Prologue: What We See In the Stars
Find me.
The words scattered across a sea of data, followed by the flurry of fading fingers. The typist watched the screen blur and tremble before their eyes and didn't flinch. The email was almost complete. Their time was almost up. Hurry, hurry. Live, live.
The song thudded through their soul. As they didn't have much of a body now, this was all they could do. They typed and murmured code that they had long known. Years of practice, years of encryption and decryption and decoding. Too many years of being smart, they couldn't help but think to themselves. It would bother them if they worried about it.
Find me.
The V-Pets of people around the world let out a chime. It was the chime of the Digimon falling over and of eggs forming when the Tamer blinked. But the Digimon in the toys were fine, strangely enough. Of course, they were looking in another direction but they were fine. Such was the limit of two-dimensional vision. The humans could not see what their friends were looking at. If they had, perhaps the journey would have been a little easier.
Doubtful. Journeys are nothing if not difficult.
Find me.
The data spun away from them further, like a laugh echoing across the water. It was getting harder and harder to see. She continued her typing. The cough from behind her sounded like pain. Empathy maybe, or concern. The bystander was too kind to her, too kind by half.
The girl pulled her hands away for a moment, touching the save button with a shaking finger. It was ready to send.
If only it was time.
If only she could call them immediately, let them bring this to an end before more people got hurt. But… That was simply impossible. Everyone got hurt. And she couldn't ensure it would get through in time.
She looked at her hands, saw them flicker. She smiled. She would find them again, just in time. It was fine. It would be all right.
All there was left to do was let go.
All things considered, it was a lot harder to do that than expected.
The Digital World was known for its odd phenomena. Random volcanic eruptions, a forest appearing where a desert was three years before, flooding of the arctic regions, most Digimon were about as used to this as humans were with spring rain showers.
Still, meteor showers didn't happen every day. Best of all, the meteors were blue.
Unusual, even for a world inhabited by monsters.
Many stood and watched. Others, as was now becoming commonplace of Digimon in that time, fell to their deaths as the stars of data ran over their heads. The stars continued to fall, unabated, from the Digital Sea above, mixing with the spirals of white from below.
The eldest of the world watched the stars and sighed. "The legends say when a child dies," he began to the semi-empty room. "The tears of the world become the lights in our sky. The legends say when a child dies, the water from the tears falls to reach the soul, to cocoon it in all the love of the earth and sea. The legends say when a child dies, they too can come to the world and be reborn. But rebirth is not gentle, and time is not kind. If only there were those the child could reach out to to save them, to walk with them. If only… but that is just a story, isn't it?"
The eggs forming on his floor only wobbled to the soothing sound of his voice.
"Ah," he said to them, chuckling and shaking his head. "You won't remember this anyway. I need an apprentice for that."
The human world wanted to see the stars, so they built lights to hide them with. That night, all the lights went out.
Still, not everyone saw the stars.
The children did. They awoke to their beeping V-Pets, the beeping sounding familiar to a trained ear. It was too bad most children didn't know this particular song and dance by heart.
Yakov Petrov, however, most certainly did, and he was awake to hear it too.
He was a light sleeper on a normal night and these past few evenings had had him lay awake at night, watching the rise and fall of his wife's chest. He sighed and rolled away from the sleeping woman, intent on going towards the sound. He had told his son to lower the volume on his V-Pet. Just because he could sleep through a hurricane doesn't mean the rest of the family was that lucky, or well, unlucky.
He let out a low sigh, heading once more to the sound of the beeping. As he passed his office, he saw a light under the door. Yakov pinched his nose. No wonder the sound seemed so close to their room. Nikolai had gone into his office again. He rubbed his neck and eased thte door open. "Niko… are you trying to download something off of my computer again?" He wasn't very good at it. His son just didn't have a knack for computers.
His son was not in there. However, his computer was on. With the rest of the house turned off from the power outage, the brightened monitor was almost stark white in the inky color of the room. He went over to it, intent on turning it off and going to wake Niko. (The beeping was still going and it was starting to nudge at his already forming migraine). He squinted at the screen, rubbing his eyes. An envelope icon flashed in the middle of his desktop, wiggling impatiently. With a sigh, and perhaps too little sleep causing him to take this action, he opened the mail.
His screen turned black. Then electric blue numbers ran down the screen. Yakov choked and swallowed spit as the code slipped from sight, forming symbols as quickly as they could, then disappearing.
He rubbed his eyes again and read the vanishing words with as much accuracy as he could muster.
"It's okay."
"All is well."
"Welcome. How can I help you?"
"Don't blame yourself."
"Still a chance."
The last one made his blood run cold,. Then the screen turned black entirely, covering the room in darkness. Yakov sat in silence, staring at the blank screen. He put his head in his hands and let out a deep sigh. "Poor child… that poor girl… I..."
"Dad!"
Yakov heard the door open and managed to look up towards his son. "Shouldn't you be asleep?"
Even in the dark, he could tell his son was pouting. "Not now, dad! The stars are falling! You've gotta come see!"
Yakov gave a pensive frown. His son was imaginative, had to be to keep up with his father's theories at all, but meteors were a bit of a stretch. "Are you certain you weren't dreaming?"
"Sasha woke me up with the beeping!" Niko jumped up and down, billowing the sleeves of his pajamas. "Come on, dad!"
Dread coiled in the man's stomach as he rose to follow his son. The V-Pet was still beeping, sounding more like it was dying than anything else. The company was working on an upgrade for their toy, but it was on the backburner, in the face of a more recent threat. A more obvious one. Yakov made it to the balcony and looked at the sky. It was still, but Niko was watching with the fascination only a child could have. And still, the device continued its incessant noise.
A noise that… to his ears honed by spy games and snowfall, sounded quite familiar.
Yakov snatched a piece of blank paper from his son's desk and began to scrawl. Niko looked up and over at him, frowning.
"Dad…?"
He went unheard until Yakov lifted the paper to the moonlight. "Find… me…?"
He saw the stars fall then; blue and beautiful streaks across the night sky. Such an unusual, telling color of electric blue. The dread became a solid stone.
"It's not supposed to look like that, right dad?" Niko said, eyes widening as he followed his father's gaze.
"No," the man said, voice slightly hollow. "No they are not."
Poor child, he thought. What has happened to you?
Morning came and went with Jijimon taking to Railroad Plains, as he often did when the city didn't need him. He wandered through every dip and hill, enjoying the quiet, the softness over the air. Then his foot hit something, and he slowed, looking down. He was lucky he hadn't kicked it.
From a distance, it looked like a Cupimon without wings or a horn. It had slept through the kick, pale skin flushed from the heat of the morning, wisps of bright hair curling over the head. He picked it up with one hand, putting his staff under his other arm. "Well, hello there," he said to the sleeping creature. "Who are you? Where did you come from?"
The child opened bright blue eyes and let out a sob.
"Poor child," he said with a smile behind his hair. "You must have died. Don't you worry. You'll be safe with us. Just you wait and see."
He was wrong.
A/N: Happy early birthday, Onix! I've kept you waiting long enough. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope everyone else does the same!
Challenges: Gameverse Boot Camp prompt 7. 'past', AU Diversity Boot Camp prompt 6 'memory' (fusion!AU), headcanons challenge, what-if challenge, and Diversity Writing M2. alternate timeline!AU