This story was written for Meister Li. It contains growth and macro hi-jinks involving a very mischievous digimon. :3

Daniel frowned as he saw the blip on one of his screens. For hours he had been scouring various corners of the web with some of the Cyber Security Bureau's newest and most high tech software, all to no avail. And now... now there had to be some sort of malfunction, his screens telling him something that simply couldn't be possible, and made him wonder if he had been wasting his entire morning on a fruitless effort with a piece of software that never should have left alpha testing. It said, quite simply, that there was a digimon in the Cyber Security Bureau's system. That it was in the process of dismantling one of their most impenetrable firewalls as though it was nothing more than abc123 on a simple password lock, and seemingly intent upon gaining direct access to the very programme which Daniel was running.

The CSB knew all about digimon, creatures of pure data that existed in some sort of dimension entirely composed of electronic information, and which was linked to their world by the various digital data signals that anthrokind had been feeding out into the universe over the last thirty or forty years. They had been trying to find ways to track them, perhaps even to learn how to command and control them for almost the entire time they'd known of their existence. But, all without success. Their only knowledge of the movements and actions of digimon came from the occasions when those creatures had shown up in the real world, defending them from threats which themselves had been born in the digital realm from whence those same creatures emerged. That, of course, was not an acceptable result for anyone higher up in either the bureau or the government in general. To have creatures invading them from another dimension was bad enough, but to have no role to play in defeating them... that, to Daniel and many other agents with the bureau, was the real insult that made their collective blood boil.

And now, now their supposed best chance at tracking and identifying digimon moving between dimensions within the fabric of the world wide web was proving to be so unreliable that it claimed to be dropping a digimon right in the human agent's lap. Daniel rolled his eyes and tried to figure out what the programme was actually showing him, opening up the programme's source code and trying to figure out where the hell this ghost in the machine or whatever it was might actually be coming from. The more and more he looked however, eyes flicking regularly back to the other screens where he could see alarms flashing as firewalls claimed to be breached, the more something crossed Daniel's mind. The code he was looking at... it looked solid. It looked correct. It looked, for all the world, like it was doing exactly the job that it was meant to do. Only, surely it couldn't be. Because, if it was working, that could only mean one thing. 

He really was looking at a digimon tearing through the most high tech digital security in the world like it was nothing more than scraps of yarn. Watching as that living data pushed through system after system, locked gateway after locked gateway, not just entering the CSB mainframe but burrowing through sub-systems in order to reach one very particular point on their network. The source of the programme that was tracking its movement. Daniel's workstation. Daniel's own desktop. 

"O-oh... shit..." 

The human groaned as he realised all of this within a few seconds, and considered all the classified files he had accessed from this terminal. All the details of ongoing investigations, all the blueprints for currently top secret hardware accessible through the access codes he had already typed in at the start of that session, leaving the database wide open to be accessed. In a panic, he looked under his desk at the main off-switch for his terminal. He considered simply hammering his thumb into it right then, but hurriedly shook his head as he realised that if a digimon really was a living creature, then it would surely be able to survive even without any power running through the systems it was inhabiting. What he had to do to make it leave was to stop the flow of data entirely, and in order to do that... he gave a strangled yelp as he dived under his desk and grabbed at a handful of cables which connected his desktop to the CSB system at large. Hurriedly, with all his strength, he yanked them free, most popping loose from their housings without any ill effects but a few letting loose visible sparks as connections were severed and live, active circuits forcibly rendered broken. Just as swiftly as he had ducked down under the desk though, the agent bounded back up into his leather swivel chair. He leaned forward, staring wide eyed at the many screens of data present before him, and tried to figure out if his hurried solution had worked no matter the cost to his computer systems' overall integrity. 

Errors flashed up on many screens, multiple programmes interrupted as they normally relied upon a connection to the main CSB server in order to remain active. Several screens were entirely blank, but the one that drew Daniel's gaze most prominently was a single screen upon which a small, pale cursor was blinking like an old style DOS prompt. 

No sooner had he set eyes upon it, the agent gave a strangled yelp as a single word appeared on the screen as though being typed letter by letter by some unknown source.

'Hello!'

His hands trembled as they moved towards the keyboard, but before he could reach out and touch a single key, more words appeared on the screen.

'Silly human, why scared?'

