0000
The day after meeting with Soul and Bearmon, Josh got home, throwing his bag onto the bed opposite his computer and docked his D-phone. Opening up the welcome screen to Digimon Masters, he smiled a wide smile and logged in before putting the oculus rift on his head.
0000
For the second time, Red enjoyed watching the green binary form itself into the layout of the digital world he had entered. However, this time, he was not in the Village of Beginning when he landed. Instead, he was in some sort of desert. Red thought that the best thing to do was check his D-phone which revealed that he was in the 'Western Area.' Studying the map that the D-phone provided, he noticed that town the was slightly off to his right.
Telling the information to his partner, they started walking when a number of explosions were heard in the distance. Weighing in their options, they figured that the explosions would be more interesting than the small town, so they started running off in that direction, smirking at each other while doing so.
0000
Arriving at the area, they were shocked to find no one there besides a teenage girl and a ball of dark blue light that shrunk down to a Kotemon. The girl in question had shoulder length black hair tied into a ponytail with grey highlights running through it and an intense look in her violet eyes that would make anyone tremble at the thought of getting her angry. She was garbed in a light blue t-shirt with a yellow crest of friendship on the front, blue jeans, sneakers, and a pair of fingerless gloves with the crest of courage emblazed on the back of each one.
Her Digimon was a blue lizard garbed in so much dark purple kendo armor that it's only visible features were its tail and feet. Heck, the only thing that a person could see through its helmet were its glowing yellow eyes. It carried a small shinai that was held to its waist by some kind of force (or it might just be a transparent sheath, hey, how am I suppose to know?).
After shooting Red a look that would normally mean 'How may I help you?' he sheepishly replied by saying, "Sorry, I just logged in and I saw explosions so I figured that it would be fun to see what I would find. Also could you possibly tell me how I got here?" After seeing her lift an eyebrow at him, he thought best to continue. "The last time I logged off, I was just outside the Village of Beginning and now I'm here."
Her answer came out as if she was forcing herself not to get angry. "Well, you probably have someone listed as a friend saved and that person set it up so that if one of you logs on while the other is online, the one logging on would be taken to the general location of the one online."
Nodding his head, he felt embarrassed that he didn't think of that. He just laughed awkwardly. Agumon, on the other hand, was paying almost no attention to the new people as soon as he saw a man sized cactus with holes for eyes and a mouth along with a pair of boxing gloves on its thorn covered arms running their way. Agumon rushed to the side of Kotemon and launched his pepper breath attack which the Digimon just swatted to the side.
Red took out his D-phone and figured that his best option was to scan the Digimon, but he was too late as Kotemon sprinted off, unsheathing his shinai and jumped a very high distance off the ground. During his decent, his weapon caught alight and vertically cut the poor cactus in half while the armored Digimon shouted "Fire MEN!" After his little display, he calmly re-sheathed his shinai and absorbed the fallen Digimon without saying a word. Walking over to his Tamer he first received a thumbs up, but as soon as he was in striking range she hit him on his helmet and yelled at her partner, "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, KOTEMON!? YOU KNOW HOW ANNOYING KILL STEALING IS? I MEAN, COME ON, WHAT KIND OF HERO STEALS FROM SOMEONE ELSE?!"
Using the sweat drop function, Red outstretched his hand to introduce himself, smiling at him. She shook his hand and said that her name was 'Dream.' Both of them, having had enough of the awkwardness, started walking in the direction of the town. During the walk, the two of them shared a mutual silence that was soon broken by Dream. "So how long have you and Agumon been partners?"
Surprised by her vocal forwardness, Red just looked into the artificial evening sky and answered, "Well, we've been together for about five years." Gaining a small smile he continued, "I still remember the day I got my D-phone. It was kind of like tonight, only you know in the real world. What about you two?"
