Chapter 9: The Brigade

Disclaimer: Don't own Digimon. Just the OCs.

One Week Earlier, Los Angeles, California

The curly-haired redhead just walked around the area, knowing what to expect. He was wandering the LA area and knew that with his digivice, he'd get caught. Still, this was a mission, and it had to be done to find the location of the missing tamers.

David Symanski, Jacob McClosky, Gwen LeFabre, and Cletus Jurgemeyerwere some of the names he thought up, taken from the website of the anti-tamer organization that they were dealing with, the so-called Sons of Earth. He knew that David was the son of a Canadian physicist who was working with Hypnos to create a portal to the digital world so they had a place to put any bioemerged digimon that weren't deleted. He didn't know anything about the other three, though, but was about to find out.

"Halt!" he heard someone say behind him, glancing at the person with his green eyes. The man was wearing a black suit and tie with a white dress shirt underneath. Somnus…The man was also holding a digivice, obviously one taken from a tamer.

"What is it, sir?" He asked, doing a good job at faking an American accent. It wasn't exactly easy for him, being from Ireland and everything. It seemed that as far as the accent spectrum was concerned, the two accents were on opposite ends. Then again, Southern accents were actually worse.

"You're a Digimon Tamer, aren't you?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Where's your partner?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"If you won't tell us, then we'll take the information from you."

"Listen, I'll tell you, but only if you show me that you're not here to hurt me just because I'm a tamer."

The next thing he knew was that something sharp struck him in the neck and that he was on an operating table. He struggled to get his American accent back together. Watching all those cartoons paid after all.

"What is your name?" he heard a voice ask out of nowhere.

"Sean O'Farrell. I won't give you anymore information until you tell me where I am."

"You're a Digimon Tamer. Where is your partner?"

"Even I don't know that one. I had some friends put him somewhere safe." As far as he knew, the plan was working perfectly.

He just wanted to get back to Dublin, and not the one in Ohio. That and he wanted his clothes back. He had a CD player in one of his pockets that he really wanted to use.

"We have absolutely nothing on him, no date of birth, no name, and no hometown. None of the children we already have know who he is," a woman commented. "I don't think he's even American."

"How could you figure that out?" someone said in an eastern-European accent, rolling his r's and shortening his vowels.

"It's just a hunch. My full reasons aren't really appropriate."

"Keep him here and keep an eye on him," another voice said.

"That we will do."

Las Vegas, Nevada

Johnny Beckenstein was in his office, filing off paperwork and monitoring the operations of his employees. The day was pretty standard so far, a bio-emergence showed up at about 2pm and was easily taken care of. Other than that, nothing much happened.

Of course, that didn't change the fact that Johnny had a lot on his mind, namely the safety of his son. Really, the reason for sending Nathan off to California was to keep him away from the enemy. At the same time, there were Somnus agents monitoring every known tamer, including Nathan and Steven. A couple of agents from the San Francisco branch even traveled to Oxnard to monitor Diego. The agents were meant to look for any suspicious activity, and track down anyone that looked like they were from the anti-tamer organizations back to their base.

Johnny had requested info on the two brothers, Steven and Jacob McClosky and while he was finishing up paperwork on the recent incursions and the patterns in the network that have been getting punctured recently, he got it. A pair of files was given to him by one of his subordinates, who walked off right away to work on another project.

Steven McClosky, Age: 13, DOB: 7/12/1989

Jacob McClosky, Age: 12, DOB: 4/19/1991

From what he read, their parents were Laura and Travis McClosky and they divorced two years earlier. They also had three other siblings, two sisters and a brother that was older than Steven. The two had relatively average grade point averages, except that Jacob's was actually a bit higher than Steven's. They even competed against one another in a tournament, with Jacob actually defeating Steven in a match.

Just outside of Las Angeles, California

Jacob was relaxing on a hill in the compound that he was trapped in. The grass actually felt good on his back, even though he couldn't stay out here very long because of his fair skin. He just laid there, his thoughts wandering until they were interrupted by a female voice.

