Fifteen-year-old Tricia Mikhalia sat up suddenly, gasping for air. Sweat beaded her brow and she sat silent for a moment, shivering. The third nightmare this week, she thought, then pushed the thought away. Extremely tricky to have three nightmares in two days, but she'd managed it somehow. How had she managed that again? Oh yes. She'd passed out in the middle of class that very morning.
Okay, she allowed, glancing at the clock, yesterday morning. As if to expand on this point, the clock intoned in a soft, mechanical voice, "The time is three-oh-five ay em. Good morning, Tricia." Tricia, in the short amount of time she'd had that clock, had come to loathe it dearly. I suppose I shouldn't, she reflected, have tried giving it a Genuine People Personality.
She might as well have had the thing go "bing bong bingledy beep". It might have been more annoying, but only slightly.
"Well," she said aloud, shaking off the last strain of her nightmare, "I might as well start the day. I wonder what we have for breakfast...?" At that moment, as if triggered by the young freshman's voice, a light began to glow on her computer. Funny thing was, though, it was 'off'. Tricia barely had time to say, "What the bloody hell-?!" before disappearing.
The room was quiet again. Also missing from it was a small overnight bag, and the computer itself. Although Tricia might be glad for the former in the next few days, she wouldn't be able to keep from thinking, Pity I don't have a laptop.
There aren't many phone jacks in the Digital World.
DigiDisaster
The world was spinning. Tricia wished with all her might it would stop. She carefully opened her eyes, then immidiately carefully closed them again. "Is there," she asked aloud, "a small purple rabbit sitting on my chest?" She was quite possibly querying the universe in general but probably actually said rabbit. When no one answered, she felt immensly cheered. "Ah," she said then, "so I must be mad. Nice day for it."
She had to admit that it was a nice day wherever she was. It might be three-oh-five in the morning in the real world, and twenty below zero, but in her mind at least it was sunny and warm. Then the rabbit spoke.
"You're not mad. You're in the DigiWorld."
The poor rabbit barely managed to hop off as Tricia sat up. "Am I?" she asked, considered it for point five seconds, then shook her head grandly. "No, I suppose not. I'm quite sure I'm mad. Are they doubling up the cellmates now?" She peered closely at the little purple rabbit, trying hard to turn it into another mentally ill person, but it was stubborn and stayed a little purple rabbit.
It blinked at her, wondering how to repond, then decided not to and continued stubbornly on, "I'm your Digimon, Tricia! I've been waiting a long time for you. My name's Psyamon." Tricia fought down a sudden and overwhelming desire to say "hi my name is BRAAAK!" Instead, she just stood up and, brushing herself off, responded, "Cool. My name's Tricia, but you already seem to know that. What am I saying, of course you do, you're a figment of my imagination, although I'm a bit surprised that my imagination is conjuring up little purple bunnies named Psyamon." Oh, well, you never know what you're gonna find out about yourself when you go stark raving mad until... well, until you go stark raving mad. She grinned. Oh, well. They don't call it "insanity" for nothing.
Psyamon paused. "This is real," she said finally. "I can prove it." Tricia paused, uncertain, then she laughed out loud. "Fine!" she practically sang. "You can prove this isn't just a fevered delusion? Lead on!"
"Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow." Tricia's complaining was becoming a chant. An annoying chant. If I had to imagine splinters, she wondered idley, couldn't I have imagined shoes, too? She was still barefoot. In the bag on her shoulder, which she had imagined into the DigiWorld (though not useful things, like food or comic books; just an overnight bag she'd been planning to take to Jennifer's when she slept over), were changes of clothes, but no shoes.
I wish, she thought, changing into black jeans and a light blue t-shirt (to avoid roasting in her long-sleeves: hey, it was twenty below zero in Guildford). I could trade that useless computer in for some Nikés. Sure enough, her extremely large Pentium had been brought along. Since there was no place to plug it in, Tricia had immidiately decided to leave the useless thing behind. "No use dragging around a computer I can't use," she'd said cheerfully, leaving it the ditch it had landed in for anyone to find.
As a matter of fact, a few days later a bunch of Zassomon would stumble across it and bury the poor electronic device, thinking it was some kind of seed and hoping it would take root. But this was an utterly useless fact, so Tricia didn't really need to know what lay in store for her computer. Besides, she wouldn't have cared if she had, for at the moment she was still convinced this was all a figment of her deluded imagination.
"Hmmm," the shadowey figure grated in his annoyingly high-pitched voice. Of course, nobody was going to tell him his voice was annoyingly high-pitched. He was Creepymon, soon-to-be ruler of the DigiWorld, and inherently evil.
He also, it has to be admitted, looked like a large, Oz-esque flying monkey with horns, but that was beside the point.
