LMS VII - A Rocky Side Adventure

They spent a few minutes just showing each other what they’d spotted on the menu before Jason ordered some sort of red drink that ended up too sugary for his liking (his Monochromon form would have despised that, he was sure!) and then they both could order their food. Roasted sandwiches with glittering rock and something that Jason was half-convinced were shards of a mirror. Texture was interesting for sure— and he could catch a, heh, snapshot of his brother covered in glitter and staring sullenly at his sandwich---betrayed by a sneeze.
Which did remind Jason and he fished the pictures from Diane’s presentation out of his exto. And noted how loose the strap now sat since it also needed to fit his Monochromon. Huh, he supposed that another trip to Dad’s favourite tailor would be necessary soon…
He hesitated a moment, pictures in hand, when he thought back to the encounter with Dad and Lee yesterday. His brother noticed, stopping half-way between two irritable swipes with his towel. It was glittering now as profoundly as Lee himself did.
“Is this what I think it is?” Lee asked, sounding way too long-suffering. He was of course only seeing the pictures. Jason made an effort to pull himself together and forced a smile that felt pretty convincing to himself.
“It definitely is,” Jason said easily, sliding the pictures over and making sure to let some glitter fall onto them. Dad would appreciate the effort and Aunt Kim would appreciate the art.
While Lee took them, irritably shaking off the glitter with an annoyed look, Jason leaned back and nearly fell off the chair because it did not have a backrest. Oops. Good thing Lee didn’t notice, too busy scowling at his own picture scowling back at him. Wouldn’t do to let the little brother think he’d lost his edge.
“You look like a grumpy gargoyle in this one,” Jason pointed out once he was secure in his seat again, resting both elbows on the marble top.
Lee just sighed and rendered the family book out of his own exto. Ah, so that’s where it was. With meticulous effort because Lee never did things by halves, he clipped their newest acquisitions onto the black, velvety pages. Dad would later put up a nice script to them, like he usually did.
Ugh Dad. Jason couldn’t remember a time where he’d been more frustrated with their father. He wished he wouldn’t let his century of experience run away with him all the time, ignoring the problems of today. Dad was way too carefree, all the time, and way too stubborn too. Lee got that from him. The way Dad refused to go for a straightforward solution when he thought he could get away with something flashy and fancy never failed to annoy Jason—but usually that was all it did. Dad usually NEVER endangered them all on purpose, just because something struck his fancy that he just had to try.
Yet twice now, Dad had refused to digivolve when the situation called for it. Dad was stable as a Rockmon, Jason had to remind himself. And yet, he almost never used it. Jason got it, Rockmon was large and cost extra on train fair (the reason why he dropped back to Gotsumon for train travel too) and the limbs were weirdly proportioned so maybe they lacked the dexterity that Dad preferred? But surely that was only a matter of practice? And it shouldn’t matter when a bunch of hooligans were shaking down their train and a Rockmon with a freaking laser beam would have been a perfectly valid deterrend!
And Jason really really didn’t want to start on yesterday.
Yesterday.
“Little brother,” Jason began without being sure where he wanted to go with this.
Lee was carefully scanning the family book, a look of pure concentration on his face. In a matter of seconds, the entire thing had vanished in a glitter of fractal code nearly as shiny as the specs of glitter still circling the air between them.
“Good job,” Jason added then. He hadn’t even begun to understand the fractal code work and just settled on being impressed now that Lee appeared to know what he was doing.
Lee grinned. “Heh.” Then he titled his head. “You were saying?”
With everything else that happened yesterday, and Aisha’s and Lily’s great efforts to distract from the situation, Jason really didn’t feel like he got a good talk out of either his father or his brother. Plus he had been too angry for it anyway. But that was yesterday. He gave Lee a quick onceover but his brother appeared his usual self: slightly frustrated with whatever project he was currently working on, annoyed about the way the conference had gone and of course curious for what was gonna happen next.
“…how are you, really?” Jason decided to ask.
Lee picked up on the shift in mood which was probably the only reason he was merely drawing his eyeridges in and not ridiculing him for question. Instead, his sharp yellow eyes fixed Jason with a stare and he could basically see that brain of his spinning into gear. It was almost a bit eerie. His brother was scarily smart when he set his mind on a task.
Eventually, Lee seemed to have determined the reason for the question and rolled his eyes. He leaned back against the backrest (because of course he had chosen the bench mounted to the wall and not one of the free-standing stools) and made a non-comittal noise.
“You shouldn’t worry so much,” he said eventually, giving Jason a stare out of half-lidded eyes. “We’re fine now, right?”
It was a similar thing to what he’d told Aisha and Lily yesterday too back before Jason had gone to have this unsuccessful confrontation with Dad.
“Really?” Jason asked, more to see the reaction. He felt a bit better equipped for the conversation now, at least.
That got him another narrowing of eyes until the simmering yellow was only a small strip in the black.

