Digital Demons - Part 1

by Nopporn Wongrassamee

Summary - A Digimon Tamers/Jackie Chan Adventures/Gatekeepers Crossover.

Disclaimer - None of these characters are mine, nor am I
making a profit here.

They ran. In the cracks between worlds, they fled,
searching for a flaw, a crack, anything through
which they could squeeze.

From the Sovereigns they bore a warning...and a
plea for help. For themselves, they only desired
to see their partners again. The latter was reason
enough for their flight. The former just lent
urgency.

They fled past a table. On the table was a game
resembling a chess set. Two figures, mere shadows
of their former glory sat on opposite sides.

"Ach! Tourists," Kaiser Kikai muttered to his
opponent after the Digimon had rushed past.

"Kids these days, always in a rush," Baron Akuma
replied dismissively.

The two went back to their game.

***

The Digital Portal fluctuated, still showing no
signs of anything coming through. Takato stared
at the portal, silently willing for Guilmon to
appear. But there was nothing. No Guilmon, no
digivice, nothing but...

"Takato!"

Startled, Takato broke out of his trance. The
voice came from behind him, from outside. And it
wasn't Guilmon, but he recognized it.

"In here, Henry!" Takato called back.

Henry entered the concrete shack, his orange vest
practically glowing in the dimness from the light
of the portal.

"I came as fast as I could, Takato," Henry said,
slightly out of breath. "Wow, it really is a
portal."

"Yeah, it is," Takato said quietly. "I've been
waiting for Guilmon to come through, but there's
been nothing so far. I've been thinking about
going through..."

"Alone?" Henry practically yelped. "After what
happened last time?"

"I know, I know," Takato placated, "I thought I'd
wait for the others before deciding anything."

"Okay, that makes sense," Henry said, relieved.

"Speaking of the others, where's Suzie," Takato
asked. "She's a Tamer. She should be here."

"D'oh!" Henry smacked his own forehead with the
palm of his hand.

"Didn't tell her?" Takato prompted.

"Didn't even think to tell her," Henry grumbled.
"Some big brother I am."

***

"Mr. Yamaki, are you all right?"

"What?" Yamaki said, "Sorry, Captain, I was just
distracted..."

"Captain Black! Sir!" one Black's people called,
sounding urgent.

"Miles?" Black said, neatly identifying the man
for Yamaki, as he came up to them. "What's wrong?"

"It's the new AEGIS equipment, sir," Miles began.
He looked at Yamaki and hesitated.

"Is something wrong with it?" Yamaki asked. "If
something is, I want to know about it."

"Go ahead, Miles," Black said encouragingly.

"Alright, sir." Miles took a breath. "About ten,
fifteen minutes ago, the monitors reported a
signal trace matching that of a Digimon
bioemergence."

"You were right, Yamaki," Black said, "The digimon
are already coming back."

"That's not all," Miles continued morosely. "At
almost the smae time, the monitors also picked up
another signal trace, but didn't tag it as a
bioemergence. It, ah..."

"What?" Black asked, concerned. "What else?"

"The second signal was tagged as 'Invader'," Miles
told them. "At first, we thought there was a
malfunction in the equipment. The files said that
there hadn't been an Invader sighting since the
Battle of Tokyo in 1970. Then we got independent
confirmation."

"One of our agents?" Black asked hopefully.

"No," Miles replied miserably. "The morning news."

"Bloody hell!"

***

"What are we doing here?" Rika complained.

"We're on a family vacation, Rika," her mother
replied. "Well, you and Mother are on vacation. I
have a photo shoot, but I'll join you as soon as
I'm done."

"I want to go home," Rika growled.

"Rika, we just got off the plane," her mother
said, exasperated. "If you didn't want to come,
you should have said something before we left
Japan. Besides, the only part of San Francisco
you've seen so far is this airport lounge." She
waved vaguely, indicating the lounge in question.

"I still wanna go home," Rika repeated. "Now."

"Mother?" Mrs. Nonaka turned to her mother. "Help
please?"

Ruriko smiled at the interplay. "I think what Rika
really wants is her friend, Renamon. She thinks
Takato has a way to get her back and he's back in
Japan."

"Is this true, Rika?" Rika's mother asked.

"Uh, yeah," Rika said uncomfortably.

"Don't worry Rika," Ruriko told her granddaughter.
"If you really want Renamon back, I'm sure you'll
find a way to get her back."

