DISCLAIMER: I don't own Digimon, but I do own the original characters introduced in this story and my other stories (except where stated otherwise here or elsewhere by myself).
A/N: Thanks to Crazyeight for beta reading.
DIMENSIONS
BOOK ONE
Links
Rewrite
By Blazing Chaos
CHAPTER NINE
The Reformatted Digital World
WEDNESDAY, 14TH NOVEMBER 2007
DIGITAL PLANE
23:29 UTC
The Digital Plane was not the sort of place that made sense. Random things came and went all the time, from the revolving clocks occasionally punctuating the background to the random numbers. A human was still a rare sight though, and the Goggles on its head were hardly the in-thing in Digital Plane fashion.
"Took you long enough," snapped a redhead, standing (although what on she didn't want to consider) nearby and clutching a rucksack in her hands, which she unceremoniously tossed across to him over a fair distance. In reality, the shot was an unlikely one unless you were well-trained in the art of throwing, but the physics of this world made the bag simply seem to drift towards him instead. Unlike true weightlessness, however, it seemed to speed up and slow down as it saw fit, and it soon occurred to Takato that the 'floor' Rika was standing on was at a bizarrely different angle to his.
"Thanks," he said, clasping the bag and securely putting it on his back, making sure the zips were tied. He didn't want another bread-falling incident. "So…do you want to talk?"
Rika's eyes were closed, and she tapped her foot on nothing in a repetitive pattern. "What's keeping Henry?"
"'cause, well, it seemed that…"
"Tak…Gogglehead, what's more important right now?"
"Huh? More important than what?"
"Having your sappy conversation about, oh, I'm so harsh on my mother, or working out what we're going to do next?"
"I just thought we had some time on our hands and…"
There was a large gurgling noise from behind Rika, rather like a toaster being dropped into a washing machine. "And now we don't," she said with no lack of satisfaction, before she turned, her pleasure at not having to have the conversation she dreaded right now being unfortunately short lived.
For there, in front of her, was someone she didn't quite expect.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
Ryo smiled his annoyingly perfect and unaffected smile, one that seemed unlikely to originate anywhere other than an American high school show. "Nice to see you too Princess. Although you're upside down."
A lightning storm in a bubble bath managed to overpower Rika's gargling, as Henry shot out from below, his feet barely missing Takato's whole body (thanks to a just-in-time step back) before he settled on a position above.
"I forgot what that felt like," he said, regretting the reliving of those memories as he looked around, seeing his companions all around him, all standing on slightly different planes.
"Great, everyone's here!"
"Everyone plus one," Rika said, arms crossed and eyes demanding an answer. "Before we get down there, I want to know…"
It was too late, and the redhead's eyes widened as gravity finally settled on where it was. And so began the headfirst fall of Ryo, the sky-diver fall of Henry, the frightened fall of Takato and the seemingly disaffected and really quite angry fall of Rika, the ambiguity and nonsense of the Digital Plane giving way to the increasing certainty of the rather solid land of the Digital World surface below.
But first came a variety of circuit boards. Takato instinctively went into the foetal position as he smashed into them. Some felt like falling through feathers, but while passing through a particularly nasty 'concrete' one, he remembered in the nick of time to grab tightly onto his bag so that the Digital World wouldn't suffer from the occasional bread shower for the next millennia.
And then, after the circuit boards, came the welcome relief and certainty of the Digital World's desert below, for which Takato clenched his eyes shut.
DIGITAL WORLD
Desert Level
23:31 UTC
It was not until after it literally hit Takato, of course, that he remembered how that certainty felt. The sound was cacophonous, but fizzled out in the world around them, echoes completely lacking in its vast expanse, dimly lit, even at its current night, by an unseen (and extremely bright) moon.
Still, something about the landing felt slightly different. Was the sand originally this lumpy below? And he didn't remember a rock landing on his back before – particularly not such an oddly-shaped one, one which took all the wind out of him as it delivered a powerful blow to his spine and pushed him further into the rock below.
As a result, his wail when the rock below him began to move was minimal.
"Takato. Get off my arse."
Although that voice implicitly promised the worst punishments conceivable if its demands were not met, the noise of apology and objection still couldn't be brought to the wheezing boy's lips, and his arms would not budge under the weight of the rock above him. So he was eternally thankful when that same rock started talking and defended his case.
