Chapter One

Andrew Roth had fought with his mother that morning, just has they had fought yesterday and the day before; just as they had a hundred times over for almost a year now. Something had changed between them ever since the accident that took his father's life; something that prayed on their nerves and caused them to explode at one another over the smallest and dumbest of instances. If his room was messy there was a fight, if he left his backpack in the hallway there was a fight, if one of them made an off-hand remark there was one fight after another.

It wasn't that his home life was neglected or abusive. There was always food on the table and no bill ever went unpaid, and not once did his mother ever lay a single hand upon him no matter how much he might have deserved otherwise, but so little of that seemed important during the moments they were shouting at one another at the drop of a hat.

On most days he would just shut himself in his room for an hour or so until they both cooled down and then everything could go back to something like normal. However today's verbal brawl had been particularly vicious, and by the time it ended (or at came to a point where one of them was bound to lose their voice if they went any longer) the boy no longer thought he could find peace even within the quiet sanctity of his own room. What he needed was to get out of the house entirely and go somewhere, anywhere, just as long as that place was far away from his home, his mother, and the arguments.

So on that warm July afternoon that's just what he did. The young boy stepped out of his home, slamming the door behind him just for extra effect, and headed down the street of his plain suburban home perched just outside the city limits.

Even if a fog of hurt anger wasn't already clouding his mind, the young boy had no way of knowing that it was going to be a long, long time before he ever saw his house, mother, or even his world again.

The gears that controlled his destiny began to turn with a heavy lurch.

O O O

Andrew walked the streets of his city with little direction or purpose. In that time he didn't care where he was going just as long as he was walking, moving, doing anything to keep himself occupied.

His mind repeatedly tried to making him think about the last fight, or how things had gone so wrong with his once normal family. That was the last thing he wanted to do. All he was interested in was cooling off and calming down before he headed home, and since he was constantly getting himself worked up every time he began to come down as his brain kept turning back to a fight he could not even remember the cause of, Andrew ended up putting a lot of distance between himself and his house.

The quiet streets of his suburb had long since given way to a commercial district. Small shops and offices stood on either side of the street where the traffic had increased to a steady pace. The sidewalk, which he had had mostly to himself, was now being shared with dozens of other people. Cars zoomed by in a constant parade, an airplane roar far overhead, and from somewhere across the street came the sound of a guitar.

Instead of being able to turn his mind to a state of blank serenity he was now forced to concentrate on not running into anyone around him. Where as before he was able to move and stop at leisure he was now being forced to keep pace with the foot traffic as if they were cattle heading down an assembly line. When they chance came to free himself from the herd and take a moment to catch his breath, he took it.

Ducking into a good sized alley between an antique store and an office building, Andrew leaned against a wall, trying to gauge just how far he had walked. He was tired, that much he knew, but as to where he was exactly was a different matter.

Not that he was too worried. He had lived in this city all of his life and could easily find his way back to familiar territory, and if got too mixed up he still had his cell phone. He could always call his mom and have her pick him up. She wouldn't be happy about it and would probably spend the entire drive back lecturing him about not running off on his own, but he felt like he could take it... but not just yet. He needed a little more time before he was ready to head back into the war zone that had become his life. As for now, he came to a unanimous decision with himself to just chill out here.

Andrew bent down and picked up a small pebble from the ground, tossing down the alley as if skipping it across the surface of a pond; a silly timewaster, but soothing in its own way.

It was on his third bend to grab a piece of chipped concrete that he happened to glance forward and saw something lying just behind the wheel of a dumpster a little further down from where he stood. For a moment he simply remained the way he was; crouched over like a runner on a track getting readying for the starting gun as he tried to puzzle together what he was looking at.

The object was a shiny blue and gray in color and looked totally out of place in the alley. He kept waiting for his brain to place the name of the item in his mind, to tell him that he was just looking at a candy wrapper or broken piece of ... something, but it never came. The more he looked at it, the more interested he was in finding out exactly what the mystery prize was, so with a light shrug as if to ask 'what am I waiting for', Andrew stood and headed for the dumpster.

He had to drop to one knee to get his hand in the space between the dumpster and the ground. His fingers wrapped around the object, which felt like hard plastic, and pulled it out and whatever hopes he had to identifying the thing after getting a good look at it faded quickly.

It was egg shaped colored blue in the middle with gray stripes running around the sides and wrapping into the back. At the wider end there was a small screen and what appeared to be the small nub of an antenna of some kind. Near the stop sat a small screen above a handful of unmarked buttons.

To Andrew it looked like a portable TV, but the screen far too small to see anything on. It might have also been an MP3 player of some kind, but if so it wasn't like any brand he had ever seen before.

Well, whatever it is, it not working, he figured. None of the buttons seemed to do anything and, as far as he was able to see, there wasn't any place to put in batteries or attach a charger. Whatever it was he was hold seemed to be ultimately pointless, yet still kinda cool, and since it looked like whoever owned it before just tossed it away, Andrew decided that it would be okay if he held on to it.

Stuffing the object into his empty pocket, the boy turned and started to head back to the street. He was finally starting to feel better and decided that he had been out long enough for today.

