Chapter 1: Winds of Fate

The wind tore against my hair as it raced down from the open t-tops above me. I loved racing around the back streets in the 82' Camaro my dad had recently restored, with my help of course. It had a new dark blue paint job, new upholstery, new stereo system; it had been nearly replaced. It was awesome. In it, I could imagine I was a cool hero in an action movie, with my smooth shades and black gloves on. Coupled with my dark blue jeans, my silver/white sneakers, and my white t-shirt, I felt like I was da bomb. Best of all, it was a beautiful late April day; 90 degree temperatures and not a cloud in the sky.

I rounded the corner onto my home street and began to head home. As I topped the hill before my driveway, I saw somebody walking along the road. She looked like she was an inch or two shorter than me. Her brown hair fell just past her shoulders, blowing a little in the wind. She wore a pair of Daisy-Dukes that fell over a pair of ratty looking white sneakers, and a somewhat revealing, pink tank-top. I pulled over to see who it was.

"You need a ride?" She turned and looked at me; it was a girl from my school. I saw her all the time; she had lots of friends and I always saw her in the arms of some guy.

"Sure!" I felt dizzy. I wasn't sure why. She hopped in the passenger seat and I pulled off.

"So what's your name?

"Jennifer. What's yours?"

"James. Where you headed?"

"I wrecked further back down this road," she pointed back down towards the main road and into the trees. I saw where the bushes were a little disheveled, "and started walking this way. A friend of mine lives down somewhere around here." She pointed down another road that ran into the one we were on. "Could you just take me there?"

"Sure!" I turned red. I had put a little too much excitement into it and sweat-dropped.

As we pulled off, I noticed she was shuffling around a bit in her seat. She had just been in a wreck, I wondered if anything was broken. The sun disappeared behind a cloud.

"You OK?" She looked at me with a questioning face and realized I had seen what she was doing.

"Yeah, it's just I found this thing lying in the ditch by where I wrecked." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a pink and white, oddly shaped device. It looked like a hand-held computer or something; it had a small screen and two buttons, one with a left arrow, another with a right arrow. It was vaguely familiar, but I couldn't remember where I had seen it. "It's kind of odd. The screen glows a little whenever I touch it, see?" The device's screen had started to glow when she began to pull it out of her pocket. It was still glowing faintly. "Do you kn..."

She stopped what she was saying, threw her heads over her head and looked up. It had begun to rain and the wind was picking up, I could feel my hair blowing forward now, even though we were going forward. It would have just been a nuisance, but there hadn't been a cloud in sight just a few minutes ago. Since the t-tops were off, the rain just fell in and pelted us. I quickly pulled over and hopped out the way you see cops get in and out of convertibles in action flicks. Cool, I'd never pulled that off before.

I ran around to the trunk and pulled out one of the glass t-tops. I was about to put it on when it blew away from me. The wind was gusting now and I heard a low rumble. I had only ever heard a rumble like that once before. It was when I was six; in the middle of the night my mom, pregnant with my little brother, woke me up and told me to run with her to the basement of the house. The low rumble shook the house violently, but it held. A few seconds later we were in the basement when it hit. I still have nightmares about that.

I whipped around and looked up. A huge tornado was coming down out of the clouds, about to touchdown. Jennifer looked shocked at the tornado, paralyzed with fear.

"Come on, we gotta go!" I nearly tore the heavy door of the Camaro off and helped her out. We ran a few feet across the road and threw ourselves into the ditch near a four-way intersection. I looked up just in time to see the tornado land on top of the church that was across the street from my house. It was smashed into a million different pieces of wood and steel. I felt like I was going to be sick when I saw the bell get slung hundreds of feet down towards us. It landed in the intersection. A deep gash was carved out and sparks flew everywhere.

"AHHH!!!" We screamed together as the tornado rode across the ditch and picked us up. The weathermen on TV always said getting in a ditch was the best thing to do during a tornado, but fat lot that helped us. As we were slung through the air, we held tight to each other, spur of the moment I guess. The last thing I remember was that the device she had shown me, now attached to her shorts, was shining brilliantly and shaking violently. I squeezed tighter to her as I blacked out.

"Gilamon! Gilamon, where are you!?"

The TV was blaring as a young boy, blonde hair, blue eyes, sat glued to the screen, one of his favorite shows on. His hair was brushed down, but stuck out wildly in its own spiky fashion. He was wearing a blue sweatshirt and a brand new pair of jeans. Normally he would have been outside, but there was an unusual cold snap, 32 degrees for the high. If there were any clouds they would have dropped snow.

"Joey, honey, turn that down, I can't hear your father over it."

"But mom! This is my favorite show!"

"Turn it down or I'm turning it off. It's your choice."

