puke" Lapis was throwing a hissy fit. "I'd rather walk"
"Right, it's never that easy with you" Faith sighed while looking though her bag. 
"Also, I ain't trustin' da next thing ta come outta yer bag of tricks" Lapis remembered what got him onto the bug digimon in the first place. Drugging his food was a nasty trick. Faith was going to do something to force him to do things her way. 
"Sure" Faith agreed while pulling out the thermos Lapis had emptied earlier. There were still bits of beef stew sitting at the bottom of it as she went to go rinse it out. Lapis watched as his tamer filled both her canteen from earlier and the thermos with water from the lake. What was she planning? Soaking him wasn't going to do much. 

"Lapis and I are travelling on ground it looks like" Faith rubbed her head. She would like nothing more than to go home and sleep off the migraine she has. The bump on her head was throbbing in pain, and the rest of her muscles were sore from that fishing exercise, but this was the lesser of two evils. Had she tried to fight Lapis, he probably would send a strong shock her way- and Faith was not going to hinge her well being on Emily knowing CPR or not. "I'm really going to need a drink when I get home"
"Is dat why ya filled up on water?" it's oddly cute how innocent Lapis didn't connect "drinking" with "getting so drunk she'll have a hangover the next day". 
"I'm planning to go at a moderate pace- unless you're carrying me as Pardelismon" 
"Not dat good on energy" Lapis shrugged. 

VelkynKarma:

Crocutamon snickers at Lapis’ rejection of flying. “Big, baaad Lapis can’t handle a little flight time,” he says, cackling not unlike his hyena namesake. 

“Be nice,” Emily tells him. “He did just give you a lot of good advice.” Crocutamon sobers a little. 

“Croctuamon probably doesn’t have the energy for a regular Digivolution, not that it’s exactly useful as a travel-form anyway,” Emily says mildly. “Boremon could fly lower to the ground though—would that help? I wouldn’t want to leave you guys behind out here, especially if Lapis is too low on energy to evolve.” 

Beeku:

"Will that work Lapis?" Faith asked her partner wearily. 
"...ehhhhhhh" Lapis looked his human over. He could see she was starting to wear down. As tough as she was, it wasn't good to let her show her weakness until she was back home safe. He didn't want her to be too vulnerable for too long. "Fine. we can fly bleh" He still didn't like the idea. He would rather have Delgamon drag him for playtime by the tail. 
"Excellent. I'll text Bastion now and have him pick us up from Astra."
"Tell him ta pick up some ham on da way home" Lapis wagged his tail when he thought of the butler driving them home. Bastion was good about selecting offerings for him. Lapis looked at Crocutamon expectantly. 

VelkynKarma:

Crocutamon’s still snickering a little, even as Emily pages through her iPod again and finds the now digitized Knowledge Egg. “Okay, here we go,” she says, selecting it and pointing at Crocutamon. The Rookie expands until he’s in the familiar armored bug form, shuffling all of his legs momentarily before crouching to let everybody on.

“You know, I probably couldn’t fly that high this time anyway,” he comments, as Emily seats herself on her preferred segment. “Lapis is way huge-er this time. But I can skim the roads, then we’ll go super fast but pretty low.” 

He waits for everybody to clamber on, before hollering, “All aboard! Next stop, Astra Campus!” His wings flutter, beginning their constant drone, and he zips only a few feet above the ground until he finds a relatively clear path and streaks down it towards home. 

Beeku:

"Thanks Boremon" Faith clambered onto the bug's back. Lapis on the other hand opted to cling onto Boremon's leg. That way if he got airsick, he'd be able to not cover the humans in poisonous stomach acids. 

VelkynKarma:

Boremon zips along for some time, mindful of all his passengers, even opting to curl the leg Lapis is clinging to a little more securely just in case he has to make a catch if Lapis slips. They eventually reach the campus in the Digital world, and Boremon sets down wearily right in front of the building with the portal to the real world. He barely holds his form together long enough for his passengers to get off before he glows and shrinks back to a weary-looking Rideremon.

“So tired,” he mutters. “I could sleep for a week. After I eat a horse.”

Emily scoops him up carefully. “You did a good job, you can take a breather. We’re definitely safe for now. And I promise you’ll get a huge meal when we get home, okay?”

“Yay,” Rideremon yawns. 

Emily turns to Faith and Lapis. “Well, that was…quite a day,” she says slowly. “I definitely hadn’t planned on quite that much excitement, but at least we all got out in one piece.” 

She glances down at the odd spot on Rideremon’s back leg, and adds with a grimace, “Mostly, anyway. I know we haven’t found a permanent solution on this yet, but…keep in touch, okay? You guys know more about this virus core thing than I do. If you can think of any way to get rid of it before it’s fully set in, let me know. And me, I’ll be researching pretty heavily into coding and programming after this…if I find anything that I think might shed a light on the subject, so to speak, I’ll let you guys know, too.” 

She glances at the door behind her. “I’ll let you guys go for now, though…sounds like you’ve got somebody waiting to pick you up. Take it easy after all that…I think you guys’ve earned it.” 

Beeku:

Faith nodded. "Yes. I guess a good place to start is the research notes." Faith stifled a yawn. "I'll burn you a copy of Datamon's lab notes on a cd."
Lapis was occupying himself by playing with his tail ring. The metal bit had a metallic ding as he batted it between his paws. "Dun worry. Becomin meh isn't sumthin' I'd wish on da worst of mah enemies. I wouldn't let cat-dog-thing get fully infected."