EDIT 8/13/11: Chapter has been fixed of some grammar, punctuation or spelling errors.

~.::Prologue::.~

He sat there, legs dangling from a ledge that seemed to have no end. On his lap sat a grey laptop that he was directly and intently paying attention to. One hand was moving around the mouse pad while the other was leaned against his chin. Behind him roamed a very large and muscular red winged, metal plated head, dragon type monster. He was anxious and annoyed. His tamer was always on that computer. The dragon made his way over to his tamer and knelt besides him-growling rather loudly to catch the brunette's attention.

Ryo looked away from the bright screen that lit up the very dark and desolate area of the digital world. The area was barren and often filled with fog. It was the area that Baihumon, sovereign god of the West, guarded. Crevices filled a vast majority of the area, but the duo had grown accustomed to finding their way around. They never left. They weren't allowed to.

Ryo had been hiding something from everyone and the only ones that knew of his secret were keeping it hidden from everyone else as well. Staying in the digital world and doing what the Sovereign asked of him was the only way he could keep his secret. Staying in the real world would have eventually required him to unveil his secret and then they would turn on him, and he didn't know if he could deal with the thought of losing another group of friends.

"Yeah, I know it's kind of boring here, but we have a job to do." Ryo patted his partner gently on the metal plate.

Cyberdramon let out a low growl and stood up completely uninterested by their current mission; a mission that they had been given upon returning to the digital world six years ago. Ryo closed his laptop, gently placed it in its case and stood up.

"Well there is obviously nothing going on here. Would you like to check out another crevice?" Ryo asked as he placed the laptop bag over his shoulder.

The dragon type Digimon didn't respond he just pointed his head in one direction and Ryo took it to mean 'yes'. He climbed unto Cyberdramon's back and gripped tightly to the metal attachment from which extruded four red wings. Cyberdramon hadn't changed one bit; it wasn't in his programming to change. Ryo; however, had changed in more ways than one. He was no longer the 14-year-old boy that had a problem Digimon. Ryo Akiyama was now 20 years old and would be described as tall, tan, handsome and well built. Though he would never use those words to describe himself. Ryo stood six foot one inch, hair was still in its outrageous style, complexion still darker than all the other Tamers, and his muscle tone was quite built. Personality wise Ryo was still Ryo. He got angry more often, stopped letting people walk all over him, if he felt passionate about something he pursued it, but he still lacked people skills. He had grown fond of the Tamers, but he was still unsure if he could truly call them friends. Sure he had Kazu and Kenta as groupies, occasionally Takato would fawn over him, he even had a major crush on Rika, and out of all the Tamers she was the one he trusted the most. But besides being Tamers he didn't have much of a connection with any of them.

Cyberdramon flew with great speed looking for a crevice with some type of unusual activity. Rarely did they ever find one. When they came across a large crevice Ryo told Cyberdramon to land. They would set up camp for the night and go exploring in the morning, generally. Cyberdramon had something different in mind this night. He decided with or without Ryo that he was going to explore it.

Ryo jumped off the dragon and placed his bag down, but no sooner did Cyberdramon take full advantage of his tamer's current lack of attention. Ryo looked over to see the black dragon dive into the crevice.

"Cyberdramon!" Ryo shouted. "We'll explore this in the morning!" He sighed, for the dragon Digimon was long gone.

Knowing that his eyesight was nowhere near as good as Cyberdramon's during the night he made camp and opened his laptop. Even though he had full access to the internet not once did Ryo contact any of the other Tamers. Instead, he used the laptop to manipulate digital data. He created a new outfit for himself by this method. Instead of having a grey shirt with one long sleeve and the other ripped-he created for himself a shirt of the exact same color, but with short sleeves. The red bandana was now gone, and it was replaced by a red scarf. His pants were now black with a yellow line running down the outsides of the legs, and he finished the look off with brown foot conforming boots.

Out of the corner of his eye he notice a pink light. Far off was a data stream that Ryo made sure to keep his eye on. He watched it for a while and realized that it seemed to have no particular interest in heading towards him, so he took his eyes off of it and placed them back on the screen. Everything was going fine too until his laptop screen cut out and then fuzzed like when a television loses its signal. Then the screen went back to normal. Figuring that he had been up for too long, he decided then that it would be best to go to bed. Gently, he closed the laptop and placed it back in the case. He then lie down on his pre-made bed and closed his eyes just to get a quick flash of a bothersome image. Ryo sat up and looked around. Nothing. Even the data stream was gone. He shook his head. It must have been nothing. He went to lie back down when the data stream suddenly reappeared and swallowed him up.

He pushed himself up to see where he had landed. The area was dark, and he seemed to be in a freshly dug hole. Ryo climbed out of the hole and noticed that he was closed off in a small cement building with an open entrance and a gate around the perimeter. Ryo rubbed his head. Where exactly was he? The area looked much greener and much too man-made for it to be a typical place in the digital world. He then looked at his hand, because he had felt a slight sting. His hand was cut open, but no blood poured out. However, it hurt a lot. And then Ryo realized it, wide eyed and everything, he wasn't in the digital world anymore. He was in the real world…

Hello, hello! I decided to wait until after you've read the prologue to give some information about what is going on. Well I've been gone for a very, very, very long time from fanfiction. net, but I've been around checking out stories ever so occasionally. As for this story in particular it is a long awaited work in process. This is the current story I wrote for NaNoWriMo (Are we even allowed to write fan fictions? Pssh I don't care!). However, I've restarted this story around four times now and this is the only part that I'm completely happy with. I have until the end of July to get this fan fiction complete, so then the story will be done and hopefully well on its way up here.

As for this story, it heavily revolves around Ryo's past, so if you do not know his past story that's ok, because all will be explained in this story. However, if you are curious feel free to look it up. Obviously some things will be based on fact and then a lot of me fudging things around. If you have read any of my past stories you can tell that my writing style has significantly changed as well as many other things. I'm still a die hard Ryuki fan, so expect a lot of that.

Happy Reading! R & R

-Aninika

PS: Yes, some of the characters are OOC it's been six years they're obviously not going to be 100% the same.