The scrawny Goblimon sighs. “If you figure something out, that sounds nice.” He doesn’t seem very convinced it’s possible.

As they walk along they start to hear high pitched screaming. This little floating ball of fluff bursts from the bushes and it is yelling at the top of its tiny lungs.

“AHHHHH HES GONNA EAT ME!” It screams at them.

A horrible spider thing comes crashing through after the little puffball! With an evil but more human looking face with regular jaws rather than pincers, and thick limbs.

It seems surprised to have encountered a whole tribe of Goblimon.

The leader Goblimon wastes no time with indecision. “Clobber it!”

The Goblimon start yelling out attack names. “Goblin rush!” “Boulder throw!” “Goblin strike!” “Goblin bomb!” The scrawny Goblimon Al was talking to summons a fireball and then smashes it with his club like a baseball bat towards the spider. The rest just throw fireballs or rocks or smash it with their clubs.

The spider looks big and scary enough to take on maybe 2 of the Goblimon at once, but not a whole group of them. It is quickly dispatched and dies. Starting to fade away into sparkly pixels.

Al, before he even really has time to think and thus acting on pure instinct, dives for the little fluff-ball creature, curling his body around them defensively to shield them from the spider-thing, and consequently from the several fireballs and boulders that were lobbed at the spider-thing. Depending on how much of a burst radius those all have, he might be fine or might be quite singed and/or bruised.

Once the barrage of attacks is over, he'll look over to the where the spider-thing is now discorporating. There's a pang of guilt in his chest. That was probably a digimon, and thus probably at least had the potential be a person, maybe even a friend.

He has no idea how one is supposed to try and befriend someone who is trying to eat you, but a carefully protected part of him refuses to believe it's impossible.

Nonetheless, a larger and more practical part of himself recognizes that, in the finitude of his competence, there wasn't really anything he could have done, and the creature he's currently shield isn't deserving of any less care than the one who was chasing them.

He sighs, and uncurls a bit, before looking down at the fluff-ball and asking, "Are you alright?"

The puffball had a decent lead on the spider creature. All the fireballs were decently far away. The worst Al receives is a bit of hot air.

The puffball looks up at him in wonder. “ALFRED! IT YOU!” It excitedly yells at the top of its tiny lungs. (It doesn’t even look like it has a mouth, so who knows how it is yelling) It is not incredibly loud but still about as loud as a cat yowling. “Found you! Found you! Found you!” 

Some of the pixelated sparkles from the killed spider thing woosh into the Goblimon, while a greater part of the sparkly pixels flies off into the sky.

"Uh. Hello! Yes, I'm Alfred. You can call me Al, though."

It takes a moment for Al to really process what he just did, and then the fact that this creature seems to know his name even though he didn't even tell Lucemon the whole thing. That might be a partner thing, then?

In a bit of perverse, adventure game-style 'combine everything with everything' logic, Al pulls out the digivice from his pocket (fortunately not the side that he landed hard on during his dive), just to check if it's reacting to this situation.

Al would break before the digivice would. The screen has lit up! There is text that just says ‘digimon’ on it.

“Found Al!” The fuzzball nuzzles into him.

Scrawny Goblimon comes over to check on Al. “See you found your partner. You alright?”

Al stands up, holding the digivice in one hand and his presumed partner in the crook of his other arm (gently, in case they prefer to hop out and...stand on their own zero feet?). "I guess! And yeah, not the worst fall I've taken. Little guy seems to be okay too."

He'll also give one of the digivice's buttons a tentative press, just in case. Hopefully it doesn't do anything bad at least.

Clicking the middle button gets him into the “digimon” menu.

The only listing is “Yuramon”.

The little puffball is still cuddling into Alfreds chest. “Found you! Big scary mon chase me but found Al!”

"You did! Sorry for not being easier to find," Al replies, gently scritching the puffball (possibly Yuramon?) with the hand of the same arm that he's cradling them with. At the same time, in his other hand, he'll go ahead and try to select 'Yuramon' by pressing the middle button again and hope for the best.

"I guess we should probably keep going? I don't know if that spider-thing is liable to have any other scavengers following it."

The digivice has more text on it now!

Yuramon

Level: Baby/Training 1

Type: Seed

Attribute: Data, Free

Memory use: 5g

A Seed Digimon whose whole body is covered in a substance with the appearance of long, soft hair. When it hatches from its Digitama, it seeks an environment suitable for its growth, and drifts lightly through the air, like a dandelion seed. If it finds a place where there will be no intruders and where the environment is good, it will settle to the ground and begin preparations for evolution. Its offensive ability is practically nil, so it will spit out adhesive bubbles to hinder the opponent's movement, then seize the opportunity to escape.

 

The leader goblimon comes over. “Kodokugumon are territorial so there shouldn’t be more right here, but they are also spawned together in large numbers, so theres probably more than a few we could find if we move further afield.” 

He grins, showing off his huge fangs. “I think we should do some…. Community service and go clear them out. They universally try to eat other digimon, and aren’t… all there, very feral, so you can’t convince them not to until they evolve. Better that they be reborn as something less genocidal.”

Scrawny goblimon also grins with his fangs bared. “And the data we get for beating them is just incidental then. We are just doing this out of the goodness of our hearts.”

Leader goblimon nods. “Thats the idea. It’s not like we are loading the poor buggers after beating them. And we can look for meat on the way, it’d probably draw the kodokugumon towards it anyway.”

He turns to Al. “We can try and get your partner some experience too if you want.”

Man, it's kind of fucked up that there are entire kinds of digimon that apparently basically just born as violent cannibals. Al has no idea if there's anything that could be done about that but if there is he is definitely interested in it.

"Does that sound good to you?" he asks what he has assumed is Yuramon, going from how the description matches the puffball's appearance.

Yuramon just blows bubbles at him happily, they stick to his shirt before dissolving into sparkly voxels.

“Protect Al!”

"Uh..." Al takes a long couple seconds to really consider how interpret the wishes of someone who is continuing to give him very strong 'toddler' vibes. Eventually he looks back up to the leader of the goblimon. "I guess getting the little guy some experience seems reasonable."

“Okay boys! War party instead of gathering party time!” The leader goblimon yells at the other goblimon. The other goblimon raise their clubs and hoot. “Whoo whoo!”

Scrawny goblimon grins over at Al. “We might be stand up guys, but we are still virus types. It’s gonna be so one sided and that’s the best kind of fight.”

”Whooooo! It’s clobbering time!” Another random goblimon yells out.

The leader looks over his troops. “Glad to see everyone is excited! But if I catch you loading them after we beat them i’ll delete you myself!”

They all start walking off in the direction the spider thing came from.