In his quest to expand his utter dominance of the planet Earth, man has created weapons of increasing power. With the creation of the atomic bomb, man officially became to powerful for his own good. This, however, was merely the tip of the iceberg. The advent of computers has pushed man's potential beyond comprehension. This awesome potential first began to materialize in the form of digital monsters, or Digimon for short.

Digimon can be thought of as programs brought to life. Computer viruses are able to perform multiple functions without being controlled by people during the process. Digimon are very complicated programs. They are basically artificial intelligence. Their bodies are made of super tough proteins created by the world's leading scientists. Their growth and body processes are run by the computer program that makes them intelligent.

Digimon are man's deadliest creations. Conventional weapons like guns, missiles, and grenades have absolutely no effect on them. Digimon have also proven to be extremely difficult to control. Their creators have yet to discover the problem in their programming that leads to the Digimon's chaotic behavior. This has lead to the Digimon program being put on ice. The original nine Digimon that were created are held at a lab behind electrostatic fields. That is where the story begins....

Chapter 1: Absolute Zero

Rowen stared out the bus window, and let out a sigh. He didn't really like school, nor did he care for bus rides. He'd rather be at home playing video games, or baseball, or even practicing Judo. One doesn't have much say in the matter though.

Today the class was taking a field trip. They were visiting a military programming facility. Rowen had no idea why they would visit a place like this. The most likely reason he could conjure was because it was the only interesting thing in the area. Rowen looked at the person beside him, Kazahiro (Kaz for short), typing away at his laptop computer. Kaz had been anticipating this trip for days. He was a computer junkie, and loved anything computer related.

The back of the bus was a lot noisier than the front. Hiro and Shinjo were the main cause of the noise as usual. These two best friends were a handful to say the least. They play on the school soccer team together, and are both very energetic. Hiro always wore a pair of red goggles on his head to emulate his favorite baseball player. Hiro was quite the athlete, competing in baseball, soccer, and almost any other sport of the moment. Shinjo was big for his age. He was a lot taller and stronger than most of the

kids in his class. He had a reputation of a bully, which he lived up to on some occasions.

The bus came to a stop, and Rown realized they had reached their destination. As he looked at the government building, he felt slight chill go down his spine. He wasn't sure why, but that building gave him the creeps.

Kaz did not share in his uneasiness. His eyes were glued on the building as the kids filed off the bus. The facility had a sleak metallic look to it. Kaz slipped his laptop into his book bag and turned to step off the bus. He just couldn't wait to get inside.

Shinjo and Hiro were already off the bus and making up for lost time. Having 12 year olds sit still on a bus for 30 minutes is not an easy task, and you don't want to be around when they finally get off it.

Their teacher, Mr. Sasaki, began to assign the students into groups of 5. There were 25 students, so there would be five groups of five. Rowen, Kaz, Shinjo, Hiro, and a girl named Miki were all assigned to the same group. They all knew Miki, as she was one of the more popular girls in their grade. None of them were friends with her, although Hiro had frequently tried showing off in front of her to no avail.

Mr. Sasaki filed them into the building, but they had to wait in the lobby for their tour guide to arrive. It was a short wait, only

about 5 minutes. A man with a white lab coat walked in with a clipboard in his hand. He seemed to be nice. He had a friendly smile.

"Good morning, everyone. My name is Mr. Chen, and I'll be your tour guide for the afternoon. We have some really interesting exhibits for you, and I'll think you'll enjoy yourselves. If you will follow me, we'll begin the tour."

"Yeah, interesting if your computer nerd." Hiro complains.

"Like Einstein here," Shinjo says as he glances over at Kaz. Shinjo usually made fun of Kaz's intelligence.

"You're just made that he double your score on that last math test!" Hiro burst at laughing at his own joke.

Kaz cracked a smile at this. Even though he knew he would never admit it, Hiro was a sort of friend to Kaz. In the 5th grade Kaz had been assigned to tutor Hiro. This forced them to hang out after school occasionally, and Hiro discovered that Kaz wasn't just a computer obsessed freak. He was actually pretty funny, and the two became friends. Of course, Hiro never mentioned this publicly, but that didn't bother Kaz. They would still hang out occasionally, and Hiro saved Kaz from a lot of abuse from his classmates.

"If you'll look to your left," Mr. Chen says, "You'll see our server lab. This is where all our data is stored. Each computer can hold up to 150 gigabytes of information. There are already over 50 server computers here, but with all the research we do we have begun to run out of room. We'll have to upgrade soon and add new servers."

Hiro quickly grew bored with all this techno talk. He looked around to see where Miki was and noticed she was right beside Rowen. This angered Hiro to no end. Here he was, star of the soccer team, all world athlete, and she would rather hang out with that shy loner kid! And he didn't even make any notice of her no less!