***

"It was chaos on the Golden Gate Bridge today,"
the news announcer began.

The footage was shaky, obviously taken by an
amateur. Traffic was jammed on the Golden Gate
Bridge. There was a crash or a small explosion of
something that couldn't be seen. The view was from
ground level and vehicles blocked most of the
view. But smoke could be seen rising up.

A blurry red figure appeared on top of a vehicle
wielding what appeared to be a hammer. The image
froze.

"Is this a Digimon?" the announcer continued. "Or
is it just a human being gone postal?"

"Can't you pull the plug on this story?" Yamaki
asked Black.

"This is America, Mr. Yamaki," Black replied.
"We can't just 'pull the plug' without creating an
even bigger ruckus. The best we can do is try to
put a positive spin on this story." Looking back
at the newscast, Black shook his head. "Could this
get any worse?"

"You did not just say that," Yamaki groaned.

"Sir!" Miles called. "I have the President on line
two!"

***

As a young teenaged girl, Jade had begun to pick
up some new loves that was the heritage of any
teenaged girl in America. Dejected as she was,
Jade thought indulging her new love might cheer
her up. Namely, the love of shopping!

Okay, so her pitiful allowance really didn't let
her buy much in the way of, well, anything. She
had yet to wrangle a minimum wage out of Uncle for
helping around the shop. He had this tendency to
rant about children helping their elders and how
Jade kept running off to follow Uncle Jackie on
some dangerous adventures that were no place for
little girls. And wasn't that a bogus reason,
cause Jade wasn't so little anymore...

Her thoughts cut off as she spotted something in
an alley she was passing on her way to the mall.
Years of fighting supernatural whatsits had honed
a sort of sixth sense in Jade. Whatever was in the
alley was definitely out of the ordinary.

Picking up a broken piece of two by four that was
littering the ground, Jade scanned the alley until
she spotted a shivering pile of garbage.

"Okay, come on out," Jade called, two by four at
the ready. "You're not fooling anyone."

A little white...thing emerged from the pile.
"Don't hurt me!" it cried.

Jade lowered the two by four. The critter was cute
and in obvious distress, pushing all of Jade's
nascent maternal instincts. Then she realized what
it was.

"Wow, you're a Digimon," Jade breathed as she
crouched over the shivering form.

The digimon eyed her warily. "You're not gonna
turn into a monster and chase me are you?" it
asked.

"No..." Jade began.

"Oh goody!" The digimon exclaimed cheerfully as it
jumped into Jade's arms. "Hi! I'm Calumon! What's
your name?"

"I'm Jade," Jade replied absently, as she replayed
the conversation in her mind. Something Calumon
said... "Was something chasing you?"

"Uh huh." Calumon pointed to the other end of the
alley. "That."

Startled, Jade looked up in time to see a red
figure appeared at the other end of the alley.
"Target reaquired," it intoned mechanically as it
raised an arm. Instead of a hand, the arm ended in
what looked like a cluster of gun barrels.

While Jade had bravado in spades, she was no fool.
She ran out of the alley with Calumon in her arms,
chased by rings of violet energy bolts.

***

"No."

"But Jeri..."

"No! We are not going through," Jeri declared. "We
are going to wait right here. I am not going to
lose another friend because we didn't think this
through!"

"But Jeri..." Takato tried again.

"You don't have Guilmon, Takato," Jeri pointed
out. "What if you run into another Digimon first?
And unfriendly one at that. Can you defend
yourself? Can you?"

"Much as I hate to admit it, she's right guys,"
Ryo said. All the older Tamers were present more
or less, summoned by Takato's phone calls. "Man I
wish Rika was here."

"Yes, I'm sure you do," Henry muttered to a chorus
of coughs and giggles. It wasn't exactly a secret
that Ryo and Rika were "sorta" dating. "I guess we
have to wait and see if one of our Digimon comes
through."

"I'm tired of waiting," Takato moaned. "I've been
waiting for hours." He turned to the portal and
cried, "Guilmon, where are you?"

"Takato-mon?"

Silence reigned. Everyone stared at the flickering
portal. Takato lunged forward, but stopped himself
from entering.

"Guilmon? Guilmon! Talk to me, boy!" Takato
called.

"I can't come through, Takato-mon," Guilmon's
plaintive voice replied. "It's too small..."

"You gotta come through, Guilmon," Takato called
back. "I won't come this close to being with you
again just to have it taken away." Unseen by
Takato the others leaned forward, caught up in the
drama.

