Chapter 2: Introductions II
Emi lazily kicked at the grass covering the forested ground, hoping to turn up some sort of clue to where the location for the requested item might be. Her partner, Kudamon, was resting upon her shoulders, scanning the large forest for any danger that might approach from under the cover of the trees. Emi crouched down to the forest floor, attempting to give a more detailed search than kicking at grass could achieve. After rooting around the base of several nearby trees for several minutes and turning up nothing, Emi let out a sigh of frustration and stood back up, smoothing out the wrinkles in her black t-shirt.
"Five trees down," Emi called out "3,000 more to go." Other than a flick of his ear Kudamon gave no indication he heard. Emi noticed Kudamon silence, which wasn't abnormal but his lack of acknowledgment was.
"Is something wrong?" Emi inquired. Kudamon turned his head to look at her.
"It's quite, unsettlingly so." Kudamon's voice was low, almost a whisper.
"You're just paranoid." Emi teased.
"Maybe." Kudamon said as he gave gazed once more at the forest that surrounded the two.
Emi didn't push the matter further but instead headed further down the twisting path that lead deeper into the forest. Kudamon wound himself tighter around her shoulders, keeping a vigilant eye on the passing trees. They walked slowly along the winding path for what felt like over an hour, checking each nook and cranny of Chip Forest for the requested item they had been tasked to find.
"This is impossible." Emi groaned. "How am I supposed to find," Emi paused and looked at her white and orange digivice which held notes on the task they had been assigned, "a L mushroom in this maze of a forest."
"I told you it would be difficult when you took the mission. Like finding a needle in a haystack." Kudamon replied. Emi plopped herself down onto the ground in response.
"That's not helpful now, besides we need the bit* and the tamer points**." Kudamon gave Emi what looked like a shrug in response. Emi frowned and looked back at her digivice, pulling up a map of Chip Forest.
"I think the only place I haven't looked yet is at the heart of the forest."
"But that doesn't exactly mean the mushroom is going to be there." Kudamon said.
"We won't know until we try." Emi replied. With that she pushed herself off the ground, following the course she had just charted with her digivice.
The farther the two moved down the trail, the more dense the trees grew together. Eventually, the trees were so close together that their branches seemed to completely block out the sunlight, that before trickled through the canopy, leaving little to touch the forest's floor. Emi undaunted by the decreasing amount of light, continued her trek through the forest until she entered a large clearing. The trees seemed to have retract leaving an ominous circular space that was sparse of anything except an old dead tree in the center.
"Ha! I knew it!" Emi declared excitedly as she rushed to the center of the clearing. In the branches of the dead tree was the item Veemon's had requested, the thing that Emi had spent so much time trying to find. The L Mushroom.
"Emi," Kudamon called out, his ears hanging back close to his head. "Something doesn't feel right. It's too empty, too quiet." The last part came out almost as a whisper.
The girl paid him no heed and continued to approach the dead tree. The mushroom was lodged in one of the higher branches, requiring Emi to climb a small way up the tree to reach it. Luckily, there seemed to be a perfect foothold to give her just enough height, an old rotted out knot that was settled in the middle of the tree's wide trunk. Emi's outstretched hands almost had the mushroom, if her fingers would just reach a little further… Emi paused as she heard the tree creak beneath her and felt the tree shift. Emi looked down to where her feet were just to make sure it wasn't Kudamon. A glimmer of color caught her eye and she looked back at the tree.
The tree looked back at her.
Emi let out a yelp as she fell back from the tree. The tree gazed at her, its face frozen it what seemed like shock, but the expression quickly morphed into one of fury.
"Branch Drill" The tree, no digimon, called out. It raised one of its thicker branches and slammed it down to where Emi had been moments before if she hadn't quickly rolled out of the way.
Kudamon immediately slide off of his partner's shoulders and got into a protective stance in front of her. Emi brushed some of her stray dirty blond hairs out of her face as she got back to her feet and pulled out her digivice. She scanned the digimon before her with tit. On her device an image of the scanned digimon appeared, along with its name, level and attribute.
"Woodmon, a champion plant/insect digimon." Emi read aloud.
Kudamon grunted in response. He had quickly shifted into a battle ready stance. However, Woodmon paid him no head. The Woodmon pulled its branch out of the small crater it had created and focused its attention back on Emi, completely ignoring Kudamon.
"Leaf Slider!" Emi dove out of the way again as sharp leaves came hurtling towards her. As she hit the ground, she could hear a loud crashing sound as a tree came tumbling down from the attack. It had cut the tree cleanly in half. Kudamon scrambled to respond to the attack. "Blinding Ray!" A searing white light emitted from Kudamon's earring, blinding the large tree. The tree digimon stumbled backwards, rubbing its eyes with its branches.
"Nice." Emi called out as she picked herself off the ground and dusted off the dirt from her jeans from her precious tumblr.
"Emi, let's go. Before it recovers." Kudamon said.
"Give me a sec" Emi said. She spared a quick glance at the Woodmon, who was still temporarily blinded by Kudamon's attack. Satisfied that she would be attacked she hurriedly went to the small crater the digimon had created. Laying in the middle of the small crater was the L Mushroom. It was slightly dirty but otherwise undamaged. Not questioning her luck Emi quickly swiped the mushroom off the ground. With the task now complete she followed Kudamon out of the forest and far away from the Woodmon.
As the flash of light on both sides of the arena disappeared. Two champion digimon stood in place of the rookie level digimon, BlackGatomon and Sangloupmon.