His eyes bulged. How could the person typing those words possibly know that he was scared? His eyes darted up to the webcam sitting atop one of his monitors, and he gave a sharp yelp as he slapped a hand over it. He was compromised. The digimon, or whoever was controlling that signal masquerading as a digimon, was in his system. But... how was that possible? How could they be communicating through the system, through a network when all the wires had been removed, and there were no wireless signals permitted throughout the entirety of the CSB complex. It simply couldn't be happening, and yet it so clearly, however impossibly, was.

'You called. I came! Hello, human!'

His voice cracked slightly, and in wonder, in confusion, not knowing if this was going to work or not, the agent spoke as he slowly removed his hand from the webcam once again.

"H-hello. I'm... I'm Daniel. Who... w-what are you?" 

The answer was immediate, and as the seven letters which comprised it appeared on Daniel's screen, he reached under his desk and hit the silent alarm located there for any sort of immediate emergencies. 

'Digimon.'

That one word was soon followed by another.

'Gatomon.'

And then a few more.

'Friends call me... Scratch. Is human my friend?'

Daniel opened his muzzle to say yes, to say that he would like to be, and that he had a whole bunch of other friends here at the CSB who would absolutely like to get to know this digimon themselves. Before he could do so though, his eyes widened anew as the computer screen in front of him began to flicker slightly while yet more words flashed across it.

'Why human call for help? Why signal alarm? Scratch hear alarm. Scratch stop it. Too noisy. Human still scared?!'

Daniel stammered and groaned in horror as he glanced at one of his other monitors, only to realise there was no way to know if the alarm signal had gotten through to the rest of the building given his lack of wired connection to any of it.

'Don't be scared! Scratch come say hello. Scratch show how friendly she is!'

The screen began to flicker more, and Daniel gave a yelp as he rolled back on his chair across the smooth wooden floor, seeing sparks and crackles of blue electricity beginning to ripple and arc across the screen's surface while the same word began to repeat itself over and over and over again until it filled the increasingly brightly glowing, flickering, overloading screen. 

'Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.'

Finally, the computer screen exploded. The thin plastic film beneath the flatscreen display burst open with a violent flashing of light, and for a few moments a roaring sound like a mixture of a thousand dial-up tones all overlapping erupted through Daniel's office. From the bright light, a figure emerged. Not walking, not dragging their way into the real world, but leaping forth with arms outstretched and a dazzling, toothy grin upon her muzzle. She flipped in the air, tail whipping out with the golden, rune-etched band upon it glinting in the light from the still flashing computer screen, and landed upon delicate white footpaws ending in dark claws. 

Upon landing, her eyes immediately darted towards Daniel where he lay upon the floor, having tumbled backwards out of his chair and used it as a shield to hide himself from the initial force of that digital explosion. The flashing lights faded, the echoing sound of that dial-up tone began to dissipate, and in their place a gleeful, high pitched voice mewled a single word as the gatomon threw her gloved hands out wide.

"Hello!"

She bounded forward, maybe only three feet in height though much more anthropomorphised in physical form at least than Daniel had expected based on reports of many digimon having more reptilian or otherwise feral-like bodies. Her body was wrapped up in clothes, a tattered white t-shirt, torn denim shorts and ankle-warmers that looked like they might once have been part of the same set of complete bluejeans, though now there was nothing remaining between calf and thigh but lush white fur. Whether or not she looked like the digimon of which Daniel and the rest of the CSB had heard tales though, she certainly possessed the power of one. She grabbed at the chair behind which Daniel was hiding, and with her body barely half the agent's size lifted it up over her head like it was nothing more than a block of polystyrene. Peering down at the now exposed and terrified human, she let go of the chair with one hand, still holding it without issue in just the one outstretched arm, and waved at him.

"Hello, human!" 

A moment later though, her gaze shifted away from Daniel entirely, and the human gasped as he rolled out of the way just in time for Scratch to drop the chair and bound off in a mixture of two legged and four-limbed running to the other side of the agent's office. His eyes bulged as he saw her approach a large cabinet which contained a bunch of files, not just paper but those held on USB sticks, external hard drives and even a few writeable DVD-roms. They were all encrypted of course, but to a creature who had broken through their firewalls so easily and seemingly without setting off any alarms throughout the entirety of the CSB judging by the lack of security techs swarming this office, Daniel wasn't entirely sure just how effective a deterrent such security might be. 

