The idea of this story is for a classic style of Digimon, so basically Digidestined travel to the Digital World and try to save it and so on – it's slightly more complex than that, but that's the general concept. To be clear on the background of this fic, this includes only the original eight Digidestined from Digimon Adventure; the Adventure 02 characters (with the obvious exceptions of T.K. and Kari) are not included in any way and nothing after the final episode of the original series occurred. Beyond this I'll provide no other story details, so you'll just need to read on and bear with me. This is intended to be the longest story I have written yet, so this could well go on for a long time. If you're willing to stick with me for however long this takes, then I hope I can give you something you'll enjoy reading.
Summers can be long times in our lives, but they also often go quicker than we would like. Some use it to rest. Others find time to catch up on what the other seasons have taken away from them. But all, in one way or another, for the longest or shortest of times, find just a little bit of adventure in the summer months. One person's adventure may be grand in their undertaking, epic in scope, while others may go unnoticed by all but the traveller, whose journeys may only take place within their own imagination. But there were never more than a select few, a mere handful that could say they had ventured beyond this world, much less having become heroes to beings most of humanity would never meet. That summer four years ago, for them more than anyone else, had truly been a time of adventure. It was recollections of this time, among many other cares and worries, which kept Tai Kamiya awake one warm July morning.
The sixteen year old sighed as he rolled to his side, his brown eyes itching with tiredness, and glanced at his digital alarm clock that shone a burning red through the darkness of his room. 3 A.M. Groaning, he rolled onto his back once again, running both hands through his thick and impossibly large head of chocolate brown hair. He had resisted droves of nagging from his mother to cut it back over the past couple of years, but even through his obstinance he could he could feel himself growing less and less fond of his hairstyle, which was described by many, quite literally, as more like a bush than a hairdo.
What the hell is going on, he asked himself, moving his hands down to mercifully rub his tired eyes while releasing an aching yawn that exemplified his fatigue. Sleep was not normally something he had any trouble achieving. Of all the people he knew, few were known to be able to drop off into a state of rough and dishevelled unconsciousness quite as fast and irretrievably as he could. Indeed, the family cat, Miko, had once caused an electronic birthday card to fall open right beside Tai's head, bleating out its high pitched well wishes at a level so shrill it instilled in the feline an enduring and rather comic loathing, resulting in it hissing menacingly at every card that subsequently entered the Kamiya household. Tai remembered that his parents had been woken up by it from the other side of the apartment and had come in to find him still sound asleep, none the wiser to what had happened.
This night, however, was the first since that summer four years before where he could not bring himself to fall asleep. Unlike all those years ago, however, he was not in another world entirely, fighting monsters with his now closest friends. There were eight of them, named by prophecy as the Digidestined, who travelled for the most part inadvertently to another dimension they came to know as the Digital World, composed of and inhabited by beings constructed by data, which as best they could tell was a shadow version of their own world. Seven of them had been sucked into that realm from the summer camp they had attended together and each had met one of the creatures from this unfamiliar world, called digital monsters or digimon for short, who had become their partners in the battles and quests they were to undertake. Their eighth member had been Tai's own little sister, Kari, who had joined them later when they had returned to Earth to thwart an invasion by one of their most deadly adversaries, the vampiric digimon, Myotismon.
Tai frowned as he recalled these times, which had returned to him with a unique and haunting sharpness despite his weary state. His own partner, a small orange dinosaur named Agumon, reminiscent of a miniature Tyrannosaurus, had become perhaps his best friend in the months they had spent together, never really spending any time apart. Tai's own courage and life force had been used to allow the small digimon to evolve temporarily, in a process called digivolution, to higher levels of great and destructive power in order to defeat the enemies that threatened them as well as the safety of both the Digital World and their own dimension, which they referred to variably as the Real World or simply as Earth. Tai had not seen Agumon since that summer. After they had defeated their ultimate adversary, the deranged and relentless engine of destruction called Apocalymon, the gateway between both worlds was sealed, the digimon and humans returning permanently to their respective homes for good. The brown haired teenager had once said that the day must eventually come when the Digidestined and their friends and partners would be reunited; four years later he doubted those words.
These memories of adventures past were not all that kept him from finally entering a world of dreams, however; the life of a teenager was not quite so simple. Indeed, his home of Odaiba, Japan, had entered a new summer season, with school having only the week before released its students, mercifully, from the drudgery of study for what was hoped to be a holiday which would not end before they had had their fill of fun and rest. Traditionally, Tai had no trouble filling his time during the long summer breaks. Being the athletic type, with a lean muscled frame to match, he had always devoted his greatest attention to sports, which he played non-stop whether competitive or casual. His great love, soccer, was the pursuit which consumed the vast majority of his free time. A rising star to be sure, his tanned skin, lightening agility and deadly accurate kick were all testaments to the countless hours he spent outside on the pitch. The mere thought of the weeks of freedom before him sent a buzz through his body and an explosion of nerves in his brain, heralding the mass enjoyment he saw on the horizon. Sadly, these waking dreams of leisure only brought forward matching feelings of gloom as he lay there staring pensively into the darkness surrounding him.
