Episode 1: Rumors

Sitting in a chair, a man types out a code on the computer. "How does it look on your end?" The man asks his colleague, as the chamber, filled with miscellaneous computers, almost echoes his voice.

"The Digital Waves are in acceptable ranges," replies the colleague, looking at streams of data on a separate computer.

"Let's commence the test." The chamber's roof opens up to the magenta sky. The floor elevates them to the top of the roof and four spires erect from the roof with them.

The colleague starts inputting codes on his computer. "Converging the waves now." Pulling a small, black device out of his pocket, the man stands up from his chair and stands in the center as the four spires start admitting auras at the top. The man watches as the spires shoot out a beam that intersect each other, high in the sky, creating a massive sphere of light. "The gate will be stable for approximately ten seconds."

The man points the screen of the device at the sphere of light. The screen jumps to life, reacting to the sphere. "Digital Gate! Open!"

The skyscrapers of downtown, usually filled with busy office people, were empty. Not a soul in sight of the usually busy area. In the liminal space, a massive bird, consumed by fire, soars. In pursuit flies a black and green insectoid of similar size.

Panting, trying to catch his breath, a young man chases after the two. The bird whips around and hurls several balls of fire towards the insectoid. "Stingmon!" The man cries out.

Stingmon evades the projectiles. "I'm alright." Stingmon turns to pursue the bird, but it has vanished. "Where…?" Gasping in realization, Stingmon looks up at the magenta sky and spots it as the bird hurls more fiery projectiles. The man gasps, worried for Stingmon. He pulls out a small, green device, about the size of a cell phone. On the screen, it displays an image of the bird with information:

===========Digital Analyzer===========

Name: Birdramon

Level: Adult

Attribute: Vaccine

Technique: Meteor Wing

Stingmon is grazed by the attack. "Gaaah!"

"Stingmon!" The man's eyes narrow as Birdramon swoops in with its talons.

Stingmon instinctually avoids the attack. Stingmon's shoulder pads and one of his wrist spikes extend. "Spiking Finish!" Stingmon hurls himself towards Birdramon.

Scrolling through a few posts on social media, a boy walks through the halls of his school, navigating his way around the waves of other teens to get to his class. As he puts his phone away, he sighs. 'Another day, another class,' he thinks to himself. Finding his way to his classroom, he takes his seat next to the window.

As the bell rang, the teacher stood up with several sheets of paper. "Good afternoon!"

"Good afternoon, Mr. Crest," the class responded.

"I'll be handing out your tests, you have until the end of class to complete it."

The boy receives his test and writes his name: Lance. Filling in several bubblers and several word questions, he feels the anxiety of test taking setting in. Pausing on one of the questions, Lance re-reads the question a few times. 'Stop second guessing yourself.' Finishing the test early, he stares out the window, losing himself in thought. He runs his hand through his black hair. Hearing a noise, Lance turns his head to the direction of the sound. The window had opened by itself.

Mr. Crest begrudgingly stands up and walks over to close the window. "Sorry about that. I really need to get that fixed. Please continue."

Turning his head back to the window, he focuses his attention on the park he and his friends hang out after school. 'Am I just going through the motions with all of you?' He moves his goggles to scratch his forehead. The bell rings and Lance quickly starts packing up his backpack.

"Have a good lunch!" Mr. Crest bids, "I'll pick up your tests from the desks." Lance leaves the classroom. As the last student leaves, Mr. Crest lets out a sigh of relief. "Espi…"

Making his way towards the cafeteria, Lance approaches the restroom. Seeing a girl exiting it, he calls out "Sara!"

The girl turns. "Hey!" The two make their way to each other.

"Did you accidentally walk into the men's room again?" Lance inquired.

"So embarrassing," Sara responded.

Lance dismisses the encounter. "Well…anyways."

The two continue to the cafeteria and find a table with a boy and a girl next to each other. The two take a seat across from the other two. "Yo," the boy greets.

"What's up, Ezra?" Lance reciprocates. Pulling out a container, Lance notices the girl is distracted by her phone. "Whatchu got going on, Lauren?"

Lauren shoots her head up, "Shelby has something to tell us later! Something about a new urban legend!"

"I can't wait to hear it from her!" Lance pulls a slice of pizza from his container.

Sara, disgusted by the slice, tells Lance, "I'll never understand how you can eat that stuff."

"What?" Lance looks at his pizza. "The mushrooms?"

"They're so gross."

"They are not."

"I'm actually kinda jealous," Ezra interjects, running his hand against his spikey, dirty blonde hair.

Sara turns away from them to pull out her food. "You two are weird."

Lauren looks at the three, pushes up her glasses, and responds, "It's just okay, honestly. Not my favorite topping.

End of the day. The last class is almost over. Everyone has some free time before the end. "Lance! Have you heard of the supernatural phenomena going on?" one of his classmates asks.