Nahliel grinned as he took in the scene before him, observing every little detail as the two digimon circled each other. BlackGatomon, sticking to their plan, struck first at the Sangloupmon. BlackGatomon attempted to paralyze the opposing digimon but the wings that shaded Sangloupmon protected them from the attack and left an opening that Sangloupmon took advantage of.
Above Sangloupmon numerous blades materialized out of thin air, all pointed at BlackGatomon. Within a second of their materialization the blades launched at the black feline digimon. However, BlackGatomon didn't let this faze her and effortlessly dodged the blades, only having to strike a few with her claws.
Confident that BlackGatomon could handle this fight on her own Nahliel tore his attention away from the fight, redirecting it to the opposing tamer. The redheaded girl's attention was glued to the fight, occasionally yelling out commands to Sangloupmon.
"You know," Nahiel called out. "you aren't half bad at this for someone who's with Night Crow." The girl, in response, blatantly ignored him, keeping her attention on the fight. Nahiel continued, undaunted by her response.
"I would feel pretty bad for beating a girl so how about I let you win?" BlackGatomon hissed in annoyance as she avoided another one of Sangloupmon's attacks but it got Kimberly's attention. Kimberly turn her gaze to Nahiel.
"And let your entire team down? Please do." Nahiel shut up after that and redirected his focus fully on the fight.
Cayson munched on another chip as he overlooked Shine Hall. He was currently situated opposite the grand fountain that was the centerpiece for the brightly lit area. Settled among one of the raised rectangular structures that was currently being used as a bench.
There were several people in occupying the area along with him. One was a blonde preppy looking girl who was conversing with a Salamon, most likely her partner. Another was a black haired digimonless guy sitting along the edge of the fountain's raised barrier. A second guy with long black hair pulled up in a ponytail and a backwards black baseball cap was standing near the entryway. Along with the humans there were countless digimon. A Monzemon stood in a corner, animatedly talking with a Renamon. A Gigimon rested along a wall, basking in Shine Hall's evening sun.
Cayson's own feline digimon partner, Liormon, was messing around with a Tinkermon over by the guy with the long black hair.
He redirected his gaze to the entryway to Shine Hall, hoping to spot the client who had asked him for a favor. They were supposed to meet him here and give him more details about what they needed done. He had been waiting for the digimon for well over an hour and his patience was worn thin.
Cayson pulled out his orange and black digivice from his blue jacket pocket. He needed to talk to Gatomon to see what the deal was, as she was the one who had planned the meet up. Gatomon answered his call almost immediately.
"Hey Cay. Need something?" Gatomon asked.
"It's about that digimon i'm supposed to meet. Are you sure they said they would meet me here?"
"Yup," Gatomon answered cheerily, "they said Shine Square."
Cayson gave a pause before answering, trying to keep his frustration in check. "I'm in Shine Hall."
"Well no wonder they didn't show up, you're in the wrong place."
"You told me they would meet me at Shine Hall." Cayson's tone held thinly veiled annoyance.
"Really? Huh, my bad. Guess you should head over there though. Tootles." Gatomon hung up, not letting Cayson get a word in edgewise.
Cayson shoved his digivice back into his pocket and let out a sigh. Today was going to be a long day.
Ryoga watched as Tinkermon tormented a poor Liormon. Tinkermon was hovering just out of their reach as she poked them with the dull end of her barbed spear. Floating just a bit higher when the Liormon swiped his paw at Tinkermon. However Tinkermon's fun was cut short when a slightly chubby boy called to Liormon. The digimon happily bound after his partner as he made his way to the exit of Shine Hall.
Tinkermon, disappointed that her hapless victim had left, fluttered over to Ryoga's side.
"Ryo, I'm bored." The small fairy digimon whined.
"I don't know what you expect me to do about it." Ryo replied. Tinkermon let out a frustrated huff, apparently she hadn't known either.
"I know!" Tinkermon excitedly exclaimed. "Let's go exploring at Chip Forest. That's always fun!" Ryo fetched his green and maroon digivice out of his camouflage pants pocket. Checking the time displayed across the screen he shook his head.
"It's to late to do something like that." Tinkermon's face puffed up in annoyance.
"You're no fun." Tinkermon crossed her arms over her chest. "It's not like there's anything interesting going on here."
As if to answer TInkermon's call, a bright searing flash engulfed the room and the life forms within it before plunging into an impenetrable darkness. A yelp echoed out from the opposite side of the room and the sounds of something hitting water soon followed. In the absence of light Shine Hall was uncharacteristically quiet, the idle chatter that usually filled it had ceased, even the gurgling fountain had gone silent. It seemed as if everyone was holding their breath, waiting for some indication that everything was fine, that the current situations was only a glitch in the code. That hope was dampened when the red emergency lights flickered to on, doing little to chase off the blackness that blanketed the room.
It was crushed when the alarms came screeching to life.
Clarification:
*Bit is the currency in the digital world
**Tamer points are points awarded for the completion of mission, tasks, and competitions, the harder they are the more tamer points awarded. If enough are gathered tamers can take an advancement test and move up a rank if they pass. Higher rank means access to more difficult missions and better stores.
A/N
So I don't know if any of you readers noticed but I uploaded a short prologue in place of the first chapter.
Anyways, after a long wait part two of the introductions has arrived. Hurray! I hope you guys enjoyed it. On another note, I have been seeing people do this with their SYOC fics and I thought it was a cool idea. So if you wouldn't mind I have some questions about the introduction chapters.
Questions
1. What do you think of the characters so far? Have any favorites or ones you want to see more of?
2. Is there anything you want to see more of or have introduced? Such as certain digimon or concepts introduced in the last two chapters?