Welcome back to the other half of the tamers. Life in that reality is just as interesting. Time for our adult tamer to enjoy the "fun" of the digital world. Hope you like it and please leave a review. I need more feedback, please.
Yamaki mentally tried to prepare himself for whatever might be awaiting him through the colorful portal. He was not expecting an empty wasteland vacant of all signs of life. The children and digimon did not act surprised, but they had been here before after all. As he turned his face skyward, he did not see any familiar celestial shapes. Instead, a strange round shape hung overhead.
"What is that?" the adult tamer asked no one in particular.
The hooded figure explained, "That is where you just came from, tamer. That is the human world as viewed from the digital world."
"You'll get used to that weirdness quickly," reassured Kazu. "Wait until we get to the more interesting levels around here where normal laws don't work. Or the data streams. The sky is just the tip of the iceberg."
"Where's Wyo? Which way is he?" Suzie questioned.
Destiny informed them, "He and his partner were left as a digi-egg in the possession of a Floramon. Her village is on the forest level, on the banks of Seadramon's lake. Begin your search there."
"Wait, how…?" Kenta tried to ask, but the cloaked figure stepped through another portal and vanished out of sight. "Not fair."
"Alright, she's no help," muttered Kazu. "Do we have a plan B, oh fearless leader?"
The bespectacled child closed his eyes for a moment before asking, "Guardromon, I know you have several different sensors and there are connections between levels other than data streams. Can you detect them?"
"There is access to another level within range, if barely," the robotic digimon confirmed, "but I cannot determine if it leads to the desired destination."
All the talk about levels, data streams, and connections was slightly confusing for the government agent. They sounded familiar, but he couldn't remember enough about them to follow the conversation yet. The dark-haired boy nodded to himself.
"Well, since we don't have any better options, does anyone have a problem with trying to find that connection?" Silence met Kenta's words. "Okay, lead the way."
"Since you are in command, should we not follow you?" asked a confused Guardromon.
The boy sighed, "But I can't sense our target. You can."
"Just use your cool jetpack-like flying skills to show us the way and we'll get going," Kazu instructed his partner.
"Oh," murmured Calumon softly. "What pretty lights! All sparkly and nice. And it's coming closer. Yay, pretty lights."
"No! Not already," shouted Kenta, spotting the approaching data stream. "Run!"
"What?" Yamaki asked, confused by the boy's sudden change of mood.
"Another one!" called Kazu, pointing at a second data stream. "Don't get hit by it or you'll end up who knows where."
Guardromon grabbed his partner and fired up his engines at full speed. Yamaki picked up Suzie and Lopmon, Calumon grasping the blond man's head. Kenta broke into a sprint, holding tightly to MarineAngemon. As a group, they fled from the beams, but they ended up being trapped between the two.
"Pii pii!" shouted the pink mega as he and his partner were swallowed up by one.
"Kenta!" called the hat-wearing boy as his friend vanished.
The other beam swept over the grown man, Suzie, and their partners, transporting them across the digital world. The twin data streams diverged and left Kazu and his metallic digimon alone.
"I really hate those things," the tamer commented dryly.
It really wasn't fair. He did what his master wanted, received tons of power, and was nearly invincible. Nearly was the key word. He was killed by one of those stupid kids. The one who did that really dorky speech before going mega.
So, the digimon found himself turned into a digi-egg and was forced to regain his previous level the hard way. No super-boost from his master this time. It was trapped and powerless now. Who needed it? He'd be his own boss now. After all, he had his memories of his previous life and that was a start.
Concentrating, he could feel himself digivolving. Finally. He had to kill off loads of baby and in-training digimon to succeed. Being an in-training, and a baby before that, was annoying. The digimon felt himself become a rookie. This form was more useful at least.
DemiDevimon took flight, plans for his future racing through his mind. Power and revenge were his main concerns. And the small virus intended to have both.
"Come on, Monodramon. Don't be such a worry-wart."
The purple reptilian digimon looked at his companion. Both had been together as long as they could remember, which wasn't very long. In a sense, they could be considered twins. They had emerged from a single digi-egg after all, but their appearance was vastly different. While Monodramon had changed drastically from baby to training to his current rookie form, his friend retained the same overall shape and only increased in size. But Floramon had just stated they were different. And both accepted this.
Floramon had been there forever too. She kept watch over them, making sure the two were safe and happy. She was a caring digimon. When the pair grew (and after Monodramon digivolved enough to have limbs), she stood on the bank as Seadramon taught them to swim. She trusted the champion to watch them, but she still needed to keep them in view anyway. That was just the kind of digimon she was.
But the two close friends had spent their whole short lives in the village. Floramon had not even allowed them to go out with a gathering party to forage. She worried about them too much.
"I don't think we should be doing this," answered Monodramon. "We aren't supposed to go, you know. Besides, Floramon said that dangerous digimon exist outside the village and you can't even…"
"Don't worry about it. We can handle it. I mean, you're a rookie now and I'm… tall," his friend reassured.