"Supernatural phenomena?" Lance ponders. "Like ghosts?"

"Not quite!" She takes out her phone and shoves it into Lance's face

Analyzing the image on screen, Lance raises his eyebrow in confusion. "What is it? It looks like an orange dinosaur."

"I think it's an AI generated image," one of the other classmates states.

"No! This is from one of the forums I follow that tracks supernatural phenomena!"

"You can't believe everything you see on the internet," the other classmate reminds her. Before she could say another word, the bell rings.

"See ya!" Lance leaves, but is curious about this forum with the dinosaur. "I'll have to ask the next time I see her."

After tracking down Sara, Lauren, and Ezra, the four exit the school and make their way to the park. At one of the picnic tables, they find two others already there. "There you are," exclaims a college-aged boy as he puts his hand on the hip of his khaki cargo pants.

"We're sorry, Connor!" Lance picks up the pace of his walk. Ezra and Sara follow.

Lauren, almost in a sprint passing the other three, sitting next to a younger girl. "Shelby!" She twirls her brunette hair in her fingers. "What is this urban legend you've been talking about?" Shelby pulls a little at her purple shirt. "It's gotta be amazing!"

"It's not really that big of a deal," Shelby states almost flatly. She pushes her glasses back into position.

"I'm almost dying to hear now," Ezra expresses.

The three take a spot at the picnic table. "I'm now curious, too!" Sara blurts out.

Lauren turns to Shelby, "What's the tea?"

Shelby gives everyone a glance over. "I've been reading these rumors on some of the boards I'm a part of. I haven't given them much thought other than folklore, but they're at least interesting." Wrapping herself in her blue hoodie, Shelby takes a deep breath. "There have been stories about how strange monsters are coming out of the data lines used to power things like the internet or land phone lines for the businesses that use them. I've even seen some stories about how they just come out of anything that has some kind of a network, like an ATM machine, a modem, or any digital technology. After these creatures appear, they all fall into some sort of hole that takes them to seemingly nowhere at first. But, on closer expectation, they've been transported to another plane of existence where these monsters are more commonly seen."

"Sounds like creepy pasta," Connor notes.

"Very creepy," Lance adds.

Shelby continues, "The community have started calling these monsters Digital Monsters, or Digimon for short."

"That sounds like an anime," Sara comments. "Digimon! Digital Monsters!"

"It definitely sounds like someone trying to make creepy pasta," Lauren nods, almost dismissively.

"It's definitely caught my interest," Lance smiled. "I think one of my classmates was showing me something from that board before we left. I wanna hear more about it!"

"Well, I can message you the-" Shelby starts.

"Don't get involved," Connor interrupts. "It's just some rumor." Connor folds his arms. "There's some rabbit holes not worth exploring."

Lauren nervously tries to find words. "L-let's just change the subject."

Lance nods in confusion, thinking to himself, 'But why?'

A couple hours later, Lance starts to walk home. As he walks by a convenience store, he stops and looks at the ATM machine nervously. Thinking about how both Connor and Lauren reacted, he could help but wonder, "Why? If it's just rumors…" He stares at it for a couple moments. "Maybe I'm just overthinking it." Continuing to walk past it, it flashes a slight electrical discharge, but not enough for him to notice.

Gazing up to the night sky, he notices some data cables and stops again. Looking to the ground and back at the cable, Lance concludes, "It's just a rumor." The cables discharge. "Hm?" Another discharge occurs and strikes the ground. Lance shields his eyes. "How?!" The discharge turns into a hole and Lance witnesses a mushroom looking monster flying out. "What the…?" Turning to the monster, he stares in awe.

Landing face first on the ground, the monster lets out a cry, "Ouch!"

"It talks?!" Lance panics.

The monster gets up and looks at Lance. "Hey, a human! We've been looking for the perfect human to make soup with!"

"Me?" Lance asks, more panicked than before. "N-no, I wouldn't taste good."

The mushroom monster takes out a smaller mushroom. "Destructive Mushroom Bomb!" The monster throws the mushroom at Lance. Realizing what was just said, Lance runs and nearly escapes the explosion as another hole opens up and Lance falls inside.

Lance wakes up, props himself up, and looks around. "Didn't I fall through a hole? Why am I in the exact same place? Where's that mushroom monster?" Lance remembered what Shelby said. "So that must've been…No, this is crazy!" Lance stands up and looks around more. He notices speckles floating and glistening around him along with lines surrounding most objects. He brushes the dirt off of his blue shirt when he realizes that he's holding something. He looks at it and examines the mysterious blue and white device he's holding. "What…is this?"

