Digimon Adventure dA - Chapter 1

Okay, here's Chapter 1.

Before you start reading, there's something I need to apologise for, though; that guy standing beside the Bakemon is supposed to be one of the young Gennai guys seen in Adventure 02. As you can see, he looks nothing like him. Unfortunately, that's the closest I could get with the tools and skills I currently have at my disposal.

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It all started on the thirtieth of May, 2030. It was twenty eight years since the defeat of MaloMyotismon and the fall of the barrier between the two worlds. Everyone had their own partner digimon and humans were as common a sight in the digital world as digimon had become in theirs. But then, on that fateful day, for an unknown reason, the barrier not only reformed, but somehow ejected all humans from the digital world, and prevented their digvices from reopening any gates through into that plane; not even the more powerful ones, known colloquially as “D3s”, could punch through this new, heavily fortified barrier. Without the gates, communication was cut off completely. Even we were unable to find a way to make contact with the humans, despite our great knowledge of technology.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t even the strangest thing which occurred that day. The creator of the new barrier had also managed to alter the source code of the digital world itself (though again, we had absolutely no idea how he, she or it could possibly have done something like this), in such a way that it caused all but the four greatest digimon to lose their memories of everything to have occurred after the fall of the first barrier, all those years ago, when MaloMyotismon was destroyed. In other words, they completely forgot all about their human partners, and went right back to living their lives in little villages or in the wilds, not even realising that anything had been lost.
They were aware that a long time had passed, yet they couldn’t recall any details of what had occurred during that time… to them it seemed as though the digidestined had simply saved their world and then left to go home, never to return, and they’d just gone on with their lives like normal, but that everything had been so boring that they had hadn’t bothered to remember it.
Mere hours after this mysterious event, two groups began to investigate it and attempt to find a way to reverse it. On the digital side of the barrier, we were the ones who did this, while in the human world that role was taken by a newly (and rapidly) formed international taskforce lead by none other than the renowned digiworld expert, Koushiro Izumi himself.
Eventually, we were able to come up with a somewhat crude and undesirable solution; new digivices. But why was this undesirable, you ask? Simple; the new barrier was actually connected to our world at a fundamental level, and no matter how hard we tried, we could find no way of bypassing it – the only alternative was to punch through, which would actually damage the barrier… and so the rest of the digiworld as well.
Obviously, this meant that we could not make our new digivices publicly available, as that would soon bring this entire dimension to ruin. Instead, we decided to fall back on a strategy which had succeeded time and again (well, twice, anyway); abduct a promising looking bunch of human kids and pressgang them into saving our world…
Actually, now that I write it down like that, it seems pretty cruel… still, that’s what we did, after meeting with the Four Harmonious Ones to iron out the details of our new plan…

