Author's Note: Hey guys, Red-Chan here! Welcome to the beginning of a new journey with the Digidestined! I'm going to say, I've been working on this long before I even knew Digimon Tri was going to be a thing, and thus I'm going to go ahead and say that because it would be too conflicting otherwise, Digimon Tri is NOT canon to this story. Only Adventure and 02 are canon. I am, however, watching Digimon Tri, and I might include some elements from the series itself but not the actual plot. Also, this isn't the original document for the first chapter, this is an updated one with a few fixed errors. It took me so long to edit it that my original document isn't on fanfiction anymore so I just decided to re-write the entire author's note xD Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy!
Disclaimer: I, Red-Chan, do not own Digimon or any of its canon characters in any way! They all belong to their rightful owners! I do, however, own the four new protagonists, Breezomon, and probably a few minor characters, and some plot elements but I doubt they're much original.
Fixed at Zero
Chapter 1
Fragments of a Whole
Sometimes a story is told by one, but sometimes there's much more to a story than one person alone can tell. The saying goes that there are two sides to every story, but actually, this story has four sides. But this story doesn't only belong to them, as they are all but fragments of a whole: A whole that both saved the world and almost brought forth its destruction.
But perhaps this story would be better told by those four fragments. Each voice will share their beginning, middle, and end, and when they're all finished, all the holes, the mysteries will be filled to create a final, lasting image.
Who am I? Well, I'm no one important. I'm just here to prepare you for the story about to unfold. The story you're about to hear is about how an evil digital creature gets created and travels across dimensions, disrupting and bringing together several other stories throughout the universe.
But enough of me, how about we let our fragments do the talking from now on?
Carter Jones
"Oh, c'mon, Carter! It isn't that bad!" said a purple haired teen, plopping down on the bench beside her friend.
The girl beside her, Carter, only glanced up from her work in her sketchpad. "I don't like sports," she said, stealing a look to the field across from her.
Apparently, a soccer match was being held between some neighborhood kids, a few of which were friends with Yolei, the girl Carter had been convinced to spend the day with. Not only had she been secluded to her dorm-room (provided by her new school) for the past two months, but her only friend in school decided that she needed friends her own age and thus set her up to hang out with Yolei for the evening.
And she hadn't yet decided if the outing would end well or not.
"Oh. Well . . ." Yolei shifted about uncomfortably, looking between her friends and the girl beside her. "My friends and I are going out for ice cream when the game is finished. You up for that?"
Carter instantly stopped the stroke she was on and fully looked over at Yolei. "Who are your friends?" she asked, though the excitement in her voice was detectable.
Yolei's face lit up with a smile. "So, you see that spiky haired kid with the goggles? Not the big one, the little one. Yeah, him. That's my friend, Davis. The bigger one is Tai. And the kid who can't kick a soccer ball to save his life, that's T.K. He's better at basketball. And if you look across the field at the cheerleaders, the girl with the short hair, wearing a camera around her neck, that's our friend, Kari. She's Tai's younger sister, and Davis has a major mando crush on her!"
Carter had never heard one person talk so fast in her life, but she was able to follow close enough to match names with faces, so it wasn't too big of a deal.
"And Cody was supposed to meet us here . . . but it looks like he might have gotten caught up at Kendo," Yolei finished, craning her neck to look around.
Just then, a soccer ball knocked against Carter's leg, and she looked up to see one of the players running towards her. This wasn't one that Yolei had named. The boy looked barely younger than she was, with short, dark hair and a smile on his face.
"Sorry about that," he said, and Carter kicked the ball out towards him. "I'm Ken." He held his hand out to her.
"Carter," she replied, shaking his hand. "Is he one of your friends?" she asked Yolei, who was still grinning, but now her cheeks were red.
"Y-yeah!" she said in reply. "Ken goes to a different school. He only came to play in the game today on Davis' request."
Ken laughed and shook his head. "It's better than sitting at home all day doing homework."
Even Carter cracked a smile. "So, are you hanging around after the game too?"
Ken nodded but was interrupted by the goggle boy she recognized as Davis. "Hey, Ken, c'mon! We need the ball to finish the game!"
