AN: Okies, this be my first Tamers fic, and I can't say you'll be fully satisfied. It's a little confusing at first, but sooner or later, you'll understand what I'm talking about… hopefully. Now I present to you a li'l something I call 'Guardian Algorithm'. It might look like I ripped off a few things from the Matrix, Syphon Filter, and probably some authors here in this section, but I assure you, I brainstormed about it all by myself. Oh, yeah, and it's setting is 5 years post D-Reaper. Just a feeler, though, and as all feelers, is pretty short. Well, here we go!
Disclaimer: I don't own Digimon Tamers, it belongs to Toei, Bandai, some other unmentioned organizations, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There, satisfied?
Guardian AlgorithmA Tamers fic
By Fizzy 13
MONTH ONE: INTRODUCTION
Lamentations and InvitationsAgency Mainframe Building, Agency Pacific Branch Main Compound (Disguised as a Corporate Compound called D-Tech), Tokyo
Wednesday, 2145 hours, Local Time…
A young brunette hacked furiously into the Networks owned by the mysterious organization known only as The Agency, searching for anything that could be used to shut this infamous covert group down. Of course, simply calling her 'young brunette' was merely scratching the surface, since that would, by most standards, be too vague. She was about the age of 18, chocolate hair that barely touched her shoulders, a little conspicuous ponytail separated from the majority of it by a green hair band to the left rear portion of her head, golden eyes focused on what she was doing. She was dressed in what most female spies from spy movies wore: a black, body fit sneaking suit, which sadly failed to accentuate her still underdeveloped curves (hint, hint). Traditionally, as well with most female spies, she also had a weapon or two… such as a silenced 9mm Browning that was strapped to her belt. Then there was that ever-reliable backpack that she carried her heavy-duty stuff around in.
The sound of the tic-tac's caused by her hazardous speed of typing continued for some small period of time until she finally managed to procure a useful piece of information from the server concerning The Agency's latest and, no doubt, most notorious plans yet to be achieved: something known only as Project: Toto-Con. However, since fate was as timely, unruly, clichéd, and just plain annoying as it was, that was when a patrolling guard discovered the body of one of his comrades tucked nice and good into the bushes, and as what most guards do, sounded the alarm and announced that it was time for her to escape.
Not literally, of course, for had it been literal, she should've thanked him instead of downing him with a 9mm round as she burst through the building's front door, CD copy of Project Toto-Con in hand. But, as what happens in most spy movies, going out through the front door is the dumbest thing one can most possibly do since, as usual, that was where the search lights, armed guards, and men in black suits were piled up, all guns pointed at anything that dared to emerge.
Obviously, with one look at all of those, she scrambled back up the flight of stairs with plans of going up to the roof and hijacking a B-627 Blackhawk as bullets and shells whizzed by, missing her by mere inches. She definitely didn't go into this building blindly, of course. Her partner had downloaded the schematics for the entire structure. Okay, so maybe she was a little blind, since her partner was the one barking directions into her ear via commlink. Where he was? He was waiting in a black, inconspicuous-looking truck on the outside of the compound's walls near the Mainframe building. The thing was that the Mainframe building was attached to the walls, and thus all one needed to do was to grapple his or her way to the top. "Okay, Katou, now go up that flight of stairs, and you'll be at the helipad. You do know how to pilot a Blackhawk, of course?"
"Um…" she replied with uncertainty as she kicked the rooftop door open, "Sorry, Hiroshi, I guess I forgot that I didn't."
Special Agent Hiroshi Yamamoto mentally kicked himself for that, "Okay, time for plan B. Secure a line to the railing of the roof on the wall side and rappel down. The truck's just at the bottom."
"Gotcha Hi—" Jeri stopped in mid-sentence at what she saw, "Uh, Hiroshi?"
"Yeah?"
"Why are that chopper's rotors spinning?"
"What!? Oh, bad," his voice became that of worry. Apparently, from what he knew about these kinds of situations, somebody was prepping a chopper for launch, meaning that his partner wasn't alone on that roof. "Okay, listen. You've got to get out of there ASAP! You hear me? Now!"