He considered his options, staring into the scrying pool one of his Soulmon minions had conjured up. Specifically, he stared Tricia, and even more specifically at the Crest around her neck. She hadn't yet noticed that she was carrying the Crest of Hope, but it was only a matter of time before she discovered that she was one of those DigiDestined brats. And Creepymon really didn't want any more enemies than he already had.
He motioned to one of the Digimon floating in the shadows behind him. It happened to be a Tekkamon, small and purple, with razor-sharp teeth and a sword. Despite it's size, it was extremely dangerous: it was fast, and could take a lot of damage.
That sword was no toothpick, either.
Smiling grimly in the darkness, Creepymon spread his wings and, extending an arm and pointing dramatically at Tricia, said softy, "Kill her."
Tricia was blisfully unaware that a Tekkamon was coming to destroy her, and any hope the DigiWorld might have had of salvation. In fact, she didn't believe that the DigiWorld actually existed, and therefore needed any sort of salvation, anyway.
"Besides," she argued to Psyamon, "even if this place was real- which it's not- it wouldn't need my help! For God's sake, I'm a freshman! I'm still in High School!"
Before Psyamon could tell her that this didn't matter, and that a couple of the DigiDestined had been a lot younger than that when they'd become Destined, a small purple ball shot out of the treeline. It looked around, smiled evilly, and shot toward Tricia.
Actually, "shot" was a pretty good action verb to use. It wasn't much bigger than a grenade, but its speed was intense. It also held a sword, for this was none other than the Tekkamon that had been sent to kill Tricia.
Tricia knew none of this; she did know that, although she was probably just imagining it, an evil-looking creature was coming at her with a sword. She did the only thing she could do, under the circumstances. She stood and stared at the Digimon blankly, like a rabbit trying to get hit by a car. She blinked a few times. Then it regestered with her that she ought to run, probably because Psyamon was rushing toward her yelling, "RUUUN!"
She turned to do so, and immidiately tripped.
This, she thought as she tried to pick herself up, just figures. It must be an omen. Maybe after this delusion does absolutely nothing to me, I'll wake up.
So, ignoring her better instincts, when Tricia managed to right herself, she just stood there. Psyamon was hitting Tekkamon with some kind of energy beam, giving it all she'd got, but it wasn't doing anything besides making him glow. Then, just as its sword got within a millimeter of Tricia's chest, he blew up.
She stared in shock at a bunch of kids that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Realizing with a jolt that she'd been screaming bloody murder at the top of her lungs, she stopped. Then she smiled. A pain raced through her chest, and she looked down.
When she looked back up she was still smiling, but she looked immensly confused. "I believe I've been impaled," she said, sounding just as surprised and confused as she looked. She glanced down again. It was true. When the Tekkamon had blown up, the inertia of the sword had kept it moving. The sword hilt was currently sticking out of her chest, along with about four good inches of blade.
She looked back up at the DigiDestined (that's who they were, of course, but she didn't know this), and said, puzzled but calm, "I didn't think a delusion could hurt so much."
Then she collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Four things happened at once. The DigiDestined, as a group, gasped. Out of the forest flew half a dozen Yanmamon. Psyamon, ignoring the newly-arrived evil Digimon, shouted in horror and began running toward her fallen DigiDestined. At the same time, she began to glow purple.
Suddenly Psyamon stopped in her tracks and fell over. As the rest of the DigiDestined began to fight the Yanmamon, both Psyamon and Tricia stood up. It was as if something was pulling them, and holding them up by the shoulders. The Tricia, too, began to glow purple; suddenly they both opened their previously-closed eyes. Their eyes flashed pure white for a split second, then they both collapsed again.
Groaning, Tricia re-opened her eyes and pushed herself up into a sitting position. "Wha- oh. Omigod. I'm not- this isn't- I'm- this is real." The realization hit her like a ton of bricks. Psyamon opened her eyes, too, and jumped up with minor difficulty. She smiled weakly. "I said I could prove it. I didn't mean it quite that way, though..."
"Watch OUT!"
Tricia barely managed to roll out of the way of one of the Yanmamon's Sonic Beam attacks. Psyamon, furious now, glared at the offending Digimon and blew it away with a weird eyebeam. "Purple Shot!" she shouted, zapping the other two remaining. All three flew off, deciding that perhaps they didn't want to get in a fight right then. Tricia grinned shakily. "Cool trick. A lot cooler now I know it's real."
There was a moment's silence from both sides. The DigiDestined looked, shocked, at the girl who had just a few moments ago been quite dead. We've seen weird stuff, was the collective thought, but nothing quite like that. Suddenly Tricia grinned again, a real grin this time. "Hey. I see you've got some Monster friends, too. Guess I'm not the only human here after all."