Chapter 1

A stone falling from the sky and hitting you on the head is not the best way to start your day by anyone's standards, but it turns out that it can be a very good way to get involved with something that you never really wanted to get involved with in the first place.

Kazuki rubbed his head, grumbling and swearing over the sharp pain in where the stone had hit him, he hoped he wasn't bleeding. He pulled his hand away from his head and was relieved to see that it was clean of blood. He dragged his long, light brown hair back into position. He heaved his tall, thick set figure back up onto its feet and looked around to see if he could identify the missile. He knew what had hit him the second he saw it.

The stone sat on the floor a short way away, it was about the size of a tennis ball but it looked sharp at one end, Kazuki could only assume that he'd been hit by one of the more blunt edges. It was bright white and busily refracting the chilly morning sun, Kazuki glowered at it and went to kick it away, but just as he lifted his foot, he stopped. He wanted to get rid of the stone, he knew he should be able to, his foot was even in position to knock it away and into the sludgy waters of the school moat not so far away, but he just couldn't do it.

Kazuki made a small grunting noise and bent down to pick up the rock. It has a rough kind of symmetry to it and fitted perfectly into his hand. The second he touched it, he knew he didn't ever want to lose it.

Later that day, Kazuki found himself examining the rock again while he and his friends ate lunch. Since the morning, the day had warmed and many of his classmates has relieved themselves of their school jumpers and were playing a game involving one boys bag and some oranges. Those who considered themselves too dignified to join in with the game sat on the hill watching, laughing and sharing lunch. Kazuki sat on the hill with them, but slightly apart from the rest of the group. He had been itching to examine the stone since he had put it in his bag that morning. The more he looked, the more he liked it, and the more he felt that he couldn't look away.

"What have you got there Kazuki?" the question drove Kazuki out of his trance, and reluctantly he looked round to see that the question had come from Saki.

Saki had a lot of light brown hair and her blue eyes were always framed by deep rings of eyeliner, it was a well known fact that she was completely insane, but she was smart and most of the time she was nice.

"Just a stone I found"

"Oo! Can I see?" Saki was immediately hyper-active and Kazuki knew that she'd pester him like a two year old until he let her see the stone, but he couldn't bear to let it go.

"Maybe some other time."

"Aww, Kazukiiiiiiiiii!" and so Saki kept going for the rest of the lunch hour.

Kazuki dragged his feet along the ground as slowly as possible and he and his friends; Naoto, Chinatsu, Momoko and Rina, walked to maths. It wasn't that he hated maths, more that he just had to look at the stone, and he wasn't sure that he could risk it again in class, not with Momoko there, ready to steal it off him the second she got a chance.

"You know Saki?" Momoko said, suddenly bursting into Kazuki's line of vision, she had dark brown hair and her eyes matched the colour almost perfectly, she was fairly pretty and much shorter than Kazuki. He had once had a bit of a thing for her, but she could be very annoying when the mood took her, which was most of the time.

"Of course I do, everyone knows Saki, what's it to you?"

"Well, did you know that she's seeing someone? If you catch my drift."

"No. Should I care?"

"Oh, I just thought that you liked her, that's all."

Kazuki liked Saki in a very complicated way, she was definitely his friend, until they both decided that they were a bit more than that, and then suddenly things would go wonky, and be back to normal in the morning. It really boggled his head.

"Momoko, that is completely foul." Naoto announced, as Momoko threw a large handful of orange peelings over his head. Naoto was Kazuki's best friend, a boy who managed to be shy and outspoken at the same time, rather than just shy like Kazuki. Naoto had big dark eyes and naturally black hair, in their little group of friends, he was the looker, and it was no secret!

Chinatsu, a girl with red-brown hair who had a bit of a 'love-it-or-hate-it' face was in hysterics, but it was nothing compared to the stitches that the orange peel incident had left Rina in. Rina was tall, blonde, brown eyed, ditsy in the extreme and astonishingly beautiful. There weren't many boys who didn't get a funny feeling in their stomach for Rina, but she didn't seem interested in any of them.

The small crowd walked to maths, passing the twins along the way. The twins, Yuudai and Haruka, were awesome. They both had straight black hair and big brown eyes, but here the similarities ended. Yuudai was tall, but thick set with a hair cut that meant he was constantly flicking his fringe to the side; his sister had a slightly large nose but managed to remain very pretty despite it. Everyone liked the twins.

"Are you two going to town after school?" Chinatsu called after them. Yuudai made a noise that made it sound like the last thing he wanted to do in the world was go into town after school that day, but Haruka shoved him in the ribs and shouted back

"Sure we are, see you by the English block at three!"

