Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon, never have and I never will. Don’t sue me because I’m writing this; sue me because you can...

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Government Confines

Progress Loop: Part I

“Could someone please tell me what is going on?”

“Quiet Marcus,” Alice told him.

“Actually, that would be some good information,” Pat said, panting slightly from their furious pace. “Where are we going?” The underground city was more a maze to him than a city. He and his partner (still merged) would both be hopelessly lost if it weren’t for Casey and Alice. As it stood, none of the four of them were confident that they could find their way back to the surface.

“Good information,” Pat stated again. “Where are we going, why are we going, and who are we going to?” Someone bumped the AeroVeedramon roughly. The entire encampment was in chaos, preparing for the oncoming attack. They had to push their way through the denseness of the crowd forcefully.

“The chief Airdramon, duh.” The two females led them around a corner to a less packed area. “He wanted to see you, I’m not sure why, but he wants it.”

“So he wouldn’t tell you anything?” Like his partner, Marcus was rapidly getting more frustrated. After nearly being killed, it was his idea that he deserved some sort of thanks from the village. He thought they deserved a rest, not a reprimand, which was what he expected from the chief Airdramon.

“We only got the order just as you touched down,” said Alice. “If you two get yourselves thrown into some sort of detention, I’ll be right there to testify against you.” As she said this, she was surprised at herself. “What were you two thinking anyway? Going to fight like that by yourselves?”

“I didn’t know you cared,” Marcus said tersely (and sarcastically). “You can thank us later. We took maybe a hundred of them…”

“You’re lucky I don’t throw you in the brig,” a familiar voice thundered. It was the village elder. “You have led them straight to the village: a folly that could cost everyone here their lives.”

The elder had come up behind them and ushered Pat and Marcus into the conference room, now a make shift control center. He glanced at the BlackExVeemon before shutting the doors. “You two, go back to the surface and keep up your watch.” Casey followed the orders with no protest from Alice.

---

“Faster, you!” His chariot raced along with incredible speed across the desert sands. The two Garurumon pulling it were already soaked in sweat from the unbearable heat, and pulling a half-ton chariot only served to mat their fur even more. “Run faster, before I crush your thick skulls beneath my boot!” Again he cracked his whip.

Those humans were becoming a nuisance to ForceWarGreymon. One evolution so far and probably another one on the way. The boy, he thought. I could persuade him to come to my side. He was still thinking of Marcus and Pat. The duo had destroyed three Megas without breaking a sweat, and then turned around and pummeled a hundred of his soldiers with just the same ease.

And then that Machinedramon. He had seen him before. ForceWarGreymon vaguely remembered hearing about a successful minor who bought slaves as a hobby. At first it had escaped his attention that the Machinedramon might be setting the slaves free. But the more the thought, that Garurumon he had seen the other night had the branding marks on him, and was in the same company as the Machinedramon.

A shame. I could have used him. –And I thought I told those mutts to move faster. An angry snarl escaped his mouth as he cracked down on his charioteers yet again. It would be unacceptable if the reached the village and found they were already prepared. Far too many things had gone wrong already.

The first was that the humans had come in the first place. Then they had gotten together and organized into some sort of group along with the resistance. Then the boy, Their leader, he thought, had evolved. And now they were in league with refugees that had somehow escaped under the radar, and who also had a well-fortified position to fight from.

A war of attrition, he decided. That was what he was going to do: send everything he had at them and wear them down. That, of course, was only in the unlikely event that three thousand troops were not enough to dispose of the village they had recruited.

---

“Your friends were right,” the elder was saying. “You two are impetuous and unthinking.” The doors of the conference room were locked tight so that they were not disturbed by the cacophony outside. “How many did you kill?”

Marcus and his partner, having separated from each other, both looked thoughtful. Pat had retained his Ultimate form after the separation. “I’d say we got about a hundred with Jerry and Mech,” Pat replied after a moment’s silence. “And individually, Marcus scored better than me, I think. Saved my tail on a couple of occasions.”