"Hey, Jacob!" Jacob looked through his circular sunglasses at a girl with blonde hair tipped in blue streaks. She was wearing a purple shirt with a skull on the front and tight blue jeans.

"Hi, uh, how are you?"

"Doing pretty good. I could see you were bored too, so I thought I'd say hi."

Jacob wasn't impressed. He couldn't even remember the girl's name. Of course, his hormones hadn't kicked in yet so he didn't even give her much thought. "Uh, that's nice," he responded, getting up to walk away. "I just realized I had something to do. See you later."

The girl just rolled her eyes. How are we supposed to get out of here if we don't work together? She thought, sighing.

Just outside of San Francisco, California

Nathan and Steven entered into the McCoy's large house, Alice leading them in. After putting their stuff in a couple of upstairs bedrooms, the two boys and their Digimon walked downstairs to see the girl sitting down at the kitchen table, reading a book while sipping some hot tea.

I just had to run into another creepy Goth chick, didn't I? Steven asked himself silently. Alice then glanced at the two, first Steven, who sweated profusely, and then Nathan, who had this unhealthy grin on his face.

"So, you're a tamer?" Dracomon asked.

Alice shook her head and then looked back down at her book, somberly. "No… I had… a companion, but we weren't actual partners. We helped the Tamers in Japan reach the Mega stage and then…"

"He's dead, isn't he?" Nathan deduced. Alice nodded.

"He sacrificed his life so they could have the data to reach that stage and fight the D-Reaper."

The two boys stood awkwardly. "So, what was he?"

Alice looked at him in the eye and answered. "Dobermon."

Dracomon just about fell backward in shock. "Dobermon! You mean that that idiot Ezekiel's partner was with you?"

"Uh, Dracomon, I don't think it was the same Dobermon," Nathan corrected him.

"That's not what I meant."

"There's another?" Alice smiled a bit. "Do you want some tea?"

"Eh, I prefer mine iced," Nathan responded. Then Alice got up and grabbed some from the fridge. "Oh, cool."

"It's the sweetest tea you can find."

"Uh, might as well have some," Steven said, sitting down. "So, whatcha reading?"

"Pride and Prejudice. I've been going through a Jane Austin phase recently. I met a Tamer from Britain so… I don't know. I just felt like reading it."

"Wait… you met a Tamer other than us and the people in Japan?" Nathan asked.

Alice nodded, pouring iced tea. "Yes. Would you like a lemon? By the way, my parents will be home in less than an hour. I'm surprised you came here so quickly."
"Yeah? So, what can you tell us about this British guy?" Nathan asked.

"His name is Ricardo Sanchez."

"Sounds Mexican," Steven commented.

"Maybe he can make us burritos," Dracomon commented, practically drooling.

"He's Colombian, actually" Alice said.

"Uh, what do Colombians eat?" the miniature dragon asked.

Nathan couldn't answer. "Beats me."

"So, would you like to meet him?" Alice asked the group.

"Uh, yeah. Wait, he's here?" Nathan inquired.

"No, he's in London right now, but he can come here whenever he likes." Alice got up and headed out of the kitchen. "You can come with me if you'd like."

Nathan, Steven and their Digimon followed. Alice started up the old family desktop computer and loaded an instant messenger program. She then clicked on one of the screen names and started a conversation.

AMcCoyDoberman: Hello, Ricardo

NotMontalban90: Hey, Alice!

AMcCoyDoberman: I have Siegfried and Roy over at my house.

NotMontalban90: Okay, just a second…

"Siegfried and Roy?" Nathan inquired.

"Code for Tamers. Ricardo's paranoid," Alice responded. Suddenly, what looked like a bunch of paper appeared around a single point, expanding. A blond-haired man with a mask on his face and a purple scarf covering his head appeared. He was wearing a cloak and appeared to have a third eye. Nathan knew he was a Digimon, but couldn't identify the species because he had never seen it before.

He checked his digivice: Baalmon, Ultimate Level, Virus Attribute. "Baalmon? Never heard of him," Nathan said.

"There are many Digimon you have never heard of," Baalmon told him. "Now… to take you someplace safe. Hold tight."
"You never said he could reach the Ultimate Level, Alice," Steven said.