"Guess I should return this," Ken said, waving goodbye and heading back towards the field. "I'm coming, Davis, don't have a cow!"
Carter puffed her cheeks out and gripped her sketchpad tightly. "That Davis kid is so rude!"
"You think so?" Yolei asked, laughing. "He's not so bad. He just tends to rub people the wrong way at first."
She chose not to reply this time, but turned her attention to the soccer match (which she hadn't previously been paying attention to). When Yolei said that T.K wasn't too great at soccer, she wasn't kidding. The blond haired kid couldn't keep the ball for more than a few seconds, and someone was always bumping or running into him. It didn't seem to bother him though, because he seemed to get this determined smile every time it happened. It probably helped that the Kari girl was clapping for him and cheering him on.
Ken and Davis were both actually good players, but she couldn't tell if they were on the same team or not because they kept arguing, yet they didn't fight for the ball like all the others did. Ken seemed to laugh about it more though, while Davis looked like he got more frustrated with the whole thing.
And then there was the player who looked older than the others, Tai. He had the ball a lot of the time and seemed to like to bounce the ball off various parts of his body. For some reason, she wondered how he was able to bounce it on his head, what with his giant mass of brown hair and all; she didn't see how his hair didn't block the ball from hitting his skull. Well, maybe that was actually a good thing.
Jomei Saito
"Cody! Nyeh. Earth to Cody!" The seventeen year old girl who walked into the Dojo bent down, knocking lightly on the head of the boy sitting at the entrance, gazing off into nowhere.
He blinked a few times to clear the haze of his thoughts and looked up at her, drawing his brows together. "Jomei? What are you doing here?"
A wide grin spread across her face as she clasped her hands together behind her back. "I'm taking you to get some ice cream!"
The boy, quite a few years younger than she herself, gazed up at her quizzically. "Wasn't I doing that anyway?"
Her cheeks burst out in shades of red and through her lips came a nervous, lighthearted laughter. "Well, yeah, probably. That's what Grandpa said. But I wanted some ice cream, too! So, my treat?"
The brown haired boy smiled politely back at her as he stood and gave a stiff nod. Jomei had spent the majority of the last year working on some big secret project for her younger brother, so she hadn't been around much. Before she started working on her project, random outings between her, her brother, and Cody were actually pretty common. Her and her brother would often come sit in on Cody's Judo practice, and then they'd all walk home, or in the case of her brother, roll home. But around three years ago, Jomei had gotten some kind of 'spectacular' idea of a present for her brother and had basically disappeared off the face of the earth. Around the same time, Cody had gotten involved in the crisis of the Digital World along with the rest of the new Chosen Children. While Cody's digital fiasco had ended on a good note, him and his friends had been visiting the Digital World quite frequently, and he himself hadn't left much free time for anything else. Jomei, on the other hand, had become stumped not too long after the huge digital mess concluded and had put her project on hold. But the year before, she regained some random inspiration and had only recently taken another break from the project. So, it was an understatement to say the two hadn't had any bonding time in quite a while. And it seemed she wanted to go about fixing that.
As they walked, Cody's nose scrunched up in query, and then he looked up at his cousin. "Where's Lane?"
Jomei's lips curved down, and her pace slowed ever so slightly before the smallest of forced smiles came over her face. "His wheelchair's been acting up, so he's at home playing video games. He did say to ask you to come by sometimes; it's been too long."
The culminating guilt seemed to overtake her expression just then as she cast another forced smile towards Cody, but the sadness laced within it did little to ease his own guilt. It was obvious Jomei felt bad about being a contributing factor to Lane and Cody's diminished time together: she WAS his chaperone for leaving home, considering their parents were far too busy to accompany him much of anywhere. But Cody felt his own fair share of blame. He'd had plenty of free time the last two years to see his cousins, but he'd spent the bulk of it in the Digital World with his friends.
Sometimes he forgot that Jomei and himself were the only real friends Lane had.
