Digital

Chapter 4

Alter Ego

Edited on: 6/3/11

Thank you to everybody who reviewed the last chapter.

Previously in Digital:

That was all Dumbledore needed to hear. Practically throwing himself out of his chair he ran to the fireplace and waited just long enough to choo Molly's head out of the flames, before he threw in some powder.

Two seconds and a flash of green flames later, he was gone.

And now the continuation:

Hours later, some park in Surrey.

It was several hours later before Harry woke up to the sound of several children beside him.

Not fully aware of what was happening, or that anybody was near by, Harry groaned as he woke up. Almost immediately, he realized that he now had a splitting headache and was aching all over.

"Ohhh that feels bad…did some one get the number of the bus that hit me?" he asked, somewhat groggily, almost pitifully even, more to himself than to anybody else. A comment which was answered almost instantly in the form of a girlish giggle.

Surprised by the giggle, Harry's eyes flipped open and he found himself staring up into the face of a young girl who couldn't have been more than nine years old, maybe ten.

Beside her stood two other girls her age. To Harry's surprise, they seemed to be all looking at him with extreme interest instead of fear. It was actually as if they knew directly what he was.

'But that couldn't be possible, could it?' Harry wondered, already thinking up a good cover story for his strange attire. The last thing he needed right now was to break the statute of secrecy. He'd be in Askaban for sure.

'Could they be muggleborn?' he wondered. After all, how else would they be so calm otherwise? But no, that can't be, they are much too young for Hogwarts. Maybe somebody in their family is magical, he thought. Harry's musings were suddenly broken as one of the girls started to speak:

"How ya doing Mr. Digimon?"

'Digimon? 'thought Harry, his eyes widening at the new word. 'What is a digimon?'

"Do you need any help?" asked another.

"Can I be your tamer?" asked the third? She sounded hopeful, almost too hopeful, begging even, which confused Harry even more?

"Er… what?" asked Harry incredulously. He didn't know what to think. His mind was racing, looking for possible excuses to explain his current predicament and to make it believable and he needed it now.

"Do you have a name?" asked the second girl again, ignoring what he had said.

"Of course he has a name, every digimon has a name," said the third, looking at her friend as if she were stupid.

There was that word again, 'digimon' what was a digimon?' He'd have to ask. Best play along for now, he thought.

"Excuse me… I'm curious, you seem to know what I am. Is that true?" Harry asked, trying to get their attention.

"Of course I know what you are…everybody knows…You're a digimon," she said as if it was one of the most obvious things in the world.

'I don't,' thought Harry somewhat amused 'And I seem to be one of them. Could digimon be another name for animagus?' he wondered, though he didn't know why it would. Then again children, especially muggleborns, did make up strange names for everything. Could this be one of them?

Harry turned his attention to the other two.

"So…er…what can you tell me…what is a digimon? Can you tell me about them?" he asked, feeling somewhat stupid asking the question.

"Of course I can, but shouldn't you know that already?" one of the girls answered.

"You must not be a very good digimon, if you don't know what a digimon is," said another.

"Yes…well…..em…" Unfortunately, or fortunately for Harry, depending on the way you look at it, that was as far as he got as at that direct moment a different voice was heard coming from nearby:

"Lisa, Sarah, Jenny, Where are you? Come on, we are going home," came the unmistakable voice of an adult.

'Uh oh,' thought Harry, looking around wildly for a place to hide but before he could find one, one of the girls called out to the adult; "Mom look…I found a digimon…I told you digital monsters are real."

'Uh oh,' thought Harry again, before looking at the approaching woman. "Er... hi!"

The mother took one look at Harry and screamed.

Harry groaned.

"NO mom...don't it's ok...it's only a digimon," said one of the girls with a horrified look on her face, but her mother didn't seem to hear her.

Instead she grabbed a stone from the ground and threw it at Harry who promptly dodged it.

Thinking it best to lave the area quickly, Harry turned around and ran.

The last thing he heard before he was gone was the tearful cry of the young girls screaming for him to come back but by then he was long gone.

Hours later Harry was hiding in a dense bush wondering what he should do next.

He had learned one thing of importance from his little conversation with the children and that was of what he allegedly was supposed to be something called a… digimon…or more precisely a digital monster.

"Digital!"

Harry said the word out loud, letting it run off his tongue.

Once again he wondered why he couldn't just have become something normal…like a cat…or even a worm.

'No! On the other hand maybe not a worm… too vulnerable...a cat though, now that would have been great …why couldn't I have become a simple cat or a dog?' he thought, once again annoyed that he could never be normal.

"As a dog I could have kept Padfoot company, instead I have to become a… what's its name? …. a digimon," he said, letting the full word of what he had allegedly become run across his tongue.

Suddenly he was interrupted:

"Hey, we.. .digimon that is, aren't that bad…I mean, just look at all the cool stuff we can do," said a voice. It seemed to come from inside his head.

Harry jumped, then looked around wildly, but couldn't find anybody.