"You never asked." Baalmon wrapped his cloak around the three children and two Digimon and then disappeared the way he came there.

Oxnard, California

Diego was playing some arcade games with a few of his friends when he received a phone call. They were just about to go in for a game of laser tag, too. "Hello," he greeted upon opening the phone.

"Hey, Diego, this is Jake."

"Oh, hey. Uh, what's up?"

"No questions asked, you're going to have to get out of the amusement park you're in. There are Somnus agents coming right now."

"Huh?" Diego was confused. Somnus was supposed to be the good guys. "Gaomon!" the Digimon appeared quickly.

"Hey, Diego, what's going on?" Diego's Chicano friend asked.

Diego spoke into the phone again, "Jake, how do you know all this? And they're Somnus, our allies."

"Not this branch of Somnus."

Diego's eyes widened as he saw a pair of Somnus agents at the exit, various arcade machines along the way. The two moved towards Diego and Gaomon. "We are Somnus. You have a partner Digimon and should therefore come with us since he's a potential threat."

Diego looked at the pair. "I'll talk to you later," he told Jake before hanging up the phone. "I work for Somnus already."

The one that spoke gave out a humph. "I find that hard to believe."

"Vegas branch under Johnny Beckenstein. I'm part of a team of Tamers."

"When was Beckenstein authorized for such a project? Did the anti-Digimon organizations ever contact him?"

Diego felt some sweat crawl down his face. "If you want, you can talk to him about it." He held out the phone.

"No, that won't be necessary as we don't answer to him. You will come with us, Tamer."

Diego glared at the duo. He knew they were in league with the Anti-Digimon organizations and there was no way he was going with them. "No."

"Unfortunately, Diego, you have no choice in the matter."

Once the agent finished speaking, Diego's friends started yelling at them. "Who says he has to go with you guys, huh?" A blond-haired guy asked.

"Yeah, what did he do wrong?" a black kid asked.

"This is none of your concern," the second agent told them. "Stay out of it!"

"Make us," Diego's Chicano friend told them. When the first agent tried to make a move for Diego, his friends blocked both him and the second agent. "Make a run for it, man! We got you covered." Diego nodded and then ran off with Gaomon, running out the exit and onto the street.

"What should we do, Diego?" Gaomon asked.

"Let me call someone." Diego was about to call Jake back when the goatee-wearing blond appeared right in front of him, driving in a red convertible and sporting sunglasses. Something about the whole situation made Diego extremely uncomfortable, but there wasn't really anything to do other than attempting to head back to Vegas. Yet, the temperatures were far too high to be doing that.

"Get in, now!" Diego jumped in the front seat and Gaomon ended up on his lap.

"So, how much do you know?"

"A lot, we don't have much time. I've got to get you somewhere safe, Diego."

"How do I know you're not working for the enemy? It's obvious you were spying on me or something."

The convertible took off. "You don't. Now, listen here, I'm going to take you somewhere safe." Jake drove him for miles.

"So, who are you working for? I take it you're not really an investor."

"I actually am. That much is true. I never actually lied to you about anything except my name since I go by a pseudonym. As it is, you wouldn't believe my real identity anyway."

"Try me."

"I'm not going to take that risk."

"Does Eric know who you are?"

"Not really. We've got pretty similar circumstances, though."

"Yeah?"

"We're both not from this world. Eric comes from World 18 and I come from World 29. We're not the only ones, either. There are at least two others, Ryo Akiyama who's from World 3 and someone I'd rather not mention from World 6."

"What world are we in right now?"

"World 4. You actually exist in most of the alternate realities I've been to, to be honest. Strangely enough, in most of those worlds you have cousins that aren't in this one."

Diego chuckled at that one. "Reminds me of an episode of Star Trek… So what's with the world names?"

"Well, it's complicated. Beings from each world have a phase variance that's barely detectable. This one has a phase variance of four. Ryo Akiyama's world, also known as the Adventure/Frontier universe had one of three."

"Why don't you want to mention one of the guys from another world by name?"

"I have my reasons. The man's the head of Somnus right now and he's the worst possible person for the position."

