Chapter 2: Searching
Okay, this was just great.
Dozens of questions were buzzing around in Takuya's head and he could only answer one. Partly. Where he was? That was kind of obvious now, wasn't it? Seeing how he stood in a forest, where frogs tied instruments around their necks like scarves and where crosses between slugs and green slime were crawling around the ground.
Yes, he was in the Digiworld. But that was about all he knew. Takuya was not familiar with this part and somehow he even doubted it was the Digital World he visited. Why he thought so? His instincts said so after all.
He had no idea what he was doing here, how he got here, why he was here and what he was supposed to be doing now, though that itself wasn't that unusually, seeing how he was in the Digiworld.
On the bright side however, since he was here he could no longer go to school and get detention.
But the best thing was, without a doubt, the burning presences within his mind.
He was whole again. Agnimon and Vitramon were with him again. Pulling out his mobile phone, Takuya was disappointed; it was still a phone. No D-Tector.
Another thing to add to the long list of negatives. Even if he was whole again without his D-Tector he could not fight.
Just great.
Lost in and unknown world, all alone, without means to fight, or even some kind of hint what he should do.
Just great.
Lost in thoughts Takuya wandered along the edge of the forest and searched for the last thing he remembered as he most certainly did not came here by Trailmon.
Yesterday-or was it yesterday?- he was walking home from school. He met up with Izumi 'Zoe' Orimoto along the way and they were going to meet up with Koji Minamoto, Junpei 'JP' Shibayama, Koichi Kimura and Tomoki 'Tommy' Himi in the park to hang out. Did he even reach the park?
He did, didn't he?
Yeah, he did.
He did have a fight with Koji. That, he remembered. Right, they were planning to go to an Amusement Park. They didn't reach it. Somewhat between leaving the park and reaching the Amusement Park he ended up here.
There was only a big black in between.
His spirits didn't know where he was either. He would know if they did.
Things kept getting better and better.
"Grmml!"
Seems like his stomach said it was time for – according to the sun in the sky- lunch. Takuya looked around. The scenery hadn't changed much since he had started walking. To his left was a forest and to his right a wide green plain. Hearing no water he headed into the forest and grabbed the first Gekomon hopping in his way by its instrument.
"Hey, do you know where I can find some water", he asked it.
The Gekomon eyed him with huge eyes and was silent for, what Takuya felt, like hours, its eyes growing wider as time passed.
"Human! A human! Finally a human again!" It screamed, almost deafening Takuya in the process and he let it go in favor of massaging his poor ears, but before he knew what was happening Takuya was surrounded by all kinds of talking Digimon. The majority being Otamamon and Gekomon, with few Numemon mixed in between.
"Can you –"
"-My partner-"
"-We-"
"-are the-"
Takuya was flooded questions, not understanding a single one, because the Digimon always interrupted each other and the questions got louder and louder until he couldn't identify a single word any more.
"Stop!" Takuya yelled, holding his ears and trying not to deafen completely. "One at a time, please! I can't understand you like this!"
It became silent in the blink of an eye.
Or maybe Takuya had just gone deaf.
No, he hadn't. He could still hear the wind brush through the leaves.
He smiled.
"Great, now one at a time. You start." He pointed at an Otamamon near his feet. It blushed and looked around nervously, shifting its weight from left to right and vise versa since it had no feet.
"Uhm, are humans able to come here again?" It finally squeaked, terribly embarrassed. Takuya had no idea why, though. He sat down on the ground, feeling tired in his feet.
"What do you mean with come here again? Humans could freely come to the Digiworld?"
The starring eyes grew to the size of plates.
Chaos erupted again.
"What-"
"We-"
"-Partner-"
"-You-"
This time Takuya just held his ears and waited for them to calm down. A decision he came to regret after the first minute passed. He was not the most patient person.
Yes, definitely not the most patient. Another five minutes or so passed and he was aching to shut them all up.
But Takuya didn't.
At least half had already quiet down after all. He couldn't let that go to waste, now could he? No, he could, he just shouldn't. So Takuya passed time by counting blades of grass.
Gosh, he sure was bored. He wasn't even that desperate in school.