For a second he thought he had simply been imagining things, but then the voice spoke again:

"Oh… right, of course, you wouldn't know yet, sorry about that, I'm in here… I mean...I'm you, no wait, that's not right,… I'm in your head…no wait…that sounded bad too… oh, what ever, let's just say I'm a part of you now, nice to meet you!" said the voice again.

"What!" Harry exclaimed out load, now very afraid and worried, he practically screamed as he jumped up from where he had been sitting moments before.

"What do you mean your inside of me…who are you? Get out of me!" he said while looking around anxiously, hoping that who ever had spoken had been joking and would be somewhere near by. The last thing he needed right now was another voice in his head, or worse.

"Oh don't be like that, look, it isn't really that bad…I won't hurt you, I promise…I… Ah!... I see, you're a wizard…well that changes everything... in that case…this might work better;…I… er…your digimon alter ego…yes, that's it… swear on…er…whatever life I have, that I will not willingly harm, mislead, or do anything which could somehow hinder my host Harry James Potter, to the best of my ability, unless otherwise agreed to first by the host, or unless in the case of where any non-action may otherwise lead to the prior abrupt end of said host, in which case I reserve the right to do as I see fit to help save said body and life of my host, which is incidentally now also my own, to the best of my abilities, up to and including the immediate full take over of control of said body, so mote it be…"

The moment this was said a flash of light emitted from Harry's body, sealing the oath.

"There, I hope that will do it…is that ok for you?" asked the voice before falling silent, waiting for Harry's response.

Harry for his part was in shock. He had no idea what had just happened.

For a few seconds he was unsure of what to do, but then, knowing that a unbreakable vow was just that; unbreakable, he shrugged, and then nodded.

'Just another thing to add to the ever increasing list of what makes the special Harry James Potter tick,' thought Harry as he began to accept what had just happened.

"So, you're my…alter ego... was it? That's what you called yourself, right?...em…what actually does that mean?" he asked after absorbing what the oath had said. It seemed fair enough, considering the circumstances. And the 'voice', did seem to mean what it said. So he would trust it…for now at least.

"I'll try to answer your question…but to do that I will have to give you a short history lesson. You see, long before you were born, in fact many millenia ago, there once lived a species of highly advanced humans. One day, one of these humans, a brilliant professor called Tern Digimo had the bright idea to create physically stable digital creatures as a sort of pastime.

Physically stable as you may not know, meant that they could take a physical form and were actually solid. Unlike normal simple computer code which you can't touch, this new code could actually interact with in the real world. It was a great breakthrough at the time.

At first these digital creatures were nothing more than simple computer programs, programmed to do simple menial tasks, their biological masters gave them to do. Due to the fact that they were digital they couldn't die when they encountered radiation or poison, so this made them very useful for such tasks.

Over time his Diginome's as he called them, became more and more popular and it didn't take long before a vast industry was created dealing solely with his digital creations. After a while there was no household with at least one of these diginomes.

As they become more sophisticated, these digital creatures where given other tasks to do, some of which were also included the in entertainment area.

As fate had it, it wasn't long before people discovered their immense potential in the fighting industry. Being very hard to kill and seeing as they were digital they couldn't loose body parts, or indeed get injured, but instead simply lost energy from the attacks until they were deleted. The name Diginome was soon changed to Digimon...or as you now know it, Digital Monsters and the digital tournaments were born.

Over time vast battles were fought and won, and the newly established source of entertainment grew more and more popular.

Now we get to the part which concerns us…

At some point, as usually tends to happen in large galactic empires, a war broke out and the military decided to use these digimon as a form of fighting back the invading force. At first all went well, people even supported it when it showed that by using these digimon, less human lives were lost, however,even then, the military wasn't satisfied.

At first they simply created stronger and stronger digimon, leading to the creation of 'Champion' forms and then the powerful 'Ultimate' forms, but the military still wasn't happy.

Claiming that digimon lacked a certain amount of adequate intelligence and couldn't adapt to certain situations, situations which may not have been programmed into them, or where it simply needed to adapt at the spur of the moment, a new digimon was sought for.

A few years later, they got the answer: 'Bio merging.'

Bio-merging was the process of combining Humans and Digimon together to create the perfect fighting machine, one which could think strategically like a human and which could adapt to any and all situations. This led to the birth of the first 'Mega' form digimon.

As fearsome as they indeed were, they never the less had one fatal flaw; the pilots who were supposed to merge needed time to adapt to their new digital forms.

This proved to be very difficult, as they simply couldn't afford to learn by mistakes, as defeat usually meant immediate death in the face of battle.

You see, time was of the essence, and at the point of the creation of the mega, both sides were at the brink of defeat. With both sides, hoping for a miracle to beat the other, digi-pilots did not have time for any training.

So we were created...

A scientific breakthrough and the envy of multiple galaxies, the 'alter ego training gene,' they called us. One simple, fully conscious gene, created for one simple purpose; to help the pilot adapt to their digimon forms. In other words, we were a sort of adviser to the pilot which also had the ability to take over control of their hosts body if a situation were to arise where we might have been needed to do so. Their right hand consciousness, trainer and co-pilot in one, so to speak.

