Litanya: Okay… I have to stop making new fics. This is about the billionth that I have started… I keep on having to delete them off my computer otherwise it would overflow. But you don't really care about that, so I'll shut up and let you read the fic. I don't own Digimon or any of the characters that appear in that show. I own the other characters though, whoever they may be.
Oh, and 02 never happened… just thought that you would want to know that.
An Old Box
Prologue
~DREAM SEQUENCE~
A small box was just sitting in mid-air, or it could have been on something, he wasn't sure. The space around him was covered in darkness and he wasn't even sure if he was there himself. All that he was aware of was that the box was there, with its own light. There was nothing really special about the box. It was made of a wood that was almost the colour of honey and it had been carved into the shape of a square. The corners were sharp and carved at exactly 90o. On the top of the box was painted an orange flower. Next to it, although considerably smaller, were flowers that were red, blue, light and dark yellow, light and dark pink, grey, green, purple and brown. These painted flowers looked almost real, but he knew that they were only that way because the artist's talented brush had made them. The flowers were edged in gold and it was obvious that the artist had taken a lot of care to make the design meticulous. But he had no idea why he should be dreaming about a box.
"The box… opens with a tap on the top… not a word… the box…opens with a tap on the top… not a word…" a whispery old voice rasped in his ear, "The box… opens with a tap on the top… not a word…" The box seemed to lift in the air and spin towards him and he caught it, still hearing the rasping of the old man. He examined the design for a second before he tapped the lid of the box once. It opened and he screamed, for by doing that he felt a sense of a world of torture that was going to come soon. Very soon.
~END OF DREAM SEQUENCE~
As he woke he didn't scream, didn't sit up quickly in shock, but just lay there where he was, his eyes closed and his breathing only a little faster than normal.
'It was only a dream, nothing else,' he whispered to himself in his mind, 'But if it was only a dream, why can I still remember every moment of it?' He was slowly becoming aware that it was daylight outside as through his eyelids he could sense the red heat of the Sun coming through his window. He used that thought to comfort his racing heart and he slowly opened his eyes. He carefully sat up and moved so that he could see if his little sister was still asleep in the bunk below him. Their parents were looking for a bigger apartment so that each of them could have their own rooms because, at the age of 14, Tai should not really be sharing a room with the 11 year old Kari. The 11 year old was still sleeping, her mousy brown hair lying in tangles. It was only up to her chin, but for some reason it always tangled when she slept.
"Tai, Kari, time to get up!" he looked up quickly, wondering why their mother had called out to them on a day they didn't have to go to school, "You have your Digidestined meeting, remember?" Tai sighed in relief. He had thought that maybe she was going to take them to meet their relatives or something. He had almost forgotten about the Digidestined meeting. Kari was sitting up, rubbing the sleep from her tired crimson eyes.
"Morning Kari," Tai called down to her from the top bunk as he clambered over to the ladder, "For once I'll beat you to the bathroom!" Kari sat up at that, but then she seemed to be too tired to bother and she flopped back down again. Tai grabbed some clothes from his cupboard and disappeared into the bathroom, forgetting about his vividly clear dream. He felt a lot better as he emerged from the bathroom, dressed and clean half an hour later. Kari rushed into the bathroom as soon as Tai had opened the door and it slammed shut behind him. Shrugging in confusion Tai went to the kitchen where his mother had a plate of what looked to be green plastic bags with yellow spots on the table.
"Morning mum," he said as he took his seat at the table and eyed the 'plastic bags' suspiciously.
"Hi honey, did you sleep well? For breakfast it is my new recipe: Spinach Omelet Surprise! Your sister tried it but almost immediately you finished in the bathroom and she rushed off…" Tai was reminded of his dream at his mother's question, but then his gaze went beck to the 'plastic bags' that were his breakfast.
"Uh… yeah mum. I think that I would like to have some cereal for breakfast this morning," he got up and took a bowl out of the cupboard and took his special 'emergency' supply of Rice Bubbles out too. His mother seemed a little disappointed.
