A/N: Written for the a writing muse community on livejournal, table 10-B and prompt #001. Island. This chapter functions as a prologue of sorts.
Regarding the fanfiction rules, this might be second person, but second person isn't in fact against the rules: "interactive" fics is what are (the second person is listed as an example, but not all second person fics are interactive). This is just a thought experiment, as if some omnipresent entity in the Digital World addressing the people who were staring at the sky in the real world during the final arc of Adventure. I've just taken the role of that omnipresent entity…which would make it technically first person, despite the lack of "I's". But I digress; point is, I'm fairly certain it's not against the rules, just like plays aren't against the rules even though "scripts" are.
All that aside, enjoy and let me know what you think.
The Adventure Kids
1. The World in the Sky
You can see the sky, transformed as it is. In your mind's eye, you can still find the pale blue expanse stretching over – white wisps of summer cloud brushing against a bright yellow sun. But now it is not there, and instead there are brown-crust islands drifting on an indigo dye cloth, blurred by the green lines that ran along and across like a grid.
You might have been back at school, being asked to draw something after being given a piece of graphing paper, having little squares of 5mm sides neatly lined up in the white background. Or maybe your paper wasn't quite neat, or white; you might be one of those people who throw a whole assortment of things into their backpack and have to deal with miscolours and scrunches later. Or you might be one of those who buys their supplies so early – or perhaps an older sibling's – so that the edges are yellowing by the time a pencil touches the page.
You're not at school now though, so it doesn't matter. You might not even be of school age; that doesn't matter either. What matters is that scene in the sky, that scene you've never seen before…and yet looks somehow familiar to you…
You squint at one of the islands – or you assume they are islands anyway: mountain-like peaks, some of them white with snow, others dark with the heavy canopy of trees overhead and one that looked as though a waterfall constantly washed it clean. One island appeared to be moving. Another appeared to be swallowed up by the large island in its centre. Then there was one that sprouted a mountain too straight and square. Do you think of the Egyptian Pyramids when you see that? Or are your eyes wondering elsewhere?
Maybe your eyes just aren't sharp enough to pick out those subtleties from our world. Few can; fewer still can see the underlining digital code that permeates it all. The zeroes and ones that run in an endless loop beneath the framework of all manner of things that exists in our Digital World: this strange land in the sky that you can only stare at and wonder.
Should we be grateful for that? It is the reason we have been able to live in relative peace for all these years. We have our own problems, yes, but at least they are separate from your own. But if I told you about the power-hungry Devimon, who attempted to control all manner of digimon, would you think of one of your own dictators in his place? And if I told you about Etemon, a singing sensation whose hypnotic voice slowly corrupted your brood?
Or are you one of those people who cares nothing of this world, so apparently remote from your own? Who thinks of the strange phenomena of barriers falling apart as an artefact of science, or fanatics attempting to put evidence to some myth? Who turns their face from the murmurs of panic that seeps through others around them, concentrated at the spiritual heart of your world, that Tokyo in Japan?
No, I suppose you wouldn't be, otherwise you would not look up here still – looking with that expression on your face. Curiosity I think, and wonder, and some fear is there as well. Which are you looking at? The islands? The ocean? The mountains that rise from the sky? And what are you thinking: that none of it is real? Or perhaps how to get there yourself?
You're still looking up there even as things fall. Digimon, falling through the barrier from our world to yours…but can you see them? See that Apemon climbing the straight back of a tall building. Or perhaps you're seeing a gorilla escaped from your circus instead. Or that Kuwagumon in the sky – an insect permeating the sky in a blur of red?
But you can see the sky; I see it reflecting in your eyes: that indigo dye blue ocean and that brown-crust assortment of land mass drifting afloat in it. Those mountains rising from their peaks to the roots that dug into the land; specks of green, blue or grey background noise. A world far out of your reach, and you wonder…something.
I guess it doesn't matter what. Maybe each of you are even wondering a different thing, or the same. And maybe that changes as you watch a stream of rainbow light connect the two worlds - the Rainbow Bridge Brifost you might think – or maybe not.
But you see the eight children swallowed up by it, and so do those who surround you.
