Jokess-So this idea has been in my head awhile and I decided I want to see if it goes anywhere. If it does, I'll probably hold off on my other story to do this. If this story doesn't go anywhere, I'll work on my other story. Also, the ideas in this chapter may seem familiar to some. So I'll say now I do not own digimon or the other series I used for this idea. I'm getting no monetary gain, only writing ability.
The cell stank of rotten food, sickness, urine, shit and dirt. The stench was everywhere, in every piece of grubby, worn down furniture and in every molecule of stale air. Had the slit that passed as a window not been open to the outside world, she would have suffocated long ago.
As it were, being alive didn't feel all to great. Had she had the means she would have killed herself long ago. Of course, they had made that impossible. The only ones who would, or could, kill her were her captors.
After three weeks of living, no, surviving, in the wretched cell she had been locked in Rachel Harriet Jones was sure her time was up. The cell she was in now had, had residents in the past, and at least one of them had marked their time surviving before being taken away. The tally scratched on the wall had added to just under four weeks, and that time had been accounted for in the past. Now, her captors moved faster as they neared her goal.
With a resigned sigh, Rachel flopped to the hard ground, bruising her bum and possibly dirtying her outfit more. She wasn't sure, as her outfit had turned a greasy, smelly dark brown a week ago, if it was capable of getting dirtier.
"Well guess I won't be seeing you anymore…well, hearing from you anyway." Rachel croaked, voice tiny and rough with disuse. As she spoke, she turned to the far wall and lifted her right hand to the wall. "It was nice speaking with you Greggy."
From the other side of the wall, 'Greggy' spoke, his voice as strong as Rachel's was weak. "Two things Rachel. First don't call me Greggy, second, don't you dare speak like that. This is no time to give up. You may not know a way to escape now, but you'll find it."
"In death maybe." Rachel replied. "Of course, if the rumors are true they may not even give me that."
"Those ENIAC bastards haven't taken you yet, stop acting like they have."
"What other choice is there? I've been here for three weeks, and we both know that's about how long they leave us here before they experiment."
"Hope is always the other choice." Greg said forcefully. "Just believing it might exist means it does exist in some form."
"Yeah, for you Greggy, not for me. I'm done."
"But why the hell why? Not long ago you were hell bent on getting revenge on those bastards. You had life, hope, spirit. Fuck, you even had the balls to ask for hair dye because the pink had faded from your hair. I say that's pretty impressive, especially for a girl."
"They castrated me." Rachel replied dead pan, leaving only silence.
"They cut my balls off Greggy." Rachel said with a resigned sigh. "Really, how illiterate are you?"
"Um…that depends on what illiterate means. I'm sure you told me at one point, but I've never been a good learner."
"Illiterate, no or little ability to read or write."
"I can read and write!" Greg replied hotly. "Just because Missimon is an in-training doesn't mean I'm an idiot, as you should know."
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Popomon is a baby level digimon and because of that society deems us pathetic weaklings who only deserve to live so that those who are better than us have some sort of comparison to see just how good they look. That of course means that we don't get anything like school or learning and shouldn't be able to do more than count to ten. So, yes, I should know not everyone with a baby or in-training level digimon is an idiot. Of course, I also know that I'm an exception to that idea. Most people are lucky to get to five, much less ten."
"Guess a hundred is pretty good than." Greg said, a proud smile on his face.
"If your parents hadn't had rookie level digimon you wouldn't have made it to ten either."
"Fuck you Rachel. You can be a real bitch sometimes. You know as well as I do they wrote me off as soon as Missimon settled into that form."
"Yes, I know. You told me multiple times using language that could make a deaf man blush. Still, the point holds firm. You can't count past a hundred and you had thirteen years to learn."
"Well that isn't my fault. The digimon my parents had were so weak. They never once digivlolved to champion. They might as well have had in-training digimon."
"Yeah, I heard that line too Greg, and again in language that could make a deaf man blush."
"Fuck off, I was only trying to help and have hope for you Rachel. You didn't have to be such a bitch."
"I didn't have to be, but I wanted to be. Think of it as my last supper except in a slightly different form."
Frowning in his cell, Greg said nothing and instead, with all his strength, kicked the wall separating him and Rachel.
Hearing the thud and some colorful curses, Rachel smirked. "I believe three broken toes in one kick would be a record for you Greg. The last few times you barely managed two."
"How do you always know I kicked this damn wall Rachel?"
When no answer came, Greg was about to ask again when he heard Rachel scream. As the scream of terror filled the air and rose higher and higher in pitch and volume, Greg kicked and punched at the wall. "Damn it Rachel, if you're playing with me it isn't funny."
As he spoke, the screaming stopped, surprising Greg to falling back from the wall. "Rachel?" he asked, barely aware that his fists were bleeding badly or that at least one finger and two knuckles broken.