With her nose wiggling like a dog that had caught the scent of a treat, Scratch tore open the front of the metal filing cabinet like it was tissue paper, shuffling and scooting her way up it with the metal clamped between her thighs as she ripped open its top drawer and began to toss sheaths of paper out in all directions. She dug through the paper files to the electronic storage hidden beneath, and giggled gleefully as she looked back at Daniel for a moment with wide, eager blue eyes. 

"Data!" 

Her hand disappeared into the cabinet's interior, only to draw back a few moments later with a large external hard drive resting upon her open palm. She placed her other hand atop it, closed her eyes, and giggled once again as that dial-up tone began to ring out through the air of the office once more. The hard drive began to glow between her hands, and as it did so Daniel gave a stunned cry as before his very eyes he saw Scratch begin to grow. Not much, just by a few inches, but given her small stature to begin with the difference was entirely noticeable. Soon she tossed the hard drive, its metal case twisted and charred as though partially melted, to the ground, and squealed with laughter as she ripped the front of the cabinet open with her claws and yet more hard drives and USB sticks came tumbling out onto the floor. Like a feral cat toying with a mouse she pounced upon one of them, absorbing its data too before batting it aside and moving onto the next, then the next, and the one after that. 

"H-hey, stop! You can't do that. T-that data's sensitive. Classified, it's..." 

As Daniel watched the digimon feast and grow from the diet of data that she was consuming, it occurred to him that he probably should act. As fascinating as it was to see a digimon in the real world, and as incredible as it seemed to see her acting more like a feral, or a child compared to the stories of wise, heroic creatures of which he and the other members of the CSB had heard, he realised that he still had a duty to perform. To protect the information under the CSB's jurisdiction, to not allow anyone or anything to tamper with or risk the security of the nation via dissemination or acquisition of classified materials, and of course, to try and acquire any advantages possible to aid the country in any future cyber attacks that might come from any source. And a digimon, a real, genuine digimon would be one hell of an advantage if unleashed against their enemy's own databanks.

Daniel moved closer to where Scratch was sitting and feasting upon the various sources of data, the digimon now probably around five foot tall though it was hard to tell given how she was seated amidst the pile of increasingly broken, smoking and warped hard drives. He took a deep breath, recalling his hand to hand combat training and the six months he had spent as a field agent during his first year with the bureau, and...

"Human not be scared! Scratch friend. Scratch here to play!"

He lunged for her, and cried out as the digimon launched herself into the air, performing a perfect back-flip off the spot where she was knelt and landing with her bare paws on the back of his head, driving him down into the floor with a grunt of pain as she flipped off once again and twirled to a landing near his computer. Lifting his head, dazed from the impact with the ground, Daniel groaned and tried to right himself. Before he could do so though he witnessed through somewhat hazy, blurred vision the digimon burying her claws in the side of his desktop's large tower. He stared in gathering horror as he watched not just data but electricity begin to course out of the computer's system and into the digimon's body, doing nothing to harm her whatsoever but triggering another volatile bout of growth as she swelled in size while remaining proportionally identical to before.

Scratch threw her head back, eyes bulging as she let loose a giddy yowling of delight. Her body shook as it grew, six feet, seven, eight, nine, rapidly approaching the ceiling of the office even as she was currently kneeling down. She feasted on the vast volumes of data contained within that computer system, and found herself energised and revitalised by the crackling, powerful electricity pouring through the system and into her alongside all that delicious electronic information. She was so caught up in her gleeful consumption that she didn't notice Daniel racing for the door as she rapidly outgrew the room, and by the time alarms began to blare around her, the digimon turned with force enough to shatter the office walls and grant her access to the corridor beyond, at the end of which she could see Daniel standing and feverishly pointing a couple of armed agents in her direction. 

"...have to contain her! Have to stop her feeding before she... o-oh god, oh god she's out! She sees us!" 

Scratch barrelled down the hallway, filling it with her now ten foot tall frame thankfully still able to move relatively uninhibited while on all fours. She gasped as the two other humans drew weapons, but squealed with laughter as two long cables whipped out from their guns and dug into her fur, crackling electricity blazing through the wires attached to the tazers' powerful base units. The feline digimon mewled loudly in gleeful amusement as she felt the rush of fresh energy surge through her, and as she grew again her shoulders and back pressed up against the roof of the corridor, the stonework cracking and groaning under the pressure and strength of her form. 

