Chapter 1:

It all started when kids' bodies started falling from the sky. No one was certain where they were coming from, there weren't any planes or helicopters flying over Tokyo when the bodies fell, and a couple had fallen in parks and the middle of intersections with no tall buildings around them. No one could explain it. The police tried to hush it up, but every few days a bunch of kids would disappear all at once and then reappear a few days later, dead and falling out of a clear blue sky.

I only know about it because I saw it happen. I was walking home after the last day of school before vacation, when suddenly I saw it, a kid fall from a clear blue sky. He was dead on impact, but the fall didn't kill him. His arm was gone, chewed off by some monstrous beast, claws had torn his chest open and his ribs were clearly visible, cracked and broken, through the tears in his flesh. In his remaining arm he was clutching a small pale green device, it looked like a square with all the corners excised, and there was a smaller square screen in the middle of it slowly going dark. There seemed to be some buttons and what looked like an antenna too, but I didn't get a good enough look to tell exactly because a few seconds after the kid's body hit the ground the screen went completely dark and the entire device broke apart into some sort of multi-colored dust that floated away on a non-existent wind, swirling back up into the sky.

I recognized the kid. He went to my school, he hadn't shown up today, but I'd seen him yesterday. He had seemed perfectly fine then. I stared at the kid's broken form. There was no question, he had been ripped apart by a large animal. I ran.

There was nothing I could do for him, he was already dead, and I could hear sirens approaching. The smell of blood and death filled my nose as I fled. There was nothing I could do. I kept repeating it to myself, over and over again. There was nothing I could do. I slept fitfully that night. My classmate's body haunting my dreams as the memory of the incident replayed in my head. It wasn't until a few days latter that I discovered what had really happened to him, and even now I wish I hadn't.

My name is Koushiro "Izzy" Izumi, and I am trapped in the digital world.

The forest was flat. That was the only thought that got him past the pain, past the realization of just what he was holding in his hand. The forest was flat. It existed in all three dimensions, but somehow there was something flat about it anyway. The leaves on the trees didn't droop or shift, they didn't shine in the sunlight and their edges were blocky and pixelated, as if some programmer tried to make some trees and failed to render the details properly. The forest is flat, Izzy thought to himself, and I'm in big trouble.

The buzzing started off small, almost an afterthought, distant and not important. A high pitched whine echoing through the fake trees. But it was getting closer, and Izzy could hear loud crashes joining the buzzing as it approached. It sounded almost like a gigantic animal thundering through the fake forest in his direction. The kid's body had looked like it was torn apart by some sort of animal didn't it? Trying not to think about the thing in his hand, Izzy started running.

Wormmon was having a bad day. Wormmon had heard all the stories about chosen children. He had even seen one help his V-mon partner evolve into an adult level digimon in order to overcome a seadramon. So when Wormmon had seen the pillar of light in the distance he knew it had to have something to do with one of the chosen, maybe even a new arrival who hadn't yet bonded to a digimon. It was only after he had started running towards the pillar of light that things had taken a turn for the worse. Now he was scrambling for his life frantically trying to evade the kuwagamon trying to eat him, and the giant flying beetle digimon was getting closer.

Just then, Wormmon saw it, a human. A chosen child. It was smaller than the last chosen he saw, dressed in yellow and red and staring dumbly straight at him. More importantly however, he didn't have a digimon anywhere near him. This was both good and bad. Good because it meant that wormmon's goal of bonding to a chosen child was looking not just viable but almost certain now. Of course, that brought wormmon to the bad, the reason his goal was almost certain was that in the absence of a chosen partner, bonding together was the only way to fight kuwagamon, and there was a very real possibility that this battle would lead immediately to their extremely grisly deaths.

"What in the world?" Izzy cried out as he saw the giant green insect leaping at him. There was no way something as small as that was making the sound which was even now resonating in his bones.

"There's no time!" the insect shouted. If it weren't for the clear note of panic in the thing's voice, Izzy would have started to investigate the phenomenon immediately.

"Run! We need to get away from Kuwagamon!" the green creature continued. It didn't take much thought to realize that Kuwagamon was probably whatever was making that noise, and whatever had frightened the creature into panicked flight.

Izzy wasn't sure what possessed him to do it, but when the creature ran past him, Izzy bent to pick it up instead of fleeing on his own. "What is a Kuwagamon?" Izzy asked, as he started to run as fast as his legs could carry him.