"What level are you, anyway?" questioned the purple rookie. "Your name never changes and you just grow."
"Well, I've changed sizes at the same times you've digivolved. So, I'm probably a rookie too."
"I still say this is a bad idea."
Ryo Akiyama, tamer and human boy, grinned at his partner, "We're just going to explore a little. What's the worst that could happen?"
"A lot," the digimon muttered. "A lot could happen."
"They're gone… again?" whispered Mayumi Wong. "I… just stood there as Suzie, my baby girl, vanished."
The rest of the stunned parents left in the wake of Destiny's arrival and the departure of the tamers and digimon felt just as lost and confused. A simple birthday party had been transformed as chaos escaped left and right. First the explosion and now this. Her youngest two children were caught up in so much, as were the children of the other parents present.
"What did she say about the others not returning for some time?" Rumiko Nonaka asked, for once not at a photo shoot and having decided to attend the day's festivities. She had hoped that it would be a prime opportunity to have some mother-daughter bonding and to get to know the various tamers and their families better. She had even resisted the urge to suggest Rika could wear a dress. But fate seemed to have intervened. "Did something happen to Rika?"
"I… I don't know," admitted Janyu. "But I think we should find out."
Mie Matsuki suggested, "Contact that Riley woman and have her make some phone calls or check their equipment. That Hypnos place has so many connections, they should be able to find something out. And if they don't know, I'll find out myself."
As Mr. Wong began dialing, he heard Takato's mother, the woman who bakery she ran with her husband and sold the now famous Guilmon Bread, give a feral growl under her breath that sounded so threatening. It reminded the man of all the nature films of the ferocity of mother bears concerning their young.
"Takato, you'd better not be gone without a word again. Regardless of what that Destiny person said to you."
Riley grinned to herself as she watched the various screens covered in readouts that described everything from the strength of the digital barriers to the status of the equipment in the Hypnos building. But it was nothing on the computers that had created her good humor. Yamaki had taken the afternoon off to attend, of all things, a child's birthday party. It had been Calumon who had informed the head of Hypnos that "he was a tamer and that means saving the world, having adventures, and playing with all the other digimon and tamers; the party means lots of games and candy and cake and fun and everybody else is going, so please, please, please, please say 'yes' and we'll get to have lots of fun and you have to go." It was just fun to watch the tiny creampuff convince his partner to do something against the man's nature while apparently not taking a breath.
The technician still loved how the opposing personalities somehow worked. Yamaki seemed to be so much more… not relaxed really, but a little more accepting that he couldn't control everything. He still tried to maintain some, but he seemed to understand that there were some things beyond his ability to affect (like Calumon's hyperness). Even if the white being spent a great deal of his time with the girl, Jeri, he did still make sure all the members of Hypnos were "really happy" and especially Yamaki. It was especially sweet, in Riley's opinion, when Calumon promised to guard against "the grumpy lady with red hair and an angry face."
The phone ringing caught the woman's attention. That particular line had a limited number of people with knowledge of how to reach it. Specifically, it was limited to the tamers and Monster Makers. Thus any time that phone rung, it had to be important.
"This is Riley," she greeted.
"Hey, this is Mr. Wong and I have a favor to ask. You can track the tamers, right? Can you check on their location, no question asked? Specifically my son, Henry, and any of them near his signal."
Wondering on the strangeness of the request, her fingers flew across the keyboard and pulled up the appropriate information. "I don't think that this system was created to hunt down kids who missed their curfew, so I'm guessing you have a good reason. Let's see… Hmm… This doesn't make any sense. Where…?"
"What is it?" asked the concerned parent over the speaker. "Where are they?"
"Gone. All the tamers: Henry, Rika, Takato, Kazu, Kenta, and even Yamaki, Suzie, Jeri, and the twins, all of them are gone."
There was a resigned sigh before the man explained, "I was… afraid of that. Some of them just… vanished right in front of us. The rest of them were investigating a disturbance, an explosion, earlier. Can you find out what you can about what happened? We'll be there as soon as we can."
"I'll do what I can," she agreed. Hopefully when the expected assortment of Monster Makers and concerned parents arrived, she would have some answers for them and they could answer a few of her own.
"Tally," she called to where her co-worker watched curiously. "I think trouble is coming and we're on our own. The tamers, including Yamaki, are missing in action."
"What happened?"Yamaki asked, still holding the child and rabbit digimon in his arms. He had stumbled, disoriented by the journey by the bright beam of light. The sandy landscape had been replaced with tall trees and greenery. "Where are we?"
Lopmon sighed softly, "We were caught by a data stream and it transported us to another level of the digital world. As the other tamers have explained to you in the past, there are several different layers to this world and the environment differs on the various layers." She glanced around the area. "This is part of the forest level."