Contrary to what Hiro thought, Rowen had noticed that Miki had been walking with him for the duration of the tour. This made him quite nervous, as he had never been good at talking with girls. So he tried not to pay attention to her, only occasionally glancing out of the corner of his eye to see what she was doing.

Away from the tour, a few flights up, a group of government officials were meeting about the future of their project. One of them was watching the tour on a security screen.

"I still say this was a bad idea. Allowing child to tour the facilities...."

"It's good PR, Mr. Yagami. After the accident, the public wasn't to trusting of us. This will ease their conscious and get them off our backs."

"Ignorance to the truth is the price they pay for protection." Mr. Yagami says. "What goes on behind these walls is none of their concern. All they need to know is when to pay their taxes."

"You'd be out of a job in hurry if you were an elected official," Mr. Hida, the other man, quips.

"But I'm not an elected official. You offered me this job because you knew I was the best at it, and I am. And in my professional opinion, this is not a good idea."

"Well, I disagree. Everything has went smoothly so far. Look how good Chen is with those kids. So far this tour is a success."

At that moment, Mr. Hida was forced to eat his words. The room suddenly became pitch black.

"Power outtage!" Mr. Hida cried.

"Suzuki!" Mr. Yagami yelled over his radio. "Tell me those generators are online!"

"That's a big negative," the voice over the radio alerts him. "The problem is in the computer systems, all power is out. Main and auxiliary."

"Now you see why this was a bad idea!" Mr. Yagami yells.

When the lights went out, a few of the girls let out shrieks of terror. Rowen didn't really care, as the dark didn't bother him. Kaz was a bit scared, but his excitement over what he had seen so far in the tour was a bit more prominent in his mind. Hiro and Shinjo were goofing off again. Miki just stood quiet, waiting for the lights to come back on. She wasn't really afraid of the dark, but she really wasn't in the mood for Hiro to play one of his stupid pranks right about now.

"What's going on?" Chen asks over his radio.

"Systems failure," the voice of Yagami alerts him. "Get those brats out of there!"

"All right kids, follow the sound of my voice. We're going to wait in the snack area until the power comes back on."

Hiro, Rowen and company follow after where they heard Mr. Chen's voice, but soon they couldn't hear there other classmates anymore.

"Um, I think we're lost," Miki points out.

"Don't worry, I'll protect you from any evil scientist we encounter." Hiro says, as he puts his arm around Miki.

"I think I'll take my chances," she replies, flinging his arm off her shoulder. Hiro pouts as they walk on, and Shinjo laughs at him.

All of the sudden the lights come back on. They discover they are standing in front of an elevator. They had not been in this location before, so they had no idea where they were.

"Ah cool, let's go check out what's on the other floors!" Shinjo says.

"This is a government building, and what's on the other floors could be classified information." Kaz points out.

"Come on, what are they gonna do? Throw us in jail?" Hiro joins in.

"I'm with Kaz. I don't think that's a good idea." Rowen states.

"What, are you afraid?" Hiro asks.

Rowen did not like to be insulted, especially not by Hiro. They had been competing for years in baseball. Rowen had always disliked how Hiro flaunted his athleticism. He seemed to play sports for glory rather than for the game itself. Now he had developed an overall disliking of Hiro. He was sure the feelings were mutual, as he had usually out-performed Hiro in baseball. Hiro couldn't stand for anyone to be better at a sport than he was.

"Fine, let's go." Rowen replies. He pushes the button and the elevator opens. He is the first to step in, as if to one up Hiro.

"Guys, I still think this is a bad idea...." Kaz tells them.

"Then stay behind, wimp." Shinjo says.

"Don't worry, what could possibly happen?" Miki reassures him with a pat on the back. She walks into the elevator behind Hiro and Shinjo. Kaz gives up, and goes in with them.

"Status report." Yagami says over his radio.

"There was a glitch in the main power's computer system," the familiar voice of Suzuki says over the radio. "It's fixed now, but a few systems are still down. All security systems are offline, and we'll probably have to reboot them manually."

"Any incidents with the electrostatic fields?" Yagami asks.

"No, everything is fine"

Yagami let's out a sign of relief. "All right, well let's get to work on those security systems."

Hiro had picked the floor level marked "D" to go to. Why is anyone's guess. Once they got there, they discovered there were not many people around.

"Man, I figured someone would have caught us and had our parents on the phone by now..." Hiro states.

At the sound of this, Shinjo suddenly seems a bit uneasy. "You think they'd call our parents just because we got lost?"

"Ah well, what's one more week of punishment added on to 15!" Hiro says with a grin. Shinjo hangs his head and stares at his shoes in silence.

They come to the end of the corridor. In front of them lie to push doors. Above them, "Digimon: Second Edition" is printed on the wall.

"What's a 'Digimon' " Miki asks them.

"I've never heard of it," Kaz answers, "But it must be some project they are working on."

"Only one way to find out..." Hiro claims as he pushes the door open.

