Digimon: Blue to Gray [TV-PG]

[Kentucky Fried Torchic]

Digimon: Blue to Gray

Episode 101: Help I'm Alive, Part One

"I tremble at the thought of you all being able to check this graduation requirement off," Mr. Leslie said to his students, "but despite my repeated appeals to the sanctity of the educational process, my pleas have been ignored and I have been informed by the administration, the board, and the district that the vast majority of you, despite an absolutely abysmal mean score on the final, are to move on to the physics portion of your high school science education." The ruddy-faced man ran one hand over his receding hairline while the other grabbed the top copy off of a stack of packets and waved it in the air. "All but two of you got questions fifteen and sixteen on ionic and covalent bonds, two of the basic building blocks of chemistry wrong!" he hollered before stammering, "It's like none of you pay any attention to me."

In fact, while a few students were deriving amusement from their high school science teacher's meltdown, the vast majority of them were paying him no mind. Some were idly messing around on their cellphones and others were blatantly talking to their friends, rotating their bodies one-hundred-and-eighty degrees in some cases to do so. Joshua Kleberg, like many of his peers, had his attention solely focused on the clock that hung over the classroom's exit as it relentlessly ticked down towards the end of the last period of the last day of his sophomore year of high school.

Time passed slowly, as it always did for students in Mr. Leslie's sixth period class, but after spending most of the period going over each answer and expressing his incredulity that so many students had missed one question or another, even the middle-aged chemistry instructor was running out of steam. He handed back the graded tests, shaking his balding head and grumbling each time when it turned out that a student had elected to skip his class, which had happened not infrequently throughout the year but had seemed to become epidemic today. As the minute hand crept over the last few hurdles to the twelve, Mr. Leslie offered his students one last admonishment to cap off a year of such dire warnings. "You all had better step up your academic game," he said, "or else the coursework at that college you go to in a few years is going to eat you alive." Then the defeated educator sank into his chair and the bell rang.

"The students rushed out of the classroom and the whole building seemed to shake with the force of the exuberant cheers given by the student body. Joshua did not join in the cheers, but a grin broke out across his face nonetheless as he made a dash for his locker, his graded test hastily stuffed into his backpack with hardly a second glance past the red marker that proclaimed, "79/100. Glad to see someone understands the material", with two heavy lines underlining the word "someone" in emphasis. The teenager made his way down two flights of stairs, skipping every other step with his long strides, and rounded the corner to his locker. After fumbling with the combination and pulling off the rusting lock, Joshua swung open the door and began the process of transferring the locker's contents to his backpack. Notebooks, a near-empty lunch box, and stray pens, pencils, and pieces of paper were all haphazardly shoved into the young man's book bag. One item was treated with reverence, however. Gingerly removed from the top shelf of his locker were Joshua's Digimon cards.

The cards contained within the shoebox were hardly remarkable. There were a few cards that were worth a couple of dollars each and some staples that had seen play in tournament-winning decks. Most of them were in good condition, but a couple had been damaged and malformed by the everyday wear and tear of life or by some unlucky mishaps. There were probably thousands of collections similar in nature, but for the simple fact that these were Joshua's cards, plain and simple, and the young man took pride in this fact.

After setting the container down, Joshua slung his bulging backpack over his shoulder and picked the black box up again. The school was all but deserted, so Joshua had no concerns about running through the commons to his destination, save for the precious cargo in his hands. He went through one of the set of double glass doors, careful to open it with one of hips, and scanned the parking lot for his ride. He saw it immediately, the boxy baby blue shape and all of its dents and dings having been burned in his mind by countless trips and visits. Two figures were in the car, wrapped in each other's arms and further connected by their lips, unaware of the world around them or perhaps just unconcerned with it. That was until Joshua walked up to the driver's side of the vehicle and, after shifting his load to one hand, tapped on the glass, saying "James, James," as he did so.

The two teenagers in the car leapt apart as if stuck with a pin and both of them proceeded to try and put as much distance between them as the tiny space would allow. The mousy-looking girl was making a production out of straightening her modest top and smoothing out her plaid skirt in order to avoid making eye contact while the boy glared daggers at their interrupter from under the heavy black curls of his afro. He mouthed the word, "What," but made it clear that it was intended as a statement rather than a question.

Joshua responded by pointing at his box of Digimon cards and then tapping his wrist insistently.

James let out a sigh and said something to the girl in the passenger seat before gesturing to the door. She opened it and quickly hurried away, pausing only to give a small wave and to say, "Hi Joshua."

He took her spot in the car and gave James a grin. "So, things are going well with Danni I take it?"