Yamaki could now remember some of the reports on the digital world the children, their partners, and Shibumi had given. But the descriptions of the strangeness of this world had not truly prepared the man for the reality he found.
"It looks like a really big park," noted Calumon, leaping off the blond man's head and flying around them.
"Possibly with dangerous digimon hiding," murmured the brown and pink rabbit.
"Don't wowwy, Lopmon," Suzie reassured. "Just like Tewwiermon says: momentai. We'll be alwight and we'll find Wyo and the west of ouw fwiends."
"Yay!" cheered Calumon.
The adult tamer felt a headache coming on and reached for his lighter. He was trapped in a hostile environment with only one combative digimon for protection and in the company of two innocent and optimistic beings. The familiar click of his lighter as he flicked the lid did little to sooth his stress.
"Well, this is going splendidly so far," he muttered.
Mrs. Olkowski, picking up toys scattered across the room and generally cleaning up the mess left by having a pair of four year olds and a trouble-making being from another world in the household, paused as a sense of unease filled her. Her hand hovered over a toy bear as she tried to name the feeling. It wasn't a sense of danger or a threat. It just felt… distant. Like something important was missing.
The housewife shook her head. If she was going to turn psychic and gaining a sixth sense or something, you would she would have felt something was off months ago when the whole digimon thing started. Or even a month and a half ago, when her children vanished in the night to enter the digital world. Even when her family was in another world, there hadn't been this sense of distance.
The tamers' mother would admit to anyone she was not necessarily the most perceptive dealing with digimon. She hadn't even recognized her children's partner after he digivolved. Of course, he didn't really resemble the small, purple rookie when he was in his mega form. She grinned slightly at the memory of her first encounter with Beelzemon.
Ai and Mako were out in the yard, playing. Their puppy, who they had named Scruffy, was currently being taught how to fetch, with mixed results.
"Come on, get the ball," coaxed the young girl as the canine panted.
"Be a good boy," her brother urged the dog that was nearly out of his puppy stage by now really.
Their mother, washing the dishes from breakfast as she watched out the window, heard an odd flapping sound. Instincts born from the knowledge that dangerous creatures could appear at anytime warned her that it wasn't a bird. She took hold of the frying pan she had been cleaning and approached the door to the backyard.
"That mutt's too stupid anyway," a deep voice muttered, causing the woman to freeze. Through the sliding door, she could see a tall, dark figure land with its back to her. "Don't know why you kee…"
"I don't know who you are, but you have five seconds to step away from my children," the concerned mother interrupted, swinging her chosen weapon at the winged digimon.
"Yikes, watch it," he shouted, dodging the blow. "You're going to hurt someone. Probably me. A little help here with the crazy lady, please."
She swung again at the dark creature. The strange digimon took flight to avoid the cast-iron frying pan.
"Take it easy, toots," called the digimon. "What's got you all worked up? I swear, those towels were burned when I found them."
The use of the nickname "toots" along with familiar emerald eyes caught the woman's attention. She now noticed the twins shouting for her to stop.
"Impmon?" she asked cautiously. "Is that you?"
"Yep, only I go by Beelzemon when I look like this," he answered with a grin, landing once more. "Sorry. I thought the munchkins told you."
She swung at him once more. "What did you do to the towels?" screamed the infuriated mother as the frying pan connected.
The digimon had apparently burned one of her more expensive towels to a blackened crisp, ruining the set. She had not been pleased and there had been punishment.
But he did add something to the household and the woman wouldn't trade the rookie for a more behaved one. For all the mayhem Impmon brought, he also served as a calming element for the twins. While it seemed impossible for children their age to control themselves, Ai and Mako did so because they loved the purple rookie. And, while he would rarely admit it in earshot of anyone, he obviously did so in return.
He may be a lot of things, but he was a nice guy deep down. Mrs. Olkowski knew this and understood he would guard her children with his life. And, after talking with some of the older children and convincing them to tell the truth, she knew that level of protection was not just a figure of speech. Still, as a parent she would always worry. About all three of them.
And the sense of distance worried her and she didn't know why. But her family felt… scattered. She sighed and picked up the toy finally.
"Stay safe," she whispered, hoping she was only being paranoid.
Okay, on the Ryo thing, I'll go into better detail later. But here is how it is more or less set up. When he and his partner emerged from the digi-egg, he looked and acted like a three year. When his partner digivolved to an in-training level, the boy aged to about seven years old. Finally, when the digimon reached the rookie level, Ryo then regained his former age of fourteen. He will not continue to change age as his digimon digivolves and dedigivolves. That was just until he regained his original form. After all, it would be kind of odd for a teen boy to emerge from a tiny digi-egg.
People out in cyber space!!! I ask for your input. Questions, comments, requests, and general statements are all accepted. (Complaining just for the sake of complaining will not be.)
Thanks and hope to keep having your support.