Chapter Text
This story starts in a world made out of computer data. A world that, after coming under threat a very long time ago, even by the standards of a world where time did not flow nearly as fast, had been peaceful ever since. A world where turmoil was once again beginning.
“Should we do what we did before?” Homeostasis suggested. Intangible, and invisible to all but a few, she perched at the edge of a computer monitor. “You know, pick a few random humans and throw them in head first?”
“We’d need to prepare partners, first,” Gennai reminded her. “And picking randomly doesn’t help. What sort of pool would we choose from?”
“I knew I should have suggested this to Benjamin…” She muttered. “He’d be all for it. Without needing to think about it. Well,” She continued, louder, “We’d need someone able to communicate with me, at least. I suppose we could ask Philemon for ideas…”
“Might I make a suggestion?” They weren’t even surprised.
“Chronos. What are you doing here? Better question, why do you look different?” The god glanced at his outfit, which was significantly more casual than what he’d worn for their previous meetings, few and far between as they were.
“That is… a personal matter, really. But my suggestions can be backed up by Philemon, for all it’s worth.” The file was placed in front of them, and Gennai opened it. Peering over his shoulder, Homeostasis latched on to one part she found particularly interesting.
“Are you sure-?”
“I thought you’d appreciate the irony.” Huh. She’d never seen him smile before. “And he should be available by this point in time.”
She sighed. “If this were just eight Real World years earlier, we could have gotten those kids from Odaiba… but we have no clue where they are now. Might as well. It’ll only take us a few years here to set up, anyway.”
“It’s good you agree.” Chronos turned, walked away, and vanished. Not that he’d given them a chance to argue… nor did they have any better options.
“High school starts next week,” Amagi Yukiko commented, lying down by the riverbank. “What do you think about that, Chie?”
“I dunno,” Satonaka Chie responded. “I just want to enjoy this last week before I have to grow up… I mean, high school. What am I supposed to do about that? You’re the one with all the great grades.” She nudged a rock with her foot and it rolled down into the Samegawa, making a rather loud splash.
“Chie! You’ll scare the fish!”
“It’s not like we were gonna catch anything.” Chie glanced at the line, which held Yukiko’s extremely poor attempt at a sandwich. Which was giving off toxic fumes. From underwater.
In all honesty, they were more likely to poison the fish than catch them.
“We can at least try… huh. What’s that?” Chie glanced to the sky where her friend was pointing.
“That’s the sun, Yukiko.”
“Not that! Under the sun!” Chie squinted.
“I don’t know, but it’s heading this way. I guess we’ll see soon enough.”
Roughly five seconds later, two blue gadgets embedded themselves in the shore. Overcome by curiosity, they both picked them up. They disappeared five seconds later.
Tatsumi Kanji glared first at the hole in his bedroom window, and second at the glowing device sitting in the middle of several shards of broken glass. He picked up the object for the sake of throwing it back out the window.
He never had the chance.
Seta Souji had his window open so he wouldn’t choke from the dust of what he was trying to unpack that he never got around to during his last move six months prior. That the device embedded itself in his desk was just another annoyance.
Prying it out of the wood, he only had time to think that he’d need a new desk before falling unconscious.
Kujikawa Rise kept performing uninterrupted.
In a world full of Shadows, one of them sat alone in the middle of an intense fog. That is, until he noticed something that wasn’t part of the fog. An odd blue light.
He was far too curious for his own good, but it did work out this time. Much better.
Hanamura Yosuke shoved the last of the things he’d need for school in his bag. There. He’d be entirely prepared when it started the next week. Which meant he now had the week to goof off.
Or not. Because he just so happened to pick up the object sitting innocently on his windowsill, which killed all of his plans for his foreseeable future.
Shirogane Naoto found her device falling on her desk while she was working. Her grandfather had just opened to door to talk to her, but she disappeared too quickly for anything to happen.
They never did have that conversation he wanted.
“Ugh… turn off the sun…” Yosuke groaned, rolling over on the ground… wait… this wasn’t where he was earlier, was it?
“But Yosuke, if I turn off the sun, how will all the plants grow?” A small voice squeaked in his ear. He pushed himself up to glare at the speaker, only to notice that it was an adorable ball of white fluff.
“What… what are you?”
“I’m your Digimon partner! It’s good to meet you, Yosuke, I’m Tokomon!”
It was too early in the universe for this. Yosuke lay back down in the hopes that if he did, the weirdness would go away. It didn’t.
“Come on, Yosuke, don’t you want to meet the others?”
“...Others?”
“So, let me get this straight,” Souji stated, looking at the clearly foreign boy playing with the long tassel-like ears of his pink blob in front of him, his own significantly less cuddly orange blob in his lap. “You aren’t from here either.”
The boy shook his head. “No, my world is full of fog.”
“...Right. And you actually aren’t human, apparently.”
“I’m normally a bear!” He volunteered cheerfully.
“Okay, then… you also haven’t told me your name yet.” This caused the other boy to wince.
“I… don’t really have one yet… And I haven’t had time to think of one...”
“What about Teddie?” The pink blob suggested. “I mean, you say you’re a bear, and it can actually be used as a name.”
“That… that sounds nice… Okay, then! My name’s Teddie!”