His friend just muttered, "Shut up," and turned the key in the ignition. The car sputtered to life and jerkily backed out of the school's parking lot to join the exodus of students heading home from this place of wrath and tears.

"Thanks for accepting my invitation to this thing," Joshua said over the crooning of the singer on the radio's alt-rock station.

"No problem," James replied, his gaze and mind focused on running repeatedly through a mental checklist of the road, his mirrors, and his dashboard while his grip on the steering wheel turned his knuckles white.

"And for being my ride."

"No problem."

"And for hosting it too, I guess."

"No problem," James said and the rest of the ride was silent save for the sound of the radio. It was not a long trip from West High School to James's home, just a matter of getting onto the highway, staying on it for a few miles, and then getting off. Still, when the boxy blue car pulled up to the house, Joshua's excitement had built up to be palpable, and it only grew when he saw a familiar silver minivan parked further down the block.

"Great!" he said. "Joules is already here!"

James and his passenger went inside and, sure enough, the third member of their trio was there. The bulkier Joules sat on the middle section of the couch in front of the television, watching a rerun of some mindless cartoon. When he saw the other two boys, he gave them a slight wave.

"What are you doing?" Joshua asked, his pale face growing red as he became flustered. "It's already started and you haven't got it set up?"

"Relax," James said, putting a hand on his friend's shoulder. "We'll get it set up, no worries. Go say hi to my mom.

After setting down his shoebox and backpack and kicking off his shoes, Joshua dutifully went to the narrow hallway that served as the main artery of the modest home. At one end were two bedrooms and at the other was a staircase that rose up out of sight of the view afforded by the wood-paneled frame. The teenager walked up to the edge of the first pink-carpeted stair and called up, "Hello, Mrs. Garner!"

An echoing voice rang out from the upper story mirthfully, "Hi honey! How are you? We hardly see you around here it seems."

"I'm doing well, Mrs. Garner. It feels good to be here so I'll definitely be trying to stop by more often."

"That's good to hear, honey," James's mother said from her room upstairs. "It's too bad that Natalie isn't around to see you. Anyway, have fun tonight, and, before I forget, I got you boys something. It should be on the kitchen table."

"Thank you, Mrs. Garner," Joshua said, "have a good night!"

"You too, honey! Say hi to your mom for me."

"I will," Joshua replied. He then turned his attention to the cozy kitchen situated through an arch just across from the entrance to the living room. Sure enough, on the table by the windows looking out at the sparsely-covered backyard were three bags of Skittles and three rectangular packages wrapped in a foil that shimmered in the late afternoon sun. The young man's face lit up and he scooped up the items and returned to the living room. "James, look what your mom got us!" Joshua exclaimed, dumping the gifts onto the coffee table between the couch and the television.

James and Joules were sitting in front of the boxy TV with a laptop and a mess of cords, but both looked up upon their friend's entrance. Joules spun around with surprising speed and seized both a bag of candy and one of the packages emblazoned with various monsters and the words "Digimon Collectible Card Game". James was more subdued and continued to fiddle with the electronics. "Open mine for me, would you, Josh?" he said without looking away from his work a second time.

With fingers trembling with excitement, Joshua carefully tore the foil and meticulously slid the cards out of the opening before fanning them out and examining each card in more detail. Most of them were unremarkable, lower-level Digimon useful for fleshing out a collection, but by no means the center-piece of any serious attempt at competitive deck-building. The rare card in the pack did not look like anything special either. The picture was of a monstrous-looking bird, a chicken really, that the gold lettering on the side of the card proclaimed to be Kokatorimon. The disappointed teen turned to Joules, who was lost in his own acquisitions, and said, "Looks like James got a junk rare."

The larger boy looked at the card and laughed. "Shows how much you know," he chortled.

"What's so special about it?" Joshua demanded. "It's just a Champion-level, and it looks like a chicken!"

"Some Digimon have special abilities," James said from his work station. "Use that app I showed you."

Muttering under his breath, Joshua pulled out his phone and opened the official app for the Digimon Collectible Card Game. Navigating through options for keeping score during a game, keeping track of the cards in one's collection finding and keeping in touch with other players, and others, he settled on a tab titled "Scanner". Tapping it prompted a message requesting permission to use his phone's camera, which Joshua naturally acquiesced to. The crack screen began to display the card below and, after an animation of some gears spinning, the screen was filled with additional details on Kokatorimon, including some additional rules text. "Petrifier, huh?" Joshua said thoughtfully. He set the cards down and grabbed his own booster pack, and was about to open it when his concentration was broken by the television screen coming to life.