One Week After Barrier Re-Emergence…
Otto Schwartz lay on his bed, fiddling with his digivice, trying to get it to bring him back to the digital world. He knew that Agumon must be missing him dreadfully, and he was certainly missing the little dinosaur, so he had to find a way. He had to. He knew that there must be something that the stupid digivice could do. He’d been doing pretty much the same thing now for the whole of the last week, excepting only the time needed for meals, school, sleeping, and other necessary breaks. It would have quickly become monotonous, had he not been so worried about his friend. The newscasters claimed that the fact that this new barrier had forced out all humans and dragged back in any digimon which were in the ‘real’ world at the time was a clear sign that it was under attack from some malevolent being who wanted to keep them separate, so that none of the partner digimon would be able to digivolve, making them easy prey for the entity’s vile schemes… which didn’t exactly help calm everyone down.
The boy growled in frustration as the pressing of one button made the tiny device give of a soft beep… but then do nothing else at all. He’d really started to get his hopes up there.
But then, all of a sudden, and without Otto doing a thing, the digivice began to glow. And not just the screen, either; the entire thing.
“Wha-?” he murmured (in German), gaping at the device as it slowly reshaped itself, taking on a new form, complete with a slightly different colour scheme.
There was a moment of quiet, and then the screens of both his digivice and TV began to glow. Grinning broadly, he jumped to his feet, thinking that he was finally about to be able to return to the digiworld. Instead, he was hit in the face by a robed man who flew out of the TV. The pair of them collapsed on the floor and Otto groaned. The newcomer hurriedly apologised and got to his feet, before helping the boy back up as well.
There was something vaguely familiar about him, but Otto couldn’t put his finger on what exactly it was. The man looked vaguely Japanese, had both spiky hair and a ponytail, and spoke German fluently. Judging by his accent, he would seem to be from Munich, but something told the boy that he actually came from a place much further away.
Suddenly, he realised who this man was.
“You’re Gennai!” he cried, shocked to actually be meeting him. Gennai was well know these days, just as were the adventures of the two teams of digidestined children whom he’d helped save the worlds… to the point that digital history, as the subject had become known, was now taught in schools.
“Sort of,” the man responded, smiling; happy at being recognised, perhaps, “he and I were once one and the same. At this particular point in time, though, my name is Gottfried. I am here on behalf of our organisation and Ebonwumon, one of the Harmonious Ones who protect the digital world, to ask you for your help; once again we’re in need of digidestined to save us from certain destruction, and I believe that you have what it takes to make an excellent leader.”
“You do?” Otto asked, his voice barely louder than a whisper, so shocked he was.
“Yes. From the observations we’ve made it has been determined that a good leader must have a pair of goggles, a reptilian partner digimon, and must be brave. Also, for some reason, being of below average intelligence seems to help, though we have no idea why.”
“Um… thanks… I think.” Otto replied, sounding confused.
“So? Do you want the job?”
“Of course!” the boy replied, his bemusement instantly replaced by enthusiasm.
“Great.” replied Gottfried happily, then grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and casually hefted him into the air and tossed him at the still-glowing TV screen. An instant before impact, his body too began to glow, and then he was absorbed by the light.