"Human friend! Scratch play! Scratch hungry!" 

Daniel fled as Scratch tried to move once again, her shoulders now too broad for the corridor and smashing through the walls into the rooms on either side. She dragged herself forward, tearing the corridor to shreds and causing more and more cracks to develop in the ceiling overhead as the tazers' batteries were finally drained and their owners were dragged off their feet by the speed of the digimon's motion, tumbling and flailing until they could finally let go. More alarms sounded as the various rooms which Scratch was tearing through began to alert the rest of the building to the rather large problem at hand, but the digimon herself appeared utterly unconcerned by them. Even if she noticed the blaring, wailing sirens she paid them no heed, and continued to chase after Daniel, giggling as he raced along corridor after corridor towards the most heavily fortified and secured area of the entire complex. 

Surely he would be safe there. Surely the defences there both digital and analogue alike would be able to stop this digimon menace in her tracks. He raced through another line of agents ready to defend him and the mainframe towards which he was running, and soon heard them crying out in shock and confusion as their tazers discharged and a deep, rumbling crash echoed through the building. 

"Big!!" 

Daniel heard Scratch squeal in delight, and looked back over his shoulder to see... a pair of arms and legs crashing towards him, with everything from her torso upward out of view as it tore through the floor above, and no doubt the floor above that too. He watched as the building crumbled, as it shook and gaze way from within, and after just a few seconds turned tail and began to run once again. The mainframe area was so large, so open and well defended that even in her current twenty foot tall state Scratch wouldn't hit its roof if she stood upright. He knew that people would be able to stop her there. They had to. 

No sooner had he arrived at the mainframe though, the human male cried out in horror. The blast doors were down, and within he could see lines of agents standing with weapons drawn, guns rather than tazers, ready to fire. He peered in through the bullet-resistant glass, hammering upon it, but saw one of the agents at the front of the group shake her head at him in sorrow. The rumbling, the crashing of the building behind him grew louder and louder as Scratch barrelled towards him, and then, just as he was certain he was about to either be buried in an avalanche of broken stonework or squashed under a gloved paw...

"Friend stuck?!"

One of Scratch's paws hovered over Daniel's head, protecting him as she swept away the rest of the rubble around them and allowed herself to peer down at the tiny human. She looked at him, then at the door in front of him as he cowered and trembled. 

"Scratch help!" 

A moment later the door wrenched itself off its hinges, and Scratch had barely time to bound in front of Daniel, leaping over him and thankfully protecting his body with hers, as the agents beyond opened fire. The bullets glanced off her furred flesh like they were nothing at all, ricocheting and falling to the ground bent and spent within moments even as the agents continued to fire. Scratch meanwhile just looked around curiously, standing upright in the vast chamber containing the CSB mainframe and dwarfing all the other humans with her full twenty foot height. She stretched out her newly grown body, yawned slightly as the hail of bullets faded, and then licked her lips as she glanced towards the mainframe itself.

"Data..." 

She murmured with another giggle, and leaving Daniel behind, quaking and wide eyed, the digimon began to stomp and trample her way through the line of agents guarding the mainframe before heading towards the vast cages which contained much of the entire world's most sensitive, high security digitised information. Scratch reached out for one of the cages, and squealed not in pain but in excitement as a jolt of electricity far beyond anything she had encountered thus far surged through her. Her eyes bulged, and she gave a mewling shriek of laughter as her body burst upward in height, swelling, growing, her clothes expanding right along with her while she grew to thirty, then forty feet tall. Scratch stared out across the gantries of the mainframe chamber's upper levels and saw countless other agents with weapons prepped and ready to fire upon her as she felt thousands of volts of electricity surging through her body, but thankfully the generators powering the cage's defense system gave out before she grew tall enough to make contact with the metal gantries and send the same electricity surging through each and every person standing upon it. 

