NOTE: There is some Christian content…not much, but some.
Chapter 1:
Weird, scary circumstances let the cream rise to the top when it comes to judging people's character: it is in the face of adversity that people show whether they are really quitters, cowards, decisive, intelligent, fast, slow, or sheep.
The Little Teenaged Geek (not that he would know anything)
Even though she hadn't touched the water yet, Tina was soaking wet from sweat. And even though none of her teammates thought it was hot outside, she thought it was blistering. A lot of the excess warmth that filled her was escaping out her head, thanks to the fact that she had shaved her head for this occasion. But she still felt far too warm. She was dying to dive into that Olympic pool and cool off, but she had to wait until the starting pistol fired. BANG! She dove into the water and was like a torpedo, shooting across the surface with speed that would've surprised even her, had she been paying attention to her distance from the other athletes. BAM! She hit her head on the wall of the pool. I'm at the other side so soon? Wow, time sure flies, she thought to herself. She shot back the other way and began the rest of her laps. She felt a little pain from the bump she had received, but it didn't seem to be a problem. Finally, she was on her last lap. She sprinted the last part with everything she had. She didn't even stop to take a breath, and wasn't very out of breath by the time she was done. But there was a problem: BAM! She hit her head on the wall again. In her now fuzzy mind, she wondered, So…how did I do?
But…oh! She had a splitting headache from hitting her head on the pool wall twice! The pain was a little disorienting. Trying to hang on to the side of the pool, she asked her coach, "So how did I…do…? . . . . . . . ." She fell back down into the water and went unconscious.
"Tina! TINA!" The coach yelled.
Another athlete pulled Tina out of the water. "Get an emergency med team over here!" There was a little blood coming out of the wound, and Tina wasn't breathing. The coach checked her pulse…her heart was still beating. The coach began giving her mouth-to-mouth, but it wasn't doing any good…but, then again, Tina's face wasn't getting blue or purple from lack of oxygen. It was a full seven minutes before she was breathing again, and she had just begun to turn purple by that time.
Her family was hysterical. A team of digimon guards had to hold her parents back so that the EM team would have room to work. Finally, they took Tina to the hospital in an ambulance. Her parents were wondering which one of them should go with her. "Yolei, you look as white as a sheet---I think it would destroy you to go."
"Honey, I can't stay here and wonder. I'd rather know for a fact that my daughter is dead than be left here wondering."
"Yolei…"
"She's right," Hawkmon insisted. "If Tina dies, then she'll be devastated either way. If she's with her when she goes, it'll be better once she's over it."
Ken thought it over.
"Honey, we need to decide now."
After a second's hesitation, Ken answered, "Go." Breathing heavily and allowing the stress lines in his forehead to show, he looked up. "God, did I do the right thing? Oh, please don't let Tina die!"
"Are we so certain?"
"Yes. We can say so for a fact."
It was easy to tell how stressed and incredulous the chief was, but he had to admit that the evidence at hand was very persuasive. "Is there any way to stop them without breaking the accord ourselves?"
"I am uncertain, sir. We have all our best political notaries on the task of finding a way to legally circumvent them. I will inform you as soon as they find an answer."
Tina came to with a bandage on her head. She felt absolutely fine, but couldn't figure out why she was in a hospital bed. She looked to her left, and saw her mother. "Mom, what's going on here?"
"TINA!" Yolei dragged her daughter halfway out of the bed and into her arms.
"Mom? …I'm still waiting for an answer to my question!"
"We thought you were going to die!"
"From what? A little bump on my head?"
"You stopped breathing!"
"I did what? …Well…that was careless of me."
A doctor suddenly walked in. Seeing that Tina was awake, he said, "It's nothing short of a miracle, Mrs. Ichijouji. But she was the right girl in the right place."
"What do you mean?"
"Her blood test came back."
"And?"
"Her hemoglobin levels are five times higher than normal."
"What…does that mean?"
"It means that her blood is different from ours: it can carry five times more oxygen than normal blood can. That's how she was able to live without breathing for seven minutes. Normal people wouldn't be able to make it more than six."
"You're saying I'm a mutant?" Tina asked. "That my blood is weird?"
"That sums it up, miss. And your blood helped you heal from your concussion. I'd say that we'd be able to release you by the end of today. Here's your paperwork, Mrs. Ichijouji. Excuse me."
Tina's head spun, but it didn't spin because she'd hit it a few days ago. "I am a mutant?"
Yolei was speechless. "Excuse me…I have to tell your father and the digimon." She hustled out of the room.
Tina rubbed her temples. What was she doing in a hospital? She felt fine, other than a little stressed! Considering that an Olympic athlete had nearly bought the farm (or so her mother had told her), she wondered if this wasn't one of the top stories heading the news. She switched on a television set and read the crawlers that translated the French into English for her to read. "The panel of judges moved unanimously to award Tina Ichijouji the gold for swimming, post-mortem if necessary. This is the first medal of any kind that an athlete from the United States has won in twelve years. We have yet to hear about her condition; medics are declining to comment. She is currently in Central Hospital---"
Wow! Tina thought to herself. I didn't know I was that good! She was left with a great deal of curiosity and a lot to think about.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
Thus begins the first chapter of the first volume of a really long, really big series. I think that this might just be the biggest fanfic ever written, period. For MON: 2028, I had to make up more than one new set of creatures and I made a new language, to boot. It'll probably be into the second volume before you get to see any of the language at all. It's a weird language, too: there's direct object-verb agreement and indirect object-verb agreement---sort of. You'll have to see the text file on the language yourself to understand what I mean.
So…you like how I started the chapter with a little nugget of wisdom? I plan on having one of those at the beginning of each chapter. I got the idea from the television show Starship Andromeda. They started every show with a quote, too. In volume two, there are no quotes; I return to the system in Endgame where each chapter has its own subtitle. I do the same thing in volume three, too.