Starting to make his exit, Andrew got no further than two steps before the strangest feeling came over him. The world around him began to blur, like he was looking through a camera lens that was slowing being turned out of focus. Turning his eyes down to look at himself, Andrew saw that his own body was still as clear as ever; it was everything else that was going out of focus around him, fading into a white light that hurt his eyes a little. Squinting, the boy felt ready to cry out for help when he suddenly fell. It wasn't a 'losing your balance' kind of fall, but more like someone had opened up a trapdoor beneath his feet. The world around him had all vanished into pure a white glow leaving the boy with no firm ground to stand upon and nothing to grab on to, leaving him to fall, tumbling down into an endless, empty abyss.

O O O

At some point during the night Andrew must have kicked the sheets off his bed, because he felt a cool breeze caressing his entire body. He didn't remember turning his overhead fan on that night or leaving the window open, but he must have. Keeping his eyes shut, Andrew reached down for the blanket so he could pull it back up around him shoulders the way he liked, but could not find them. He moved his hand back and forth, but each time it came up empty. It was as he beginning to awaken from his sleepy stupor that he noticed how his mattress didn't feel right at all; it was hard and poking into him in some places, there also seemed to be no pillow under his head.

It was at that moment that everything came rushing back to him in one huge wave. Andrew sat bolt upright, his eyes shooting open and found himself in the last place he would have never suspected: a forest.

Andrew stood up slowly, trying to look everywhere at once. The afternoon sun had lowered to that of early evening, meaning he had been out for a few hours, but how did he even end up in the middle of the woods? As far as he knew there weren't any forests around the city, just a lot of in-fill suburbs and highways. Checking his pockets he found both his cell phone as well as the thing he picked up from the ally were still there, so he hadn't been robbed, and as far as he could tell he was unhurt; even the woozy feeling he had earlier was gone. So then that begged the question: who would take him from an alley in the middle of a busy street just to dump him in the middle of the woods? It made no sense...

Whatever the answer was, he wasn't too interested in it, anyway. All he wanted was to go home.

Before the idea of calling his mother had just been a quaint possibility, but now it was more like a necessity. Opening his phone, he called his house and after a few seconds of waiting be was greeted by only the sound of a shrill beep followed by a recorded voice saying his call could not be completed as dialed. It then helpfully suggested that he check the number and try again before hanging up. Andrew took the advice, the fingers that punched in the number to his house starting to shake, but he received the same result. Glancing at his signal strength, Andrew saw the reason for his phone problems: no bars. There was not a single hint of a connection out here, and that deeply worried him. Just how far away from the city was he if he couldn't get a call out?

Andrew had heard that in times like this he was supposed to stay where he was and wait for rescue, but he thought that only applied to when people knew you were lost in a forest somewhere. He had no way of knowing when is mother would start to get worried and call the police. Even when she did, they would probably start by looking around their home and spreading outward from there, so how long before they made it all the way out to… wherever he was? Days? Weeks? Longer?

No, the smart thing to do now is to keep moving in one steady direction, he told himself, trying to keep calm. Sooner or later I have to come upon something. Right?

Even his own interior voice didn't show so sure of that.

Time passed and the sun set lower into the sky, yet no matter how far he walk he saw no signs of civilization, and with each passing minute his feelings of dread grew, as did the un shakable sensation of being watched. Several times he stopped and looked around, but always saw nothing. There were no footsteps other than his own, only this low buzzing as if made by a bee or some such insect; not exactly an out of place sound way out here.

It continued on until he finally stopped to rest on a fallen tree trunk. The trip though the woods mixed with his walk through town left him exhausted despite his unwanted nap. He needed a minute to catch his breath and get his bearings.

That was when the buzzing grew to its loudest level. It now sounded right behind him and came a voice, one that was very clear and strong, but defiantly not human.

"Well, it izzz about you stopped," it spoke, the zone seeming to match the buzz of wings he heard. "I don't think my apatite could hold any longer."

Whipping his head around so quickly that it was a wonder he didn't hurt himself in the process, Andrew found himself being stared down by what looked like a gigantic wasp; one which a long, wicked looking stinger poised directly at him.

"You must be about the ugliest Digimon I have ever seen, but I am sure you will taste much better than you look."

Andrew tried to stand up, but the fear had turned his legs into mush causing him to instead collapse onto his side. Desperatly, he tried to get back up to his feet, but was unable to get enough strength into his shaking arms; a feeble attempt that only seemed to amuse the monster that could only have come out of his deepest nightmares to devour him whole. It turned out that the grown-up were wrong; there really were such things as monsters, and they did feast upon children.

"P-please. Stop," he pleaded, his eyes never blinking as he watched the thing's jerky movements.

"That izzz right; beg. Squirm. It alwayzzz makezzz the meal more pleasurable," it taunted.

The boy closed his eyes tight and buried his face into his arms, unable to fight through the terror brought on by the impossible creature that hovered before him. Andrew lay there, smelling the sweet grass and feeling the soft breeze wash over his body as he waited for the pain to begin as he was devoured.

The buzzing sound the creature's wings made grew in volume as it drew closer, almost deafening him, yet somehow over the noise he was able to hear the new voice. It seemed to come from the trees just above him. It was a female voice as far as he could tell, and it called out two words in a tone that was strong and demanding, one which seemed to hold no fear whatsoever. When it spoke, it did so with authority, and even thought what he heard sounded nonsensical to his year, there was an undeniable viciousness to them.

"Diamond Storm!"

To be continued.