Digimon - Crest Shift 3

Crest Shift 3: Sincerity

"Ha! Kari's got NOTHING on this photo shoot!" Mimi Tachikawa thought to herself, a smirk creasing her face, as she clicked among the pictures displayed on the computer screen. Watching over her shoulder was her Digimon partner in Ultimate form, Lillymon, the two of them together trying to pick a picture from the impromptu photoshoot.

"I like that one. Let's send that one." Lillymon stated, pointing to a particular picture on the computer screen.

"I don't know about that one. I like this one better." Mimi replied, pointing to a different picture.

"Well, why can't we send them both?" Lillymon offered as a compromise.

"I only wanna send one. They charge by the megabyte, and if I run up a big Internet bill my parents will start to wonder what I'm doing in here."

"Megabyte?" Lillymon asked. Despite being a digital lifeform, she was not familiar with all the technical computer terms humans used.

"Megabyte is a million bytes. I suppose for you it would be like a million molecules in your body or somethin' like that, I'd have to ask Izzy or Willis, someone that's more into computers than I am." Mimi answered, moving and clicking the mouse to prepare to send the email with a picture attachment.

"That sounds like a lot."

"It's not as impressive as it sounds. I wouldn't know if you could even SEE a million molecules. Again, you'd have to ask the brainacs about that." Mimi stated, turning to face Lillymon's confused expression. She smiled, shook her head, and went back to her work.

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Mimi held the smile as she began typing up the email. The recent restoration of the Crest power had greatly improved her Digimon's partner sociability and spontaneity, perhaps because it helped ease a very awkward domestic situation. Mimi's parents had accepted the partner, but could never quite figure out what to make of the walking, talking "orchid with teeth", as they were inclined to refer to Palmon. Also, Palmon had to stay out of the way whenever Mimi had friends over, for fairly obvious reasons. The Ultimate form of Lillymon, on the other hand, was slightly easier to "figure out".

The availability of the Ultimate form allowed for at least some social interaction with other humans (albeit on a very controlled basis), and also to participate in the parties Mimi held. Her parents had not yet seen the Ultimate form, but Mimi wasn't worried because her parents would be slow to catch on to what was happening. In the meantime, Mimi and her partner had a chance to be the friends the strained domestic situation had not previously allowed.

This kind of socializing was important to Mimi, the de facto coordinator and leader of the American DigiDestined. The position had devolved on her more or less by default, justified supposedly by her participation in the original Japanese group before moving to New York City with the parents. Mimi had accepted the role, realizing that there was no real alternative candidate and also seeing it as making up "for all the whining I did before". The crisis in the theft of Willis' data by an evil yakuza organization made this job even more important, adding the role of communication intermediary and social rally leader. Working with the police, her leadership had lead to several "surgical strikes" that had driven the yakuza group out of the city. Now, with the Crest powers back, it was time to take the fight to them and destroy the yakuza's power once and for all.

The offensive, though, could wait a few days. After all, they didn't need to fight all the time anymore. At least, that was what was hoped...

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"Come on outside, I'll show you that flowerbed Mom and I are planting!" Mimi said after seeing the email had been sent out successfully. Lillymon consented to this, mostly out of excitement of going outside for the first time in a long while, and the two went out to the backyard of the house.

Mimi's parents were already out there, mom currently planting vegetables and dad tinkering in the garage. The arrival of Mimi and her partner went unnoticed initially because both parents were focused on the work at hand, but when Mom looked up and saw Lillymon with Mimi by the flowerbed she almost flew into a panic.

Unknown to Mimi, her parents had associated Lillymon's appearance with Mimi disappearing, both from summer 1999 when Myotismon attacked Odaiba and the previous Christmas with the monsters in the city. Therefore, the mom's panic attack was very understandable. She called out for her husband to get the weed killer (alerting Mimi that something odd was going on), then grabbed a shovel and approached wielding it. Her face twisted into a "protect-your-kid" kind of scowling expression.

"Mom, what the heck is going on?" Mimi asked in a mixture of surprise and alarm, looking around to see if there was some danger she was previously unaware of suddenly appearing.

"Get away, dear! Move away! I have a shovel and I'm not afraid to use it!" the mother commanded, pointing it menacingly toward Lillymon. The Digimon, as clueless as Mimi to what set the mom off, froze in place.

"Mom, what's the problem? I don't understand what Lillymon..." Mimi began to reply, only to be cut off by another threatening thrust of the shovel.

"Quiet, dear. Every time I see that... whatever it is... you disappear! Well, I'm not going to let it happen THIS time!" the mom exclaimed with all the maternal instinct she could muster.

Mimi and Lillymon exchanged perplexed looks, then Mimi stepped away toward her mom, beginning to explain that there was no danger in the situation. Mimi began to pull her mom aside, at the same time discretely giving Lillymon a "down" sign, meaning she should drop down to Rookie level. The Digimon did so, returning to the Palmon form, and shortly afterward the dad came out with a bottle of weed killer in hand.

"Here, Honey, I brought the... weed... killer..." the dad stated, trailing off as he looked in confusion between the mom with Mimi and Palmon standing by herself by the flowerbed.

"What's going on here?" the dad finally asked after a pregnant pause from looking back and forth in the confusion. The mom dropped the shovel, her face turning a deep shade of pink, and began to drag the dad away.

"Hey, where are we going?! What's going on? HEY...!" the dad complained as he was being tugged away into the garage. Both Mimi and Palmon watched as the parents disappeared into the garage, then Mimi returned to the previous spot beside Palmon.

"Do you have... ANY idea what that was all about?!" Mimi asked her partner as confusion creased her face again. The partner gave the best imitation of a shoulder shrug her plant-based anatomy allowed.

"Weird... Well, hopefully it won't happen again. Come on, let me finish explaining what's here!" Mimi said again, shaking off the recent experience like a thick winter coat.

"OK!" Palmon exclaimed. Like a real plant, it would take more than a misunderstanding to get her down.

Mimi smiled and continued where she had left off in the tour. Whether it was by accident or by design, Palmon was her perfect best friend, somehow and someway, and the excitement and joy the returned Crest provided only made that argument more sure. Maybe they weren't the born leaders like Tai and Davis were, but they did have the power of social networking and sincerity-born passion needed to organize a force and lead it into battle against the evil that had emerged in the human world. Sometime soon, she realized, her new leadership would be tested, and its success or failure would influence the fight her old friends back in Tokyo were fighting. She could only hope she and Palmon were ready for the trial that lay ahead...