"Couldn't you just try a little bit? Please?" he felt guilty so he agreed reluctantly. As soon as he had tried some, he regretted it, but he had to eat it all. As Kari was in the bathroom, he had to use the kitchen sink to throw up all of the 'Spinach Omelet Surprise' whilst his mother wasn't looking. All he could say about it when she asked him was that he couldn't taste the salt and pepper in it at all. When Kari finally emerged from the bathroom an hour later, the siblings said a quick goodbye to their mother and left quickly to avoid getting a bag of their mother's recipe in their lunch.
"How long did you spend throwing up after that delightful breakfast?" Kari asked her brother sarcastically as they left the apartment building, "It took me ten minutes to get the taste of it out of my mouth, and I only had a mouthful." Tai groaned.
"You're lucky! Mum watched me like a hawk and made me eat a whole plateful. Let's not talk about throwing up anymore or I will. I already spent the three-quarters of an hour that you were still in the bathroom being sick, so please, let's drop this," Kari agreed, seeing how serious her brother was being. She did not want her brother to be sick again right at that moment. They continued on to the park where they were meeting the others in a comfortable silence that only siblings can ever manage to construct. Tai was deep in his thoughts about his dream and Kari was thinking about what joke she and T.K could pull on the others during the day. It was because they were thinking about two completely different things and ignoring each other that they managed the comfortable silence. It is called the sibling silence.
"Tai, Kari, you guys are late," Sora, the eldest girl in the digidestined told them, a little annoyance sounding in her voice, "Joe, Mimi and Izzy can't come, they all muttered something about school work, so it's just the five of us." Kari went straight to T.K, her best friend and they quietly began to plot some practical joke.
"Yeah, sorry, my mother had a new recipe this morning and it took me three-quarters of an hour to throw it all up. So if the other three aren't coming, why are we waiting around here?" he pulled his digivice, the only one out of all of the digivices of the digidestined that could open the gate to the Digital World, out of his pocket. He quickly typed in the activation code, which only he knew, and the five digidestined disappeared out of the park and into the Digital World.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
"The One is coming… he's coming! Finally I will get them… I'll get the minions that I have always longed for. Then, then this world will me mine! All mine!"
"Master, are you still watching that melodramatic movie?" a bored voice drawled from behind the small brown three-legged stool that his master was sitting on.
"Entier, what's wrong? Are they finally here? I thought that I told you only to disturb me when they all arrived," the second voice, the voice of the master, was hard and cruel. True, he was only sitting on a tiny stool, but he still managed to sit on it as though it was a throne. He was watching a tiny TV that was positioned only ten centimeters from his knees. The room was extremely small, and that was why everything was so small and cramped.
"Yes, they are here Master, but there is one problem. Three of them decided not to come, so only five of them are here Master," Entier's voice was that of a servant, polite and a little respectful. It was obvious, even if someone just looked at the pair, who was the master and who was the servant.
"Well, go after them then, before they can find their Digimon. You incompetent! You should have been already attacking them right now. NOW GO! And remember that one will do, but all of them will be better," Entier quickly left the room, bowing as he did so, and ran off to get his digimon.
"Now the fun and games will begin. Finally," the master whispered melodramatically before resuming his watch of the movie. He didn't care if his servant failed to gain all five of them, as long as he got a hold of one. At least one.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
"AGUMON, WHERE ARE YOU AGUMON?" Tai called across the wasted desert that the five digidestined had landed in, "GABUMON? BIYOMON? PATAMON? GATOMON? WHERE ARE YOU GUYS?" There was no reply.
"They told us that they would meet us here!" an exasperated Sora groaned, "How could they forget? They were the ones that arranged the meeting!" There wasn't even anything that remotely resembled any of their digimon on the horizon and they were beginning to get more than a little tired.
"Can we take a break Tai?" Kari asked her older brother, knowing that he would stop the group if she asked.
"Yeah, sure, I'm getting a little tired too," he immediately agreed, "But first we should set up some shade so that we don't get burnt." Matt opened the huge bag that he was carrying and took out a beach umbrella.
"Here, this should provide some shade."