Smirking at the boy, Dream said that 'a hero doesn't reveal her tricks'. By now, they had reached the outside of the town and had gone their separate ways. Receiving a pop up on his D-phone, Red opened it and it seemed to be a message from Soul that read, "Meet me at Starmon's Inn in about 10 minutes." Sighing to himself, he started walking towards the Starmon's Inn since he had read on the forums that there was an item mall in there, so he figured that he could kill two birds with one stone.
Seeing the egg with lizard legs, commonly associated with selling items to Tamers, the orange dino walked up to it and was about to shake claws. However, when he realized that the Digitamamon did not have any claws to shake, he sweat dropped and just looked up at his Tamer with big, green, puppy dog eyes, as if trying to say that he was sorry. Smiling playfully, he just asked what items were on sale and a holographic screen appeared in front of him. Scrolling down the list, he picked up the most common items for Tamers to have: Health potions, escape disks, the works.
After buying those with the money he gained from defeating Darklizardmon, he apparently had only one hundred Megs left and opted for a color pallet swap of his shirt that boosted his Digimon's attack stat. The only difference between the new shirt and the old one was that the shirt itself was green and the crest happened to be black.
Looking into the mirror provided by the digital egg, he smiled and nodded, thanking Digitamamon who simply bowed in return. Checking the amount of time passed since the message from Soul, he was surprised to see that almost eight minutes had passed. Sprinting away from the Digimon, he yelled out to his partner, "COME ON, LIZARD FACE! We're going to be late!"
Catching up, Agumon simply stuck out his tongue and replied with, "At least I don't get nervous talking to avatars."
0000
After about three minutes of running, Agumon was panting with his claws on his knees. He was still panting while Red was in awe at the elegance of the restaurant, given the old western town theme of the rest of the village. After his staring had ended, he walked up to a small wooden podium manned by a Bi-Pedal Polar Bear Cub wearing an apron. "Hello, Kumamon. Umm... I was told that someone would be waiting on me here."
Nodding, the ice beast said that Soul had already gotten a private table in the back. A little confused at first, his reasoning was that his D-phone probably let the Digimon know who he was. Walking into the restaurant, he was soon greeted by a small arrow in his sight that was pointing to his left. Following the arrow led him to an old door with a sign saying "Employees only!" Both Red and his partner seemed to have different trains of thought because the moment his partner was turning to look somewhere else, Agumon had opened the door.
A strange green light blinded the pair and they were suddenly inside a small black room with a long table that looked like it belonged in a board meeting for a huge company in the middle. Opening their eyes, they saw both Soul and Dream along with their partners talking among themselves, seemingly not noticing their presence. Looking to her right, Dream groaned and her mood had changed from serious to disappointment. "Oh, please tell me this isn't the new member you were talking about. No offence, kid, but you're no hero. You couldn't even take out a fu-eep-ing Togemon."
Cringing at the high pitch beep that covered the supposed curse, Soul was about to argue with her, but Red beat him to the punch. "What do you mean new member? And the only reason we didn't take out that Togemon is because your Digimon is a fu…. freaking kill stealer!"
Soul took the silent fuming that manifested itself into an electrified glare as his opportunity to speak up. "Dream, don't start your hero crap again. And Red just wait, and let me explain." Accepting the word of their more trusted acquaintance, Red and Agumon took a seat at the end of the table, and then gestured to the anime style avatar. Taking that as a sign to continue, Soul typed some kind of command into his D-phone and put it on the table. After a few seconds of waiting, a three dimensional hologram was created.
0000
The image was showing Soul walking through a forest when suddenly a green vortex of energy appeared in front of him, and out came two familiar winged Digimon. About to pass the shocked player and battle ready partner, they stopped, seeing something in the young bear's eyes. "Before you attack, let me give you some incentive to keep us alive. Go on, Patamon. Tell him."
Looking oddly to the Demi Demon, Patamon just sighed and started talking. "I'm sorry about my brother. Anyways, do you happen to know how we can get out of this game?" Confused by the thought of Digimon outside of the world of the game, Soul started pushing for more information.
"What do you mean out of the game?"
Also interested in the prospect, Bearmon lowered his glowing claw to hear them out.