The device flashes to life and displays the message: Link Established. Link Strength: 13%. Not knowing what that meant, Lance clips the device to his pocket. "You're finally awake!" Lance jumps and looks in the direction came from, but couldn't see anyone. "Down here!" Lance looks down to see a tiny, blue and white dragon-like monster.

"WHA!" Lance jumps back in alarm.

"Don't be scared!" The tiny dragon approaches Lance. "My name is Chibimon! I saw you come out of that hole. I've been waiting for you."

"What do you mean you've been waiting for me?"

Chibimon looks at the ground, seemingly thinking, and looks back at Lance. "Well, I'm not sure how to explain it. I've been waiting for a while for something ever since I arrived here. I never knew what. But I knew I was waiting for something. And then you fell out of that hole and I just knew! You were what I've been waiting for."

"I don't think I understand…" Lance starts. "But you seem nice. Do you know where we are?"

"Not a clue!" Chibimon tells Lance. "I actually don't know how I got here."

"You're just as lost as I am."

"Yep!" Chibimon smiles.

Lance sighs. "Well, thanks anyways. I'm going to see if there's a way out of here."

"I'll come with you! Two looking is better than one!"

"Okay!" The pair start walking. "This place looks a lot like where I just was. That means there should be a park nearby and maybe my friends are also here."

"What's a park?" Chibimon wondered. Lance laughs nervously.

Finding their way back to the park, Lance notices a huge building that wasn't there before against a magenta sky. "What's that?! It's huge!"

"It looks menacing!" Chibimon notes. "Is that the park?"

"No, I'm not sure what that is. Maybe it's a way back."

"I want to see what a park is!" Chibimon excites, "Let's go!"

"Yeah!"

"There you are!" A familiar voice declares before the two take off. Turning back, the two see the mushroom monster from before.

"Mushmon!" Chibimon calls out.

Lance snaps, "You again?!" Lance turns to Chibimon. "We should run!"

"I'll protect you!" Chibimon starts charging at Mushmon. "Hop Attack!"

"Destructive Mushroom Bomb!" Mushmon throws a bomb at Chibimon. The explosion sends Chibimon back flying. Landing back first on the ground, Chibimon gasps in pain.

"Chibimon!"

"Run, Lance…" Chibimon lets out, struggling to speak.

"No way!" Lance screams and charges at Mushmon, but is stopped by Mushmon punching him in the stomach.

"Lance!" Chibimon cries out, struggling to get up.

"You're gonna make a fine soup," Mushmon tells Lance. The mysterious device flashes to life once again.

"Hop Attack!" Chibimon leaps in the air, only for Mushmon to knock him out of the air.

"Chibimon…run."

Chibimon pants, "I…can..handle it. You run." The screen on the device glows faintly.

Lance shakes his head. "If you won't back out, neither will I. Let's take him together."

"Together…" Chibimon gets back up. The screen glows brighter.

"You're coming with me!" Mushmon declares approaching Lance.

Lance kneels back up. "Together…"

The screen glows brightly. Both Lance and Chibimon announce, "Together!"

Chibimon glows with an intense light. "Chibimon evolve!" Chibimon begins to grow taller, his arms becoming more human like "V-mon!"

Lance, taken aback, looks at the formerly Chibimon and repeats, "Evolve…? V-mon…?"

Mushmon looked at V-mon in frustration. "You won't beat me because you evolved! I won't let you take him away! Destructive Mushroom Bomb!" Mushmon throws another bomb. V-mon catches it and throws it back at Mushmon. Exploding in his face, Mushmon flies backwards.

V-mon leaps into the air and darts towards Mushmon. "V-mon Head!" V-mon hits Mushmon with his head. Mushmon collapses to the ground and V-mon lands on his feet.

Mushmon staggers back up. "Why you!"

"V-mon Punch!" V-mon punches Mushmon, lifting him off of the ground. Falling to the ground, Mushmon struggles to get back up.

"Forget this, no soup is worth this much trouble," Mushmon turns his back to them and flees.

"V-mon!" Lance runs up to V-mon.

V-mon turns to Lance. "I told you I'd protect you."

"What just happened?"

"I was able to evolve thanks to you!" V-mon sticks out his hand. "Now we're partners!"

"Partners…" Lance smiles and nods. "Yeah! Partners!" Lance shakes V-mon's hand. "Let's look for a way back to my world."

"Hey, what about that device that you have?"

Lance unclips the device. "This? Well…" He hits a couple of buttons before one of them lets out a discharge that changes the world around them. The park. Just like how it was before Lance left.

V-mon, still at his side, excitedly asks, "This is a park?!" Looking around, V-mon takes in his surroundings. "It's so different! Your world is so cool!"

Lance pauses, so many questions filled his head all at once. He looks at V-mon, "Hey, V-mon." V-mon looks up at Lance. "Just what are you?"

V-mon smiles. "I'm a Digimon! Digital Monster!"