The life he led after returning from his digital adventure was such that it was difficult to imagine the world as being any different to what he knew best. Change had not been a kind influence, as it was now encroaching on that with which he defined himself. The proficiency of youth, one was quick to discover, can prove illusory and exaggerated in the segregation of the talented from each other. The best in little league would often encounter struggles as they moved up, facing competition unknown to them in their sealed off worlds of childish ignorance.
In recent months, Tai had experienced just this. As he had moved up in leagues, he found those against which he had to play, and even certain teammates, outclassed the kids he used to run circles around and had given him a rude awakening from his unenlightened hubris. For years he had seen an uncontested professional career ahead of him in the sport, but now the more he played and the more rivals he discovered, the less he allowed himself to believe in those dreams. Like a parasite the doubt had gnawed away inside him for weeks and months, sapping the shining optimism he held at his core. It was infuriating to acknowledge limits you could not see before, something that still flushed his mind with frustration at the mere thought of it, that moment being no exception.
Unconsciously, the teen threw his right arm out to his bedside table, groping around over the scratched wooden surface and over the alarm clock in search of something. Finally finding the cool square of metal he was after, he grabbed a hold and retracted the arm, bringing the object above him and before his upturned eyes. The picture frame was old but, unlike most of Tai's property, was well cared for with barely a blemish along its steel coloured edges and without a single smudge on its glass face.
Staring back at him in the darkness he found a younger version of himself, thirteen or fourteen perhaps, but it was not the wild haired, grass stained, red faced boy in his soccer jersey that drew his attention. Instead it was the similarly dressed, but perhaps even more dishevelled girl that stood beside his younger self that held his gaze. With crimson eyes, orange-red hair and a smile of pure and unmitigated glee, Sora Takenouchi stood before the camera, arm in arm with her best friend of the time following one of the many memorable victories the pair had experienced on the field; if Tai remembered correctly, they had won the game that preceded the picture nine-nil.
His best friend then, and he hoped still, had been the one person Tai had ever felt comfortable accepting as an athletic rival, which she had even once, after some sweet talking, managed to get him to admit. Far more than an athlete, however, she was a fellow Digidestined who he had known since preschool. While initially not on the best terms, which may have had something to do with an incident involving a severe bout of nausea and her hat, by the time they entered the Digital World they were fast friends who had bonded over their mutual love of soccer. If only that common ground still existed between them, he mused sombrely as he continued to stare at the years old image of her. They were still good friends, but life had a way of getting between them.
It had all, in fact, started with the Digital World. Sora's originally rocky relationship with her mother had started on the road to recovery during that very summer. If not for the trials they had gone through, fighting and evolving as they went, such improvement might not have been possible. While Tai was happy for her, the unfortunate catch was a shift in the girl's lifestyle, away from her passions of old. Where once she had played soccer with him in the junior mixed leagues, backing each other up in a coordinated striker partnership, Sora had since found another pursuit with her mother's growing presence in her life. It turned out that both of Sora's parents had been keen tennis players in their youth, and apparently it was on the court that the two first met. At first it had been a bonding exercise for the girl and her parents, but she had quickly taken to the game, leaving soccer permanently for it now just over a year ago. Tai had needed to switch to an all male league for his hoped for career anyway, but the lack of the familiar blur of orange as she darted around the field with him was a loss he still harboured painfully in his heart.
It was not only a shift in sport that weighed on their relationship. School was demanding more and more of their time as they advanced in years and, like the road they walked had confronted them with a fork, they had chosen vastly different subjects which left them with no shared classes. Her interest in the humanities was far removed from his preference for, although far from love of, the sciences. As a sardonic sidenote, he thought that if only they had nothing to do with mathematics he might actually like the subjects, and achieve admirable marks for that matter. Regardless, the vicissitudes of life had drawn the two apart somewhat. Where once they had spent time with each other every day, it was now more like every other day.
