A/N: Well, I really wanna just get this chapter over with. I got an idea for something the other day, but I can't do it until I deal with this chapter. In any case though, I'm putting in the digital world's time system now, it may stay, it may not. It will signal any scene change with the time (DT means Digital Time) and place. If the abbreviation next to the time is not DT, the scene takes place outside of the digital world.
Disclaimer: One in One Digimon Fanfiction writers want to own Digimon. None of them do, otherwise it wouldn't be a fanfiction. Also, any claims made about seasons of the show here must be taken with a grain of salt, as I haven't seen any of them but Data Squad in ages. And I saw Data Squad in Japanese with subtitles, so something would obviously have changed by the time Wayne, Felicia, Kyle, and Jeff saw it. Furthermore, if my Japanese here is incorrect, I blame the Langenscheidt Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary with Blue Headwords, which I do own a copy of, but not the rights to.
Chapter Seven: First Spires
14:23DT/Internet Island/Mythic Spire # 1
"You know, for being the one of us who landed on top of everyone else, you sure don't seem like it." Jeff said to Coronamon, earning him to flaming middle finger salutes.
"It isn't my fault that I was furthest from where that hole started opening! Besides, Gaomon isn't exactly soft once you get past the fur." Coronamon stepped out the door and looked around. Seeing another human, he was expecting to see a white spire outside. Instead, he saw the exact opposite, along with a very angry looking Meramon. His eyes widened. "Digimon first, partners prepared to step in if they have to." He muttered back to the others. There was some quiet shifting around as Leormon, Gaomon, Lunamon, and Labramon joined him. Coronamon's last few words had set everyone on edge.
"Look, uh, we don't wanna cause any trouble…." Labramon began before a fireball was shot at him. He barely managed to jump out of the way. "Fine, be that way." He said, a low growl following it.
"Roaring Fire!" The Meramon shouted as flames erupted from his hands.
"Petit Prominence!" Coronamon shouted as flame clones of himself appeared and attempted to block the fire being shot at the digimon. Instead, the flame clones made the fire stronger. "Shit."
"Tear Shoot!" Lunamon said as a barrage of water balls appeared out of nowhere and began pummeling the fire. "Next time remember that fighting fire with fire never works." She whispered to Coronamon.
"Retribark!" Everyone turned and stared as Labramon used the attack. It wasn't every day Labramon used the attack, and for the most part Labramon usually stayed out of battles and healed everyone afterwards. The visible soundwaves struck Meramon and seemed to do very little. But Labramon seemed to have something else in mind as a large statue was seen falling through the air towards him. The dog digimon spun around on his front paws just in time to kick the statue towards Meramon as hard as he could. The statue shattered from the force of the kick, but the bigger chunks kept flying towards the flaming digimon.
"Magma Blast!" The Meramon screamed as the chunks of statue suddenly caught fire and turned molten. The molten rocks then switched course and turned to pummel the digimon. Most of the rocks hit with enough force to de-digivolve Leormon, Coronamon, Gaomon, and Labramon, but Lunamon escaped by emitting a large amount of foam like that at the top of a wave and using the momentum to do a spinning jump. The rock heading towards Lunamon, however, kept going towards Akira.
"Lunamon!" Akira cried out desperately, too surprised to even jump out of the way. She cringed only to hear:
"Lunamon, digivolve to: Lekismon! Moon Night Kick!" Looking up, Akira saw something that looked vaguely like Lunamon kicking the rock straight at Meramon. "Tear Arrow!" Lekismon shouted as an arrow made of ice appeared between the sticks on her back and shot towards Meramon. The rock had stunned Meramon enough to keep him in place as the ice arrow hit him, melting into water but moving with the same momentum mere millimeters before it hit. Now doused with water, the Meramon collapsed on the ground, the flames where he had been hit gone to reveal a scaly black chest. The Meramon shuddered as it de-digivolved into DemiMeramon.
Then again, DemiMeramon wasn't the only thing shuddering, as proved when a brick from the internet fell and hit it on the head, further de-digivolving it into a digitama ((A/N: The kind of digiegg that hatches into a digimon for those of you who don't know)). A white light seemed to come down from the sky and touch down on the tip of the mythic spire, which had been black. Once touched by the light, however, the mythic spire turned white again and a screen appeared on its side.
Not that anyone noticed that, as everyone was too busy staring at Lekismon. The first thing anyone said was Wayne saying "Well, that's a little cliché."
"How so?" Jeff asked.
"Every season of the show, the first show includes someone digivolving in the first episode. We've barely been here half an hour if you start counting from when we woke up. Think about it." Felicia stated.
"Maybe, but technically they all start in the real world too. Which means that we'd be in the second episode by now. Hah!" Kyle said victoriously.
"And this is all relevant why?" Akira asked, "Why don't we congratulate Lekismon here instead of saying how cliché this whole incident is." She said, getting up and walking over to Lekismon. She hugged her partner and whispered "Arigato."
"Do itashishimashite." Lekismon replied. The world seemed to go quiet for a while. Of course, someone had to break the silence.
"What in the what now?" Kyle asked.
"Moment ruiner. It was all nice and then it was like someone walks into a quiet room screaming about a papercut." Wayne said.
"But what does it mean?!" Kyle begged.
