Black Stranger

Written By Omnicrom

Standard Disclaimer: This work is a non-profit derivative work of fanfiction. I claim no ownership to Digimon or its characters.

Under a Moonless Night

The black train screeched to a stop outside the seaside town and a boy stepped out.

He paused, turned back to the train, spoke, and then listened. Then he turned his gaze on the world. It only took one look at the barren dunes to tell him why he was here.

People he had yet to meet called this place "The Dark World", but to his eye the world wasn't dark or black so much as gray. Hollow. Color existed but it painfully muted. The sound of waves carried some distance but the noise was flat and dull. The scattering of trees had greenery the dead color of dried paper. The mess of silent beach houses were worn and decrepit. The saltwater scent in the air was stale and torpid. The sky was a mottled black and white that was devoid of clouds and lacking in a sun or moon or stars to cast light. Indeed, no true light shone here, and even the ever-present shadows that covered the world were vacant and empty.

After a moment the boy reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. After another moment shadows flickered across it and it wasn't a cell phone anymore. An indicator on the device blinked into life pointing in a direction. The boy swung the device as he started running and now he was a streak of black, real black, charging through the faded world.

The last thing Yagami Hikari remembered was saying good night and lying down to sleep. Then she was here, looking out over the churning waves of the ocean. Was she dreaming? That thought was no comfort, she was still here. And they were still here. They had to be.

She remembered this place all too well, she remembered being called here to this shore, this hollow town and this ocean with its endless black waves. She remembered the way everything looked pale and washed out, how everything felt empty and gloomy. And she remembered the creatures of this world, the ones that had looked like digimon but had revealed themselves to be something... else.

Now she was here again. And she was alone. There was no sign of Tailmon, or her brother, or Miyako, or Takeru, or Daisuke. Just her, looking out over the waves.

On some instinct Hikari turned and started walking away from the shore. Then, in the corner of her gaze, she saw one of the things and started running. It hadn't taken long after the first for more of the not-digimon to start appearing everywhere. The things seemed to rise up everywhere around her, emerging out of patches of half-cast shadows. They shuffled after her, reaching out from byways and shattered doors and open windows and oozing after her over mismatched picket fences. Hikari kept moving, kept running, kept fleeing. She took a quick dash down an alley and fled through a loose cluster of the things before they could wall her off, but then had to take a sharp right as a wall of the creatures stood before her. It took her two frantic dashes and three more blocked off turns to realize she was being herded, coaxed like a lamb back towards the shore and by then it was too late.

They were all around her now, the shadowy things. The strangers vaguely resembled the Hangyomon they had pretended to be, but seeing their true forms Hikari doubted very much whether these things were actually digimon. Or even if they were really anything at all.

They were humanoid creatures, hunched over with fins and flippers and they carried strongly the fishy scent of the sea. Their identical silhouettes made them seem almost ill as they were all lanky, pot-bellied, graceless things. Beyond that, however, they were nothing but shadows and water: black shapes without any features or details save for a strange shimmering quality like the surface of the sea. The only solid thing in the creatures were their eyes, yellow ones with slitted pupils sunk into deep black recesses on otherwise blank faces.

Hikari stared around at the black things as they slower moved in on her. In absolute silence they had corralled her onto the beach and now they were closing in, step by step. Unlike the last time there were no charades being played, no talk of gods and war and children, and no option to turn down their desires, whatever they were. There was nothing but a mass of bodies, slowly piling in on her.

The last time Takeru had come to find her, and Tailmon had been there and evolved and frightened off the featureless things. Now though? Nobody knew where she was. It must have been the dead of night in the real world. No one was coming for her, nobody knew she had been called, and nobody was here to fight these things. The creatures were made of shadows but they were horribly solid, along with everything else she remembered Hikari could recall clearly the powerful grip one of their clammy arms had fastened on her arm when they had begged her to become their bride.

There was no one to help her. The creatures were going to catch her and then...

And then a meteor struck the beach.

At least that's what Hikari thought at first, that a meteor had suddenly come crashing down onto the beach scattering the bone-white sand into the air. But if it was a meteor that didn't explain the sudden flurry of moving shapes, the mess of sounds, the groans and cries and even leonine roars, and the sound of splashing water. No, it wasn't a meteor, something else had come.