“He got sloppy. It’s—”

“You were both sloppy,” the elder said, silencing them with a mighty gust from his wings. “That ForceWarGreymon didn’t know the location of our village. Now he does. Thanks to the both of you, we now have to pack up and move out. Two thousand people, a third of which will probably die from the trip.”

“We didn’t kn—” Marcus was cut off again by the elder Airdramon. Marcus was getting quite irked with not being able to talk. He had to wonder if the chief was always this way. If he had known he was going to lead an army here, he probably would have opted to go the other way. But no-o, he mentally screamed at the elder. You won’t give us a chance to talk!

Agreed, Marcus, Pat told him. If we have the chance, I’d like to talk to you. Marcus groaned in his head, as Pat expected him to do. He was not going to like the topic of this conversation much, but it was the only way to get Marcus to open up to him. They would need to know each other better.

“And that is only if we survive this encounter.” He sighed at the chief air dragon. “Don’t roll your eyes at me.”

“May I speak,” Pat asked, as politely as he could. The elder finally nodded and let him get a word in. “If we had known that he was sending an army after us, we probably would’ve started off toward District Seventy-two, not Eighteen.” The elder didn’t look any less menacing.

“Be that as it may,” he said, “you still led them here, not District Seventy-two or Eighteen. You have put the lives of every member of this village in jeopardy because of a lack of forethought. Because of that, you shall remain inside with the caretakers and await my return.”

On the bright side, Marcus said to his partner, we get to rest a bit.

Whatever.

The doors to the hall outside opened, revealing an uneasy BlackExVeemon who had the strangest posture for a Digimon that Pat had ever seen. “What’s the verdict,” Casey asked. “In or out?”

“You guys are out on the field, but he condemned us to be nurses aids.”

“You can’t be,” Alice gasped noisily. “You guys are Ultimates, not aids! He can’t be that blind? We need you out there!” Her hand pointed up, indicating the exterior of the city. “Did he put you guys in the reserves at least?”

Marcus shook his head. He craned his neck upwards to look at the Human/Digimon in the face. Alice, looking through Casey’s eyes, was distressed at seeing them tossed onto the sidelines. She wanted him out there fighting with them, not just because he was an Ultimate with his partner, but because she wanted to see him at his best again.

Casey knew something of the matter, and felt that she had already seen Pat at his best. “You two should be out there. There isn’t a question about it. Where’s the elder?”

“Gone to inspect the battlements.” Mission had come up behind, slithering silently across the floor. “I’m here to take you two to the caretakers.” He turned to the others and said: “You need to be on the surface.” All of them complied, reluctantly. As Mission led the Ultimates away, the Champions had already begun picking their way through the crowds.

It wasn’t long before they reached the surface and were inspecting the horizon. The enemy would be cresting the farthest dune soon. All they had to do now was wait for the attack to begin. Already, though, Casey could point out the dust being kicked up by the re-organized army.

It was only a matter of time now. To say the least, they were nervous. If it wasn’t for Jerry and Mech being so nearby, the females would have been shaking so violently that they would have been no good on the field. As it was, the nervousness was already more than they could hide from prying eyes.

Mech was the first to notice. His yellow eyes were keen on picking up things like that. He could see a fly land ten miles off on an average day. He wondered briefly if he too should be nervous. A Giga Cannon could easily wipe twenty of the enemy off the map, but he wouldn’t be able to use it more than once or twice due to the proximity of his allies. The only time he would be able to attack like that was while the turrets were keeping them at bay.

But through all this, Jerry taken control and found his way over to Casey and Alice. Mech found the boy trying to comfort them. Jerry had as much heart as his partner for sure. The Digimon who was hosting him had not even thought to encourage the others. It was going to be a kind word that determined the battle, not a cannon strapped to his back.

“He’ll disobey the elder,” Jerry said, an electronic inflection in his voice. “You do care about him, don’t you? Marcus I mean.” He was speaking to Alice. “I noticed yesterday the way you were looking at him and the way you fought beside him today.”