The eight year old picked up the remote and turned it down, a look of disappointment coming over his face. He could barely hear the TV over his parents arguing. It wasn't violent or anything, it was that calm, low voiced kind of argument, one only done when Joey was around.

"Mom, I'm going over to Andrew's house."

"Ok honey; just remember to get your jacket."

As Joey stepped outside the cold air nipped at his face. It was freezing outside, even for New York, it was cold. He looked at the thermometer mounted beside the door to his house: 14 degrees. How could it be so cold in late April was beyond him. Joey ran down the short steps and onto the sidewalk, running over to his friend's apartment. The doors went into a large empty room with a stairway up to another apartment on the second floor, Joey's home was identical, but he lived on the first floor.

When he was almost to the stairs he tripped over something. Hitting the concrete sidewalk, tears began to well up in his eyes, but he held them off. His dad had told him boys don't cry. He looked down to see what he tripped on and saw what looked like a hand-held computer. His dad had one for his business, but it had a much larger screen, and more buttons, and a stick for using the touch screen. What had his dad called it, oh yeah, a stylus.

Joey picked it up and the screen glowed faintly. A series of ones and zeros marched across the small, screen, which was about a square inch in size. Then it showed the time for a few seconds, and went blank.

"Cool!" Joey ran up into the apartment beside his and up the stairs to where his friend lived. He knocked on the door and looked back down at the device with excitement. He hit one of the two buttons, but they didn't seem to do anything. One had an arrow pointing left, the other right, on them. Time, blank, and then blank again, and ones and zeros, and time again. The smile faded a bit, but he would figure it out later. The door opened and Andrew's face appeared.

"Hey Joey! What's that?"

"I don't know, I think it's a computer. I can't get it to work."

"Maybe I can get my mom to mess with it! She knows everything about computers." Andrew said this with pride, putting emphasis on the 'everything.' As they stepped inside, Joey looked outside the window; it was snowing.

"Look! Snow!" They lived in New York, but they still loved snow. Andrew ran around the house, looking for his mom while Joey sat down on the couch in the living room that the apartment opened into. He looked back at the device and hit the buttons again. Time, blank screen, blank screen with purple dot, ones and... wait... purple dot?

He hit the left button to go back and looked at the purple dot. It was blinking. It reminded him of the radar he had seen on TV. "I'll be outside waiting!"

"Ok!" Andrew was in his mom's room putting on his heavy coat and other warm clothes. Joey ran down the steps and out the apartment door and noticed that he purple dot was moving around the screen as he moved. It had to be radar! He looked to his right and stopped in his tracks. There was a hole in the sidewalk. It looked like a puddle, but there wasn't water in it. It looked like light had turned into water and had seeped into the hole. He walked up to the hole and looked in, it was almost too bright to look at directly and Joey had to squint.

An unknown wind blew across Joey's face. It was so cold that he thought his face had frozen. He looked down slowly, shivering, at the device and saw that the purple dot was the hole. Before he looked up, a light shot into Joey's face from the device, blinding him. "Ow!"

He stumbled around a bit, and fell in. Joey could feel the weather getting colder, and colder around him as he fell. Just as he thought it could get no colder, he blacked out, still falling.

"Come on mom, you've got to let me in! It's a hundred degrees out here! You know I'm only twelve right? I'm still a minor and this is child abuse."

"No Christopher, you are going to stay outside. Go play with your friends or something! And take off those goggles! You look ridiculous with them on your head like that! Hand them over unless you plan to go swimming." His mom pointed out the red rimmed goggles snugly fit around his head, resting on his brown hair that he never brushed. It fell into its own semi-spiky style that suited him just fine. He normally wore shorts, but since they were all dirty, he was stuck in an old pair of faded jeans. His red t-shirt had a black skateboarding logo on it.

"Fine." Chris walked away from his mom, who was standing at the front door of their house.

"Where are you going?"

"To the pool." He lied. He hated the public pool. It was always too crowded and filled with little kids who liked to use the restroom in it.

Chris walked down the street looking for things to do. His parents must have moved into the most boring suburb of Los Angeles there was, just to spite him. He wondered how anybody could make California boring; heck, they just elected Schwarzenegger for crying out loud! The heat seemed to just keep rising, Chris looked around and saw a thermometer on one of the houses; 116 degrees.

He looked up in the sky and was blinded by the sun. As he turned his head away though, he thought he saw something else. There was a small fire in the sky; it looked like a burning comet. It bothered him; it was getting bigger, faster. He thought it was still much farther away when it crashed into the street beside him. He was thrown a couple dozen feet, over a fence, and landed in somebody's backyard. He stumbled to his feet and hopped back over the wooden privacy fence. Whatever it was, it had smashed a crater the width of the street. It was at least seven feet deep, but was beginning to fill with water from busted pipes.