In truth this divergence had been happening slowly for years, ever since they returned from the Digital World four years before. It was only now, however, that it was obvious. Finally replacing the photo frame on his bedside table, Tai wondered bitterly whether or not things could have been different. Would this growing gap between them be so great if he had been smart enough to see all of this coming, he pondered as he rhythmically clenched and relaxed his right fist, the crack of knuckles and the friction of his skin against itself the only sounds to break the silence of his dark abode. Like every time he started down this path of hypotheticals, however, the only conclusions he reached were indictments of his own thoughtlessness. Now that the rift had widened he drew nothing but blanks on how to fix it. He only hoped that she felt the same squeezing of her heart, the same tension in her gut that he felt during the gradually lengthening periods in which they did not see each other. Though, given the cheer and light-heartedness she was prone to exuding, he very much doubted that.
As these thoughts of sullenness and self-deprecation compiled, Tai's breathing deepened. Soon the faint sounds of his hand clenching were drowned out by the aggressive drawing and expelling of air through his nose as the blood rushed to his head in a fleeting flush of anger and resentment. Spontaneously he brought his hands quickly to his head and ruffled his hair violently, as if trying to shake his skull clean of the plague on his psyche, only coming to a stop when his arms began to tire. Panting, Tai sat up in bed. His eyes still itched as they had before, but no longer did he feel weary. Standing up, he mentally declared that he was thirsty, quashing the train of thought that had progressively tortured him all morning.
His mind reassigned its concentrations to ensuring he made as little noise as possible as he tiptoed carefully out of his room to the kitchen, just down the hall. His reward for such caution was a full glass of chilled water which slicked and cooled his throat, cleansing his mind momentarily as it focused on the quenching of his thirst. It was only as the cold water settled in his stomach and radiated its iciness throughout his body that it occurred to him how warm the inside of the apartment was. Wiping the back of his wrist across his forehead, Tai found he had broken a sweat without realising it in the modest heat of a mid-summer morning.
Placing his emptied glass gingerly in the sink, making only the smallest of noises, he leaned heavily upon the kitchen counter, looking through the adjoined living area and out the glass door that led to the balcony. The stars outside flickered like distant lanterns in a cloudless black sky with the moon nowhere to be seen, no doubt shining on the other side of the building at that hour. Tai's eyes had been adjusted to the darkness for hours, yet the grey and shadow that coloured the apartment interior was no less inviting. Reluctantly, and with a sigh, he shuffled into the living area and seated himself lankly on the soft, but aged couch. There was little chance he would be falling asleep in his own bed that night.
As he sat in silence, Tai would periodically rap himself gently on the skull with his middle three knuckles, trying to drive away a resurgence of his prior obsessions. After the passing of a quarter of an hour, he laid his head back over the top of the couch, his neck arching to curve around its apex. Would nothing grant him the mercy of sleep that morning, he softly asked of no one in particular with his deep yet still boyish voice. He was to answer his own question with what he next caught sight of.
From his inverted viewpoint he could see, out from under the door to the spare room, a faint flicker of bluish white light which advanced and retreated in an erratic stutter. Swivelling so that he was right side up and kneeling on the couch, Tai peered with a now overriding curiosity at the sputtering luminosity, unsure at first of what to make of it. His mind, however, soon settled on the conclusion that the family computer must have been on. With a groan he laid his head down against the thin, coarse fabric of the back of the couch. Kari must still have been up.
"Damn it sis, not again." he groaned lowly, his voice barely rising above a whisper.
He slid backwards from his crouching position onto his feet and, careful to avoid making noise, he slinked over towards the door to the spare room. Tai's sister, Kari, three years his junior, was known to his and her friends, though thankfully not their parents, for staying up at all hours on the computer whenever she had nothing on the following day. Since she had been granted her own room a little under a year ago her habits had largely ceased to rise to his attention. Said room had once been intended to house guests, but as no one who actually needed their own room had stayed at the Kamiya's in years it was decided that Kari might as well have it. Still, Tai could remember the long nights when they had still shared what was now solely his bedroom, where he would quietly nag her to get off the internet and go to sleep on the bottom of their old bunk bed, as he refused to leave the young girl awake without his supervision. Tai had since moved from the top to the bottom, but he would sometimes return to his old mattress if for no other reason than to see if it still felt the same.
Kari had since been granted greater freedom by their parents and, somewhat begrudgingly, by Tai himself, a freedom she was keen to argue for whenever she felt her older brother was being too pushy. Having separate bedrooms had proven an excellent way of keeping him out of her business, and Tai had a sneaking suspicion that was what their parents intended when they made that decision. Nevertheless, while he accepted her desire for more leeway, this early in the morning was pushing it.