"Sorry, it's my fault he can't breathe or move," Henry pushed himself away, the weight on Takato's back lifting but the pain not entirely easing. As quickly as he could with his aching mid section, he went to push himself up, but repositioned his hands when he realised what he would've used to do so. After he rolled aside, Rika got on her knees and stood up over him. She shot him a hateful look past red cheeks (through pain, embarrassment or just sheer anger, he couldn't be certain), clambering out the side of the crater the three of them had made.
Ryo, looking down from above, whistled his appreciation. "That's one deep hole you've dug yourselves."
"If only he knew," Takato thought, but he was too busy trying his utmost to breathe and climb out himself (Henry eventually seeing his distress and giving him some assistance) to voice the notion. Not that he would've. Rika still didn't know what he knew, and none of them really knew what Rika knew about the thing with Rumiko. Circles within circles within squares. When did things get so complicated again all of a sudden?
Rika didn't seem ready to laugh. "Cut the jokes. What are you doing here?"
"Your grandma called me and told me you guys were going at 08:30," Ryo answered. Rika knew he was lying, even if there was no essence of that in his delivery. The story didn't make any sense.
"Oh really, because I expressly remember us planning not to bring anyone else." The boy lived in Kyushu, after all, and there was no way he could've made it after Rika ran away from home. And why would her grandma have called for Ryo in that case anyway? Something just didn't add up here. "So why are you really here?"
"Hey, I told you."
"I don't remember her making a phone call." "I don't believe you."
"Why would I lie? And for that matter, what happened to trusting me? Last time we met, Princess, you trusted me so far as to give me all your power. What happened to change that?"
"It didn't work. It took Lancelot here glowing like a flashlight and Typhoon Rabbit to finally cram that thing. And never call me Princess."
"Okay, can we please not have an argument?" Takato laughed sheepishly. Intervening in any of Rika's arguments was hard enough: intervening in one with Ryo could only come with a death wish.
"Shut up Gogglehead, this is nothing to do with you."
"Well, it's just, two seconds ago you were sort of talking about being practical and…"
"Yes, and now we have time to talk. What's your point?"
"A very good one," Henry interjected, gesturing outwards. "This place looks even more dangerous than the last time."
The desert, like always, stretched off in all directions, with no clear indication as to which was the best way out of there. Rocks punctuated the area, from a rather large one nearby to the array of dish-like ones in the far distance, while the Earth orb above dropped pink beams onto the surface below like a hundred flashlights. Rather useful, in fact, given the darkness (even if it never got too dark here).
But even without the light, Henry could tell that that nearby rock couldn't possibly balance with the way it stood now. Its base had been perfectly eroded away, leaving its huge mass pivoted on a relatively small point at one side. It should've collapsed ages ago. And, upon closer inspection, some of those 'dishes' hung bizarrely in the air. Indeed, even the gradient of the desert had changed, erratic slopes added to its relative flatness.
"Did…did the D-Reaper do this?" Ryo asked.
"That or Guilmon's hunger," Henry quipped, his voice full of wonder at the world around him, almost as much as he'd had last time. The place simply didn't seem possible, from its different sky to the fact that one would expect to have dust and sand all over one's clothes after a crash that bad.
Rika looked indignant. "I thought we were being serious here."
"We need to find him." Takato's voice rang with determination as the pain in his torso subsided. He wasn't sure the same could be said for his relationship with Rika, which seemed to have been eroded just like those rocks in the past ten minutes or so.
Henry nodded. "We're like sitting ducks until we find any of them."
"I can't see any Digimon," Ryo said, habitually putting his hand above his eyes even though he knew there was no sun to glare into them.
"Don't forget, this place looked empty last time before those Jagamon descended." The blue-haired boy could barely believe that was only a few months ago. So much had happened since.
Ryo shook his head. "I wasn't with you guys then."
"Oh, right, I forgot, sorry. How did you get here anyhow?"
"It's a long story, and I think we have bigger things to focus on right now. What's the plan Takato? You're the one with the Goggles."
"Yes, because that's an excellent qualification for a leader," Rika said sardonically. Her argument with, well, almost everyone she had spoken to in the past few moments, had left her with a rather low tolerance for idiocy – lower even than normal.
"Well, I think we should head to those antenna rocks over there. We might find our way from there," Takato gestured in a direction, the rocks in the distance scarred by the D-Reaper's effects.
"That's strange," Henry scratched his head, turning his head around to look in the other direction. "What, you mean like those antennas that way?"