Tsunomon opened his eyes from where he rested on Souji’s lap. “Two overly bright and cheerful beings in the same room as each other for the foreseeable future… Souji-san, could I ask you to get me some earplugs?”
He nodded. After all, if the other ones that he’d been told were coming were anything like these two… he might be needing them for himself.
“I’m not sure what’s weirder,” Chie commented, glancing at where her Bukamon sat on her shoulder. “That these things exist, or that Kanji-kun has a girl partner and I don’t.”
Yukiko smiled and ruffled Yokomon’s petals. “He and Tane-chan do get along rather well, don’t they?”
The boy walking ahead of them was currently still locked in cuteness overload over his tiny plant. This would not change until they reached their destination.
“Were we meeting this way? I think it was this way…” Motimon mumbled, which reminded Naoto that she was entrusting her fate in the hands of a pink blob that had somehow known her name.
“Are you sure you know where we’re going?”
“I’m sure! Come on, I hear voices this way! It has to be where we’re all going to meet!” Being led out into the bushes, Naoto blinked and took in the rather large number of other kids her age, each of them with their own miniature companion. Six, to be precise.
“Hey, is this the last one?” The largest of them, a boy, asked.
“It should be,” The gray creature on another girl’s shoulder remarked. “We don’t know of any others, at least.”
“Good. I can’t take many more people…” Another boy, one with silver hair muttered. “Anyway, welcome to the madhouse. I’m Seta Souji.”
“Um… are you a boy or a girl?” The girl with the gray creature asked. Naoto was completely prepared to lie, until…
“She’s a girl.”
“Motimon-san!”
“You know, I don’t see why it’s a big deal nobody knows that.” Blushing, she slid her still slightly too large cap down over her face.
“...Shirogane Naoto. I assume you were being serious about this being a madhouse?”
“Might as well have been. This is my partner, Tsunomon. The spaz next to me is Teddie. Apparently, he wasn’t even human until today and is from a world different to ours. His partner is Koromon.”
“I’m Amagi Yukiko,” A girl with long black hair introduced herself. “These are my friends, Satonaka Chie and Tatsumi Kanji. Our partners are, respectively, Yokomon, Bukamon, and Tanemon.”
“And I’m Hanamura Yosuke. This is Tokomon. We’re trapped someplace we don’t know. School starts next week. I vote we find a way home before then.”
“I thought that was obvious,” Chie said. “I mean, everyone’s gonna worry about us, and we’ll be grounded for like forever.”
“I disappeared right in front of my grandfather,” Naoto realized. “So at least he realizes I’m missing. Will anyone notice you’re gone before tonight?” There was a large number of negative responses. “So with the exception of myself, we have eight hours to try and find our way back.”
“We should stick together!” Tanemon volunteered. “There’s a lot of big and scary Digimon out there, but so long as we stay together we can take on anything short of a Kuwagamon.”
“The hell’s a Kuwagamon?” Kanji asked. They suddenly heard a loud buzzing. “Wait… don’t tell me…”
Tanemon nodded, as much a little head could. “That’s a Kuwagamon. We should run now.”
Today was a bad day. Chie understood that much, what with the sandwich from the blackest pits of hell, the reminder of school, and being stranded in the middle of a jungle in the middle of nowhere with very few people she actually knew, but the cliff, at this point, was really unnecessary.
“We’re going to die we’re going to die we’re going to die….” She was stopped by a hand on her shoulder.
“Calm down.” She hadn’t expected Souji to willingly touch anyone, given that he didn’t seem all that happy about their presence. “Freaking out isn’t going to help us.”
“R-right…” Deep breaths. Ignore the giant insect trying to bisect everyone. Up until Bukamon’s presence on her shoulder disappeared. “Bukamon! What are you doing!?”
“Trying to help!” All around her, the others were having the same argument with their partners, to the same results. No. This couldn’t be happening. These adorable little blobs were their allies. They couldn’t be left alone in a place none of them knew. And then light. So much light.
“Tsunomon Digivolve to Gabumon!”
“Bukamon Digivolve to Gomamon!”
“Yokomon Digivolve to Biyomon!”
“Tokomon Digivolve to Patamon!”
“Koromon Digivolve to BlackAgumon!”
“Motimon Digivolve to Tentomon!”
“Tanemon Digivolve to Palmon!”
They weren’t the same now, were they? But she heard the overly enthusiastic cheers, and kept an eye on the one that was hers. Gomamon. She had the feeling that name would stick more often than not.
Still, their seven Digimon against giant insect Kuwagamon was still not perfect odds. Not that it stopped them.
“Blue Blaster!” Gabumon led, being the one to begin the attack. Gomamon didn’t do much in the fight, but she noted that BlackAgumon and Biyomon were more than pulling their weight. It evened out, but still…
It didn’t matter to her. They still won, and she wasn’t bug food. That was sort of the highest priority by virtue of becoming a priority in the first place. And because it was a bug.
“Chie-chan! Chie-chan, did I do well?” Gomamon asked, wide eyes staring at her.
“You… you did fine, Gomamon… I mean, the bug is gone, so…” And then the Kuwagamon fell out of the trees, neatly destroying the edge of their cliff.
Fortunately, Gomamon could control fish, bringing him up several stages of awesome in her mind. So it all worked out.
Now, if only everything else could go as smoothly.