"The head of Somnus…" Diego thought about that for a few seconds. He had heard the name, but didn't remember it. He vaguely remembered it being Japanese, though.

"Yeah… see why I didn't want to say his name?"

"Not really. What did he do?"

Jake stopped along the side of the road. They were somewhere in between Oxnard and Lancaster. The blond stepped out of the car and pulled his seat forward, grabbing a notepad from the pouch behind the seat. Then he scribbled a few notes down, tore out a piece and then proceeded to hand it to Diego. "Read these stories. They're considered fan fiction in this world but they tell the true stories of what would be the fourth, fifth and sixth seasons in some universes. Now, I don't want you going against him, not yet, especially since he can biomerge, something you can't do. He also has artificial Digimon at his disposal that are far too strong for your Digimon to handle."

"Okay. So what now?"

Jake pressed into his left arm, causing it to expand and turn into armor laced with touch-screen interfaces. He pressed a few buttons and then grabbed onto Diego's arm. "You'll go where your friends are."

Using the advanced technology that he possessed, Jake made Diego disappear into thin air. After that, the blond got in his car and drove off.

Poland

Alice, Nathan, Steven and their Digimon found themselves in an old, worn out building. They couldn't figure out where they were, though when they looked out of the window, they could tell that the sun was farther along in the sky than it was in California.

"Where did you take us, Baalmon?" the blond asked.

"He took us to one of our secret hideouts," the group heard someone say in a British accent. The person who said that was coming up the stairs and had a dark complexion, showing his African ancestry quite well. He had full lip and had his head shaved and was wearing a red shirt and some black trousers. "My name is Ricardo and I am pleased to finally meet some Tamers from the United States."

"Uh, okay," Nathan responded, not quite sure what to say.

"Hey, I thought you were Colombian," Steven said.

"I am. There's a large black population in Colombia. It's the same way with Brazil and other places such as Belize and the Dominican Republic, though all to differing degrees. So, what is your name?"

"Steven, and this is Nathan. My partner's Ryudamon."

"And I'm Dracomon!"

"It's very nice to meet you all. Welcome to the hideout of the Tamers' Brigade in Poland. You see, I'm always worried about anti-Digimon groups tracking us down so I constantly seek out secluded buildings that aren't being used to serve as bases for us."

"How many Tamers do you know around the world?" Nathan inquired.

"Only about ten or so, excluding some from Japan. There are surely many more, however they can be rather hard to find. I know about three others in London, one from South Africa, one from Ireland, and three from Russia. By the way, Baalmon, you can devolve now."

The Digimon nodded and shrunk down to his rookie form, a black imp-like creature with a white face, Impmon.

"I do know of several others, though. Unfortunately, they're proving hard to reach. We Tamers are a secluded bunch. It doesn't help that there are governments out there that are either anti-Digimon or who see Digimon and their Tamers as mere resources to be exploited. Case in point, Italy and Russia both have policies of capturing anyone with a partner Digimon and using them themselves. Other countries, like my own, have better policies and simply hire Tamers to take on any Digimon that emerge in the real world."

"Yeah, that's the case with Somnus."

"From what I hear, it isn't."

"Actually, it is. My group of Tamers is hired by the Las Vegas branch to eliminate any wild Digimon that appear in our area."

"Your group must be the exception, because from what I know, a number of Tamers are being held in California and were actually captured by Somnus themselves."
"You're lying."

"I'm afraid he's not," Nathan and Steven were surprised to see Diego just pop into existence out of thin air. The portly boy walked over to the group and joined the conversation. "I just had a run in with a pair of agents from the San Francisco branch who wanted my head for whatever reason. I don't know how they tracked me down, either. I hear part of it is because of the head of Somnus, whoever he is."

"If I may ask, how did you get here?" Ricardo asked.

"I'm having a hard time figuring that out myself."

"His signal is similar to that of a bio-emergence," Steven commented, looking at his digivice.

"My name is Diego, by the way, and I'm partnered with Gaomon," he introduced himself.

"Ricardo and my partner is Impmon."

"Steven and this is Ryudamon." The trio shook hands.