In The Digital World…
“Aaagh!” screamed six children they collided in mid-air and fell in a heap.
“Aaagh!” screamed the six digimon who’d been told to wait there, as the children fell atop them.
Miraculously, no one seemed to be seriously injured. As they untangled themselves, the kids looked around, noticed their partners, and greeted them ecstatically. For a moment the digimon just looked confused, as though they had no idea what was going on, but then their eyes lit up and they greeted their friends like they hadn’t seen them in years.
Several minutes later, once they’d calmed down a little, the group examined their surroundings; they appeared to be on the outskirts of a small village composed entirely of simple huts, and were facing a line of six extremely old-fashioned TVs, the screens of which were still glowing. Behind this semi-circular band stood a man identical to the one who had just flung them through their respective portals.
“Hello, children.” he announced, in an excruciatingly posh English accent, though strangely, they all noticed, he was actually speaking their language, not his own. “You are the European digidestined, chosen from all across that continent by our best… actually, scratch that; it was by some of our less important people who weren’t too busy at the time… including the guy who was originally created only to make Gennai’s coffee. You’ve each been given a special new digivice which allows you to cross the barrier, however their use will damage both worlds each time they are activated, so please don’t use them to travel between the two realities unless absolutely necessary.”
He surveyed the group. Already, the little boy – Santo, he remembered being informed that the child’s name was – was crying about something (perhaps someone had accidentally punched him when they all flew into each other?), and the girl beside him – Abella, she was called – had turned to comfort him, and was now completely ignoring the man. The kid with the goggles had apparently been distracted by his new digivice (stupid ADD!) and had begun pressing buttons apparently at random in an effort to get it to do something. The other girl – Zofia – had decided to take a more scientific approach to figuring it out and so had connected her digivice to a laptop which her partner was holding aloft for her and was now typing something while staring intently at the screen. She obviously wasn’t paying attention either. Only two of them were even still looking at him, and of that pair, one – the Scot; Blair, he was called – seemed to be practically asleep… to the point that he hadn’t even noticed that his partner, a Goblimon, had stolen his digivice and was currently attempting to eat it. Only Pierre, the French boy, was actually listening. The Gennai-lookalike didn’t have a particularly great feeling about this group… not that that was particularly surprising: despite the fact that there had been digidestined all over the planet right from the arrival of those first few eggs, in both near-apocalyptic scenarios it had been the Japanese who’d saved the day; Europe didn’t exactly have a great track record when it came to producing would-be saviours.
“When are you going to get round to explaining why we can all understand each other’s languages?” Pierre asked, and every member of the group turned to face him, surprise and/or confusion etched upon their faces. The man smiled, albeit a little sadly. He would have liked to make this kid the leader, then they might actually have gotten something done… still, it wasn’t up to him to decide these things.
He noticed that even Zofia, whom he’d mentally marked down as the group’s resident genius (for some reason, their latest attempt at creating a winning team had been to simply base it as closely off the two Japanese ones as possible… not that that could possibly go much worse than their other attempts), hadn’t noticed this. Presumably she simply hadn’t been paying enough attention to them to notice that, to her, it would seem that everyone was inexplicably speaking Polish.
“Well done on spotting that, Pierre.” the man congratulated him sincerely. “It wasn’t that difficult, to be honest; as you no doubt already know, digimon are composed entirely of data, yet almost immediately after hatching – right from their In-Training stages – they’re able to speak the language to their partner, without any need for tuition, so all we needed to do was find a volunteer who would allow us to extract and duplicate his speech pattern data and help us recode it into a wide-ranging program embedded within your digivices to allow for near-infallible detection and re-translation of incoming sound waves while you remain within a ten metre radius of at least one of them. Needless to say, this software will only function correctly within the digital world, due to its unique composition.”
Five children stared blankly at him, while the sixth nodded and went back to her typing.
“In German, please?” asked Otto.
“Didn’t you just hear me? We don’t actually need to speak each other’s languages because of the-”
“Alright, alright.” the boy interrupted. “I just meant that I wanted a clear explanation.”
The man didn’t reply for some time, and when he finally did speak, it was with some confusion.
“But that was a clear explanation.”
The five non-geniuses looked blankly at him once again.
“The digivices let us speak to each other while we’re in the digiworld.” supplied Zofia without glancing away from her laptop, since their instructor seemed to be struggling to think of a way of simplifying the process down further than he already had.
“Oh.” chorused the others.
“Wait.” said Pierre. “You said that you had a volunteer, who was that then?”