They eventually made it to maths, the subject of the lesson completely passed Kazuki by, as he tried desperately to stop himself looking at the stone once more. The teacher, Mrs Bando, asked him a question about halfway through the lesson about quadratics or something, Kazuki just stared blankly at the front and waited for Mayu to answer the question for him. Mayu was very thin, she had very plain black hair and small eyes, she wasn't pretty, but she was incredibly smart. She and Kazuki hated each other. She answered the question using a series of terms that Kazuki couldn't pretend he even began to understand and then shot him a sneering look, Kazuki couldn't be bothered to respond.

The rest of the lesson passed in a boring stupor, the class couldn't wait to be released into the delicious September sunshine. Once outside, everyone began to head off to their busses and say goodbye to their friends. Kazuki went to head home, trying not to get caught up in the end of the school day ritual, but he felt something sharp and pointy and rather large crash into his back. He cried out in anger and pain and turned around to see what it was that had hit him.

"KAZUKI YOU FAIL!" announced the object; it was too skinny for words and covered in dark brown curls. Takahiro.

"Oh leave him alone!" Saki shouted from the other side of the maths block.

Takahiro ran off to join her and laugh with Naoto and Momko, even from this distance Kazuki could see Saki rolling her eyes as she turned to talk to her friend Kaeda, who looked rather like a blonde hedge, what with all her frizzy hair. They all knew that Kazuki wasn't going into town, Kazuki never did much and today he was desperate to look at the mysterious stone. He just wished someone had at least asked him if he wanted to go.

When Kazuki got home, he shouted a quick hello to him mum, ran up to his room, shut the door behind him and pulled out the stone again. It was just a stone, quartz or something, why couldn't he stop thinking about it? He rolled it over in his hands and held it up to the light coming in through his bedroom window.

He thought back to that morning, when the stone had first hit him. He had assumed that someone had thrown it at him, but now that he thought about it, no one else had been around when it had hit him. And it had seemed almost as if it had fallen straight from the sky. The faintest idea that he was perhaps supposed to have the stone crossed his mind, but he shook his head and chased the idea out of his mind.

The light fell through the stone from the window and split across his floor into a myriad of different colours, it was an astonishing sight; Kazuki could feel himself begin to grin at the sight of it. If he hadn't been so entranced, he might have realised that the light was growing brighter, and something in the middle of the rock was beginning to pulse, faster and faster. As it was, Kazuki didn't realise that anything had changed until he felt the floor fall away beneath him.

He was falling fast, and spinning, through a swirling vortex, screaming in fear and surprise as he went. He could feel himself becoming light and fast as he fell, and he soon came to realise that he wasn't falling, but travelling at great speed down what appeared to be an enormous tunnel. This realisation didn't make him any less scared though, he could feel the rock in his hand, dragging him onwards through the tunnel, like it was magnetised to something. He tried to let go, but his hand seemed to be super glued to the rough surface. He was dragged this way and that through the tunnels, it seemed that the rock knew exactly where it was going, even if he didn't.

After what seemed like forever, the tunnel came to an abrupt end and Kazuki felt himself tumble head over heels. The last thing he remembered was his head hitting something hard, and then the world went black.

Kazuki awoke in a daze, trying to work out if he had been dreaming. He slowly sat up and looked around him.

He was sitting in a forest clearing, the trees towering over him from all sides. He didn't think he'd ever seen any tree that looked quite like these ones before, they were covered in flowers of every colour of the rainbow and were so tall that it made him dizzy just thinking about being on the top branches. It was hot and humid in the clearing, so Kazuki removed his school jumper and let it fall by his side, onto a bed of moss that covered the clearing floor as he looked around, mesmerized by the sight of the place.

How did he get here?

One minute he'd been in his room, the next he was here. It wasn't possible! This whole place seemed impossible! He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself before he completely lost it, and figured that his first step should be to work out where on earth he was.

He reasoned that the plants and heat would mean he was in some kind of tropical country. His theory seemed confirmed when a group of bright pink birds flew by over head. Delighted with his logic, Kazuki bent down to pick up the stone, it no longer seemed so attractive, but he figured that he'd better keep it so he could try and get home.

That's when it hit Kazuki.

He had travelled to the middle of nowhere, he was in an unidentified foreign country, he was all alone and, as far as he knew, he had no way of getting home. He collapsed to his knees and could feel that he was about to cry. He grabbed his school jumper and held it close, trying to keep his last piece of home as close to him as possible.

All around him, the Digital World was moving.

The Defendants were coming.