He came to a stop just outside the door. If he had to guess, Tai would have said, with great confidence, that Kari would have been using the computer to chat online with her best friend, T.K. The blond kid was also a Digidestined and had been the only other person his sister's age on their adventure. Needless to say, they became fast friends and had remained in constant contact ever since, even before the boy had moved to Odaiba from across the bay. The dedication of the two was impressive, Tai mused; most others would not have had the drive to stay so close. As a bitter afterthought, he could not help but think of his own track record of keeping up with friends, an unpleasant comparison to make for sure.
Knowing that the door creaked, Tai slowly but surely pushed the door open, his hand so steady on the doorknob it was like he thought the smallest twitch might cause a crash and wake the entire apartment complex. After a few painful seconds, with the gap wide enough, Tai poked his head through the doorway and into the room, his disapproving big brother voice at the ready.
"Kari, c'mon it's after three-" he began to say but stopped short when he caught sight of who it really was in the spare room.
It was indeed the computer that had been shining the flickering light under the door, and its brightness illuminated the walls of the otherwise pitch black room. It created an eerie, light grey resonance upon the room, revealing everything but the colour of the objects inside. There was an overt insipidness to everything but the figure that stood facing his no doubt stunned face.
"Hello Tai," the person said, "it's been quite some time since I last saw you."
If the teenager could have seen himself, he would have seen his eyes bulge and his mouth hang open. Out of shock, he retracted his head a few inches, only to bang his chin against the door with a dull thud. Biting his tongue, he resisted the urge to swear as the momentary throbs of pain were felt along his lower jaw. This trauma was quickly forgotten, however, as Tai's attention returned swiftly to the uninvited, though not unwelcome, house guest.
"Gennai!?" Tai whispered loudly, entering the spare room fully while switching on the light and closing the door behind him, "What… I don't… How did… What!?"
The little old man merely smiled back at him as he spluttered out what words he could manage, or at least he thought it was a smile as the man's long, bushy white moustache mostly covered his lips.
Gennai was an old friend of the Digidestined's from their days in the Digital World, and had been a guide and advisor of sorts. He was human in appearance, but he was a denizen of the other world. Whether or not he was a digimon or something else entirely was a matter of which they had never really been sure of. His appearance was that of a short, elderly man; shorter than Tai was even at age twelve. He wore a coat of sorts, coloured midnight blue with a soft red outline and covers on his shoulders. Holding the coat closed was a thick brown belt, along with straps of the same colour which connected to the red pads that covered his shoulders. The only hair on his head was a blank, aged white, the same as his moustache, and was tied in a ponytail that emanated from the crown of his skull. Tai had never thought he would see those features again, especially since the closing of the gate between the two worlds four years ago which had cut Gennai of from them, but there he was standing in front of him. What did that say about the connection between Earth and the Digital World, he wondered.
"Gennai, it's great to see you after all these years and everything, but…" Tai exasperatedly tried to articulate himself, trying not to be rude, but Gennai had long guessed what he would say.
"But, what am I doing inside your home at three-thirty in the morning, and how did I get here?" the old man finished Tai's sentence for him. The teenager simply nodded, holding his mouth firmly shut, not wanting to miss what he was about to be told.
The warm smile that Gennai had worn only moments before was now gone, and it was only now that Tai noticed some of the differences from the digital being of old. Gennai was a visibly wrinkled person, as Tai had remembered him, but even with that in mind the digital man looked like he had aged even further since they had last seen each other. Gennai had always had a slightly hunched posture, but now the curvature of his upper back and neck looked more like the result of weariness. His fair skin had lost some of what little colour it had had to begin with. His arms hung limply by his sides and his knees were noticeably bent, putting him into a sort of half crouching position, as though he was having trouble supporting himself while standing. This was a changed being from the Gennai that he had known.
"I won't try to dress this up nicely for you, Tai." he said to the young Digidestined, his voice now much heavier than when he had greeted the teenager, "The Digital World requires your aid once again. As to the how, your computer here was my portal."
They were needed. Tai had not anticipated that, but as he thought about it he wondered what else he had really expected to hear. Breaking through that first threshold of thought, he felt a flood of feelings, but also questions, rush within his mind. His first flash was of Agumon and of the years he had waited for the opportunity to see him again, but this was quickly overtaken with an underlying foreboding by the unknown content of Gennai's proposed mission. The old man had not even said what it was that necessitated the Digidestined's assistance. If it were anything like their original trials, danger would be a key ingredient.
Tai's mind could not dwell on these fears, however, as they were quickly displaced, as they themselves had overtaken other concerns, by thoughts of his fellow chosen children; chosen teenagers by this stage, for the sake of accuracy. The Kamiya boy could only half remember the last time all eight of them were together, some two or three months ago. Forgetting momentarily the perils they would be sure to face, the thought of them working together again as a team, as they had in the old days, was an idea that lifted his spirits in the deadened glow of the room. There was one other intruding thought that forced its way into his purview of recognition, however.
