A/N: If I may take a moment to brag, when I was an eleven-year-old boy, I was a terrible writer (wait, is that really considered bragging?) and I had the worst reminder of it in the form of my first fanfic.

It was 2009 and my Pokémon frenzy spurned by the release of Diamond and Pearl had died off for the most part allowing me time to fawn over my first love: Digimon. Earlier I was content with just watching the show, but with no major anime adaptations coming over to the US for this new resurgence in Digimon fervor, it became apparent I'd have to take matters into my own hands.

Thus started my quest for Digimon merchandise outside of the show such as the Digimon card game, video games, and the like only to be cut short by the fact that most of the stuff I wanted was only available second hand. I was incapable of convincing my parents to buy it off of E-bay so that dream was deferred, but my passion lived on. I started to imagine what the Digimon World franchise was actually like and, without even thinking, my machinations found their way onto paper. It was more like a "Digimon Mystery Dungeon" I suppose presented as a Script Fic with no details in settings, jumpy plots, and flat characters as expected from a story with no prior consideration though looking back, I guess it did have its own charm.

Just a half-year later, I was filled with so much cringe that I decided to make another story labeled Digimon World, but that was actually a loyal novelization of the actual game based off of what I saw from Walkthroughs and Strategy Guides. I guess it was better written as far as stories go, but it was boring. It had a decent handle on plot, sure, but it didn't have a character with an identity crisis, an emphasis on Digimon society, or any of the other things I liked about the original story.

This is my fine attempt at a compromise with some things I threw in for the sake of it. It's technically my first story so criticism would be much appreciated. Please enjoy!

P.S. - The story is narrated by Akira from Digimon World 2 who in turn uses Hiro's narration of events where applicable. Most of the story can be said to be from Hiro's point of view, but there will be some parts where Akira will take over. I think I've given them enough quirks to tell who is who, but just in case, this will probably be the only Author's Note for risk of confusion and lack of immersion.

P.P.S. - "Hiro" is a common Japanese name which could possibly mean "abundant," "generous," or "prosperous" depending on Kanji. Honestly, its similar pronunciation to the English word "hero" is but a coincidence, a coincidence that I'm going to exploit shamelessly.

I was honored when you asked me to write about our encounters with digimon. Is "honored" the word? Maybe excited or relieved. I don't know. I was never really eloquent with words.

Anyways, as soon as I received the instruction, I rushed to write my first draft using memories, my first feelings, and accounts from witnesses, but I had to scrap it. It wasn't perfect.

After many attempts, I finally found why I wasn't satisfied with it. This wasn't my story to tell! This really all began with the breach in the Fire Wall that happened one day near the end of fifth grade, and to accurately tell the story, I'd have to start from before I featured in: when an ordinary, reserved eleven-year-old youth dived into the Digital World for who knows why for the first time. I tried narrating it myself, but Hiro communicated the experience far better than I ever could. So without further ado!

The First Episode

Death of a So-Called "God"

It wasn't the sounding of the trumpet that had awoken me from the grave, but loud whimpers as if in subdued cries for help. The confusion I felt was not the grogginess normally felt from waking, but that which one would feel when their thoughts and reality didn't match up. I looked left and right, then up and down, but I found no traces of the promised paradise of the believers or the horrid punishment that existed for the disbelievers; just an endless bog of darkness. Was I too late to be judged or simply too early?

There existed no audible sounds sans the screams and cries of a man sprinting up ahead. There existed no visible light sans the sphere of light chasing after the man that, from its intensity, appeared to attract all the energy of the world within its radius, and floating majestically within the center was the most surreal sight of this entire experience: the thing chasing this helpless man was an Azure Dragon; a thing of legends.

Oh, right! Sorry. Have I ever recounted to you the story of the day I died? I know it's strange coming from me in the flesh, but it really did happen, you know? I saw it myself after all. It was one May day in the year of Lightspeed Rescue. Do you know that one day, when a great fire broke out? It actually came over to my apartment building. No, I wasn't in the building when it first started, but when given a choice between going in the building to retrieve something and getting to safety and calling 911, I, being the idiot I was, chose the one most likely to get me killed.

Actually, please give me a moment to reflect on my actions. This was the year that Carter Grayson's noble acts of saving a little girl from a burning fire would later deem him worthy of becoming a Power Ranger and I, an eleven-year-old boy with no emergency training, was unintentionally imitating his commendable act. That's cute and all, but there were three main differences.

One, I had neither official training nor anyone to back me up if needed. If it weren't for the fact that the elevator had already been rendered unusable, I would have ridden that to my death. Not to mention that, because of that, I lacked the strength necessary to escort any victims. That didn't really deter me much as it wasn't my objective, which leads me to my next point.

Two, my motivations were radically different from Carter's. Carter went in with the full intention of saving everyone inside. I, on the other hand, simply felt left out seeing my friends playing with their v-pets at the park. I was motivated by my desire to rescue the v-pet I had left in my apartment since I really didn't want to burden my father with buying a new one, and it was the only connection I had with my friends. That's disregarding how the sentiments within said v-pet had made it an irreplaceable existence for me.