Takato nodded, smiling, and turned his head. "Yeah, like those antenna…wait, what?"
Sure enough, in the almost exact opposite direction to the dishes that the Gogglehead had been looking at, another set stood, with slightly different scars. This wasn't simply a reflection. It was the real deal. And it left them with only one explanation.
"This isn't the same place as last time, is it?" Takato sighed, cramming a hand into his forehead, his fingernails tapping onto his Goggles. "Why can't anything ever be simple?"
"I wouldn't be so quick to judge," Ryo said, bending down on one knee to inspect the ground. He peered out and around, Henry's attention drawn to the same factor. "Look at these dents in the ground."
"Wait, are these what I think they are?" Henry wondered, taking a step back and counting. While some of the dents were deeper than others, and some were slightly merged into one, there were unmistakably the same number as the number from last time: the number of Tamers who had crashed. Indeed, as Rika curiously kicked the sand, it slipped down slightly, a trickle dropping into the fresh craters nearby.
"We might want to move," she noted, a general unease building in the pit of her stomach.
"Agreed," Henry said, before the rumble from the surface below brought the reality to their attention. The four, in the order that it occurred to them exactly what was going on, leapt aside in a variety of directions, thankfully landing just before the ground caved in behind them into a pit.
Takato was the first to stand up, putting on his goggles to see through the dust cloud, which still failed to deposit itself on any of their clothes. "This is definitely Guilmon's crater," he noted.
"Of course it is, no-one else would make a crater that big," Rika said, standing up and wandering over herself as the mist settled.
"No, I mean, look," the Gogglehead said, amusement coming to the forefront of his voice. "Bread! Shaped like Guilmon's head!" he said in a singsong voice. "I always wondered where that went."
Rika delivered him a swift backhand to the back of his head, covering up his brief 'ouch' with a "moron."
"Okay, so if we're in the same place," Henry wondered, standing up and gazing around. "Then the world's changed."
"Here was me hoping I could navigate," Ryo sighed, Rika barely containing her urge to jab him for his attempt at know-it-all-ness. "Sorry guys."
"Well, now that Mr Perfect has failed, does anyone else have any proper ideas?" Rika gave up containing it.
"Maybe these things can help?" Henry suggested, lifting up his D-Arc to his face. As a group, they collectively went to their devices, and frowned at the fuzzy compass appearing on all of them, spinning wildly and not looking like it was planning to stop any time soon. Henry hoped it was just because they were too far away to find Terriermon and the others. If the D-Arc wouldn't show them at all, or…if the worst had happened… "Please be okay…"
"Useless." Rika hissed, returning the object to her belt, and disguising her worry for Renamon with irritation. "Any decent ideas, anyone?"
"Pick a direction and walk?" Takato laughed sheepishly.
"I said any decent ideas."
"Hey, I'm actually agreeing with Takato here," Henry said. Rika knew such an occurrence was far from rare. Even today, the pair often sided against her. No doubt Ryo would too. "Every option available to us is equal right now, so we won't lose out by taking one of them."
"That's stupid," Rika complained. "Renamon and the others have to be in one of these directions, so they're not all equal."
"Do you have any better ideas, or are you just going to keep criticising?" Ryo asked.
Rika huffed, not honouring it with a reply (even though she would admit he had a point), and picked the direction she was facing to begin walking in. "Come on then."
"Great!" Takato eventually said, looking after her and clasping his hands together, grinning with glee. "And while we're walking, we can have a nice long chat to catch up."
"This is not a road movie," Rika sighed, almost beneath her breath, before she realised it wasn't worth bothering with. Whatever she did, he would always be that stupidly nice and chatty and optimistic and thoughtful, even when their odds were so clearly so bad. Why did he have to be like that?Couldn't he just live in pessimism like the rest of them, or at least leave them to it? "Stupid Takato." Her bad mood, attempting to self-perpetuate, ensured she stayed a good few feet in front of the others as they walked, lest she see any speck of optimism on their jaws and attempt to copy it.
"Sounds good," Ryo said, staying back a few seconds before he began to follow so he could address the one thing that was bugging him right now. "And I think I need one too. Seems like I've landed in the middle of it all. Literally. And so I have to ask the million dollar question…" His voice descended to a whisper. "What's got Rika so testy? More than usual."
Rika, hearing, pretended she hadn't.