Hikari had barely kept standing against the blast of impact and now she was coughing and rubbing her eyes and squinting through the sand. Then, with barely a second's hesitation she ran, one arm covering her eyes, hoping against hope in the confusion she could escape. Hikari was prepared at any moment to feel a clammy arm on her leg, or her arm, or even around her neck, but to her own surprise no half-made shadow reached out to capture her. Instead she kept running, stumbling through the dust over puddles of black water till she reached the inland edge of the beach, away from the melee. Only when she was sure she was free of the mob did Hikari turn back.

There was another figure there, something besides the murky creatures. Something fighting the murky creatures. This one actually looked like a digimon, unlike the shadows it fought this being had solid body with real detail to it. In the mess of combat Hikari caught glimpses of ornate dark-colored armor fringed with gold, (real gold! with color!) the black staff, or no the spear that it used to tear through the shadows, and once or twice it slowed down long enough to let her see that the helmet it wore was molded in the shape of a roaring lion.

By the time Hikari had gotten clear of the melee the fight was at least half done. Hikari watched as the newcomer systematically fought its way through the shadow things. She stared in horrified fascination as the digimon jammed its weapon into the chest of one creature and then violently ripped it free. Rather than be torn or bleed or even disintegrate like a digimon the thing seemed to just... spill. Whatever substance was there was gone in a second as the creature collapsed into a puddle of ugly water like it was a punctured balloon.

Faced with something that could fight back the creatures, once cold, terrible, and relentless, suddenly seemed fragile and clumsy. Hikari felt a strange twinge of sympathy for the wretched shapes as they were cut down one after another. The black digimon thrust and spun its spear in a flurry of violently effective motion. One creature made an off-balance lunge and died instantly when the black digimon countered with a blow right through its head. Several more shuffled forward at once and were dispatched in short order when the digimon cut a wide, powerful sweeping slash across their chests. Another creature made a clumsy swing that missed as the black digimon leapt up and backwards, driving his spear through the neck of different shadow on the way down.

A strike through the shoulder, two blows through the stomach, a low sweep cutting through the legs – Creature after creature died, spilling dark water onto the sands. The mass of shadows had nothing to their side beyond the weight of numbers, and that was nothing against such an opponent. And then the fight was over. No words were exchanged but just the same Hikari could palpably feel a switch being flipped. A moment later the handful of remaining shadow things froze as a unit and began to slowly jerk away from the black digimon as though pulled away by a hook. As one they shuffled backwards into the ocean and under the waves. The digimon, standing in a pool of brackish remains, did nothing but watch as the creatures retreated as silently as they had come.

Then the digimon turned to Hikari. Her gaze was drawn to the eyes behind his mask, the only part of his body that wasn't covered by armor. She could see them clearly now that the fight had ended, like the rest of him somehow his eyes had real color here. In those brownish eyes she could see a faint expression of, what was it? Curiosity? Concern? Sorrow?

Hikari woke with a start and yanked upright. The clock across the room gleamed 3:28 in the morning. Everything was still there in apartment 1206, just like it had been when she had gone to sleep a scant few hours ago. Down below she could see the double desk covered in books and papers, half of it messy and half of it neat. There were the two dressers, the little side table with her D-Terminal and D-3, the closed door to the closet, and the calendar on the wall with the date circled in. Below her Taichi was still asleep, snoring quietly in the lower bunk. As she listened she heard her big brother flop over. Hikari giggled a little and relaxed. No matter how old he was Taichi was such a messy sleeper. It came as a relief to suddenly be back and to be able to appreciate the mundane.

"Hikari?" Tailmon asked quietly from the foot of her bunk. Apparently her spell of movement had roused her digimon from where she'd been sleeping. Tailmon pawed over to her on all fours and then stood upright to look at her. "Are you all right?"

"It's fine Tailmon, I just had a bad dream," Hikari said. She wasn't sure if this counted as lying, after all it HAD been a bad dream whatever else it had been. It even felt like a bad dream with the way its finer points were already fading from her memory. Unfortunately too much was left behind. The dark world, the creatures, that lion-masked digimon...