She made a dash for the edge and was about to secure a line to the railing when she just had to look back. What she saw could not be good. It never was. It was a young man coated from chest to toe in what appeared to be some sort of high tensile armor pointing an AS-12 full-auto shotgun in her direction. Judging from his face, he looked just about her age—a year older at the most. The toothy grin that he flashed gave her the impression that they've met before somewhere. The real giveaway to his identity, however, was that he owned a spiky possibly 'gelled' creamy brown hairdo. "Long time no see, Jeri. Too bad I have to say goodbye so soon."
Her eyes widened in realization of who he was. He was none other than— her thoughts got no further than that for at the precise moment of his name flashing through her mind, a load of buckshot had imbedded itself into her chest, practically punching her off the roof and down 16 stories to the cold hard cement sidewalk just beside the van, dead on impact.
The CD found its way into the bushes just beside the wall, and unfortunately, Special Agent Hiroshi Yamamoto was too busy in his useless efforts of checking his partner's body for life signs to even bother. Another life wasted for nothing. In her three years as a Junior Agent, she had so much potential to make it big. Truth be told, this was her first real world mission.
As her partner and handler, Yamamoto was held accountable for every screw up that she made, every successful mission, and, should the time come (and it did), her death. He blamed himself over and over for what happened, starting with asking himself why he never taught her how to fly a chopper, finishing with why he even bothered to take the responsibility of becoming her handler despite being the Junior officer that he was in the first place.
That was when he noticed something sticking out from her backpack, which also happened to be the one she used for school. It was a little beat up from the fall, but was, more or less, still intact. It was probably a relic from her elementary days, he thought as he picked it up. He now held a brown, handmade, dog shaped sock puppet in his hand. "Still a kid after all," he mumbled with melancholic smirk as he carefully tucked it into his vest's pocket. Hoisting her onto his shoulder by the waist, Hiroshi whispered morosely into her ear, "Time to get you home, kid," as he brought her into the back of the truck and drove off into the night.
Some Random Location on the Top Level of the Digital World
Wednesday, 2246 hours, Shinjuku-Tokyo Time…
It was nearly pitch black in the Digital World around this time, yet the darkness issue didn't seem to make any difference to the flame-haired girl who had just spun around by a hundred eighty degrees, a pair of 9mm Berettas blazing in her hands. This was most probably because she was wearing infrared goggles, allowing her to see the panorama with a brightness level that made it look as though it were in the middle of the day. Protecting her body from the harsh digital environment was what appeared to be an outfit that lots of government agencies' field operations teams wore: black pocketed Kevlar vest (inside of which was a matching black suit), corresponding multi-pocketed pants, gloves, not to mention the high-cut military boots.
The current aim of her shooting was to hit a man in a black business suit, his eyes shaded by tinted wire-frame sunglasses, a communication earpiece positioned in his right hearing canal. These and a neatly combed hairdo implied the obvious: He was some kind of government agent… although the way he dodged her bullets at speeds fast enough to cause multiple afterimages of his upper body in different and difficult postures proved that he was something else.
"Damn!" she cursed as both her clips went empty. She rolled behind a rock pillar, her back to it, simultaneously emptying her pistols' magazine chambers as she went for a fresh couple of clips attached to her belt. Stupid algorithm just had to go renegade when I was supposed to have a whole night on the town! "DSP Launcher Program: Status Report," she had just finished reloading, and had turned her attention to an electronic device vaguely resembling a D-arc that was strapped securely onto her right wrist. On its screen, the words 'Recharge Status 92 percent' materialized, informing her that there was still a considerable amount of time before she could use her last resort weapon.
Yet again, the auburn-haired teenager whirred around from behind the earthen formation to face her enemy… or at least where he used to stand. She frantically searched the area to the right of her line of sight for any sign of him, yet to no avail. Three gunshots from the left were her only clue as to where he stood at the moment. She turned her head to face three oncoming .50 caliber rounds and instinctively shielded herself with her right wrist, where the strange device was attached, speaking in more of a command than a statement, "Beam Shield Program: Activate!"
A thin circle of cyan light seemingly popped out from within the device's monitor, its protective, buckler-like shape shielding her entire form from the nearing bullets. The shots, upon making contact with the light-like substance, sank into it as they continued their trajectory for her face, stretching the material like a sheet of bubble gum inch by inch, slowing more as they did. They finally lost all momentum just millimeters from her nose, allowing the energy wall to retract to its original shape and practically spit them out. The pistol rounds dropped harmlessly to the ground.