With her head and shoulders now hunched against the roof of the mainframe chamber, the digimon dropped to her knees and crawled her way forward a little, toes curling in gleeful excitement as she tore away the cage surrounding the mainframe like wrapping paper from a gift. Her tufted ears twitched as she heard more voices calling out and felt more bullets raining down upon her, but she made no effort to stop them. The silly humans could do whatever they wanted to do, but she didn't mean them any harm. They had been the ones to call her after all, and she could only presume that they had invited her over for dinner, given all the delicious electrical energy and data provided for her. And now... with the starter courses consumed and her appetite truly whetted, Scratch was ready to embark upon the main body of the meal she had been able to smell from across the entire internet once they began to broadcast that signal to her and all other digimon. 

A feast of data, such succulent and prime information that to her knowledge was available nowhere else online. And it was all right here, all gathered together for her in one delicious banquet. 

Shuffling closer and closer, Scratch reached down, plucked the first server stack out of its housing, and flipped it up with a fingertip into the air before throwing her head forward and snapping it up within her jaws. She bit down with a loud crunch of metal and plastic, and as a brief, intense burst of dial-up static rang out around the chamber, she swallowed not only the physical remains, but consumed the data within it too. Her body shook, a delicious trembling running down her spine at the sumptuous richness of that morsel, and a moment later even as her body began to grow anew she was greedily reaching down and not just grabbing one other server stack, but scooping up entire handfuls and stuffing them into her cavernous maw.

"Data!" 

She giggled and squealed as she feasted, her body growing, the building cracking and crumbling around her as she burst through its reinforced outer walls and finally felt warm sunlight bathing her furred face. Sweeping the rubble aside and toppling far more of the building with one hand, she cleared an open space within which she could see the remains of the mainframe chamber, and began to pluck from the ruins the rest of her meal. 

"Data!" 

Scratch chomped on server after server, on terabyte after terabyte of raw information. Her body grew and grew until finally even the most devoted agents were either forced to abandon their positions due to the destabilising effect of the digimon on the building in which they were standing, or simply fled as they realised nothing they were doing was having the slightest effect. More alarms sounded, not signalling an attack any longer but calling for a full evacuation. The building emptied out around her, Scratch watching hundreds of tiny bodies fleeing into the surrounding streets of the CSB's compound while she ate. Sitting down upon her denim clad backside, the digimon stretched out her legs, bare paws crashing through walls and bringing what remained of the far side of the CSB main building tumbling down around her. She took a few more bites, a few more handfuls of delicious data wrapped up in neat little server-shaped capsules, before finally she was full. 

"Mmm... good." 

Murmuring contentedly, Scratch reached down and rubbed her belly with one gloved paw. She looked around, then up at the beautiful blue sky with a few helicopters hovering overhead, and yawned as she swatted playfully at them, not trying to hit them but simply to waft them away. The last of the CSB's main building collapsed into dust as Scratch turned on the spot, still seated, sweeping her tail around behind her and her legs in front of her in a wide arc, before finding the most comfortable position possible and beginning to lower herself down onto her elbows. Her footpaws crossed over one another at the ankle, and she licked her lips contentedly as she lay back, slipping her arms behind her head as a makeshift pillow. 

Faint sirens echoed all around the hundred plus foot tall digimon, fires crackled in some portions of the CSB headquarters' remains, and a few helicopters continued to observe her from a safe distance hovering nearby. As Scratch looked up at the beautiful blue sky of the human world however, she didn't pay heed to any of that stuff. She was just glad to be here, glad to be able to feel so content, so full and satisfied as she looked up into a sky that she had never truly seen before, only the real world's reflection shining down at her as she lay upon the grass in the digital world. In fact, soon she felt her eyelids beginning to droop, her body relaxing more and more as the warm sunlight bathed her colossal form and the dust and wreckage of the CSB headquarters settled around her. 

She might have been a problem for some people in this world, a rapidly growing concern for particular governments and what remained of the CSB in general, but right now Scratch's belly was full, her body charged and deliciously strong with all the energy and data that she had consumed. Right now, no matter what else she might have been to the planet and it's people at large, Scratch didn't have a care in the world. 

"Nap time, friends..." 

Scratch murmured as she yawned once more, rolling over onto her side and crushing another few side buildings with her feet, flattening a couple more with her tail as it twitched and flicked out behind her. 

"Nap time." 

The giant digimon echoed with a pleasant smile lingering upon her weary, contented muzzle.

"Sleep. Then play again. Play again with human friends, very soon."

By Jeeves

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