ut Jason was determined to win this test of patience and waited, clicking his finger against the edge of the plate.
Finally, Lee relented. He sighed. “What do you want to hear from me?”
“Maybe you could start with a straight answer,” Jason said, shuddering as his brother took a sip of his tee. Lee didn’t even bat an eye. Actually, he wasn’t even breaking eye contact. Gathering himself, Jason continued, “You know, because no one of you told me how this happened.”
They only really told him that they ran into an angry Grounddramon in the middle of the warehouse district and NO ONE had been there to help. This didn’t happen out of nowhere! You didn’t just run into angry Ultimate level digimon, and you were never really this alone in a city. Especially the city with the Guard Headquarters. This was too much of a coincidence, no, too convenient. And Jason bet that this was somehow Dad’s fault too.
“All you wanted to do was head to the library,” Jason reminded his brother, getting a little angry. He still couldn’t believe it; that he let them out of his sight for a couple of hours and they both managed to nearly die. In a city. He had to think of Lily’s earlier reprimand, as if things were safer here.
Lee paused, busying himself with stirring the tea. He was even throwing sugar into the mix now too. Yuck.
But the stalling couldn’t last for ever and there was a slightly embarrassed gruffness in Lee’s voice when he said, “Uhhh…. We kinda got got. Someone sent a messenger Sheepmon inviting Dad over, so we went there. And wouldn’t you the quickest way to Hawk’s Nest had been straight through the Warehouse district?”
Since this was Jason’s (and by extension Lee’s too) first time in Mirage (Not much to explore or find out in such a well-known city after all), Jason had to consult what he remembered of the map Dad had given them. Huh, kinda an oversight that Hawk’s Nest, home of the resident bird digimon could only be accessed via ferry. From the Warehouse district. As if they didn’t even want visitors over there.
“And you didn’t find that suspicious at all?” Jason asked, still pondering this. Something else was niggling at him too.
Here, Lee actually shrugged. “Well it was one of Dad’s contacts. He knows people everywhere we go! And they’re all weirdos. Remember the anti-social Kunemon?”
Jason remembered. A trio of yellow caterpillars who only communicated via leaving messages on walls when no one was watching. It had been a whole thing. A very Dad thing because of course he’d played along.
“Getting a letter was comparatively normal!” Lee insisted.
Since Jason couldn’t really put his finger on why this was bothering him more than he already expected, he just motion for Lee to continue and remained silent until he got the whole story.
How Grounddramon had used a gullible Sheepmon to lure his father and his brother into this suspiciously cleared out district (and he started to wonder if Lee was right, maybe Grounddramon HAD eaten all the other occupants before the village guard showed up to deal with him). How Grounddramon had ambushed them, the brother of a friend of Aunt Kim’s, so not even someone involved with Dad specifically. How somehow this ultimate level dragon had connected all this to his dead sister, murdered by Human digimon. And how Dad had of course refused to digivolve, or even summon any of the reliable constructs until it had nearly been too late. In the end, if it weren’t for the Village Guard FINALLY noticing the commotion right under their noses (or maybe, possibly, the reports of all the missing people), Jason wouldn’t have a brother and a father anymore.
So.
Well.
That certainly was something. And even with all the information now presented to him, it still didn’t really make much sense!
“And if you were asking if I was scared,” Lee concluded, snappish after reliving yesterday’s events, “well of course I was. You would have been too. It was a gigantic Grounddramon and it had it out for Dad specifically!”
Really, it was that part that actually scared Jason. That this digimon had somehow decided that Dad was a target for… for coming here? For being a Human digimon in favour of this random conference?
“And don’t think yourself too important,” Lee continued when Jason remained silent. His little brother had his elbows on the table, staring him down. “It’s not like you could have done anything even if you’d been there. It wouldn’t have made any difference.”
…yeah, it wouldn’t have. Monochromon was sturdy alright but it probably wouldn’t have made a difference against Grounddramon. The level difference would have had been too steep.
“You don’t know that,” Jason said instead. He hadn’t been there, in the end. He couldn’t really picture the situation all too clearly. And maybe his presence would have made the difference. The important part was that he had not been there. And he should have.
He really never should have let Lily and Aisha convince him to leave his family alone.

Ugh, Jason was brooding.
Lee sipped his tea (Will had been right, this was pretty good!) and really didn’t understand what the problem was. Yes, yes, scary Grounddramon, Dad being incorrigibly stubborn. It was the usual. It annoyed Lee that Jason couldn’t seem to let this go. He said he was fine and he meant it! He took way more about fractal code away from this entire encounter, now that he figured out how to do a wide-scale scan!
Yet, Jason seemed preoccupied with other things. “If this guy had been a former Village Guard, why has he even attacked you? Aren’t they supposed to be… I don’t know… better than the rest of us? And don’t you think Dad’s been kinda weird about this whole thing? Weirder than usual. He’s avoiding me.”
Lee titled his head.