The technology level being at the level it was, allowed us to be bred directly into the humans of the time, to be carried down the gene pool, from generation to generation, as a dominate gene from then on. We were adapted to become active once the pilot reached a certain age of maturity as well as a certain physical maturity. At the moment the child reached both, we were to activate and the child would almost immediately thereafter have been acquainted to their digital partner, with whom they would then have bio-merged to create the perfect digimon warrior, known as the 'perfect' 'mega' form, or sovereign form as it was later called.

It is important to note that earlier versions only allowed the pilot to bio merge into a mega form, at all other times the pilot and the digimon partner were separated, that's how the tamers were born, two individuals, a human and a digimon working side by side as a team. Later versions, one of which, by the way, you are an advanced type of, or so it seems, even let the 'pilot' remain in the digimon form even after de-digivolving to the weaker inferior Champion or Rookie forms, until they chose to separate. Don't worry Harry I'll help you with that when the time comes...it's actually quite fun. Though if my hunch is correct you may not have to. As I said you and I are somewhat more advanced.

In your case it seems you go another step forward again altogether, one which I most admit I have no knowledge about. I don't know how it's possible, as I don't have the information, but you seem to be an experiment, never seen before. At least I wouldn't know what else to call it. Since you have not been introduced to your partner you should not be a digimon yet, however this is obviously not the case here...instead it seems you have actually become your partner without needing a partner, which makes no sense whatsoever, but hey, who am I to complain, my job remains the same. I activated the moment you tried to transform into an animagus as you wizards call it. So maybe that has something to do with it, I really don't know.

As for the age delay in my activation, I 'm not totally sure why that happened and why I didn't activate when you reached your thirteenth birthday, as was originally planed and the norm, being the time the pilot reached their teenage years, the time deemed most suitable to do the merge, but…well...anyway…I think you can thank your relatives for that…seeing as you were abused, I guess your body simply wasn't ready…until now.

Finally, and this is the last thing I will tell you, for now, I promise, seeing as it's getting late, and you now have a lot to digest…you may by now be wondering how you got me, the gene, in the first place, hmm..., well…that's a different story altogether...

Simply put, many years after the war ended…ironically both sides decided to cease fire to help each others, a natural disaster happened in the home galaxy of the humans of the time.

It seemed, time had simply caught up on the local sun and it had started to collapse. As a final desperate measure, a group of both empires finest scientists from all around the then known galaxy came together to find a solution to their collective problem.

The answer; well, you probably wouldn't believe it but they decided to transfer all of their consciousness from their biological bodies into sufficiently advanced enough digital bodies.

Yes, I'm serious…deadly serious…practically over a year the reining human species of the galaxy ceased to exist, as they all decided to live out thier lives as the digital creation they had once created as a form of entertainment…."

"WHAT!" Harry screamed as he heard this. "You can't be serious," he exclaimed with disbelief.

"I know, I know, but its true…practically in one year we all became digimon. Being immune to the effects of hunger and atmospheric changes, they thought it was for the best, it also added the special effect that we became practically immortal, unless we were deleted, and that we now didn't even need to eat or breath to survive."

Anyway…our story ends with the fact that, after our sun died, some of us digimon decided to leave our former planet and so we used our intergalactic spaceships of the time to travel to other galaxies and so to other planets, this one being one of them.

The humans of the time, on this planet, were rather primitive to say least and it didn't take us long in becoming the dominant species and for a time everything went well.

That is, everything went well, until we came across an advanced form of humans; one which could control a form of energy they called magic."

Harry groaned. This couldn't be good.

"Its not as bad as it sounds, at first everything was ok and we lived amongst them and along side them, and we had no problems with them what so ever, but soon we fond out that, over time, vast amounts of magic could destabilize our digital data.

As you can guess, this was not good. Tired of war however, many of us decided that was no option, so instead of fighting we decided to change back into humans instead.

Our technology did indeed allow us to do so, so they went ahead with it, but not everybody wanted to forsake their new digital lives.

So a compromise was made. Seeing as we couldn't live happily ever after with the wizards, many of us went into hiding and with the help of our newly re-humanized human friends, we created another world known as the 'digital world,' where those who wished to stay as digimon could go to stay in peace.

And so, as all stories go, over time people forgot about us digimon and soon we became a legend and from there a myth… that is until now, you Harry, I'm happy to say, are the first in a long time, millenia in fact, to become one of us again."

With those last few words the voice, which Harry now called his alter ego, stopped talking, leaving a flabbergasted and completely changed and new Harry behind.

Realizing that he had been told the history of his planet, Harry did the only thing he could, he sat down and stared into space as he tried to assimilate all he had been told.

It was going to be a long day.

Thus ends a rather long but important history lesson.

A/N: Next chapter Harry goes to Hermione's house and Dumbledore begins his search.