Paws For Thought, Chapter
2
“Gatomon, they’re stuck!”
Yagami Hikari let out a frightened cry as she desperately tugged at the gloves
that now seemed to be a part of her hand.
“That’s impossible!” her digimon partner Gatomon cried. “They’re supposed to
come straight off. Here, let me have a look.” Gatomon reached for the gloves
that had, until a few minutes ago, been worn on her paws. When she touched
them, both the gloves and her paws were enveloped in a bright yellow light. She
yelped and tried to pull away, but without success. When the light subsided she
found that she was now wearing a pair of gloves that exactly matched the ones
now attached to her partner. “But, but, it can’t be!” Gatomon exclaimed as she
tried to remove the gloves that had just appeared on her paws, forgetting for
the moment her partner and her predicament. Finding her new gloves to be as
immovable as Hikari’s she calmed down somewhat to think about their next move.
She threw a blanket to Hikari, who wrapped it around her shoulders to preserve
her modesty. “We’d better go find Gennai.”
Barely had they begun to move when a robed figure appeared in a puff of smoke.
The figure pulled back his hood to reveal the form of a young man with a long
thin ponytail. “What happened here? I recorded a massive power surge followed
by what appeared to be some sort of copy program being run.” He looked at the
two figures before him and gave a startled intake of breath. “Good Lord!
Hikari? What happened? Who did this to you?”
Hikari ran to the figure and threw her arms around him, almost in tears.
“Gennai, thank goodness you’re here! Gatomon was showing me how I could become
a digimon for a short time but something went wrong. Instead of turning
completely into a digimon I stopped half way and now I can’t change back!”
Gennai rounded on Gatomon and fixed her with a piercing glare. “Gatomon,” he
said with a low growl, “how could you do this? You know perfectly well that the
power to change your partner into a digimon was only to be used in an
emergency, to save their lives if they are injured or to hide them from
anything that can track humans in the Digital World.”
“I didn’t know it would do this to Hikari. Plus she’s my friend and I couldn’t
lie to her and say there was no way for her to become a digimon when she wanted
to know if there was a way.” Gatomon retorted. “Besides, you said that it was
completely safe to use and that there were no side-effects.”
“That is true,” Gennai replied, “There were supposed to be no side-effects. All
our simulations and tests showed there to be no change to the human’s status
after the process had been performed and reversed. Unless… something must have
interfered with the process, stopping it halfway.”
“You can change me back can’t you? Gatomon said all I had to do was remove the
gloves and I’d change back. Can’t you just pull the gloves off somehow?” Hikari
was, if anything, even closer to panicking than she was earlier.
Gennai looked gravely at her. “I’m sorry Hikari, removing the gloves at this
stage, even assuming I managed to, could be very dangerous. You could become
stuck in your current form, or worse. It could very easily erase you from
existence.”
“What can we do?” Gatomon asked, hoping Gennai already had a plan for what to
do next.
“I really don’t know,” Gennai sighed, “We’d better go to my house. I can run
some tests on Hikari there to determine what, if anything, we can do for her.
You were here with Sora and Mimi right? We’ll collect them and be on our way.”
After Sora, Mimi and their partners had been roused from where they were
sleeping in a nearby clearing and had the situation briefly explained to them,
Gennai teleported the group to his house. From the bushes a figure chuckled
gleefully, pleased with his handiwork and the scene that had unfolded whilst he
had been watching surreptitiously.