Alice felt a cold metal claw on hers and Casey’s shoulder. “I don’t care about him. But he’s an Ultimate and needs to be fighting with us, not sitting on his ass doing nothing in the basement.”

“Pat’s the Ultimate. Marcus is human,” Jerry corrected, catching her obvious reference. “I was right,” he said, almost sing-songlike. “You do have a crush on Marcus!” And in a metal form, he couldn’t get slapped.

“Say that again and I’ll remove whatever sort of manhood you hold in that metal monster you think you’re safe in.” Mech found his body moving away from Alice’s threats, which he didn’t mind in the slightest. “But I think Casey has a fondness of Pat…”

“I do not!”

It was almost as if Jerry was listening to split personalities talking to each other. Casey would say she didn’t like Pat in the slightest and Alice would reply in the same voice, “You do to! I were staring just as blankly at Pat as Jerry stares at me!” That was the embarrassing part. He did think she was pretty, but not attractive.

“I hope no one thinks less of me for that,” Jerry muttered discretely to Mech.

I do not think you will have to worry much about that after tonight, replied Mech. Tonight. How long had it been since they started moving? It felt like forever to Jerry and to Mech. The sun was still high hanging in the greenish sky and the desert sands were almost on fire with the light. From the look of it all, it seemed to be about noon. But Jerry had no idea of the passage of time. He was used to clocks on walls and bells signaling that class was over.

---

Down in the basement of the city, Garth was waiting patiently. For all he knew, he might not get to fight at all. He felt restless and the hairs on his back were starting to bristle. He did not like to have to sit down. Even as a pup he was always rebellious. And now that he was free, he wanted to pay back the slavers.

But he had to remind himself that he was not alone. Michael was waiting patiently with him, and inside him. Every emotion he felt was transmitted to Michael. And small children are good at picking up on that sort of thing even without being inside a Digimon.

Children in their lower levels of development were running around like mad, playing games and dodging the eyes of the caretakers who were to watch over them. Michael eyed them curiously as they tackled one another or played a game of tag. He didn’t say anything, though. Even if he wanted to play with them, Michael felt that he was supposed to be more grown-up than that.

Garth had to admire that about his partner. He was less than a decade old, yet he showed much more wisdom than Garth did sometimes. In fact, most of the time Garth was almost as rash as Marcus was. He was certainly fidgety.

“Ma’am,” he asked, finally deciding to do something about his need to be moving. A caretaker, one of those not native to the village, came over to him. “Ma’am,” he said again, “is there anything that my human and I could do to help?”

Her humanoid form smiled benignly at them. “We’re setting tables right now for the children’s lunch. If you could help serve that would be great.” She stopped talking abruptly, seemingly remembering something. The nurse snapped her meaty fingers. “You’re human doesn’t have to help,” she said, putting a hand on Garth’s head. “He’s welcome to join the other kids.” She knew Michael was young.

Well, Garth smiled internally. Whad’ya think of that?

Mm… The idea didn’t sound very appealing. More than he wanted to play, he wanted to be close to his partner. There were just too many strange things around for him to be comfortable.

“Michael says he’ll pass on the play,” Garth told the caretaker. “You said the kitchen is that away, right,” he indicated pointing with his left paw. The caretaker nodded and removed her hand from Garth’s mane. He stood, shaking himself down and then he and Michael left to help serve.

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A/N: Ok. This is a last minute update before the holiday. Yeah! Tomorrow’s Turkey Day! It’s a short chapter because I’m going to be out of town and I wanted to update before I left. Hopefully, I’m going to be able to work on the next part while I’m gone, and maybe update (that’s doubtful).

So, keeping with tradition: Dedicated INSDragonclaw. Seeing as how he is now back online and working, I have this to say to him:

“YOU GET TO WORK! Quicklier private, quicklier. My Mickey Mouse says it’s time to be done!”