There was no time for celebration, though, for the man in black was already on the move, clearing nearly all of the 15-foot gap in less than a second as he prepared to make a painful blow that could easily break through her thin radiant shield and punch a hole through her chest. "Data Cutter Program: Activate!" the shield receded into the gadget and was almost immediately replaced by a green, luminescent wedge. This she used to slash at the entity, no longer possibly a human, which was countered by his reaction of using the butt of his gun, an Israeli Desert Eagle, to deflect the blade, resulting in the former's evaporation into fine bits of data.
She followed that move up with a clockwise spin-kick for his head to knock him off balance, which he intercepted with relatively little effort by grabbing her offensive leg with his right hand, thus causing her plan to backfire as he quickly maneuvered her body in its currently malleable state into a tight headlock from behind. His chokehold continued to tighten to the point that she dropped her guns as she brought her hands up to her aggressor's arm in attempts to wrestle it away.
"Ack!" asphyxiation was inevitable in this kind of situation, and the only way she could possibly escape was for some unprecedented miracle to occur.
"There is no relevance in resisting, human," the agent's monotone voice entered her right ear, "Even if you do manage to escape, once 60 percent of all active Guardian Algorithms have been liberated from the system, neither you or the system itself will be a threat any longer." The only thing that got past her lips was a guttural oxygen starved growl as her enemy's grip intensified. "Now, however, since you are still a problem, I am thus obliged to eliminate you."
She felt the constriction worsen even more and was losing all hope of survival… that was until a loud beep was emitted by her gadget followed by a monotone and computerized female voice, "DSP Program: Recharge Status at 100 percent. Number of rounds available: five."
This was her one chance at making the mission at all, if not keeping herself in one piece. The Data Simplifying Pulse, or DSP for short, was her organization's primary and most effective anti-digital weapon, which scrambled all forms of basic or advanced information structures within a two-meter radius and reduced them to nothing but lumps of raw data. It wouldn't matter what happened to her, though, so long as the Network's Safety was ensured. Cocking her head to the right, and activating her DSP Launcher Program, she thrust her right fist at her opponent's face, and in a strangled voice, made what was probably going to be her last corny one liner in the Digital World for a long while, "Eliminate this!" before a blast of pure white made contact with the agent's face. The impact generated a loud explosion of unseen force at least four meters in diameter, encasing them both within its influence.
The black suited program began to deform, some parts of his figure bulging, others imploding, while he continued shouting a muted incoherence about bunnies, Billy goats, and how they were related until he finally burst into countless fragments of raw 1's and 0's. A passing data stream was eventually sent by the Network Security System known only as Virgin and picked these up to induct into the data recycling system that it possessed. The girl could only smile calmly as she felt herself begin to disintegrate. It was a heroic way to get one's salary sanctioned by over 50 percent, no doubt, but heroic nonetheless. This idea ran into her mind as the last of her consciousness slipped away…
WARNING: MANDATORY LOG OUT DETECTED…
AUTHENTICATING LOG OUT AND IDENTIFYING USER…
USER IDENTIFIED…
USERNAME: FOXQUEENMON
ID NUMBER: 63974-08
SECTION ASSIGNMENT: NS-8
JURISDICTION: ASIA PACIFIC ZONE
MANDATORY LOG OUT AUTHENTICATED…
PLEASE STAND BY FOR REANIMATION, THIS MAY TAKE A FEW MINUTES…
Virgin Chamber, 18th Floor - NS-8 Headquarters, Shinjuku, Tokyo
Wednesday, 2301 hours, Local Time…
Agent Rika Nonaka expelled the green fluid from within her mouth, gasping for breath as soon as the rest of the stuff she was suspended in drained away. With the exception of the electrodes attached to several parts of her body, she was completely nude, her soaked and by now longer Sunkist-colored hair clinging to her shoulders and the upper half of her back. That was the last time she was going to allow her persona to get erased by her own DSP Launcher. The door to her cylindrical tank opened upon her touching it and, sticking her head out, her purple eyes were at once filled with irritation at who stood in front of her bare form admiring the view with a strangely solemn expression plastered to his face, very different from the joker of an officer she knew. Not that she knew him that much, besides the fact that she was Jeri's superior and handler. He was more well known as a cold, taciturn operative. "Yamamoto… get… out…"
He just stood there and continued to stare. As time went by (some intense four seconds to be exact), she noticed emptiness in his eyes. Something was missing. What was it? She could not make out its identity. That was… until she saw what he held rather absentmindedly in his right hand. She had realized then, that he was in a state of shock. For what his hand kept was never given to anybody by its owner, not even for a second. The owner wouldn't even let it away by a meter before she went hysterical from distance sensitivity. It was Jeri's old doggy sock puppet. What was its name again? Sparky? Spike? Something like that.