As they walk in, they see glass windows on the side walls. Three on one side, two on the other. Once they pass by the first window, they are shocked to see what's inside it.

A little monster, or what appears to be a monster. It looks like a small dragon. It's skin is bluish in color. It's surrounded by a field of electricity.

"What is that thing!" Miki cries out.

"It must be some kind of wild animal the government discovered!" Hiro exclaims. "We're the first civilians to see it!"

"Look, there's more of them." Rowen points out. For each window, there is a different monster.

"Hmm, it says this guy is a 'Monodramon'. Man, I bet he would make a cool pet." Hiro thinks of what it would be like to have a pet Monodramon, when suddenly something beneath the glass window catches his eye. A small digital device is in an indent in the wall. Intrigued, Hiro picks it up.

When he removes the device from its place, the electric field around the creature disappears. He doesn't notice at first, as he is examining the device. When the Monodramon begins to move, he takes notice.

"Uh, guys. I think I just broke something....."

Everyone looks over towards him and sees the Monodramon moving around inside the cage. Hiro slowly backs away from the glass window. Monodramon presses his nose against the glass, sniffing it as he does.

"It doesn't seem to be hostile," Kaz points out.

Monodramon pats the glass with one of his hands, then breaks it with one swing of the arm. Shattered glass falls everywhere, and Hiro falls down out of fright. Monodramon slowly steps out of the cage, sniffing the ground and making low grunting sounds. It slowly walks towards Hiro, who is literally shaking with fear. It gets to his shoe, and sniffs it.

The Monodramon looks up and Hiro, opens its mouth, and in a weird sort of high pitched voice (like Guilmon), "Bring food?"

Hiro's mouth drops open in shock, as does everyone elses. This animal had just talked to them! This field trip was turning out to be pretty cool.

Once Hiro got his bearings back, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the twinkie he had been saving for an after lunch snack. He rips the package off, and hands it to Monodramon. The small dragon sniffs it, then scarfs it down in one bite.

"Yum! Me like your food!"

"Do you have a name?" Hiro asks.

"I'm Monodramon! Second Edition Digimon!"

"Hmm, it appears Monodramon is his name, and Digimon is his species. Interesting...." Kaz points out.

"This is the coolest thing I've ever seen!" Hiro cries.

Yagami had been on the radio for the past 20 minutes since the lights came back on. He was making sure everything was back in order. He wasn't going to let another incident occur...

"Suzuki, how much longer before we have the security systems back online?"

"At least another hour," the voice over the radio answers. "We've gotta start at the top and work our way down floor by floor. It's gonna take some time."

"Copy that." Yagami says. He presses another button on his radio. "Chen, make sure you've got all children accounted for. I don't want any of them wandering around and touching things."

The group was having fun pettying Monodramon as he scarfed down another twinkie that Shinjo had given him. Everyone except Kaz. He was busy checking out the other Digimon. He had noticed that when Hiro removed the digital device beneath Monodramon, he was freed. He decided to test his theory by removing another device.

He chooses the one below the Digimon called 'Elecmon'. As soon as he removes the device, the eletric field disappears. Seeing as how Monodramon was friendly, he figured Elecmon would be too. He sees a button on the side that says 'Open', so he presses it. The glass opens, and Elecmon walks out.

"Is it time to fight already?" He asks. "Wait a second, are you guys new? I've never seen you before."

"My name is Kazahiro."

"I'm Elecmon. Mammal type Digimon, Second Edition."

"Fascinating!" Kaz cries. He turns around to see that the others have opened the remaining cages. Rowen opened the one marked "Impmon", Shinjo opened the one marked "Haguramon", and Miki opened the one marked "Gotsumon".

"Is this far out or what!" Hiro exclaims.

"They're so cute!" Miki says.

"I wonder where they found these creatues?" Kaz ponders aloud.

Suddenly they hear footsteps coming down the hall.

"Uh oh. Parties over!" Hiro cries.

"I'm still hungry!" Monodramon says.

"I'll tell ya what pal, you get us out of here and I'll get you all the food you want!"

"Ok!" Monodramon says. He runs out of the door opposite the one they entered. Everyone, humans and Digimon, follow after him. They make a left at the next hallway and after a while come upon a door that leads them to the sewer. Despite some pleas from Miki, they go through the sewer and and exit into the streets in the city.

"We are gonna be in so much trouble for this!" Miki says. "We missed the bus, and stole government property!"

"My dad is gonna kill me...." Shinjo laments.

"Yeah, but it was worth it!" Hiro says as he pats Monodramon on the head.

About an hour later, Yagami is going over the system reports to see what the bug was that caused the power outtage. Suddenly, his radio goes off.

"Sir, I've got some bad news. There was apparently a malfunction in the DSE chamber. The Digimon are gone. Repeat, the Digimon are gone......"

To be continued.....