Note: This chapter (and the fic itself) is strongly inspired by one of my favorite Digimon 4 episodes, episode 22, where Takuya returns to the human world and time travels. It's a 'what if the episode had happened differently?' fic. I have nothing to do with Digimon and am writing this strictly for fun. Beware of spoilers, as this fic will have them (and there's at least one big one you don't want to hear from me). It's actually been years since I'd watched this series, but ep.22 (and this idea) just happened to pop into my mind recently. I'd looked up the subbed episodes (while I'd originally watched the dubbed on TV), so I'm going to use the subbed logic, but the dubbed names (let me know if I get something wrong), and will probably paraphrase most of the quotes. And now the first chapter...
Chapter One: Erased
Duskmon slowly turned his head. Darkness seemed to leak from him, covering the area. His red eyes focused on him, staring, staring...
Takuya backed away with a yell and tripped, falling on his side.
A truck passed in front of him, and the vision was gone. He was lying in the middle of the street, in his town. In the human world.
And the human Takuya was leaving. Running down the street, trying to get to the station in time.
"What do I do?" he asked himself. "What do I do?" He jumped to his feet and ran after himself. If he didn't stop Takuya, it would all happen again. He would get on the train, and end up going to the digital world.
It had only been by chance he'd even gotten that first train ticket. He almost didn't make it. He'd banged his forehead against the machine, and then a ticket came out. He had felt lucky.
The machine...
If he sabotaged the machine, he would never go to the digital world. He would never lose, and his friends wouldn't have been hurt because of him.
He jumped, using his strong legs and speed to leap between trees and buildings, going in the direction of his past self. But, no longer focusing on him, he passed over him, headed for the train station.
He leapt down by the ticket machines. Ignoring the yelps of surprise and the stares, he glanced around, before stepping in front of the machine he had once used.
"Now what?" He wondered to himself. Whatever he did, he needed to do it quick. He looked down at his clawed hands. Could he scratch up the machine? He'd breathed fire earlier, when he'd yelled after first realizing he'd turned into a digimon. Could he do that again?
His ears twitched, picking up on a familiar voice yelling about the train already being here.
No choice, then. He took a deep breath, and, imagining fire, screamed at the machine. A bright plume of flame shot from his mouth, and startled yells sounded around him.
He darted away quickly, just in time to avoid the human Takuya noticing him. He could only wait and see if his attack had actually hurt the machine. It didn't really look damaged, just had a bit of soot on it.
The human Takuya stopped in front of it. Just like before.
He pulled his pockets inside out, realizing he didn't have any money. Defeated, he banged his head against the machine, then jerked back. "It's hot!"
He rubbed at his forehead and looked at the machine with a betrayed-looking frown. The buttons on the machine started flashing, and a blackened ticket stub came out. He picked it up and just stared.
"Hm?" He blinked and looked up. The train on the tracks above him started to pull out. "No! The train's leaving! My destiny's over before it even started!"
From his nearby hiding place, the future Takuya watched as his past self whined to himself and started home. He followed him with his eyes, watching with a slight smile that was both sad and satisfied. He could feel himself beginning to unravel into fractal code, but it was alright. It just meant he had succeeded. The human Takuya may be disappointed now, but it would end up being for the better. He himself, whoever he was, would never come to exist, and the future would be rewritten. His smile widened as he completely vanished.
He woke up in nothingness. There was no floor, no walls, no scenery. Just dark swirls of color.
"Where am I?" he asked himself. He turned in a circle, seeing nothing on any side, then took a step forward. The image of Duskmon began to form in front of him again, but before he could do more than gasp, he felt a tug from below, and yelled as he began to fall.
He was braced for a hard landing, his head ducked and shoulders raised, his teeth gritted. But, realizing he could feel solid ground beneath him, he opened his eyes.
He was on the floor of some kind of dark room, or cave, with bright white shapes randomly strewn along the walls. He slowly got to his feet as he glanced around. The room didn't have corners and the walls were rough, while the bright screens seemed almost natural, as though they had organically grown from the cave walls— if this was the digital world, they probably had.
Focusing on the bright screens, he started to make out the images playing on them. Most of them seemed to show views of a trailmon station. It was somehow familiar, in an almost-forgotten way.
The station they'd come to when first arriving at the digital world— Flame Terminal.
...It had been a long time. He'd learned so much since then, it felt like months, or even years.
Drawing closer to one of the larger screens to watch, he saw a trailmon— Worm— pulling into the station. A group of pagumon gathered around the doors, waiting to see the passengers disembark, and he couldn't help but feel nostalgic, as they had done the same thing when he'd first arrived. They must do that every time visitors came to their town. There was a puff of smoke from one of the doors, and the passengers fell in a heap—
Human passengers.
His eyes widened, and he pressed close to the screen. It was JP. And Zoe. And the others.
It was the day they first came to the digital world.
He looked on in amazement, seeming to have lost his breath, as he watched that day happen again.
There went Tommy, running out onto the tracks, insistent on trying to walk all the way back to the human world. His eyes trailed to the edge of the screen, back toward the entrance of the station, waiting to see himself go after him.
As the seconds went by, a feeling of wrongness grew within him.
...Where was he? He looked at a nearby screen that showed the rest of the group where the trailmon had left them. There was Zoe... There was JP... The pagumon... His eyes darted around, but he couldn't find Takuya. No sign of the bright red of his jacket, not even from the other angles shown in the other screens.
...He wasn't there?
Note:
It felt like a good place for a chapter break. So... what do you think? (is there even much of a fan base for Digimon on this site?)
The idea about the cave with the screens was actually inspired by the Noah episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh!: DM (...which I'd also not seen in some time), by the way. But when I looked up the Digimon 4 episodes, I realized it was similar to the TV Forest. But I think that's a good thing, because it will fit in well later. Oh, and of course, the idea for the fic was partially inspired by the classic movie It's a Wonderful Life.