Snagging a towel from a nearby rack and wrapping its protective gentleness around her fragile body, her expression softened as she faced him once more, "Yamamoto? What's wrong? Where's Jeri?"
His insecure grasp on the puppet clenched into a fist, shaking convulsively from guilt. His eyes made contact with his finely polished leather shoes, a sign of difficulty with speech. His lips finally parted, "I'm sorry, Nonaka. I tried as best I could to save her." He shook his head.
"Wha… what are you talking about?" she asked in disbelief.
"Katou's gone, Nonaka, and Sakamori wants me to get a replacement for her… someone with a similar background." Hiroshi finally managed to gasp. Telling at least half of the reason why he was in the Virgin Chamber with an almost nude acquaintance of his late partner had lightened the steadily increasing weight on his chest a little.
"That's… it?" she half-retorted, "My friend has just been KIA'd and you say that to me as if that's it!?" Rika's eyes narrowed into slits of anger. How could he be so indifferent?
"There was nothing I could do!" the Junior Officer answered rather harshly in defense of his position, softening upon the next of his statements, "There was nothing anybody could've done. You just have to face facts, Nonaka. Jeri Katou is dead."
"What'll you tell her parents? They think she works part-time at a bank and that you're one of her co-workers." Her eyes shied away, "As far as I know, nobody cares about me anymore, since you guys faked my death when I was recruited by NS-8 practically just after the D-Reaper was taken down."
"Sakamori gave me the perfect excuse: She got caught in a crossfire between security and a gang of armed men who tried to rob the bank. Our contact in the media has already made a cover story for it."
"Is that everything you came to tell me?" the toweled teenager asked, "Or is there something else you have to say?"
"When I asked Sakamori about where in the world I was going to find someone with a similar background, he told me to ask you, since you were one of those people." his face became that of pure puzzlement, "That's what I still can't figure out. What commonality brings you two together into the same category? If I did my research correctly, you were a tamer, while Katou practically became D-Reaper's life force for a while."
Her expression changed, and for a moment, it looked as if she was looking down on him for being an incompetent slob. "If you did do your research correctly, and thoroughly, you would know that before she became part of D-Reaper, she was a tamer as well; a tamer who went through many painful experiences in the course of her life which climaxed in the death of her partner and culminated with her becoming the power source of some freak program."
"I see…" Hiroshi rubbed his chin, rustling through the fine hairs of his growing unshaven beard. He was 26, in the prime of his age and intelligence, and here he was being mocked by this… this underage twit who thought she was so good at what she did. Give her a Junior Agent to handle and she'd probably crack in, give or take, two weeks, maybe even less. "And who can you recommend to join the fight?"
"I think I have just the one in mind…"
School Grounds, Iyamoto High School, Shinjuku, Tokyo
Thursday, 1213 hours, Local Time…
Takato Matsuki sighed. High School life was… boring, compared to his Junior High and elementary… especially to his elementary. Without all that adventure going on, life was as mundane as the word mundane itself. The last thing he needed to do was to snore off the last… he checked his watch… 45 or so minutes of this lunch break. He had already finished the single ordinary sandwich that his mother had made him. No more Guilmon rolls to go around, I guess. He thought.
Strangely enough, the first week after the D-Reaper's defeat was the strangest yet. Although not actually having any proof whatsoever, Rika had allegedly died in a car crash or something like that. Taxi fell off a bridge because of stormy weather and right into the river. Police managed to salvage both the car and the bodies of its two occupants, namely Rika, and the driver. Shortly after that, Ryo's family moved to the United States to get him 'a better education'.
As for Henry… well what about him? The only thing that kept him going was the thought that one day he'd see Terriermon again. After all, why wouldn't he think that if he'd been told about the Digi-gate that still remained open in Guilmon's former hideout. At least they were classmates now, unlike Kazu and Kenta who eventually went their own ways to different schools… or Suzie who was still finishing the 5th Grade.