To most anyone else in their age group or out of it, watching a live-stream of the Minnesota State Digimon Collectible Card Game tournament would be inconceivable, but for the three teenagers in James's living room, it would have been embarrassing to have missed it. Three streams were available, one each for the junior-, senior-, and master-level divisions. James clicked over to the second option, the division for teenage competitors before finding a spot on the couch next to Joshua. It was the semi-final round of the tournament and the three boys settled into the lumpy piece of leather furniture to watch. Because there were two games going on, the stream had to continually jump between the two tables, leading to a lot of explaining by James and Joules to their friend of the combos he failed to understand and the effects that he was not familiar with.

One of the matches pitted two popular tournament decks against each other, but the player piloting the Omnimon-combo deck was unable to assemble the pieces for the complex scheme before his opponent, a stern-faced young man with hair cropped close to his skull using a Machinedramon aggro deck broke through his opponent's defenses and won the game with a lucky turn one Mega-level Digimon. When it was over, all Joshua could whisper was, "Wow, he's gotten really good."

"The other game was more drawn out. A girl using her own Machinedramon deck with plenty of techs against expected match-ups had run into an opponent using a rogue deck and was not able to answer his Bakemon swarm strategy. Every time that one of the Machinedramon's platers prized Digimon would succeed in taking out one spectral opponent, two more would take its place. The grinning young man behind the ghostly march would idly run a hand through his long, greasy black hair before unleashing a devastating counterattack. He was toying with his opponent, but any further pleasure was preempted when the girl conceded. "That's what Champion-levels can do," Joules said, giving Joshua a nudge. An official announced a fifteen-minute break would occur before the two finalists, Todd Connally and Paul Russell, squared off for the title, the trophy, the prizes, and the glory.

James was badgered into making some popcorn for the final match while Joules and Joshua got decks out of their respective shoeboxes and started a match of their own on the coffee table while talking about the games they had just witnessed, as well as their predictions for who would win the final round. "That Paul guy's going to eat him alive, definitely," Joules said between turns and handfuls of Skittles. "He was in complete control that whole game."

"So was Todd," Joshua argued.

"Look, Joshie," Joules said, his voice dripping with condescension, "I know Todd used to be our friend, but you don't have to stand up for him. He doesn't need us holding him back, he said so himself."

"Fine," Josh muttered as he Armor Digivolved his Hawkmon, "but what makes you so sure that Paul will win?"

"Uh, were you watching the same game I was? Machinedramon can beat slower decks like Omnimon if it gets rolling in time, but that Bakemon swarm was incredibly fast! Short of a turn-one miracle, there's no way that chick could have possibly been able to counter it in time to make any real difference."

"But-" Joshua started.

"Furthermore," his oblivious friend continued, "Machinedramon is all about knocking out targets one at a time. A Bakemon swarm can just make up for it by numbers. The loss of one Digimon just isn't that important."

Joshua looked at the television longingly. "I wish we could have been there."

"Why? So you could have gotten humiliated?"

"I could have done well!"

"You haven't top-cut in five years," Joules shot back.

"There was that one time."

"That was a prerelease so it doesn't count."

"Doesn't matter," Joshua huffed. "I had school today."

Joules smiled at this. "It was your last day. Besides, I thought Todd went to your school?"

"Well, yeah, but James had a test to make up and I was there so I could have perfect attendance," Joshua said, trailing off in defeat.

"It's okay, how could you expect to do well if you can't even beat me?" Joules crowed as he laid down the game-winning card.

James had just reentered with a large bowl of popcorn just in time to catch the final move and clicked his tongue in disappointment before setting the bowl on the coffee table. The three friends resumed their places on the couch and waited for the intermission to end.

Joules broke the silence that had fallen over the boys after he and his vanquished opponent had picked up their cards, saying, "Joshua here thinks Todd's going to win."

James raised his eyebrow while looking at the friend in question, but said nothing.

"Well, I think he's a really good player and Joules is writing him off too soon," Joshua hastily explained.

"We'll see," James said. Not long after that, the television screen was full of movement as the final round was about to begin.

The two players shook hands, Todd grim and Paul somewhat attempting to hide a smirk, before sitting down on opposite sides of the table. After flipping a coin and Todd choosing to go second, the two teens shuffled their decks, cut that of their opponent, and then drew their opening hands. Paul's turn went on for several minutes as he played cards setting up his fighting force, tutored out Bakemon, and more. He ended his turn with three of the ghost-like Digimon in play, all of the power one another up.