"So, I wasn't expecting to see you so soon, Nathan. On a mission for your dad?"

Nathan nodded. "Yeah, we're supposed to find you and then find some anti-Digimon group that kidnapped Marcus."

Diego's expression turned from indifference to shock. "What? You're kidding."

"No, I'm not."

"Rest assured. We're working on the issue with the anti-Digimon group. I just need word from my agent about where they are. He hasn't had a chance to contact me since infiltrating the base."

Nathan suspected the worst. He had no idea what the enemy was capable of and simply hoped that the Brigade's agent was alright. Still, he wanted to help in any way he could and he figured that the only way to do that was to become as powerful as the Brigade.

"Ricardo, I have a favor to ask you," the blond said.

"Go on," Ricardo ordered, facing Nathan.

"Can you train us so we can reach Ultimate?"

Afghanistan

"Here we are," Ricardo said after Baalmon teleported them. They were in the middle of what looked like a barren wasteland. There were no buildings in sight and it was only the four tamers and their digimon.

The heat was almost too much for Steven, who patted his pockets for the sun block he usually brought with him, but to no avail. He must have left it at Alice's house. Now, they were in a hot furnace without it.

"Where is here?" Nathan asked.

"And can I possibly go back to that Alice chick's place and get my sun block. I'm going to be a lobster here, you know."

"Don't worry, you'll have a chance to in a few minutes. We're in the middle of a forbidden area in Afghanistan. Believe it or not, this place actually has the highest rate of bio-emergences in the world and though they're mostly low-level ones, the further toward ground zero you go, the higher chance of encountering Ultimates."

"How'd this place get like this?" Diego asked.

"Just after Vikalarimon rampaged through Tokyo, the terrorist group Al Qaeda decided to experiment with a number of programs in order to break into the digital world and possibly get some digimon of their own. Unfortunately, that plan backfired and they ended up destroying themselves. It made the US occupation just after 9-11 quite a bit easier. Now this place is high risk and forbidden. We only found out about it through the British organization Proteus, the counterpart to Somnus and Hypnos there. Now, before we start training you to get to the Ultimate Level, have any of you actually digivolved without cards?"

The digimon each looked at their partners. Gaomon was the first to speak. "I don't believe so."

"You know, I don't remember that happening with me either," Dracomon commented.

"I did!" Ryudamon exclaimed.

"Yeah, that was pretty scary, too," Steven told them. "I remember it. We were going against a flipping Panchomon, too."

Nathan and Diego both felt their heads get covered in cold sweat. "To digivolve to Ultimate, you have to have a good enough relationship with your partner to digivolve to Champion on your own without the use of cards. That means that while you're here, you're going to have to go without any sort of Digivolution cards. Understood?"

Nathan and Diego both nodded.

"Alright, it's time to get your stuff together. Baalmon, ready to take them wherever they need to go?"

"As always," the robed Ultimate responded.

A/N: Yeah, I was watching Tamers and realized what it took for them to digivolve. I figured it would be an interesting thing for the kids in this to do, since basic card slash doesn't involve the same emotions as digivolving without it. Basically, the idea is that anyone can digivolve with a card, but to truly digivolve completely, to the Ultimate and Mega stages, they need the bond that the characters developed in the first few episodes of Tamers. Most of the Tamers in this story don't have that bond, something that will prevent them from reaching the Ultimate level if they try. Besides, it'll give Nathan and Diego a chance to make up.

Kudos to whoever can guess the identity of the head of Somnus. They're in deep crap indeed. I figured that the alternate realities aren't really explored in the show, only implied. The 'fanfic' representations of the seasons are somewhat similar to the actual seasons (as in the ones aired in our world), except there are some major differences. It's like the idea for most 02 rewrites, that our 02 is the censored version of the real thing (and in this story's reality, it is). No offence to those that liked those seasons. I kind of like Savers. Couldn't get into Xros Wars or Frontier, though. Also tried watching 02 at one point and couldn't get into that either.

Also, please review. It's kind of annoying having only three reviews for this story. Even if you don't like it. I'm always ready for feedback.