"Shut up for five minutes and maybe they'll tell you." Leormon said, jumping up and holding Kyle's mouth shut with his paw. The overall effect was reminiscent of Pokemon whenever Brock starts obsessing over a girl. Jeff actually laughed at it.
"In any case, congratulations Lekismon." Felicia said
"Yeah, we couldn't have done it without you." Labramon added.
And so things went for the next half hour or so until Lekismon got tired of it and de-digivolved to Lunamon and made everyone go look at the spire and figure out how to get to the next one so they could leave.
14:25DT/The Complex/Conference Room
Dan frowned as he came out the other end of the portal. In all likelihood the other humans were already taking on the Meramon and about to turn the spire white. Just another problem he had to deal with. He much preferred the days in the digital world where everything was much simpler, back when he first started messing with the spires for Hadesdramon. He still remembered the very first spire he'd changed from neutral to black….
10:13DT, 3 years & 8 months ago/Somewhere in the Digital World/Dan's first spire
It was raining. That was the first thing Dan noticed about the island, which was likely very beautiful and sunny most of the time. Hadesdramon had just invented the digital portal device, and he had wanted Dan to test it out on his first mission. This led to the second thing Dan noticed while on the island. A distinct sense of wanting to throw up, most likely caused by the transportation as data being a very dizzying experience at first. The third thing he noticed was the Floramon looking curiously at him.
He spared the Floramon a glance before turning to his side, seeing an equally nauseous-looking Arkadimon right where he had been before they had gone through the portal. He gave Arkadimon a look that asked if he was all right, the only response being a nod and what seemed to be an attempt at hiding the nausea. With that, he looked around in search of the thing they'd been sent for: the mythic spire. Hadesdramon had told him it would be visible from where they landed, but he saw nothing out of the ordinary.
"You lookin' for somethin' mistah?" The Floramon asked curiously. It was rewarded with a brief glare from Dan before Dan realized that the Floramon might be of some use.
"The mythic spire. I was told it would be nearby, but I'm not seeing it." He replied, softening his expression so as to fool the Floramon. The Floramon gestured at a tree. Or at least, Dan had thought it was a tree at first. Upon closer inspection, he discovered that it was in fact simply a spire of wood that went into the canopy of the trees around it.
"Thank you." He said, nodding to Arkadimon. Arkadimon held up an arm and suddenly the claw on the end began to extend rapidly. The Floramon's expression suddenly changed from one of curiosity and helpfulness to one of anger and determination.
"Hey! What are you doing to the–"
The Floramon was cut off as suddenly it collapsed on the ground when Arkadimon's claw came into contact with the spire, digging into it slightly. Dark clouds, darker than the rain clouds already present, rolled in above them. Dark energy, barely visible at first but gradually growing more distinct, began to run down Arkadimon's arm and claw and into the spire. Dan stared in awe. "That didn't happen when we were training yesterday." He said. The response from Arkadimon was a slow nod; confusion that could only be evident to someone who knew Arkadimon as well as Dan did mixed in with it.
Arkadimon attempted to remove the claw, only to somehow end up with the claw sinking in deeper. Deciding that the effort to remove the claw was useless for the moment, Dan decided to wait it out. A few minutes later, the claw was suddenly shrunk back down to normal size and Arkadimon was sent reeling backwards, as though the claw had been hurled out of the spire, which had now turned black, as if burnt. Once again the confusion evident only to Dan appeared as the Floramon seemed to turn darker somehow, and the trees turned black and lost their leaves, as though a fire had ripped through the forest. This change spread slowly across the island, observed by Dan for a while before the Floramon began showing signs of waking up.
"Digital Portal, pre-set destination: The Complex." Dan said, grabbing Arkadimon as they began to turn into the raw data that was assimilated by the portal, spat out, and reconfigured on the other end. When greeted by BlackAgumon on the other end, Dan said nothing and made his way through the long halls and towards his room. He stopped only briefly to leave a note on the table telling BlackAgumon to tell Hadesdramon that the spire was black and the portal worked, albeit causing some slight nausea.
14:26DT, back in the present/The Complex/Conference Room
Dan shook his head, clearing the memory from his mind. Ever since then he had been working for Hadesdramon, going out and changing spires to black whenever Hadesdramon found one, or once the computer system had been invented, whenever he found one using that. The nausea from the portal had been fixed (to a point) within a few weeks, and any remaining nausea from it disappeared after a while as you got used to it. Things had been simple for the most part. The R and D department always seemed to have something for him to test out, and when he wasn't busy with that he and Arkadimon would train, eventually figuring out digimerging and how Dan could then use Arkadimon's abilities. And that's how he had spent his days, until now. He'd recognized the human seen in the footage from the camera on Internet Island. It was Jeff. He wondered how Jeff could have stayed the same age for so long, entirely forgetting that he himself hadn't seemed to age during the almost four years he'd been in the digital world.
Puzzled by the idea of not aging for four years, and not looking forward to telling Hadesdramon that the spire he had just turned black was likely going to be white by the time he got the news to Hadesdramon, he headed off to his room and decided not to tell Hadesdramon about that last spire. Arkadimon followed silently, just as he always had. Dan sometimes wondered why Arkadimon didn't speak, but he figured the digimon didn't see any reason to when the only important people he knew understood anything he would want to say without him talking.
Once he reached his room, Dan closed the door as soon as Arkadimon was in, turned off the lights, and fell asleep on the bed.