Todd's turn was a flurry of activity as well, using his own draw engine and tutors to assemble to pieces to use the incredibly rare Warp Digivolve card, a card so powerful it was limited to one per deck, to bring his starting Agumon all the way up to the Mega-level as a fearsome Machinedramon. As part of the cost, Machinedramon's controller had to discard the top ten cards of his deck. Those cards were spread out so that both the audience and Paul could see what was milled away. "Where are his techs?" Joules wondered aloud, and, sure enough, all of the cards that had been discarded were either ways to thin the deck or components for getting a Machinedramon out.

"He's running straight Machinedramon," James said, not unimpressed. No sooner had the words left his mouth that the mighty Digimon attacked, destroying one of Paul's Bakemon and putting Todd in the lead by a wide margin. "I thought that his turn one Machinedramon last round was a fluke," James continued, "but his whole deck is tuned toward getting his main attacker on the first turn and attacking without any distractions. That's why Todd went second, so he could get the first attack."

"But if he's not running any techs, how is he supposed to counter his deck's main weaknesses?" Joules asked.

"He already got rid of his biggest one," Joshua said with pride. "No one expects a Machinedramon on the first turn."

James stroked his chin. "It's a gamble, that's for sure."

Meanwhile, the game had continued. Paul was playing defensively and building up his resources, his smirk having morphed into an uneasy grimace after that first salvo. Todd's mechanical Digimon blew holes in those defenses. Things looked to be going in the latter boy's favor until his opponent activated his own surprise card.

Individually, the Champion-level Bakemon could not hold a candle to the powerful Mega-level that Todd was commanding, even as they powered each other up. But Paul's Lord Bakemon card allowed one Bakemon to absorb the power of the other's by sacrificing them. As a result, the souped-up Digimon was able to destroy Todd's Machinedramon.

"He's lost," Joules said with a sardonic shake of his head. "Todd sacrificed depth for speed and now he's doomed."

"Why?" Joshua asked. "Paul's only got one Bakemon out right now. He's vulnerable."

"Todd burned through his resources carefully," explained James. "Without any support Digimon or back-up attackers, his one shot is pulling out another Machinedramon in a single turn, but most of the cards that would make that possible have been used up. Next turn, all of Paul's Bakemon will be revived by the effect of the one on the field right now and he'll win."

On the television though, Todd did not look beaten. His face was still stony when the stream turned its attention to the teenager, but his eyes shone with a kind of defiance. He drew a card to start his turn and then started playing cards one after another. He was activating, drawing, and searching for cards at a frantic pace. His deck dwindled, but it appeared that Todd had all the pieces that he needed. By discarding half of his hand, he was able to use a card to return his Warp Digivolve card to his hand and then he used it. The last cards of his deck were discarded, but Todd had another Machinedramon out and with a single attack, the lone Bakemon was destroyed, and the game was over. Todd Connally was the Senior Division Minnesota State Champion. The stream showed people celebrating around the cold-eyed teen, but the three boys watching from the comfort of James's home were focused on discussing the details of the game.

The excitement was punctured when Joshua checked his phone and saw a flurry of text messages on the lock screen. All of them were from his mom. None of them seemed happy. "Sorry," he said to his friends. "I have to pack up. My mom's gonna be here in a few minutes."

"I thought she was okay with you staying the night," said James.

"Me too," was all Joshua could say.

James shrugged and started to clean up the living room. Joshua packed up his things, putting his shoebox of cards in order and putting his still unopened booster pack in the back pocket of his jeans. When his phone buzzed, he gathered his things up and went outside where his mother was waiting in a sleek white two-door. The clouds that had gathered in promise of a summer storm had begun leaking water and Joshua was careful that as little liquid as possible made it into the shoebox containing his prized collection.

"The car ride home consisted of Joshua answering and avoiding questions about his last day of classes and his plans, or lack thereof, for the summer. He delivered Mrs. Garner's message, but that led to a string of uncomfortable questions about her health. The car ride was not long, thankfully. The rest of the night passed by uneventfully, with Joshua eating dinner, doing some chores, and reorganizing his Digimon cards all in relative silence.

While he was getting ready for bed, Joshua remembered the still-unopened pack of cards he had been given by his friend's mother. After spitting out his toothpaste, the sandy-haired teen pulled out the foil-covered package from his pants' pocket and carefully opened it. The cards were a fairly average mixed bag, but one card stood out from the rest. At first, Joshua thought it was a misprint, as the back and front of the card were nearly identical, with both depicting a small pixelated monster emerging out of the center of a yellow "D" on a blue background. The only difference was that one side of the card was holographic and shined with the glare of the room's light. Confused, Joshua pulled out his phone and opened the card scanner feature of the official Digimon app to see what it was. No sooner had the blue card's visage taken up the cracked display that the phone shut down, the blue screen turning gray in an instant.

