Matt walked down the lonely road in this city of mischief. The city bustled around his bubble of dreamlike thought. He passed by 24-hour store after 24-hour store. Why did this city never stop? All it ever did was move and hiss in the day and night. He felt like he was the only person that ever slept and even that wasn't much anymore. After trekking through the wild suburban jungle, he finally reached his apartment. He grabbed the keys from his deep pocket and threw them into the lock. He pushed the door open and slung his bag down onto the hardwood floor.

"Dad?" The apathetic tone in his voice was deeply noticeable. Matt didn't know why he bothered anymore. His dad was never home and he never saw him anymore. He just glided into his room and flopped onto the bed. He groaned and turned to look at his answering machine, it was beeping. With much lethargic movement he stretched over to the play button and gently pressed his finger down onto it. The beep split his brain in two.

"Matt, it's Tai. Where have you been? I haven't seen you in days and I'm worried about you. Can we get together sometime? Yah know … do something, like normal friends? Just phone back OK? Just to let me know you're alive." Matt rolled his eyes and looked at his bag that was all the way back in the hall where his mobile phone was. The beep rang again.

"Ermm … hi Matt, it's TK. You remember me right? You know that little brother that you haven't spoken to IN DAYS!? Are you even still alive? I'm getting worried about you … look just phone me OK?" Matt looked at his bag again … too far to go for it; I'll do it later. The beep hit his brain once more.

"Matt it's Dad. I'm going to be late tonight so could you make food for…" Matt hit the machines button to move onto the next message. He'd heard this pre-recorded crap before. The long beep that followed was the end of the messages. He deleted them all and just lay there, staring at the ceiling. After a couple of minutes he was gone, back to the world of dreamers.

Matt lazily opened his eyes; the alarm clock on his right started to come into focus. 4:30am, great. 4hours of sleep; it's probably the most he's had out of all the nights recently. The apartment was silent; not even the wind could be heard. Matt crept out of his room into the hallway to grab his bag. His life was in this bag, well the majority of it. He kept everything but his instruments in this bag. It was a shoulder bag and it was big. Sort of like a flapdoozy from yakpak.com. He hulked it onto his shoulder and quietly crept over to the couch.

When he sat down with the bag it suddenly dawned on him that he was hungry. His stomach growling broke the tremendous silence. He sighed and opened up his bag; he rooted in there and pulled a few things out onto the coffee table in front of the couch. These were: a book made of recycled paper, a fountain pen and ink cartridges, his mobile phone and a CD player with a couple of CD's. The last thing he pulled out was a packet of chicken noodles.

He grabbed the noodles and hoped over the couch to get to the kitchen where he picked up a pan and boiled some water to cook the noodles in. Once the water was boiling he emptied the contents of the packet into the pan and sat back to wait for them to cook. Finally, after 15 minutes of waiting they were done. He emptied any excess water out into the sink and tipped the noodles into a bowl. He ran back to the couch with a big grin on his face, he pulled his favourite pair of chopsticks out of his bag and wolfed down the noodles. After he'd finished he sat back and sighed in relief.

He picked up the CD player and one of the compilation CD's Izzy had made him. Luckily his CD player actually still had some battery life in it, he'd been listening to it a lot recently and he was too lazy to go and get the AC adapter for it. He examined the front of the CD. It had the songs listed on the front: New Found Glory – My Friends Over You, Trigun – HT, Chad Kroeger – Hero, Muse – Dead Star, Box Car Racer – I Feel So, Glay – Way of Difference and Gravitation – THE RAGE BEAT. He loved this CD; it was the one he listened to the most. He had asked Izzy to download some American and British music for him because he was getting really influenced by them. He put the CD into the CD player and crammed the headphones into his ears.

After hearing the first few minutes of "My Friends Over You" he picked up his mobile phone and looked at the screen. The little message icon was flashing and the screen read "2 messages received." He would have given anyone two guesses as to which two people had sent them. He opened them up and sure enough one was from Tai and one from TK. He read the two messages and they basically just re-iterated what had been left on his answering machine. He sat in thought at what to write back to Tai and TK. I guess he was still a little shocked that they hadn't given up on him yet like everyone else had … I mean it had been a while since they'd last talked.

