Recruitment Drive 2

Well before a possible fight broke out, and it possibly getting destroyed in the crossfire, you wanted to check it out.

You directed Airdramon to quietly and stealthily take you down. 'If I can take it with me, I can analyze the data to see about setting up naturally reproducing spots of them in my kingdom, that way all digimon will have an easier time accessing food.' you thought to yourself.

Airdramon lowered in down below the tree lines and let you off. And you made your way over to the vending machine. It looked just the same as you remembered. Though, the contents were different now, wrappers and such of snacks that had changed over the last few years being present instead of old ones.

Good, that meant they naturally kept up to date. An interested prospect. Could you per chance edit the coding that made these up, to create other items directly from the human world? like, could you make a digital copy of your own home?

"Hmm." you hummed, and began looking it over. You reached out, to press one of the buttons to get a chocolate bar out of it, when an odd clicking noise came from the machine. And to your surprise, the front of it opened up, clicking open like a door and swinging open.

"W-who's there?" a high pitched voice asked, voice full of fear. Peering out of the space within the vending machine, was a large, teary eyed Numemon. It was big enough that it looked quite squished within the vending machine.

This was a Gigantic Numemon, not just a normal one. Huh, it must be quite old or lived in an area area at one point to have absorbed enough filth reach this stage.

'The heck is a Numemon doing here?' you wondered. They generally tended to prefer dark, and damp areas. They were a species that grew stronger from ingesting filth passively with their slime-like bodies.

They were a horribly weak species for champions, granted this one was a higher tier than the average one, but generally even weaker than Bakemon in general. But they made up for it with their usefulness in cities. Numemon as a species were immune to disease, and passively absorbed and purified filth, converting it into tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny amounts of strength. It added up decently over long periods of time, especially in large populations. On top of that, they could digivolve into tons of digimon should they meet specific requirements.

You made it a point to recruit many of them back in the day for Floatia. They kept the sewage systems clean, taking care of any possible pollution and such, and kept the city healthy.

'A human?" it blinked its teary eyes and shook when it saw you, "...Are you the digimon Emperor?" it asked, fearfully in a soft voice.

You closed your eyes and exhaled a deep sigh of annoyance, before opening your eyes again and looking at the Numemon, "Please do not compare me to that mongrel of a pretender," you asked, though it was more of a command and the Numemon yelped back a bit...well as little as it could with how much it filled up the insides of that vending machine, "My name is Artus, the one the first, and one true king of the digital world, any others are just mere pretenders."

"..So you're not the Digimon Emperor that enslaves all the digimon to work for him and tortures us all for amusement?'" Numemon asked, relief shining in its eyes, and completely not registering what else you said.

You sighed again, "No, I am not," you refrained from losing your temper over such a small matter, no matter how insulting. Still, just from that sentence alone, what a nauseating tidbit to learn. The fool was torturing the digimon? And you didn't think your opinion of that piece of mongrel trash could lower any further. "Tell me, what is a Numemon doing here?"

Numemon blinked its massive eyes at you, "..Ah, I made friends with the Tyrannomon who live here," it replied, "I used to live in Machinedramon's city, but all my friends were killed by it when we tried to help digidestined girl, Kari, I was the only one who lived. I came here as a refugee with the Tyrannomon who's home was destroyed by the machine digimon army, and we lived here ever since. But then one day, the Digimon Emperor came, riding in on an Airdramon with a bunch of others one and those nasty dark rings." the massive green slime digimon shivered in horror at the thought.

You pursed your lips. Numemon, at least the ones you were familiar with, grouped up in massive communities together, easily numbering in the hundreds. Because of their weakness, it was safer for them to group up in massive quantities.

If its old group was anything like that, and one for a city no less, that group of Numemon killed by the Dark Master Machinedramon, probably numbered in the multiple of hundreds.

You withheld a sigh. What a waste. As always, it seemed any Machinedramon but the one you raised personally turned out to be a disappointment and waste of existence. Truly, pitiful.

"I grew really big without my old group you see? So, I hid in here, because if I try to escape, I'll be saw easily and probably get killed by my enslaved friends," Numemon's lips wobbled, "I heard bad rumours about the Digimon Emperor when he seen a Numemon the first time, I heard he had it deleted because he found it disgusting, I'm not even worthy enough to get enslaved by him, i'll just get killed! If only I wasn't a Numemon, I could get strong enough to save them myself and destroy those towers and rings!" it fretted, eyes glistening with tears of terror and despair.

What a sad sight. You reached out and pet the massive slimy digimon on the head, "Don't give up and fall into despair so easily," you told it, "The king is generous, if you lack the power to save your friends, I will give it to you, as long as you become my subordinate, I will need digimon such as you to rebuild my kingdom."