"But...the portal's too small..." Was Guilmon's
voice fading?

"Then we'll have to open wider somehow," Takato
said desperately. His eyes now focused on the
flickering portal instead of trying to see through
it. Once, by sheer force of will, he had forced
Guilmon to digivolve to Mega level. That hadn't
gone very well, but the portal wasn't a digimon.
"C'mon, portal, open."

"Uh, Takato?" Kenta said. "What are you doing?"

"Open," Takato repeated, ignoring them.

"Yeah," Kazu added. "I'm having unpleasant
flashbacks here."

"OPEN!" Takato screamed at the portal,focusing all
his will on it. Several things happened nearly at
once.

One, a Digivice materialized in front of Takato,
who caught it easily. All the Digivices had
vanished when Henry's father had inadvertently
exiled all Digimon from the Real World.

Two, the portal changed from a flickering mass of
light to a pair of concentric rings composed of
red light. It hung verically in the air, nearly as
tall as Takato was.

Three, Guilmon flew out of the rings and right
into Takato. They went down in a heap.

The portal vanished.

"Oh, it's you, Guilmon," Takato cried as he hugged
Guilmon. "I thought I'd never see you again!"

"But you promised we'd be together again," Guilmon
said confused. Takato just laughed and hugged him
more.

"Guilmon," Henry called, coming forward. "I hate
to break this up, but have you seen Terriermon?"
He eyed the others waiting behind him. "Or any of
the others?"

"We were coming back together," Guilmon proclaimed
proudly, then added sheepishly. "But we got
seperated."

"Oh," Henry said, dejected.

"Cheer up, Henry," Takato told him. "If Guilmon
can make it back, I'm sure the others can too."

"But, Takato, you used the only portal!" Kazu
pointed out.

"Yeah, how are we supposed to get our Digimon?"
Kenta added.

"If the wall is in the way," said a feminine voice
behind them, "then maybe a gate could be found. Or
perhaps, made."

"Aw, that's a silly idea..." Kazu began, then
stopped. "Hey, who said that?" Everybody turned to
look for the speaker.

"I think it was this...snowman?" Jeri said,
indicating a little, two foot tall snowman that
hadn't been there a minute ago.

"A snowman?" Ryo said as everyone tried to puzzle
this out. "In summer?"

***

Whoever made these sinks should be killed in
horrible ways, Rika thought darkly.

The sinks in the women's restroom at San
Francisco International Airport had these nifty
little motion sensors built into them instead of
knobs. While it might sound snazzy on paper, the
reality was that they kept shutting themselves
off at inconvenient times.

This did not help sooth Rika's temper any.

"Your other half is calling," someone said.

Rika whirled around. She thought she had been
alone in here. But standing behind her was a girl
in a white kimono that looked to be Rika's age.

"What was that?" Rika asked irritably.

"Your other half is calling," the girl repeated.
"But a wall is in the way." She pointed at the
mirror behind Rika.

Rika glanced at the mirror. Amazingly, the mirror
was no longer there. Instead, there was a black
void. Not just a void, there was a little yellow
figure running in the distance. Was that...

"Renamon!" Rika called. The figured veered and
headed toward her. Yes! It was Renamon.

"Rika!" Renamon called. She stopped up short at
where the mirror should have been, pounding on an
invisible barrier. "Rika, I can't get through!"

Now, Rika was pounding against the same invisible
barrier. "But you gotta come through," Rika cried.
"I don't want to lose you again."

"The wall is but a dream," the girl behind Rika
said solemnly. "And if the wall is but a dream,
can one dream a gate to be opened?"

"If you're not going to help, just shut up!" Rika
snapped at her.

"The gate is yours, not mine to open," the strange
girl replied, unperturbed.

"What are you talking about?" Rika asked, annoyed.
This wierdo was getting on her nerves. "You think
that all I have to do is say 'Open sesame',
and..."

Rika was interupted when a pair of golden,
concentric rings appeared between her and
Renamon. Renamon, who had been leaning on the
barrier, tumbled forward into Rika when all
resistance vanished.

Suddenly, the mirror was back, the bathroom was
normal, and Rika was alone except for Renamon. She
was still here. And almost unnoticed was the
Digivice in Rika's hand.

"Rika?" Rika's grandmother called as she entered
the restroom. "What's taking you so...oh!"

"Uh, Grandma, hi!" Rika began nervously. "Ah, you
know Renamon..."