He geared up his phone to the reply stage and wrote a short sweet message to Tai. "Sure, if you want to meet up, text me with a day and time and I'll be there. Don't worry about me Tai I'm still alive." He pretty much wrote the same to TK but just changing the name. After finishing off the text messages he grabbed the book of recycled paper and started writing until the sun rose in the sky.

***

It was a new day now and Matt was towelling himself off after a quick shower. He looked into his wardrobe for some clothes to wear. After much thought he grabbed a long sleeved white T-shirt, a dark cream short sleeved T-shirt and a pair of black flared jeans. He quickly threw the clothes on and checked his mobile phone for messages. There was one, it was from Tai. "OK, meet me in the Park at 9:00am and we'll get some breakfast." Matt said he would go and if there was one thing he still held onto it was his word. So after realising it was now 8:30am he grabbed the stuff from the coffee table; crammed it into his bag and bolted for the door.

Tai sat on the grass in the park, underneath the tree where he and Matt used to meet each other to hang out. They were older now but Tai's friendship for Matt had never weakened. The sun beat down onto the grass, which was dry and flaky. Tai was wearing a bright orange hoody with a white T-shirt underneath and his usual shorts with a pair of trainers. Tai felt someone standing beside him, he looked to his other side to see a slim figure with a gigantic shoulder bag.

"MATT! It's been so long!" Tai jumped up of the ground and grabbed Matt so hard in a hug that the two of them tumbled to the floor onto the ground. Matt and Tai laughed at each other and slowly sat up on the grass. The two beamed with grins at each other.

"Hey Tai."

"Matt where have you been? I've been really worried about you, I haven't seen you for like a month." Tai's face flooded with a worried expression.

"I've been around Tai … I've just been around." Matt looked at the ground; he couldn't bare to look into Tai's eyes anymore.

"I spoke to TK … he said he hadn't seen you for almost forever … he's really worried about you. It's not like we're doing this to irritate you Matt it's just that we care. We care about you and that makes us worry…" Tai was interrupted rapidly.

"I know Tai … and it's nothing personal I've just been really busy and … things. It's just kind of complicated and it's not something I want to get into right now, OK? You understand right…" Tai nodded his head and smiled at his best friend and hugged him one last time.

"Come on. You want to go get some coffee?" Matt nodded back and smiled. The two got up off the ground and started to walk towards the direction of the local coffee shop. Behind them though, a grumble from the ground started to vibrate their eardrums. The two stopped and slowly turned around to see the calm of the Park be destroyed by this eerie rumbling. It wasn't an earthquake it was something else, something that could never have come from the Earth. The air in front of them started to swirl and it looked like something was ripping straight through the fabric that sewed the park together. In a bright flash of light a wormhole of great proportion broke through into this world. Through it appeared a Digimon unlike any they had ever seen, it looked almost like an enormous centipede but different. It was too hard to describe. It looked Matt directly in the eyes.

"It's time. It's time to pay your debt." Matt's face turned to one of stone and he walked towards the wormhole. Tai stood in shock.

"But Matt … what's going on? I don't understand." Tai was worried beyond belief. Matt turned around to face his best friend.

"I told you at the beginning of all this Tai, I'm no saint. It's over, everything is over." As he spoke, he reached into his bag and pulled his recycled paper book to the top. Tai was dazed and confused with what was going on. "It's time for me to leave." He turned to face the wormhole that had opened behind him and nodded to the new Digimon. As he turned the book that was in his bag dropped onto the crisp dry grass of the Park.

"But Matt I don't understand!" His words were lost in the haze of confusion as Matt walked into the wormhole, to be lost forever? Tai didn't know. He tried to run forward to stop him or run after him but the wormhole had closed and he just fell to the ground, the grass scratching at his face. The only clue he had was that book. He picked it up and looked it at. What could Matt have possibly wanted him to see in this book?

End of Chapter 1