The rest of the walk passed in silence, just the sound of shuffling feet on pavement continuing on and on until the little pink swirl of the ice cream shop came into view. Inside the shop sent chills down Jomei's arms, as unlike her cousin, her arms were only covered by the thin fabric of her button up shirt. The smell of peppermint filled the air, swirling with hints of strawberries and oranges, almost overwhelming her nose. From across the shop, she spotted a group of kids with about three tables pushed together, a purple haired girl standing from her seat and waving her arm about frantically in their direction.
"Rocky Road, right?" Jomei asked, grabbing a hold of Cody's arm and stopping. He nodded, and she smiled. "Go ahead and sit with your friends; I'll get the ice cream."
Jomei knew that Cody had made quite a group of new friends in recent years, and the shell that he had surrounded himself in had softened considerably, making him much more likely to smile and go with the flow as opposed to his 'I really shouldn't, mother is making blah blah tonight.' She had to admit it was probably a huge thanks to the people gathered around that table for the change she noticed in her cousin, but in the deep recesses of her heart, she could feel the bite, the resentment towards them buried underneath her gratitude. She truly was grateful for the new life Cody had been introduced to; it couldn't have been a fun life he led before, even with the occasional outing the three of them went on. But there was that thought in the back of her mind that he wasn't her little Cody anymore. It was almost like a mother seeing her son spread his wings, but the harsh bite to the feeling wouldn't let up with that explanation. There was still that dark thought eating at her that those people had taken Cody away from, not only her, but from her brother.
Lane was alone enough as it was, and Cody knew that better than anyone.
"Cody." With a smile that she used to shake off her negativity, Jomei held the ice cream out to her cousin, who gave an appreciative nod, and looked around the tables at the diverse cast before her.
At the middle table sat a set of three chairs facing her. Two of the chairs were occupied by two boys who looked almost like older and younger versions of each other, aside from the fact that the obvious younger of the two had a round pair of goggles smushing against his maroon tinted brown hair. Across from them sat two others who looked roughly around the age of the goggle boy, one boy with blonde hair and a white hat, and the other a girl with short brown hair.
The table to their left had the purple haired girl who had waved them over, along with a black haired boy of probably the same age. Cody sat in the chair opposite of the purple haired girl, and beside him sat another girl whose presence made her seem a bit older, but the awkwardness and rigidness of her posture told Jomei otherwise.
The table to their right was unoccupied aside from a single male with dark blonde hair, his feet propped up on the table, arguing some kind of nonsense back and forth with the older of the two lookalikes. There were plenty of open seats, four between the first two tables, and five at the other table.
For a few minutes, Jomei just stood there awkwardly shifting her eyes between the people at the table and her ice cream as she ate in silence, until the lone wolf at the right table grabbed her attention.
"You wanna sit down?" he asked, rolling his feet off of the table and directing her attention towards the seat across from him.
She smiled politely to him and pulled the chair out slowly as if to not startle the other table goers. Sitting wasn't any less awkward, still eating her ice cream and looking around with a lost look as conversations flew past her, so many she couldn't dare keep up with any one of them.
"You're Cody's cousin?" the same lone wolf asked, and when she opened her mouth to question him, he silenced her with a sly smile. "Cody mentioned it before you came over. Jomei, was it?"
She nodded, the chorus of voices around her dimming slightly as she focused her ears on the blonde. "And you are?"
He smiled a little more honestly this time, a sense of pride coming over his character. "I'm Matt Ishida." The grin he displayed proved that there was much more to his prideful act, but in an act of defiance, Jomei decided not to ask, only lifting a brow with a complacent nod.
This only made Matt grin a little wider and lean back in his chair, the two facing off in what was almost a staring contest, that is until the doors to the shop opened and half the table roared back to life. Jomei barely had the time to glance over her shoulder before the newcomer(s) were ravaged with greetings and questions by the rest of the group. Eventually, she managed to peek up through her canopy of platinum blonde hair at the person now standing adjacent to her.
Just as she did, however, her mouth swung open, unleashing a word that silenced the entire table.
"Koushiro?"
"Koushiro? People still call you that, man?" the brown haired boy at the middle table asked after a moment of silence, but was ignored by a sigh from the freshly arrived red-headed teen.
"Hello Saito-san," he said, pulling out the chair beside her and sitting down. "I wasn't aware you all knew each other."