Then there was that part-time job Jeri got around some three years back at some bank called Nakamura Crediting or something like that. Speaking of which, Jeri apparently hadn't remembered that it was a Thursday today, and probably took an early weekend or something like that; i.e. she was absent. Boy was Mister Toroyama going to kill her tomorrow. He could almost see it now, Jeri sulking in her seat with a burning red-hot Mister Toroyama towering above her, pointing in the direction of the detention office while barking out her sentence. "That'll be twelve hours detention for you, Little Miss I'm-too-busy-with-my-job-at-the-bank-to-go-to-school-on-Thursday!" the words swam about in the alphabet soup of weird ideas recently concocted by his mind and kind of lingered as he shook his head.
A tap on his shoulder kicked him out of his grim fantasy. Probably Henry wanting to ask if we could hang out later or something, he thought as he turned to see who it was. Whoever he was, though, he certainly wasn't any Henry he knew. He was a rather short, stocky, bearded man in a black business suit, tinted thin-wire framed sunglasses shielding his eyes along with a coiled white wire trailing from the inside of his suit to the inside of his right ear by the side of his face. Takato had seen that outfit somewhere before… what was that movie called? The Matrix? They were the 'bad guys' or agents. Of course that wasn't possible in real life, was it? Then again, so were Digimon until he met Guilmon and the others. The only offset for his 'agentness' was that he was currently chewing on a familiar looking piece of bread… a Guilmon roll to be exact. "Good day, Mister Matsuki. How would you like to work for your government?"
"Hey, who are you? And how'd you know my name?" Those two questions were frequently asked by people who fall into the Twilight Zone when they meet with mysterious men in black. Was he falling into the Twilight Zone? Of course, as far as Takato could recall, he had fallen into the Twilight Zone when he first met Guilmon.
"My name is Taberuni Pan, and I work for the government," the stocky man answered, taking a bite out of the 'ear' of the roll, "And in my kind of job, Mister Matsuki, you're required to know everything about everything." Besides resembling an agent from The Matrix, Takato also thought that he looked like that Korean assassin from the first Austin Powers movie who's main weapon was a deadly… leather shoe.
"Okay, so what do you want from me?" better be cautious about what to say. Who knew what these men in black did for a living?
"Like I said earlier, Mister Matsuki, how would you like to work for your government?" at this he bit the chin off. "The pay isn't that much, but I assure you that you'll get the best out of life."
"Well… I don't know." The prospects were uncertain, and this man could just be bluffing. Then there was the nagging feeling that if translated into audio would sound something like what those freaky oracles say about destiny or fate and crap like that. It was either that, or his imagination was just plain going hyperactive and this man standing in front of him inviting him to work for the government was part of some weird fantasy.
"I see that we're having difficulty deciding." Pan tossed the last bit of the roll into his wide-open mouth fished his inside-suit pocket for something. Takato could see the bulge of his hand rummaging around within the cloth, stop at one point, and apparently grasp something. The fat man brought out a business card and handed it over. "Once you make the choice, come over to this address after school." He turned to leave, "One more thing: if you do decide to go, talk to the guard at the elevator hall and tell him who you are."
Takato glanced at the card. It read:
Nikamura Crediting, 2417 Yannagi Avenue, Shinjuku District, Tokyo
Services Offered: Loans, Crediting, Savings, Withdrawal, Investments, etc.
'A happy life is thought to be one of excellence, and an excellent life consists
of financial stability. We are just one of the many foundations for such a life.'
Surprised at the nature of the card, he turned to question the man again, but as with most mysterious men in black, by the time Takato managed to get his eyes back to where he was supposed to be standing, he was gone. Nikamura Crediting, huh? He thought as his eyebrow rose in curiosity. I wonder…nah! He checked his watch again, "Twelve thirty five. Lot's of time to think about this, but in the meantime, I think it's time to finish my History assignment early." The former Tamer stood up and left the table.
To be continued…
AN: Yes, I know. It was a little short and a little hanging, but what can I say? It's just a feeler. Hope you like what I did. I also humbly apologize if I didn't satisfy, I don't know why, I guess I'm just an amateur after all. So, here we are… the last leg of my note: please review this fic! Thanks loads!