"Ray?" he asked again after a moment of silence. Pushing himself to his feet now, Greg had barely taken another step when something pulled at his arm and dragged him toward the back of his cell. Starting to scream himself now, the pulling wasn't painful, but it was horrifying. To him it felt like he was reliving every nightmare and bad time he had except that they were all mashed together making them into one hell that had no escape.
As the something tugged at Greg's body, the air out from his lungs was forcefully pulled out and turned into a high pitch scream of terror. Just before blacking out, Greg thought that he now understood why Rachel had screamed before. She hadn't had a choice in the matter.
The first thing Greg became aware of was hot breathing on his face. After that, he realized something very heavy was laying on his stomach and making it very hard to breath. Opening one eye, he quickly closed it again when bright light flooded his vision.
"Aw, I'm not that ugly am I?" a familiar voice, Rachel's asked as she leaned down on Greg, cutting off any last hope for him breathing.
Not able to speak, much less breathe, Greg shook his head widely mouth open in a comical fish shape.
"Charades huh?" Rachel asked a hint of mischief in her voice. "Awesome! I rule at charades! In fact I already know the answer! You're Marlin from Finding Nemo, right? What other choice is there?! The whole fish out of water look totally gives you away. Now it's my turn! Or should I say it's mine, mine, mine?
By now Greg had turned slightly blue from the lack of oxygen and was barely conscious so unable to answer. "You should get off him now, before he passes out and dies." Missimon said looking at Rachel without emotion before turning to his partner and looking concerned.
"Aww, but that would be no fun." Rachel said, getting off Greg despite her words. "Still, I suppose I can't kill him yet, it'd be rather embarrassing to kill him when I was trying to save his life."
Turning to Greg to make sure he was recovering okay, Rachel smirked and turned to her digimon, Popomon. "Can you tell me anything about where we are and why? It's no place I ever saw outside that prison and this is obviously not that prison either. Since Greg is here I doubt this is heaven, he'd go straight to hell. Of course this can't be hell either, it isn't hot enough, not to mention I'm enjoying myself way too much for this to be hell."
Popomon shook his head in answer. "I don't know what this place is called, but it feels right somehow."
"Ah." Rachel said. "If that is the case than maybe this place is the place those ENIAC bastards were trying to reach. I never heard if they had a name for the place they were searching for, but I did here rumors about why they were searching for the place, or really this place."
"What rumors would those be?" Missimon and Popomon asked in unison
"I heard they believed you digimon didn't come from our world, but a different world and that the world you came from could be reached. If that is so, I can only assume that they thought they could reach this world through breaking the bond between digimon and person."
"That sounds crazy to me." said Missimon. "Another world we digimon come from? It's not possible. Ask any digimon and they'll say they KNOW they were born when their human partner was born. Besides, if there really was a world that we digimon came from, why would we be born in the world we were born in?
Thinking the questions over, Rachel shrugged and shook her head. "No idea, but we should find out. Whatever the truth is, our world needs to know it. Think about it. The world we comes from knows nothing about how you digimon work. We can't say why digimon settle and can't digivolve freely. We don't know why people only have digimon partners. Heck, we don't even know why we call you all digimon in the first place. That is, we do have history books and records, but they don't tell us why, just is."
Before anyone could think of a reply to that, Greg grunted nasally. Turning toward him, everyone could see as he pushed himself up to his feet. "What the hell were you thinking? I couldn't breathe you know."
"I know." Rachel said joyfully. "That's why I did it.""Bitch. I thought we were friends."
"We are, I'm of the mind that friends tease each other. You know, friendly elbows to the side, a stage slap to the face. It's all in good fun."
"Not to me. For all I knew, you could have been those ENIAC bastards trying to kill me."
"Well, that just proves you know nothing. All you had to do was use your nose or eyes. Any idiot would have known who I was. Being in a prison cell with no bathroom, clean clothes, dirt and the smell of rotting food is a dead give away to who I am, and who you are for that matter."
"I didn't have much time to notice things like that. The first thing I noticed was something fat on top of me and because of that I couldn't breathe well."
"I am not fat!" Rachel half shouted before stepping hard on Greg's toes. "Now you take that back before I go for about two feet higher."
Not getting an answer, Rachel glared coldly at Greg only to realize he was openly staring at her. "What? Do I have rotten gruel in my teeth?"
Greg shook his head. "N-no. I just realized this is the first time I've ever seen you. Before I only ever heard your voice and knew that you had dyed your hair pink."
"Oh, so what do you think?" Rachel asked as she twirled once around.
"That you need a bath and clean clothes because I can't even tell what color your skin and hair is supposed to be."
"You're not any better Greggy. You were in that cell a week less than I was and you look like you were living in the sewers for a year, not in a cell for two weeks."