Jomei shook her head furiously, looking around and catching Matt's eye briefly before speaking. "Jomei is fine," she said. "They don't. I mean, I don't. I'm Cody's cousin."
He nodded in understanding, and their conversation was cut short as he was bombarded with questions.
"Where were ya, man? I thought you were gonna come watch the game!" said the same boy from before.
Koushiro raised his brows and pursed his lips slightly as he smiled. "I was working on a few complex trigonometric equations that had me stumped in Statistics."
"Oh," Jomei piped in, a sudden look of realization on her face. "You mean the ones from page three ninety-six? They were pretty puzzling, but it was simple trickery on the book's part. A lot of those equations required uncommon algebraic functions, but nothing too difficult once you knew what you were looking for."
The entire table, once again, simmered into a silence, each individual seeming to be eying Jomei carefully.
"What?" she asked, looking around. "We have Statistics together." Her face began to heat up, patches of pink growing on her cheeks as she looked down at her lap. "Sorry. Inner nerd."
Just then, the fluffy haired boy burst out into a fit of laughter, stopping only after Matt had to pat him on the back a few times to keep him from choking.
"Sorry, Sorry, I'm not laughing at you or anything. Izzy, why didn't you tell us you had a girlfriend?" he asked with a teasing smile.
Koushiro almost immediately started coughing on his own spit, wide eyed and pink cheeked.
"She isn't my girlfriend, Taichi!" Koushiro said loudly, glancing apologetically at Jomei. "Have you even introduced yourselves yet?" Though he made a valid point, it was obvious this was a tactic to change the topic.
Taichi blinked in realization, then scratched the back of his neck shyly. "Guess we didn't," he said with a lighthearted laugh. "I'm Taichi Kamiya, but you can call me Tai!"
Then, he nudged the 'mini-me' sitting beside him. "Ow! Did you have to elbow me?" the smaller boy asked, rubbing his ribs. "I'm Davis Motomiya. Davis is fine."
Jomei nodded as names were passed around the table.
"I'm Yolie! And this is Ken!" The girl with the purple hair and the black haired boy beside her.
"Carter," said the uncomfortable looking girl at the far end of the table.
"T.K. Matt's brother. Nice to meet you." The blonde boy across from Davis.
"I'm Kari Kamiya, Tai's younger sister." The brown haired girl sitting across from Taichi.
As she looked around the table, Jomei repeated everyone's names to herself, then smiled and stood, bowing slightly.
"I'm Jomei Saito, it's a pleasure to meet you all."
The tables then immersed themselves in idle chatter, some leaning across the table, some laughing and nudging their neighbors, and Jomei found herself in awe not only of how lively the group was, but of how easy it was for her to melt into their rhythm, talking animatedly with the others and laughing until her face turned red.
But along with all that laughter and fun was matched with nervousness and uncomfortableness, but not by the new coming Jomei.
It was the straightlaced, rigid Carter at the end of the table that had her own atmosphere.
Carter Jones
"You don't seem like you're enjoying yourself much," Cody said to the girl who sat beside him. "Is something the matter?"
Just as she shook her head to tell him no, Yolie's voice piped in. "She just moved here! A couple of months ago she started attending the Art University here in Odaiba."
"Art University?" Cody asked. "Pardon me, but you don't exactly look like you're out of secondary education."
A little of her nervousness subsided as she smiled. "I finished my education early in America. I was invited into the school."
Just then, Davis leaned halfway across the tables, his eyes wide like saucers. "America?! You're from America?!"
Carter's rigid form returned as she sent the maroon haired boy a pointed look. "Indeed."
Davis, completely oblivious to the apathetic change in the new girl, buzzed on with more and more questions. "Where at in America? Did you play any sports? You don't look like a sports girl. What about cheerleading? I bet you'd look good in our school's cheer uniform!"
With a refined clear of her throat, Carter cut Davis off and gave him an apathetic smile. "Where I come from is of none of your concern. But if you must know, I'm from Georgia. It's a small southern state towards the bottom of the US," she answered, folding her hands together in her lap. "And no, I'm not a fan of sports, particularly that game you were playing where you repeatedly fought Ken for the ball."