Takuya had enough time to think until they calmed down. And he got a nice idea out of it.
"Starting now, if you want to say something, raise your hand like this." He lifted his arm the way he was supposed to do in school. "If I point at one of you, you can speak. Got it? Good. So what do want to know?" He pointed at a Gekomon.
"Don't you have a Partner Digimon?"
"What's that?" Takuya felt curiosity burn from his insides as the Digimon traded glances and the same Gekomon finally spoke again. "Then how come you are here?"
"Like I said, what is a Partner Digimon?"
They traded glances again.
"A partner Digimon is your partner." One Otamamon said.
"Partner Digimon is a best friend." Another said.
"Partner Digimon protect the human partner." A Gekomon explained.
"I fight with my partner!" The third Otamamon claimed.
"That's right! That's right!" Some Numemon and Otamamon repeated.
"If you fight together with your partner, then I guess I do have partner Digimon. Say, have you ever heard of the Legendary Warriors?"
An Otamamon raised it's 'arm' and Takuya pointed at it.
"No, we haven't." It said and Takuya sighed. So it really wasn't his Digital World.
"Then, could you tell me what's going on in this Digital World? But wait," He raised his hands in defense before the Digimon could bomb him with whatever they were going to say, "could I get some water and something to eat first?" He smiled and put his hand behind his head in embarrassment as his stomach growled once again.
"Ring! Ring!"
"Alright, whose is it?" The teacher turned to face the class. Too annoyed to notice that the same noise actually peeped from three different devices at the same time.
Three students rose from their seats after a second of hesitation. It only added to the teacher's bad mood. One could almost see a vein pop on his forehead. These students were special and he was not allowed to punish them for this. Hence he continued to write an equitation on the blackboard.
Ignoring the incident.
Davis opened his D-terminal as soon as he sat back down and saw TK and Kari do the same. He deliberately, easily ignored the envious, admiring and despising eyes from his classmates that followed his every move.
The mail was from Izzy. Titled with 'Emergency'.
Hi Guys,
We have an emergency! The 'visitor(s)' we talked about yesterday have arrived.
The visitors are apparently 6 children about our age. I got word from Gennai and we have to protect them at all cost!
If we don't, we might as well surrender.
Everyone split up and search in the Digiworld now! We mustn't waste a second! I will deal with your schools and families.
Izzy
Ps: I'll give a detailed explanation later.
"Excuse me." Davis looked over to Kari. She stood again. "Sensei, something has come up for TK, Davis and I. May we please leave?"
Davis didn't wait for an answer. He was already packing his stuff into his bag, not wasting time trying to be quiet in the process. It didn't bother him the least that he could leave Algebra early. Though, the very pressing massage from Izzy was catch of course. But seriously, he would go even if the teacher would threaten with eternal detention.
It meant nothing compared to the Digiworld.
The teacher mumbled something. Davis could tell, he was not pleased, which made Davis pleased. This teacher was one that liked to see his students despair at tests and such.
He hurried out of the room answering to comments and cheering from his classmates while he did so and, once he reached the door, he quickly turned around, bowing to the teacher before running off to the Computer lab. TK and Kari followed his example and bowed before closing the door. Davis suppressed a grin; compared to him they were at least honest with their apology.
"So what do you make of that mail?" He asked, not addressing anyone specific.
"I don't know," Kari replied, "but I can hardly imagine that it was only 6 children I felt. It felt so huge."
"I don't know about that. I'm more bothered by 'we might as well surrender' part. Exactly what do children have to do with it? And since we have to protect them they can't be so strong that, in the hand of our enemies, we would have no chance of winning. If they were, we wouldn't need to protect them in the first place." TK explained after they slid around a corner. "I wonder what they are like."
"Whatever it is that makes them special, let's just hope we are the ones to find them first." Davis stated while he threw the door to the lab open. "Anyway, we need to split up. Who goes first?"
"Gatomon and I."
"Davish, what is going on?" Chibimon asked from his place by Patamon and Tailmon under a table.
"To be honest, I've got no idea," he answered, shrugging as he picked Chibimon up.