"Wait, so you can come to our world through computers? Why haven't you been able to do it before?" he questioned, his voice a little higher than he had intended. Tai did not want to think it of his old acquaintance, but that first contact between the worlds in four years should coincide with a moment of need for one of the other seemed a little convenient. For his part, Gennai maintained his expression, not faltering in the slightest. Taking a deep breath, he started what Tai hoped was an explanation.
"It's something I've been working on for some time. It's difficult to explain." he uttered evenly, without any sign of either guilt or offence, "Put simply, our world is comprised of data, and it seemed to me as though Earth's computers, being able store and transfer data, could be the key to allowing passage between here and the Digital World."
Tai just stood there, his head heavy with what he had been told. He understood little of how everything fit together, though the basic concept was simple enough. That did not answer his question entirely, though, but Gennai seemed to be aware of that as he opened his mouth to continue.
"If I'm perfectly honest with you, I had not devoted my strongest efforts to developing the gateway. But, with my world as it is now, as you say here on Earth, desperation breeds innovation."
Desperation? Just how bad had the Digital World become in their absence? Tai was satisfied, at least for the time being, by what Gennai had told him. Now the elephant in the room had regained his attention.
"The details are perhaps better shared with all of your comrades together, but suffice it to say that the Digital World is experiencing a war of sorts." Gennai revealed dimly, causing Tai's ears to prick up.
"A war? Like the time we fought against Myotismon or the Dark Masters?" the Digidestined enquired, unsure of what to make of it all.
"Not exactly." was Gennai's simple reply.
A raised eyebrow was all that Tai could manage, but the old man had seen his expression and seemed to be unwilling to speak more on the matter. Details would apparently have to wait until the entire team was back together. That presented its own problems, however. As if anticipating the issue, Gennai offered a query.
"Will there be any problems assembling everyone?"
For the most part they were fine, Tai thought, but the absence of just one from the country was enough to inspire frustration. One of the eight, Mimi Tachikawa, was the daughter of a rather eccentric couple, to say the least, which was attended by the fact that her father's job had turned the family into globetrotters of sorts. They had spent much of the past four years overseas including three different US states, Singapore and, currently, Berlin in Germany. The only times they ever saw Mimi anymore were during her brief, often week long visits back to Odaiba every year or so. How exactly this was going to work was more than Tai wanted to deal with at that hour, though.
"Mostly it should be OK, but Mimi's not even in Japan at the moment. She's on the other side of the world right now." Tai informed Gennai, his head starting to fill with a familiar stress.
"Can you contact her?" the digital man asked flatly, obviously not perturbed by such information.
"Well, sure…" Tai replied blankly.
"Then it all should be fine." Gennai said somewhat brightly, "But that is something that is best left for morning, I'm sure."
Tai made to argue but a feeling of heaviness was slowly creeping over him and he found himself agreeing with the suggestion to leave things be until a more natural light illuminated the apartment. But before he allowed himself to be taken away by this feeling there was one final remaining question.
"Er, Gennai, what are you going to do in the meantime?" he asked, holding a yawn at bay at the base of his throat.
"Do you have a spare bed by any chance? It would be best for me to remain in your world until you Digidestined are able to follow me back." the old man stated simply.
Tai let out a small grunt and he turned slowly to face the door out into the main apartment. Providing accommodation had not been something he had had in mind.
"Follow me. You can have the bottom bunk of my bed." he offered, but not without some annoyance, "Just turn off the computer first."
The last thing he needed was for his parents to walk in and find some stranger in their son's room. The fact that they had never personally met Gennai was not lost on the Kamiya boy. Still, there was a higher duty enlivened now, so there was little choice in the matter.
As the flickering light of the computer died, Tai led Gennai back to his room and, his tiredness now suddenly growing at a faster rate, directed him to the bottom bunk where he had been trying to sleep not long before. He could hardly expect the old man to climb the ladder on the bunk bed, digital being or not, and maybe a change in mattress would be a good thing.
With his now surprisingly quiet guest below him, Tai lay his head back against the cool pillow, staring up at the ceiling, now a little under a metre from his face. Although he knew so little, the enormity of what now faced him stretched out in his mind. His head was heavy with the memories of old, both the dangers and the triumphs, as well as the virtual unknowns of the future. For some reason, however, sleep was to be the victor this time in his mental struggle. After restless hours his eyes finally closed in a merciful embrace of unconsciousness. His parting thought with the waking world for that night was a simple pair of questions. How much had changed and what, if anything, had stayed the same?