"Well," Takato began, glancing ahead feeling that death would inevitably result if he said the wrong thing. "I think it's something going on with her mother and her," he continued, before he noticed that Rika's head started to move slightly. With the briefest of nervous laughs, he changed the way his words were heading. "Which is definitely none of our business and so we shouldn't talk about it."
Ryo grinned, miming a whip and its noise, before swiftly moving on. "So what's the story behind this portal then?"
"Well, yesterday when I was heading to Rika's h…I mean, heading to the shops to get something for the store," Takato quickly corrected himself. Rika had heard, and raised an eyebrow, but said nothing for the time being. "I went past the hideout and I heard this static noise…and…well, there it was."
"I'm surprised you were allowed to go. Although Yamaki did say something about wanting more time when I met him on the way from the station. To finish his preparations."
"Oh, that reminds me," Henry said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the device he had received what now felt like a lifetime ago. It was hard to believe that this place, in essence, was so 'close' to Shinjuku Park. If the portal still existed, that was.
Ryo nodded, pulling out his own, before the blue-haired boy passed his to Takato. The boy looked over the improvised device curiously. "Yamaki called it a D-Nav, and gave us two of them. It's an upgraded version of the PDA from last time, and hopefully should work a bit better. We can use them to contact each other and home."
"Ah, awesome."
"'Should'," Ryo mimed finger quotes, showing his device to Henry. Rika, in front, stopped and peered back at the new development. "I'm getting no bars of signal."
"Fantastic, another success from Hypnos," Rika sighed, her bitter wit still reigning supreme in her attitude. "Do we have to wait for another storm? Again?" Not that she really wanted to hear from home, since the message from her mother would be inevitable. But she decided she wasn't going to leave that device in Takato's hands come message-time. Last thing she needed was another heart emoticon.
"Not necessarily. Last time they worked in a cave too." Henry's hand rested on his chin. "Not that I see any around here."
"I don't think you'd see much at all in this light," Ryo mused. The trio collectively sighed, but continued on walking through the dim world, the silence oddly unnerving after a while. Rika made her distance again, and after a moment of trying to keep up and simply making her walk faster, Takato got the message that she wasn't in the mood to talk about anything right now.
Takato chewed his lip, looking around curiously. It was good that there was no sign of any Digimon…or was it? Were they hidden? The dark probably helped. It took long enough last time to run into any Digimon, to be fair. But still, it was definitely not good that there was no sign of their Digimon. The dark probably didn't help.
"What's up with the night anyhow? It was daytime back home," he asked.
"The Digital World is in a different time zone," Ryo explained.
Henry reached for his D-Nav. Its screen lacked a signal still (as much as the device desperately searched for one), it even lacked an accurate time (since it clearly wasn't 08:57). Even upgraded, it wasn't perfect. In fact, it was so far from it. He returned it to his pocket, and instead unclipped his D-Arc.
"It's two minutes to midnight," he read.
"What's that, nine hours difference?" Ryo asked.
"Unix time," Henry surmised. "Makes sense. It's based around Coordinated Universal Time."
"Oh, right. Uh, why does that make sense?" Takato raised an eyebrow. Ryo wasn't too fazed. "Am I the only one who doesn't get that here?"
"Most servers and computers run on Unix Time, which is based around UTC, the time we work out all the time zones from. And we're in a world based on computers."
"I get it. Sunrise must be seven or eight or so hours away still."
"Yeah, I think. It's only just midnight…"
THURSDAY, 15TH NOVEMBER 2007
"…now."
"Great. If we have to keep walking like this, I'm probably gonna fall asleep by the time we…"
It was at that moment that Takato flew through the air, and into the ground, making a rather alarmed noise like "aah" and then "oop", followed by an "oof."
Rika, hearing, slammed her hand into her forehead and turned round. "Oh for goodness sake Takato, do you have to literally trip over your own feet?"
"Actually, looks more like a rail," Ryo corrected, wiping off a thin layer of sand from the top. Why it settled on there, and not at all on their clothes after their huge fall, he couldn't quite be sure. Even having been in this Digital World for longer than most, he still wasn't sure how this place worked. And the rail itself rather proved he knew even less than he thought. "I've never heard of a railway in the Digital World."
"So much for being a genius about this place," the redhead said in disbelief, for the first time in a while actually joining the rest of her group.