"Where did you get all of this from?" T.K asked him, knowing that his older brother wouldn't have thought of bringing along a beach umbrella.
"Oh, yeah, Joe gave me some things when he dropped by to say that he was unable to come. The umbrella was one of them," Matt knelt down on the hot sand in front of him and dropped the bag carefully to the ground as Tai began to set up the umbrella.
"STOP right there!" they looked up to see a black Tyrannamon storm up beside them. They hadn't even noticed him approach until he was twenty metres away. Riding on the huge digimon's shoulder was a tall boy who looked to be the same age as Sora, Tai and Matt. He had serious blue-grey eyes and short, spiky dark brown hair. He was wearing a long white lab coat, making him look a lot like a scientist. The only thing missing was a pair of safety glasses.
"Good morning to you too," an already irritated Sora muttered under her breath, whilst pretending to adjust the umbrella.
"Why do we need to stop? We're not doing anything wrong are we?" Tai demanded to know, somehow knowing that something was wrong. First their digimon hadn't come and now they were being ordered around by a scientist.
"My Master has demanded your presence and so I must take you with me," his magnificent speech was marred by a box falling from Tyrannamon's back. Tai managed to get a glimpse of it and to his horror he recognised it from his dream the night before. It was the box that was going to cause pain and terror.
"The box… opens with a tap on the top… not a word," he suddenly had an idea.
"That box is word-activated isn't it? It opens with a special word. If one of us opens the box, what do you say that you let all of us go except for the one that opened it?" the boy considered the idea, remembering that he only needed to bring one of them back, if not all.
"Sure, that sounds like a good idea," he always loved a good bet.
"You have to hold the box in front of us though, so it will be able to hear what we say. I'll go last too," the boy-scientist readily agreed to these conditions, getting ready to take a cruel delight in watching them lose.
"Tai, what are you doing? His 'master' probably only wants to say hello or something like that. We have to stay together!" Matt hissed his blue eyes like daggers. If looks could kill Tai would have been dead, "What if Kari or T.K opens the box? Then what do we do?"
"You have to trust me Matt; I know what I'm doing. Look, once this creep is gone you have to take the others back through the gate to the Real World. Straight away, okay?" Matt was about to argue when he saw the serious look Tai was giving him.
"What do you mean? You're going to be with us."
"No, I'm not. Just do as I say, okay? Now we'd better stop talking," the boy-scientist made them form a line, with Tai last. Then he stood in front of Sora, holding the box out towards her.
"Open sesame?" Sora said a little tentatively, having absolutely no idea what to say. The lid of the box remained closed. The box moved along to the next person, which was T.K.
"Abra Kadabra?"
"I'm evil?" this came from Matt, but the box still remained closed. Kari was next.
"Please open little box?" even pleading didn't work. Now it was Tai's turn and the boy-scientist's smile was extremely cruel. He knew that you couldn't open the box with a word. But Tai didn't say anything. He put his hand into a fist and then hit the top of the box with his hand. The boy stared at him in astonishment as the top of the box lifted.
"Now you have to let the others go and I will accompany you back to this 'master' of yours," Tai felt a chill go down his back as he saw the instruments that lay in that box. The others couldn't see it because of the rim of the box, but Tai could see into it clearly.
"H-how did you know how to open it? You said it yourself that it was a voice activated box," the boy demanded to know, closing it quickly.
"Dreams can come true after all," Tai shrugged. Kari and the other digidestined were looking at him, concerned about what to do, "Matt, I already told you what to do, so go! You guys are set free because of the bet, so follow Matt."
"But Tai-"
"No buts. You are going and that is final," they didn't question him again. He had spoken with such strength in his voice that they knew that they would never win the argument. They turned around and walked away, looking back at Tai over their shoulders every few seconds.
"And now, you are going to come with me. Master has been looking forward to this in a long, long time."
End of Prologue
Litanya: Well, I hope that you enjoyed the prologue of my new fic. The first chapter should be up either tomorrow or some time before Thursday… but it might be a while between updates after that. Anyway, please drop a review and tell me, as kindly as possible, what you think of this fic so far!