Chapter 1: Traversing the Digital Plane (Part 1)
It was night in the town of Ardenal. The quiet yet inviting streets seemed to glow like never before. Each and every home had its lights off, while the streetlights shone above them. It seemed quaint, the town was away from the city after all, and mainly the elderly lived around here, since most families found the town's school unfit to raise their children. It was rare to see children playing on the simple, well-maintained streets, as most of them were busy doing the low amount of homework, or busy trying to find a better place to live in. The town itself was quite small, a couple housing areas, a semi-small school, a couple stores and a lovely little park in the centre of it all.
"Come on, you're barely doing anything to my Digimon!" Laughed a young boy, about the age of eleven. He had short, brown hair, with a baseball cap on top of messy head. He wore a blue shirt with dark, denim shorts, with plain black shoes to fit. In front of him was a small picnic bench, a small group of children surrounding, cheering for both him and his opponent, a young girl, about twelve. She had long, black hair, neatly placed in a bun. She wore a hooded, grey jacket and light blue jeans. On the bench were trading cards, placed orderly on the dark wood. It was clear from the number of cards she had left, that she was losing. The crowd cheered for the boy, before erupting into applause as he finished off his opponent. "In your face! You said you had good cards, and look who lost?" The boy sneered, grabbing his cards, and placing them in a plastic bag, which he shoved into his pocket.
"You go Jake!" Another boy, wearing nearly identical clothing to Jake, shouted, high fiving his twin. The crowd continued to cheer as Jake walked off, a smirk on his face,
"shouldn't have been so bad, Chelsie."
Chelsie watched as her enemy walked away, a tear running down her cheek. He didn't have to rub it in, it hurt enough as is. She stood up, placing her own cards in a small box, then placed it in her black schoolbag, which had been sitting beside her leg. She began to run home, nearly tripping over countless pebbles that littered the dirt path of the park.
After a three-minute run, she was back home. She clambered over the birch fence, then walked through her backyard. When she stepped onto the patio, she realised what was about to happen. The lights inside of the house were on, at a time like this, her parents should've been asleep, but as she walked towards the door, she saw them, standing cross-armed on the other side of the glass door. She slid open the door, staring up at her parents. Her father, a burly man with a nearly-invisible tan, spoke first, "I thought my own daughter was better than this. But guess what I woke up to find? An empty bed, and a twelve-year-old running across the street away from the house. What do you think this is? A place for misbehavior to breed and manifest?"
"No." Chelsie mumbled, directing her eyes to the floor.
"I want you to look at me when I'm talking to you."
"No." She repeated, glaring up at her father.
"Then why did you go run off at 11:35 pm? You surely know about the curfew by now."
Her mother stepped forward, she was a tall, slender woman, long black hair like her daughter, but wavier. "Let's cut the chit-chat, alright? Let's just say this, if you're gonna think of running off in the middle of the night, you'll be sorely disappointed. In short, you're grounded." Her mother's voice was laced with venom, "now get to bed, before we have to take those stupid cards away from you again."
This had only been the second time this had occurred. Years ago, when she tried it the first time, her parents were more forgiving, she was younger, more naïve, but now, they seemed too loath her and her likes, as if the cards she spent her own money on were a distraction from reality. Maybe they were on occasion, but not every single day.
As she stormed into her room, she dumped the bag onto her floor, before flopping onto her bed. She could hear her parents talking from the hallway, although what they were saying had completely flown over her.
Chelsie sat in her dad's car, staring out the window, watching as the landscape changed as they drove to her school. Neither person had said a word since they entered the vehicle, and she was planning to keep it that way. She saw a few kids, younger than her, walking down the road, their parents holding their hands. It was cute, maybe, but it didn't help her feel any better.
"We're here." Her father blankly stated as they pulled up to the school. The school itself wasn't large, about two stories tall, made with bricks, windows messily dotted around the walls. Trees were sporadically placed in front of the school, benches directly under them. Chelsie pushed open the car door, lugging her schoolbag with her, as she slammed the door shut, the car started to drive off, leaving her without a farewell. She walked towards the front of the school, it was rare to see people outside at this time, since class was impossibly close at this time of the morning. A small group made up of a mishmash of five boys and girls, huddled near one of the trees, clearly in a conversation. Among the group was Jake, who stood proudly, a smirk on his face, "then I destroyed that loser with my MetalGreymon. You should've seen her face when I did it, it was priceless!" He gloated, holding up the card in question. One of the girls, Christina, a tall, blonde girl with long hair in a high ponytail, patted him on the back,
"didn't think a dork like you would even have that card." She chuckled, glancing up at Chelsie. "I see the dorky loser too." She pointed with her other hand at Chelsie, causing the rest of the group to turn to face her.
Jake was the first to talk, "look who it is! Trying to listen in on our conversation, huh?" He stepped forward, "what are you, a creep?" The rest of the group followed suite.
"I was just, walking past, and happened to hear a bit of your conversation." Chelsie mumbled, before running into the school, not daring to see if the group followed.
Lockers lined the walls, although there weren't many students, they still kept extra lockers around in case of new students. A head of her were two hallways, one that lead to the essential subjects, the other to the computer room and IT class. Chelsie walked down the IT hallway, then slowly opened the door to the computer room, her first class of the day. Her teacher, Mrs. Berylin, sat at the teacher's desk, shuffling through paperwork. Mrs. Berylin was an average teacher, shorter than most of her male students, but she made up for it with her entertaining personality, although it was grading at times.
"Good morning Chelsie." Her teacher sung to her, giving the student a curt nod.
"Good morning to you too." Chelsie dipped her head back.
She walked over towards the back of the class and sat down at one of the computers. This computer in particular was one of the few older ones still left, its screen was a massive cube, with an old, dodgy keyboard hooked up to it. The fans on this computer were clearly breaking, since as soon as it was turned on, it began to overheat. Chelsie stared at the computer, impatiently waiting for it to log on. As it opened the home screen, she noticed some folders she'd never seen on the other computers, maybe someone added some folders yesterday? She clicked on the strange folder, opening it completely.
Once she opened the file, the first bell rang. As it did, more students walked into class, notably Jake and Christina.
The two of them sat near Chelsie, busy chatting to each other. "I told you before, Metal Greymon is clearly the best Digimon." Jake told her, shaking his head,
"he's really not. War Greymon is stronger than him in every single way, and that's just his digivolution." Christina nodded, "I'd say the strongest is Omegamon."
Jake snorted, then glanced at Chelsie, "look who decided to sit beside us!" He spat, "can you stop following us?"
"I was sitting here first." Chelsie retorted, "I got to class before the bell!" She turned back to the computer, clicking on a .exe file simply titled 'Protomon Development: Version 1. '. The file itself didn't seem too big; it wasn't even a megabyte in storage.
As the file opened, a small window opened on screen. A strange, 8-bit sprite was on screen, the sprite was a light yellow and green quadruped dinosaur, with an antenna and feathers on its head. It's shown eye was tightly shut, and strange lines ran across its face and legs. Below it, the word 'Mentamon' sat. On either side of the sprite were arrows, clicking the up arrow caused the sprite to change to a deep purple, its name changing to 'Mentamon (Purple)'. Clicking the arrow again caused the sprite to go back to normal. Clicking the side arrows swapped out the sprite entirely, the first swap showed a small, pink, axolotl-like creature, with yellow frills and a see-able skeleton, with an antenna on its head as well. This sprite was titled 'Axomon'. Clicking the arrow again showed a lime bug-like creature, its head was pointed, with two feathered ears, while its body was encased in a cocoon, on its legs pointing out of the white mess. Its name was 'Cacoomon'. Clicking the arrow a final time made the sprite go back to 'Mentamon'.
Did somebody really make an .exe file just to show off their sprite art? Even so, these sprites looked more like bootleg Digimon than anything original. Hovering her cursor over the 'x' button, Chelsie found herself questioning why she even bothered with this. After attempting to close the program, a message popped up on screen, "what do you mean quit? You still haven't picked your prototype Digimon!" Sighing, Chelsie clicked on the name of the first "prototype Digimon". As soon as she clicked it, however, the entire screen turned black, great, not even this old junk could work properly.
"Wow Chelsie, that game you played was so cool." Jake smirked, giggling, "did you make it yourself?"
"No, it was just on this computer." Chelsie responded, shaking her head, "this old junk couldn't even run a game-making program anyway."
As she said that, the screen light-up once more, now a pale blue. Maybe it had reopened itself?
Link to wiki: wiki/Protomon_Wiki