"So there might be a train then?" Takato said enthusiastically. If there was a train, they could get out of this desert. He didn't exactly imagine any of their partners would purposefully hang around this place anyway. It didn't look dangerous right now, but it could change instantly, as they had discovered before.
He mentally gulped. What if this train wasn't friendly?
"What sort of Digimon looks like a train though?" Henry asked, pondering his card collection and all the differing species he had heard of. He wasn't exactly an expert player of the game, but learning cards and strategies did appeal to his interests, not least since he had become so tightly involved in the world of Digimon that it often paid off quite highly. Still, he drew a blank. Maybe Rika or Ryo could know. He was surprised they hadn't…
"There's Locomon."
It wasn't, in fact, one voice, but two. Was it Rika and Ryo together? Digimon King and Queen for s…
"Hey, how did you know that?" Rika demanded from Takato, as Henry realised the source wasn't the undefeated 'Champion' of the card game tournaments at all. Rika, meanwhile, didn't quite expect Takato to know such a rare and unusual card, one of those in the game but not in the anime, the sort created by someone with no real control over the whole 'Digimon' affair (which had only been made trickier for the company producing it since they, well, had become real in a spectacular way).
"'cause there's Locomon right there." Takato stood with his hand and D-Arc out, holographic circle scanning with the name right above. It wasn't being too helpful, details scarce thanks to Takato's current lack of a partner (and hence lack of seeing that Digimon's eyes on his D-Arc), but it was good enough.
Sure enough, thundering towards them down the rails was a huge, anthropomorphic…train. But, far from the cheery, cartoonish designs of Ivor and Thomas, this locomotive was a hunk of black iron, a slouched, even depressed look emanating from eyes looking out through holes in its front. A thick trail of white smoke poured from its funnel and over its traditional wooden carriages, the kind so rarely seen beyond Japan's preserved railways, with open ends and balconies linking them together. If the thundering noise and the puffing of smoke didn't give one a clue, its roaring wheels would, regardless, let you know two things. A) This train was moving very fast. And, as a result, B) This train wasn't exactly going to be stopping any time soon.
And that was a problem.
"Do you think we could catch a lift?" Henry asked, the four mesmerised by the sight ahead of them.
"Catch a lift? With all that racket he's making, I don't think he could even hear us!" Rika rebutted. Even from this distance it was loud, while the vibrating rails more and more forced specks of sand to fly off them in all directions as time passed.
"Maybe we can catch his attention with something? Takato, I don't suppose there's any chance you brought the flag a…" Ryo began. And then stopped.
"That stupid thing might actually come in useful for…Takato? What the hell are you doing?"
In all this time, from noticing the tracks (by tripping up, naturally) to seeing the train to discussing how precisely they could stop it, Takato had barely moved, except to his feet. This wouldn't have been a problem…were he not standing slap bang in the middle of the railway tracks, perched on the edge of a sleeper.
"I'll stop him babe," Takato said, glancing back briefly to Rika. She barely moved at first, staring back into his eyes in disbelief. And a slight sense of…confusion. Confusion that she couldn't quite place.
The boy turned around, and began walking along the sleepers, then running. Towards the Locomon. In alarm, Henry began to run after him, shouting at him and asking what he was doing, but he paid no notice. He was focused, intently staring into the eyes of the Digimon, who stared back with all the concentration of a bored office worker, except the consequence of inattention here would be rather higher.
Running on the soft sand was hard, and Henry found himself tumbling to the ground, a soft landing nonetheless leaving him helplessly staring on at Takato running along the track ahead.
Locomon finally began to see what was going on, even his basic sight not failing him for once. Brakes screeched on fully, tearing along the rails.
"Finally. Stupid train, can't he tell I'm tired of walking?" Takato complained, finally stopping and crossing his arms. Even a car probably couldn't stop in this distance at the speed Locomon was travelling, and trains had a habit of being rather slower to stop. Still…that wouldn't be an issue, or, at least, Takato thought so, as he put his arms out in front, bracing himself against the menacing machine rapidly bearing down on him, whistle blazing out in horror.
Hearing a noise approaching him rapidly, he…turned. For this noise came not from the huge, hulking loco in front, but from behind.
A blur of white and blue rushed into him, screaming "GET DOWN!" before pushing him sharply aside.