"We are first, Tailmon." Kari typed some commands into the computer and held her Digivice up. "Don't forget to send your location to Izzy later, guys. I'm starting at Koromon Village," she said before she and Tailmon were sucked into the screen.
The first thing Karin noticed was that indeed the pressure was gone.
The second thing was that Koromon Village beamed with life. After a second of thought she came to the conclusion that it was natural since Koromon Village was one of the places where Digimon had been evacuated to. Many Digimon of Rookie Level and below were jumping around. She even discovered a few Elecmon feeding hatchlings and decided to walk up to one.
"Have you seen other humans than us here, Elecmon?"
"No. Other than the ones that brought us here, No one." The Elecmon said in a low voice, not sparing her more attention than necessary as he fed a small black blob a bottle of what looked like, but surely wasn't, milk.
"Thank you anyway. If you happen to hear something please let us know. Rumors are fine, too." Kari whispered back, careful not to wake the many sleeping children out of their peaceful slumber.
Then, leaving the village Kari and Tailmon walked into the forest. Evolving right in the middle of a second Primary Village would be bad after all.
"So you mind telling me what's going on now?" Tailmon asked while they were still putting distance between Koromon Village and themselves.
"We got a mail from Izzy. It said that what we felt were apparently 6 children our age and - Don't look like that I can't believe it either- we have to protect them. And no, I do not know more than that." She looked around. "Anyway, are you ready?" Kari pulled out her D-terminal and Digivice.
"Whenever you are."
"Digimental up!" A bright light swallowed Tailmon and when it died out seconds later a majestic horse-sized cat with white wings and mask stood in front of Kari.
"The smile of light! Nefertimon." The cat announced as if on replay.
Kari was about to climb on Nefertimon's back when her D-terminal stated to peep. A mail from Izzy again.
Hi Guys,
Until we have found the children we won't have any meetings.
I'll inform you about new developments per mail. And I've got everyone's locations so I'll write where each of you should head from there. That way we can cover more ground.
I'm sure you are wondering about the other children.
Well, here comes what you need to know. If they should fall into the enemy's hands we would lose our means to fight back. Every one of them represents one element and the enemy can use that to make digimon of the same element follow orders and render attacks of the very same element useless. To make things worse the enemy has already at least power over water, wood, steal and earth digimon. If you find a child tell them you are sent by Ophanimon and send them through the next TV to me.
Be careful, Izzy
Seconds later Kari received a mail with directions.
"It just goes downhill, doesn't it?" Nefertimon commented as they soared through the sky. Kari had read the mail out loud.
"This is just getting ridiculous. At this rate we will end up fighting the entire Digiworld." A frown appeared on her face. "Representing one element? Who gives children that kind of power?"
"We don't know, but surely there are reasons." They flew over a thick forest, making Nefertimon lowered her altitude as to not to miss anything beneath the tees. "Did you know? Ophanimon are holy angel type digimon. They evolve from Angewomon."
"Really? So you might evolve to one. But does one exist today? If we have to tell them we are sent by Ophanimon one should exist, right? But I've never heard of an Ophanimon."
Nefetimon's paws almost touched the trees, but sadly there was nothing below.
"Not necessarily. The children came from another dimension. That Ophanimon must be too, then."
"Somehow with each answered question even more unanswered appear," Kari said, sighing.
She was Light and not Hope.
So it was alright when she didn't always have hope, wasn't it?
No.
Kari shook her head in an attempt to free herself of these negative thoughts.
Who knows; maybe they were going to successfully collect the children. Then they'd only have to worry about an army that happens to be water, wood, steal and earth resistant. They could manage that. It would take time, but it was not impossible.
An image of the many, countless even, Digieggs and Hachlings in Koromon Village drifted to the forefront of her mind and she cut her previous train of thought immediately. So many digimon have died. So many more were dying.
There was no time if they wanted to protect the life in the Digital World. None at all. They had to hurry.
Again, the peeping of her D-terminal caught her attention.
Everyone return now! Matt found one and is fighting. I will redirect you from here.
This chapter is edited and hopefully free of mistakes now thanks to the help of GuardianSoulBlade, who beta-read this chapter for me. Thanks a lot.
Other than that I hope you will review to let me know what you think. :)