Chris ran over to the crater and looked in. Something in the center was glowing brightly. When it died down, he jumped in to get a closer look. He picked the glowing object up and looked at it. It was a small computer, two arrow buttons, and a screen about a square inch or so in size. It was a slightly dark red in some spots around the edges, and white everywhere else.

He picked it up and climbed out the hole. People had come out their houses thinking something had blown up. When they saw the kid with wild brown hair and goggles standing next to the hole, they ran out with a hundred questions.

"What was it!? What is that!? Are you okay!? Where did that come from!? Are there any others!?"

"Get away from me! Whoa!"

As the crowd engulfed him, Chris fell backwards into the hole. As he sat in the crater he felt the temperature begin to rise.

"What the!?... What's going on!?" Normally people don't feel the temperature change outside instantly, but Chris could and it freaked him out. He looked down at the device that he was still holding. It showed the temperature: 133 degrees. "Christ!"

As Chris watched the temp go up on the device he suddenly fell. "WHOA! HELP!" He had caught the edge of the hole in the crater and looked down. It seemed to be a bottomless, well of fire, so bright that he couldn't see. People ran off in various directions, frightened out of their senses. Normally Chris would have been able to pull himself out of the hole, but the temperature was unbearable. After about a minute, he passed out from the steadily rising temperature. His grip loosened and he fell in as he lost consciousness.

"KERPOW!"

A girl stood up from behind the old car and looked menacingly at her dad in the driver's seat. The smut on her face would have made him laugh, if he knew she wasn't so mad at him. The black on her face stood out against her long, blonde hair that hung down behind her at least halfway down her back. She had on a pair of faded jeans that frayed at the bottom around her sneakers. Her mom had almost died when she saw her daughter walk in one day with black and yellow sneakers.

"Sorry Kristen, I didn't mean to..."

"Do what!? Backfire the car in my face!? Just go away, you don't know anything about anything! I'll fix it myself."

"Kristen, if your mother caught you fixing the car without me, she'd hang me! Then she would go into one of her 'girls are supposed to do this, this, and this' fits."

"Fine, you can supervise, just stand over there."

She picked up the wrench and rolled back under the car. She loved cars, knowing every little piece. She was only twelve, but she could probably take apart the whole thing and put it back together. She didn't know why she liked cars; maybe it was because she lived in Houston. The family car had been making a weird noise, so she was trying to fix it, with her dad's 'help' of course.

"Wait... I think I found the problem! What in the world is this?"

"What is it?"

"There is something jammed up in here."

She pulled on it and it just fell onto her. She picked it up and aimed the flashlight she was using to see at it. It looked like a computer, a couple buttons and a screen. It was yellow and white. Kristen wasn't very interested in computers, but she did think of taking it apart, maybe see what made it work...

Did it work though? She pressed some buttons and saw two blank screens, a screen with the time, and a screen with digital coding scrolling by. She didn't like computers, but it didn't mean she didn't know them.

She rolled out from under the car and was about to show her dad when she heard another 'KERPOW'. Thinking it was her dad backfiring the car, again, she ducked down to avoid anymore smut on her face. Her dad wasn't in the car though, he was standing where he had been, looking outside the garage door.

"That wasn't me, it was lighting. Come on, we've got to get inside. It's about to storm. Did you find what was making the noise?"

For some reason she said no and hid the device in her pocket as she got up. Her dad still couldn't see her because of where he was standing, so he believed her. Kristen wondered why she had lied about the device to her dad. She stood up and washed her face in the garage sink, put there for just such occasions, and looked outside. Lighting was steadily flashing outside... in their front lawn.

"Um... Dad?" Her dad had already gone inside to ask Kristen's mom a question. The lightning was beginning to hit more and more in the same spot. "I thought lightning never struck twice in the same place..." Something wasn't right. She stepped outside and looked up at the overcast sky, then back at the lightning. Why was it striking in the same spot? Why wasn't she blinded by it? Why did she care? As a cadre of questions rode throughout her mind, she stepped outside towards the spot where the lightning was striking. Looking down, she saw there was a hole or puddle or something where the lighting hit. It was filled with light.

"Dad!"

"What Kristen?"

"Are there any holes in the yard?"

"No... why?"

"Just wondering."

As Kristen was about to back away a bolt of lightning slammed into the ground behind her. The force blew her forward into the hole, just as another bolt began to come down towards her. She caught herself, and for a split second thought she may be able to get out.

"Dad! Help me!"

Kristen's dad dashed out the house with a fury that to this day I haven't seen. It was too late though, the bolt of lightning that had come after her fall struck her and as she fell unconscious, she lost her grip and fell.

"KRISTEN!!"

Her father would have jumped in after her, but not only did the hole close, but another bolt of lighting hit, catching fire to a nearby tree.

"KRISTEN!!!"