Any further screams were inaudible over the roar of axle after axle behind them, lightening up once the locomotive himself had passed. Thankfully, both moron and saviour had just made it free, although the latter fearfully pulled her legs up, before her eyes were caught on the carriages now passing, still promising death even if they lacked the sheer weight and bulk of their predecessors.s
When the Doppler Effect finally came into play and the train had passed enough for its squealing brakes to not overwhelm their ears, Takato barely seemed fazed by the whole event. Indeed, his only irritation seemed to be with the redhead he was now lying under.
"I could easily have pushed him out the way you know?"
"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?" Rika screamed in his ear, her horrified curiosity overwhelming the knowledge in the back of her mind that she was currently practically laying on top of the boy, were it not for her outstretched arms planted on the ground acting as a support.
"Ouch. Sorry for calling you babes then…geez..."
A slap to the face immediately followed, and Rika found herself physically restraining herself from whacking him any harder. Just what the hell had just happened? What had come over him? He was almost dead! Henry and Ryo had fallen over in the sand trying to get to him, and she had only got any further by using the very same method as Takato had: the railway sleepers (coupled with an unexpected burst of speed).
"You must have a freaking death wish, you idiot!" She found herself holding back that horrible feeling of tears threatening to bloom on her face.
"Dear Goddramon, why are you always so aggressive?" Takato began to argue, before he was hit by a sudden burst of tiredness. "I thought that was my job. You…need to…mo…men…"
And he was gone, off into the land of nod, the determination in his eyes now covered by pinkish eyelids. Practically stabbing the mental voice that told her he somehow looked cute when sleeping, Rika shoved herself to her feet, turning and wiping a wrist across her face as she scowled. She stormed past Ryo, who had come to help, and headed straight for a now-stopped Locomon, Henry standing nearby with his pacifist face on.
The Locomon looked frenetic, his eyes wavering all over. "Oh…oh my god, you're the girl that threw yourself in front of him. Is he alright? I didn't kill someone, did I? Oh my god, oh my god, oh…"
"You owe us a lift."
"But…"
"He's fine. Fine but incredibly stupid and about to be knocked back into unconsciousness once he wakes up. Back up a bit so we don't have to waste any time chucking him onboard, okay?" she fumed, more of an order than the question implied.
"Will do," the on-edge Digimon replied, pumping his pistons back and creaking the four carriages back into life slowly, advancing back until the boy was aligned with the last car.
"Stop there," Rika said, putting her palm out flat. "Thanks for the ride," she added, a mere formality, not even accompanied with eye contact as she stormed back towards the boy and Ryo, eyes burning with intent. Henry paid her a worried glance, certain that this turn of events could only worsen her already sunken mood. A moody Rika did not make a great travel companion, or, indeed, if they ever found their partners again, teammate. He couldn't understand Takato's actions either, and had audibly breathed a sigh of relief when Rika had rushed up with alarming speed and shoved him aside. It was an extremely close call, and a completely unnecessary one.
"So…uh…where do you need to go?"
Henry took a moment to register the source of the voice. "Well, wherever you're going really. We've caused you trouble enough. Uh…where are you going?"
"Wherever the tracks take me."
"That's good for me."
Henry glanced back down the single line to Rika and Ryo, the former begrudgingly (after a few shakes and slaps failed) helping the latter hoist the unconscious boy onto the train's rear carriage, neither remotely certain about what had caused his sudden bout of narcolepsy. Henry frowned, looking to the D-Reaper-torn desert behind, and thanking whatever god could exist for their luck, as tainted by strangeness as it was.
The blue-haired boy followed the rails off into the distance with his eyes, musing about where they could possibly go over that far horizon. To another level, perhaps? Maybe to Terriermon? It didn't matter too much.
Anywhere was better than right here, right now.
"So much for a brave new Digital World…"
TO BE CONTINUED…
Hope you enjoyed this latest chapter. It shares almost no actual text with the original, as this is the kind of chapter that was better to write afresh with the same plot than rewrite and improve the original chapter. As a writer, I prefer this method, and it works well in situations like this where a chapter can be boiled down to a few key events and discoveries.
Oh, and as an aside to my readers who are well ahead of rewrite readers – please don't put spoilers of the future in your reviews. Obscure mentions are fine, but don't actually give anything that can give any of the games away. And, to my new readers, I assure you, there are plenty of games that can be given away in my bundle of mysteries I call Dimensions, hehe.
To continue reading from this point on in the original, go to about half way through Chapter 3 (and brace yourself for some discontinuity). Otherwise, wait for the next rewrite chapter.
Until next time…
B.C.