Finishing her sentence, Carter looked more towards Yolie as opposed to Davis, purposefully ignoring his cheerleader comment. Of course she didn't cheerlead! Albeit a lot of the uniforms were rather cute, and she wondered herself what she would look like a few times, her coordination would not allow for something of that caliber.
"Hehe," Davis scratched the back of his head as he grinned. "How come you're so fluent in Japanese? If you were raised in America, anyway."
"My mother is Japanese," she answered in a clipped tone. "She thought it important for me to know the language, should I ever choose to pursue a life in this nation."
Davis' questions flew out more and more, leaving most of the table to eavesdrop (though with how loud Davis was, it was more like overhearing), and once a few of them began to realize the annoyance Carter displayed that Davis was still oblivious to, Tai decided to speak up.
"It's getting late," Tai said, putting his palms on the table to push himself up. "Mom'll be making dinner soon, and I have to supervise, or it'll be jerky shakes all over again!"
"Hey, those weren't so bad at first!" Izzy cut in.
"Davis," Tai said, ignoring Izzy, "why don't you walk with us? Weren't you supposed to be home early today for failing that math paper?"
Davis shot out a few protests, his tanned cheeks darkening even more, but then he stood and pushed his chair in, pouting in defeat.
"We'll go with you," Matt said, motioning to himself and T.K. For a moment, Carter could have sworn there was some kind of silent conversation going on between Matt and the Jomei girl, but the silence was broken when said girl stood as well and walked up behind Cody.
"Us too," she said softly. "I really need to be getting Cody home."
Soon enough, the entire table was standing, aside from Carter, who was suddenly positive she would never fit in with this group. She wasn't like them; she didn't know where anyone lived, so she couldn't offer to walk with them because it was on her way. Even Jomei, who met everyone today the same as she, seemed to slide right into their circle perfectly. But not Carter; she didn't fit.
"Carter-" Yolie started before she was cut off by a vibration against her jeans.
All of the standing members of the group, minus Jomei who was just as lost as Carter was, looked down towards their own vibrations, immediately silenced as their little area of the shop shone with eight flashing lights.
Laney Sharp
"Laney, darling, are you alright?" asked a slender old woman with silver hairs peeking out from a pink knitted toboggan.
In the center of the brown, dusty attic, visible with little light shining down from the window on the opposite wall, sat a feminine figure, half hunched over an old, wooden trunk. Orangish-reddish hair fell loosely into sea-green eyes wide in a distant gaze. Beads of sweat poured down her temples and arms, loose droplets falling to rest against her lips. The sound of ragged breathing echoed in the confined, empty space, shuddering shoulders as heavy intakes of breath and shaky releases soon came to follow.
And then the old woman's voice reached her ears, and her eyes went half lidded before widening again, this time as she whipped her head towards the attic entrance. The little stuffed rabbit in her hand fell from her grasp as she clenched her hands together, fighting off the shaking that came with the moisture rising behind her eyes.
"What's the matter, Peachie?" the old woman asked again, stepping closer to the girl and putting a gentle hand on the top of her head.
The girl breathed a shaky breath, images flashing in her mind of a creature with large talons for hands and cat-like eyes that shone a dark shade of purple. It's ears were long and jagged, one of them chopped to almost a stump, it's lanky build towering over a cluster of trees. It's blood red mouth was slightly ajar, hints of a slithering tongue with a mind of its own behind it. But the creature remained predominantly in the shadows, and many features were still hidden by the darkness.
Through the cloud of tears, she looked up at the woman before her, and spoke as the freshly brewed tears dripped down her cheeks.
"It's happening again, Mamaw. There's something in the Digital World."
Author's Note: Thank you guys so so so much for reading! It means a lot to me. I hoped you liked reading it. Feel free to leave a review, good, bad, pretty, ugly, whatever it is you wanna say! If you've got some criticism, feel free to voice it! No one is perfect! However, if you're just here to flame, be warned that I have a fire extinguisher on hand and am not afraid to use it! ^_^
If you wonder about why people have different names in different parts: Tai in Carter and Taichi in Jomei, it's simply preference by the character.
Thanks for reading! How a great day/night/morning/afternoon/evening/whatever-it-is!