“Ah, I was hoping you’d ask that.” the man responded, going back to smiling, and gesturing at a spot of empty air to his right. “May I introduce my very good friend… Bakemon!”
And suddenly, the ghostly digimon materialised out of thin air.
“Hey guys.” it said, and waved.
“Ah!” cried Pierre (and most of the others), taking a few steps back in fright. Unlike his comrades, however, he also held up his digivice and yelled; “Fanbeemon get ready to-”
“No!” called the English Gennai-lookalike hurriedly as he saw the bug-digimon begin to fly threateningly towards his friend. “What are you doing!?”
“Bakemon’s a virus digimon, and he’s undead… and he has huge fangs. Everyone knows that Bakemon are evil.”
“Aww…” said Bakemon sadly.
“Whoa, talk about judging the book by its cover.” said the man, looking somewhat disappointed that Pierre had considered attacking his friend.
“Hmph.”the French kid replied, but allowed himself to calm down a little… though he was still obviously unhappy about being on the same side as a digimon which he’d always thought of as nothing but bad news.
“Well I think he looks cuddly,” said Abella cheerfully, waving back at Bakemon, “so I say we trust him.”
“Aw, shucks.” replied the ghost, looking down at the ground, genuinely appearing embarrassed.
Otto and Pierre looked sceptically at each other.
“Okay, new rule:” the German announced, “Abella never gets to decide who we make friends with.”
“Agreed.” said his French counterpart without hesitation.
“Aww…” moaned Bakemon and Abella together.
“… However, in this case,” continued Otto, “we’re not going to pick a fight, since this Gennai-man says we shouldn’t.”
“I guess.” agreed Pierre, although he still glared distrustfully at the undead abomination.
“Yes, well, anyway, we need your help, digidestined;” the man hurriedly interjected, before they could change their minds, “two days ago, Rookie-level digimon in villages such as this one began to be attacked by a mysterious group which calls itself the Digital Army. After beating them thoroughly, this ‘army’ then implant their victims with strange devices which we’ve taken to calling ‘black needles’. These needles seem to be based loosely off the dark rings used by the Digimon Emperor and the black gears once controlled by Devimon, with the main difference being that they only seem to be capable of enslaving Rookies and weaker digimon. Your first task is to stay here in this village and protect the Betamon who live here. If the Digital Army do attack then you should try to capture some of them and find out the location of their base. Okay?”
“Yeah, sure, sure,” droned Blair, “but how long do you reckon it’ll be before they show up; not that all this pointless exposition hasn’t been fun, but I just think that maybe this adventure might liven up a bit if we actually got to do something.”
Four of the five other humans (the exception being Santo, who was still staring nervously at Bakemon and looked like he was about to burst into tears) glared at their sarcastic partner, annoyed at his implication that this was just a big adventure to them and that they didn’t know what was at stake here. Abella opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the screaming which suddenly began on the other side of the village.
“Oh, look at that, it seems that they’re here already.” said the man unnecessarily. “Good luck fighting them off, digidestined. Oh, but before you go, just remember this one thing; don’t ask any of the digimon here about their partners, there’s no point; they don’t remember them at all.”
“What!?” cried the children together, while their own partners looked slightly guilty as they recalled their own brief bouts of forgetfulness.
“We don’t have a clue how, but it seems that when the barrier was re-created it also wiped everyone’s memories of their partners, and any other humans they knew. Obviously, we suspected that coming into contact with you might jog their memories, hence why we asked your partners to join us here. And as you’ve seen yourselves, that’s worked perfectly. Until the rest can be reunited with their friends, however, it doesn’t seem likely that their memories will return, so there’s no point attempting to discuss it, okay?”
“Alright, fine, fine, can we go help out now?” demanded Otto, only wanting to go and help the unfortunate villagers now that he’d recovered from the shock of the lookalike’s revelation.
“Of course.” the man responded… but the German kid hesitated.
“Actually, on second thought… since you two are still here, why don’t you give us a hand?” asked Otto. “Bakemon’s a champion-level, so he’d be really useful here.”
“Uh… yeah… about that…” muttered the Englishman – while Bakemon’s eyes bulged and he looked around nervously, as though afraid that now that the subject had been mentioned, a squad of soldiers would appear from nowhere and start shooting at him – before pausing for a good few seconds, as though trying to think of something.
“Oh, no!” he suddenly cried, pointing behind the children. “Look! A Devimon cruelly jumping up and down atop a helpless little Koromon!”
“Huh!? Where!?”
They all spun round, humans and digimon alike, looking for their new nemesis… who was nowhere to be seen. After a few moments, Pierre seemed to realise what had just happened. He sighed.
“They’re gone, aren’t they?”
Zofia turned back to look, then said; “Yup.”
“Oh well, who needs them anyway,” grumbled Otto, “we’ll be just fine on our own, now come on gang; we have a village to save!”
Sharing nervous glances, the group rushed off after their leader.

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Well there you are, I hope you've enjoyed it, despite the fact that practically nothing has actually happened so far.

I am aware, though, that I'm not a particularly good writer, so any constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated.