Prologue

Author's Note / Disclaimer: Hey there! I know I only had a character setup "chapter" up, but thank you for all the views, whoever you are! As usual, I don't own Digimon, only the OCs.

Isaac Kang was just an ordinary teenager living in an ordinary world, surrounded by an ordinary family and an ordinary group of friends. He thought nothing was going to change that - if he thought otherwise, he'd have thought he'd seen too many movies. But here he was, staring at this thing that had slammed into his sister.

"GALE!"

He couldn't believe it. Some sort of skeletal, humanoid creature that could have popped up in a cartoon or even a horror movie was in front of his very eyes, staring at the unmoving form of his older sister, Gale. Beside him, Sarah Hanson, one of his best friends, whimpered in fear. Jason Lin, another of his best friends, averted his gaze away from the whole scene, as if he was about to get sick. In his trembling hand he held his cell phone; when he made a motion to call someone, however, the monster saw this and waved its hand in the air, and the power went dead.

"How?" Jason cried, horrified. "No one will interrupt me," the THING spoke in a gruff, masculine voice. "The monster can talk?" Eric Lee, another friend, exclaimed, causing the monster to frown in confusion. "Me?" The strange skeleton-man-thing asked, "a monster?" He chuckled, sending chills down Isaac's spine. Everyone else's too, judging by how his friends shivered. "Oh no no," the thing continued, "I'm a Digimon, not a 'monster'. At least get the facts straight." Isaac had been frozen in fear for the better part of what seemed like an eternity, but he had to say something to this creature calling itself a 'Digimon' ('what does that even mean', he wondered). He just had to. This thing was responsible for knocking his sister out. She had done nothing to deserve that fate.

"What did you do to my sister, you monster?" Isaac screamed at the skeleton creature, "Why HER?" The creature spoke, glancing down at the unconscious form of Gale Kang and shrugging its shoulders indifferently, "It was at my masters' request, you shall not interfere with the works of the Seven Great Demon Lords." The thing introduced himself, standing to his full height, "I am SkullSatamon, loyal servant of Their Dark Majesties, the Seven Great Demon Lords. I've just gotten rid of someone who will be trouble for them in the future, is all." Pausing for a moment, SkullSatamon seemed to study Isaac and his friends carefully before saying something under his breath. Isaac wasn't a lip-reader, especially not a skeletal lip reader ('do skeletons even have lips?' Isaac wondered), but he thought he'd seen something akin to "These effin'-" Isaac didn't know whether to laugh or stare in shock. Even a skeletal creature straight out of someone's nightmare could try to tone down cursing. Then he screamed, like the rest of his friends. Where the skeletal man had been just seconds before was nothing. Absolutely nothing but air.

"Is... is it gone?" Eric asked quietly. "Does it matter?" Jason asked, eyeing Gale's body on the ground, looking so lifeless, "we've got to take her to the hospital." Isaac stared at his feet numbly. His friends were already moving, performing actions that could potentially save his sister's life, but him? He couldn't move at all. All the courage he'd had earlier, all the strength he'd had when he yelled at the thing calling itself SkullSatamon... It was gone. He just wanted to sit down, maybe even lie down, somewhere. Everyone was trying to be responsible, even Sarah, who was usually just acting tough to hide her true feelings of insecurities. She was the one asking all these questions at Isaac, he knew. He could hear her voice, but it felt like from far away, as if she were on the phone talking to him, not next to him.

"Isaac? Are you okay?" Sarah asked nervously, probably for the tenth time. "I'm... I'm fine," Isaac muttered, lying through his teeth, "just... worried." "I know you are," Sarah soothed, "I bet you're scared too. Right?" 'She sees right through me,' Isaac realized. "N... No," he stammered, lowering his gaze back to the ground, "I'm not scared of anything." "Liar," Jason's voice came from behind; the reliable one of Isaac's 'gang', the teen could see that Jason's phone was in his hand. "It works," the chubby Chinese-American teen explained, "as soon as I could turn it on and check if it works or not, I called 911. They're coming." "Good," Isaac replied, sighing. Soon, the air was filled with loud, obnoxious sounds of horns and sirens blaring. There was a swarm of paramedics and firefighters on the scene, and soon, they had Gale in a stretcher and in an ambulance, and with more sirens, the emergency vehicles were gone. Then the police came.

"I'm Officer Mack James with the Fairfax County Police Department. Can you kids come with me to the station?" Isaac looked at his friends uneasily. They returned his gaze with their own uneasy looks. He swallowed. "Officer," he began, only to be interrupted by the tall officer, "At the station please." Isaac and his friends sighed. It was going to be a long day.

Isaac only had one thing in his mind as the officer drove his friends and him to the nearby Underwood Police Station, 'Hang on Gale, don't die, please...' He glimpsed at his friends, and they all looked away. All three had experienced something bizarre, at the very least. None of the officers -Officer James included- would believe their story, after all. He leaned against the seat in the cruiser and closed his eyes.

When the four friends arrived at the police station, all of their parents were already there. Anxious sets of eyes greeted the teenagers as they were escorted in by Officer James. "What happened?" demanded Mrs. Lee, Eric's mother, "did they do something wrong?" "Are you arresting my son?" Mr. Kang, Isaac and Gale's father, asked, tears in his eyes. Isaac knew only his father was here because his mother was heading to the hospital by now, and only could cast his gaze downward to his feet. Another officer, this time female, spoke for the officers present, "We are not making any arrests at this time. I know all of you are worried, but whatever happened to Gale Kang was clearly witnessed by these children. We are not judging anyone," she emphasized, "just asking for what happened." Sarah Hanson's mother asked tearfully, "Will it take long?" Another officer, who introduced himself as Sgt. Samson, said officially, "It shouldn't take long at all, but only if they cooperate fully with us." With that, Isaac was led away from the group of anxious parents and into another room, watching his friends being escorted to other rooms in the station.

He wondered, 'What am I even going to say to them?'

Author's Note: I will be exploring each character's backstories later on when it becomes more significant. I know this seems a little hasty, but I promise I have a story written offline - just that I had to rewrite this prologue part because it used to be due to a car accident and things taking too long before they ended up in the Digital World, and I thought it would sound too boring. Please let me know if the original idea seems better than this one, and I can probably rewrite this as the original prologue! Also, Farifax County is an actual county in the US state of Virginia, but Underwood is a fictional town I made up. While it's easier to make up names of individual towns and cities, it's too hard for me to create an entire county. I used to live there some time ago, so I'm most familiar with the area. Thank you again for reading! ~Emmie