Three, I had – actually, I still have it to this day – a great fear of fire. I was only able to bear through it with my obsession with retrieving my v-pet. As soon as I got the v-pet in my hands, the threat of death by the scorching fire became all the more apparent to me. Paralyzed by fear and with nowhere to go, I succumbed to the suffocation of the fire that greedily ate up all the oxygen.

Overall, the biggest difference was that I was not Carter Grayson; I wasn't a hero. Forget my fellow victims and my v-pet; I couldn't even save myself. I find it poetic, fitting even, how my death mirrored the death of my mother all those years ago. I didn't personally remember actually being ensnared by the fire, but with time passing by while I was pondering the circumstance of the man running from the dragon, I couldn't help but imagine that my body would have been cremated by now.

The man looked like your stereotypical geek with less than ideal facial features mostly hidden by large-square shaped lenses and dark, unkempt hair blowing in the wind freely as he screamed for help while desperately trying to maneuver his unfit body. Unfortunately for him, the only one he could rely on – the only person here – was an eleven-year-old kid who had already flubbed a mission of a smaller scope than confronting a serpentine dragon, but...

I looked at the man's illuminated figure and then back at my own having gone transparent after death. Chances were that he was the only human in this large stretch of darkness and the only thing that scares me more than being in the dark with a hostile dragon is being alone in the dark with a hostile dragon. So, despite my better judgment, I ran towards the man and took his hand in order to urge him to follow my pace.

The man was startled. "Hey kid, what are you doing here?"

"Saving your life," I responded.

"Are you trying to tell me you know how to beat a Sovereign?"

"A Sovereign?"

"Physical…or rather 'Digital' Gods. Basically what this guy is."

"…No, I can't say I do." The man looked at me with face deadpan. Hey, I had to do something! You were the one calling for help! It wasn't my fault the monster ended up having such bloated credentials as a "Digital God", whatever that means anyways.

"Well, I actually have a way of defeating it," the man finally said.

I couldn't hide my shock. "Really!" He had a way of killing a dragon?

"I have his source code right in front of me. I can't just delete all the code since I don't know what would happen to this dimension since it was made specifically for him, but it should be fine as long as we change his class type from Sovereign to Digimon. Then I can use the programs I've developed to handle digimon to finish him once and for all."

I struggled to understand through his panting and use of terminology, but I basically understood he could manipulate something or another to make the "Sovereign" a…digimon? Like the digimon in my v-pet? And he knew some way of destroying it? I swear, were it not for evidence to the contrary, I'd find it hard to laugh this off as anything but a dream. I asked him, "Why didn't you do this before?"

He answered, "It's not quite as easy as that. The source code is actually in an encryption code that I find difficult to decipher. I need you to distract the monster for me while I take the time to find out which letter corresponds with what. Give me your e-mail address so that I can mail you the source code. It might go faster if we both try to decode it."

E-mail address? Who in the world cares about their e-mail address when they're already dead? Although, he kept going on about the weird characters the source code had. For once, I took a break from looking back at the behemoth behind me to gaze at the front. There was indeed strange text grouped in lines although I could strangely make out the words. " 'Public static void main(String args[])' Ew. Even when you can actually read it, it makes no sense."

"Is that the source code? Are you reading the source code?"

"I guess…"

"Great. You stay and alter the code. I'll distract him."

"Um…change what exactly?"

"What? You can't even understand something that simple?" He paused to further the distance between him and the Azure Dragon. "There should be a line that says 'Sovereign' something or another '= new Sovereign' something, something, something, right? Replace every 'Sovereign' with 'Digimon' and reduce every numerical value to zero."

There actually was a line like that. I did just as he said. Then everything stopped; the dragon's advancement, the flow of light emitting from him, even my incorporeal body.

"What happened?" I asked.

"The program's not compiling. I think it's because Sovereign inherits from Digimon. You need to take away some instance fields."

"I can't understand what you're saying!"

"Fine, I forgot you're a brat. On the right side of the '=' there should be parentheses. In there, there's some extra data that a 'Digimon' does not have. From what I remember, it was nine extra Digicore objects and a direction. Just delete those specific fields altogether."

I'd be lying if I said I actually knew what he meant, but I followed his instructions to the tee. Suddenly, the darkness washed over us in full force inspiring a crippling sense of fear within my heart as the Azure Dragon lost the spheres that had apparently been the source of its light. This was supposed to be our victory, but something inside me told me this wasn't how things were supposed to play out.

"What's going on?" I asked fearfully.

"I don't know myself, but I couldn't be happier. At last, I've gained entrance into the Digital World!" The man shouted victoriously as he walked proudly through a rip in the dark void. He had abandoned me.

I looked around. Certainly, I was unsettled from being lonely in the dark, but more worthy of note were the rips in space opening and closing faster and faster in quick succession. I took one long look at the fallen Sovereign ridding myself of any delusions that this was anywhere close to finished. I braced myself for the worst, but I couldn't have predicted what would occur next: the corpse of the dragon exploded in front of me sending me through a tear that had opened up before me from the shockwave.