"You two are okay though, right?" Greg asked turning to Missimon and Popomon, who nodded. While the two digimon were rather dirty and Popomon's fur looked like one giant matted knot, they were much better off than their human partners.
"I guess those bastards from ENIAC thought you'd die easier than us because they took more caution with keeping you alive." said Rachel. "That is good since that means they underestimated you and didn't realize you've been through a lot more shit than we have."
"How is that good?" Greg asked
"Well, if ENIAC underestimates us and is overconfident, that means that they have a significant weakness. By being so unimportant and seemingly weak to them, ENIAC would never think we could do anything. This means we can do something."
Sighing, Greg shook his head. "You girls are too complicated. I thought you wanted to give up."
"That was when we had no hope. We were trapped without our only source for defense and stuck in the enemy's head quarters. We may not know where we are now, but we aren't trapped in prison without any means to defend ourselves, so I have hope."
Smiling, Greg said, "Good, because you being hopeless is rather pathetic and annoying."
Just as Rachel was sticking her tongue out at Greg, two bright lights were forming about five feet in the air. Noticing the lights, both Greg and Rachel turned towards them. As they looked on, the two lights solidified into objects and darkened and than slowly fell through the air.
"Freaky." Rachel whispered as the object, which was about six inches high, three wide and about a quarter inch thick, nearest her hovered at her hand. "And very cool."
Taking hold of the object, Rachel looked at it closely noting that it looked like a high-tech, neon-green cell phone. Not only were the shapes similar, rectangular to be precise, but the buttons on the bottom half of the object were similar. Like a cell phone, the object had nine buttons. However, these buttons didn't have numbers or letters on them. Instead, they each had a hieroglyphic like symbol etched on them. The top half, also like a cell phone, was a color screen which was turned on. At present the screen was presenting the word 'Idling' in large black letters.
Flipping the object over, Rachel shook her head in surprise. The side she was looking at now was one giant screen which was showing her a picture of her face. "Like a video camera." She muttered as she noticed what must have been the camera on the upper right side of the object.
"What do you think they are?" Rachel asked as she turned to Greg.
Greg shrugged as he looked at his own object which was exactly like Rachel's except in color. Rather than neon green, Greg's object was a dark red and white. "I don't know what they are, but I'm pretty sure we'll need them."
"Why do you say that?" Rachel asked curiously.
"Because it's telling me something?"Before Rachel could ask what Greg meant, she heard her object beep and then begin to speak. "Welcome to the digital world digidestines. The object you now hold in your hand is a gift from me and is called a Digi-capture, D-capture for short. It is your digivice, a device that will enable you to surpass the limits your world has set on you. Please use your D-capture wisely. Surpassing your limits is of the utmost importance and will decide the fate of this world and your own world. If you are unable to surpass your limits the enemy named ENIAC will either rule everything or destroy everything in trying. The fate of the worlds is up to you, so remember; you control your own destinies, you decide your own fate, no one, not even a world of people, can change that." The message over, the screen of the D-capture turned an off shade of white and once again displayed the word, 'Idling.'
"Well that was annoyingly cryptic and vague." Rachel muttered. "How are we ever supposed to figure out what any of that meant? All that voice told us was where we were and what these things were. Like that's any help in figuring out what we have to do to save two worlds. For that matter, why do we have to save anything? If we control our own destinies then don't we get to chose if we do this or not?"
"I don't care about fate or destiny. All I care about is that, that voice said we had to beat ENIAC. I don't know how we can do that, but if it's possible those ENIAC bastards should run now because I'm going to get them somehow."
"Very brave of you Greg." Rachel said. "But before you go getting revenge, how about we clean up first?" smiling now, Rachel held out her D-capture which showed a map of the part of the digital world they were in. On that map was a body of water called "The Grey Sea."
"From the looks of this map this 'Grey Sea' is only about half a mile away. I believe we both can make it even if we haven't had any real exercise in weeks. Besides, I've never been to a beach before and this may be my one chance to see one."
"Yeah, and getting clean would be a plus too. I'm so dirty I think a worm would be too disgusted to live on me.""Of course a worm in you is a different story all together. Nothing like rotten food to give you a literal stomach bug."
"What a nice thought." Greg muttered to Rachel with a shiver. "It's bad enough I had to eat that food, now I have to think of what that food did to me, ugh."
"I'm glad I was able to make you think for once Greg. Just don't think too much or too hard because too much of a new thing is bad for your health, even if that new thing is good for you."
After calling Rachel a few more colorful names, Rachel reached out and tagged Greg before running away from him with a laugh and "You're it."
Frowning, Greg ran after her, not about to be out run by anyone, much less a girl who hadn't been anywhere in weeks.
Jokess-Long chapter there. I don't expect other chapters to be as long, but that is 100%. The outline and ideas I have are pretty flexible, so I'm going to be seeing what happens along with everyone else.