The creature didn't respond, the thing, whatever it was, was staring at the device clutched in Izzy's hand. The same hand cradling the creature's upper body as they ran.

"You really are one of the chosen aren't you?" the humongous insect asked, a note of wonder in his voice.

"The chosen? What's going on? You know what this thing is?" Izzy slowed down, the prospect of knowledge usurping his focus on flight.

The creature's eyes widened. "No! Don't slow down! Kuwagamon is right behind us! We haven't bonded! We can't fight him now!"

Izzy stopped in the middle of a forest clearing, confused, "Bonded? Kuwagamon? Chosen? Just what is going on here?" the humming was louder now, it felt like his entire body was vibrating, but it didn't seem as pressing as the questions in front of him.

"He's almost here! We need to run! Don't stop now! He'll kill us both!" Izzy had never realized that insects, if that really was what the creature was, were capable of hyper-ventilating.

The creature's obvious panic was enough to start Izzy moving again, but it was too late, no sooner had he taken the first step then he heard the roar behind him as something broke through the canopy.

"What in the world is that?!" Izzy cried out in alarm. It looked bore a vague resemblance a Hercules beetle, at least, it had horns and wings like a beetle. But the resemblance ended there. Whatever it was it was bigger than a car, and colored a bright cherry red that should have made it impossible to hide in the forest it just exited. It had long spindly limbs with claws on the end of them, four of them, not counting wings, and a shiny carapace. Whatever it was it was no beetle.

The creature in Izzy's arms moaned in despair, "That... is Kuwagamon." Suddenly Izzy realized why the green creature was so insistent that they flee. Kuwagamon was a monster, it looked like it was ripped directly out of someone's nightmares. Kuwagamon roared.

"That... is not not a good sound." Izzy stated, backing away from the giant red monster. Things did not look good for either Izzy or the smaller green insec creature; they were in a clearing roughly thirty feet in diameter, completely visible from the air. The nearest cover was almost fifteen feet away, and there was no way to get to it before Kuwagamon swooped down on them, but there was also no other choice than to try anyway. Izzy dashed forward, running as fst as he could toward the edge of the clearing. The buzzing turned murderously loud as Kuwagamon dove at the redheaded boy.

"Sticky Net!" Despite the swiftly approaching peril, Izzy couldn't help but take a second to wonder just how the creature in his arms talk while shooting a silken net from its mouth.

Wormmon watched in horror as his attack connected, covering kuwagamon's eyes completely in webbing to no effect at all; the red beetle-like digimon was still diving straight at them. And now the chosen child was staring at him in shock. Using all of his strength, Wormmon jumped out of the child's arms straight at its face, knocking it down just enough to dodge the bulk of Kuwagamon's attack.

Izzy's world exploded in pain as the Kuwagamon effortlessly sliced through his upper arm almost to the bone. Only the timely intervention of his green... companion? Had saved him from being cut in half entirely. He was bleeding heavily, his arm felt slick and wet from the blood, not to mention useless. He could barely lift the arm, much less use it.

The Kuwagamon pulled around for another strafing run. This was it. With his arm in its current condition there was no way he could move fast enough to get away; and neither he, nor the green creature several feet away from him had enough strength to fight Kuwagamon off. This was it. Izzy's mind flashed back to the mauled body that he had seen drop from the sky a few days ago. At least now he knew what had happened to his classmate. At least his parents would havevclosure once it happened to him. Izzy stared at Kuwagamon, determined to meet his death with dignity.

"V-Nova Blast!" Just as Izzy had resigned himself to death, a giant beam of energy suddenly sailed out from the tree cover knocking kuwagamon out of the sky. Izzy looked around frantically. Was it another enemy? He grabbed Wormmon awkwardly with his remaining usable arm and got ready to run at the slightest provocation away from both where kuwagamon had landed and from where the fireball had exited the forest. There was a rustling in the forest as something exited the treeline and entered the clearing. Izzy darted away running as fast as he could... for all of three steps before he tripped on a rock and tumbled to the ground, the injured wormmon tumbling from his grip.

"You must be new here." it was a kid, the voice belonged to another kid, one Izzy's age, if not a year or two older. He was dressed in a t-shirt that had been turned into a camouflage pattern through applications of grass stains and mud, he wore a pair of brown shorts, and his large spiky hairdo was held back from his face with a pair of blue rimmed goggles. "My name's Tai. Come with me if you want to live."