"Are you sure you're okay?" Tailmon's eyes gleamed with real concern and it hurt Hikari a little not to tell the truth, but it would be even more painful to panic Tailmon by telling her about a scary dream. If Hikari had told her she would have had to stay up late into the morning to convince Tailmon she was okay and that it was just a scary dream. And that conversation might wake up her big brother and then he'd have his own turn worrying himself sick over her. And what if they told the rest of her friends? Daisuke and Miyako and Takeru and probably Ken and maybe even Iori would all run over even in the middle of the night if they got wind there was an emergency, even a false alarm. No, it was better to stay quiet.

So Hikari said "Yes, I'm sure I'm okay. Let's just go back to sleep."

Tailmon looked up at Hikari with her big blue eyes. She could say a lot with just a look. This look said plainly that she didn't believe Hikari and wasn't sure if she really was alright. Tailmon's glance said that she knew Hikari bottled things up, that she could tell when Hikari was hiding something after long experience, that she would still be worried about Hikari even if the girl didn't say what was wrong, and that it hurt her a little that Hikari wouldn't confide in her and trust her. It was a look that reminded Hikari that Tailmon's life's mission was to be by her side and help her and protect her and that she did that mission gladly because she believed in it and because she cared about Hikari and she'd do anything she could to help her.

Hikari looked away. Then a moment later she used getting back under her covers and closing her eyes as an excuse to keep looking away.

"Good night, Tailmon"

Tailmon stayed there looking at the back of her head for a few moments more. Then she pawed her way to the edge of the bed and curled up.

"Good night, Hikari."

And just like that she was gone. Once the shadowy creatures had left the Light girl with her long gloves had taken only a couple of seconds to fade away like static on a dying screen. Hopefully she was back where she had come from. Hopefully she would wake up at home in her own room instead of being in a hospital bed barely not dead. Behind his faceplate the black digimon grimaced at that thought.

Now he surveyed the seas. There was nothing now, just lapping blackish waves on an empty shore. After another moment looking out over the ocean he closed his eyes, putting sight aside to focus on what he could feel. It was a vague thing, reaching out and trying to sense something this way. A digimon's sense was an instinctual thing, not quite based on sound or on smell or on touch but somehow all of them at once and something else. Feeling out across the waves he could tell there was still something there, maybe even more than one something, but for now all was quiet. He knew in some vague yet certain way that whatever happened with the ghosts and the girl was over, at least for now.

In a moment the strands of code faded away and Kimura Kouichi was himself. Again.

That girl who had faded away, Kouichi was pretty sure he knew what had happened to her, pretty sure it was almost the same as the thing had happened to him. Still it was strange, somehow, seeing it from the other direction. This time he wasn't the one who was a half-real wandering spirit. Still, even if she wasn't fully there why hadn't she fought back? Those echoey things were even less real than she had been, and Kouichi of all people knew how solid a fighter someone's spirit could be.

Kouichi looked around one last time at the hollow beach, the empty town, the forbidding forest. There was still nothing. So, with nothing else to be done Kouichi flipped open his phone to read the message on it one more time. Then he closed it and held it out as his digivice again, pointing it's top forward into the gloom.

This took an entirely different kind of sense, and everyone who had it described it a little bit differently. Slowly Kouichi turned in place feeling the tension from the tip of the device, feeling for the familiar fabric on the veil of night. It didn't take very long to find the right spot and so Kouichi swung his arm down tearing into the world. Darkness, real darkness from a real night fell onto the beach, like a strange inverse to light shining through a window. Kouichi flipped his digivice around to face him, and a moment later Lowemon stepped into the Digital World.

And Scene.

I've had the idea for this story for a long time. A really really long time. As in it was an idea I had prior to Digimon Savers, which I think can be agreed is a long time for a story. After coming back to Fanfiction late last year and reviewing what had been there from when I followed it and what had been written in the time I'd been absent I eventually realized if I was ever going to read the story I wanted to see written I'd have to write it myself. So here I am, trying to write the story I guess I always should have been trying to write. I am nobody but myself, and so I guess I'm the only person I can count on to write the story I want to see written. Shout-outs to every other author who wrote the story they wanted to see written, that's how this fanfiction thing works right?

As should be obvious this is merely the beginning of the story. I hope if you've read this far you'll come join me further down the road.

Next: Across Dawn