"Piece of junk," the teenager muttered with a savage flick of the phone's battered black case, "you had thirty-six percent left." Joshua set the phone by his bed and forgot all about the strange blue card and his phone malfunctioning as he drifted off to sleep to the sound of the rain falling on his window. While he slept, his phone's screen lit up and the whole device began to glow as thunder rumbled in the distance.

[Kentucky Fried Torchic]

Episode 102: Help I’m Alive, Part Two

On a network of transparent grids, a chase was underway. A pudgy blue shape was waddling as quickly as it could manage in an attempt to escape from his pursuer, a smaller blue-black-colored creature with two bat wings flapping furiously to drive it forward. “Come on, bird brain!” the fiendish monster shouted with a sadistic cackle. “Quit trembling and fight me!” To punctuate his point, the small Digimon summoned a floating syringe that would have seemed almost cartoonish if not for the incredibly sharp needle that was aimed at the fleeing bird. With a cry of “Demi Dart!”, the vampiric-looking monster seized the weapon with one of his gray feet, his red nails clicking against the glass, and heaved it at his feather victim.

With a frightened squawk, the avian Digimon threw himself onto the surface of the square that he was on, causing the projectile to barely soar over his round body. Opening his eyes, the blue creature saw a terrifying vision below him. Far, far underneath the small skirmish was a city in night’s dark embrace, albeit lit up in some corners by electric lights and more generally by periodic bursts of lightning. The penguin looked up and saw above him, past a second network of see-through squares, an arctic landscape of ice and snow. It would have looked perfect, save for the unsettling fact that the whole vision was upside-down. The frightened Digimon clutched his head in his claw-tipped wings and shut his red-irised eyes tightly. “Make it stop,” he whimpered.

“I can make that wish come true, fatty,” the other Digimon said gleefully, but before he could launch another attack, a hole opened up in the grid beneath the two and began to draw the two confused creatures in through some attractive force that was so powerful that the surface of the rest of the grid was warping to be slanted towards this opening. The heftier of the two monsters fell into the rip in the night sky with a long, drawn-out honk, and, while the other Digimon flapped his thin wings frantically, he too was drawn into the portal with a flurry of curses. Once they were through, the dimension between worlds was quiet.


* * *

In his bed, Joshua was awoken at three in the morning by a frantic beeping coming from his nightstand. With the mumblings of the half-awake, the teen fumbled around the small wooden piece of furniture, knocking scraps of black plastic out of the way as he struggled for a firm grip on his phone. He looked at the screen of the noisy device, but what he was looking at did not make any sense to his addled brain. He pulled on the pair of glasses also located on the nightstand, but the image did not change. It was a radar of sorts with a compass in the center and two green dots flashing in what looked to be the map’s northwest quadrant. This was no app that Joshua was familiar with, and his phone felt different in his hands. He got up and turned on the light to his room.

Any grogginess was wiped away when the room lit up. In his hand was his phone, except not. It looked like the device was his phone firmly enclosed in a white case with blue accents. But the screen was no longer damaged, but pristine. The case was not only different from the one that his phone had been in when he went to bed, but actually seemed to be completely inseparable from his phone. There was still a home button, and when Joshua pushed that familiar sight he was brought to a main screen that contained several new applications that were not there before, a tile depicting a crude radar being one of them. The phone’s alarms had stopped, but the radar app was still blinking frantically.

More awake now, Joshua opened it back up again and studied his changed phone’s screen. The two green dots were still blinking and, if the radar’s scale was to be believed, whatever those dots were supposed to represent was not too far away from Joshua’s phone. The young man was curious. One on hand, it was two in the morning. On the other hand, there was no need for him to get up early on a Saturday. His mind made up, Joshua got dressed in a simple outfit of jeans and a band t-shirt and pulled his bike out of the garage and took off into the storm to investigate.


* * *

In a home in Edina, just outside of the limits of the biggest city in the state, a phone rang. While his wife rolled over and put her pillow over her ears, a man picked up his cellphone and answered the call with a well-practiced swipe of his long manicured finger. “Situation?” he asked, filling every syllable of the word with the tone of command. He had known who was on the other end of the line before he had even opened his eyes. At this time of night there was only possibility.

“Two Unknowns have begun to breach in Minneapolis, sir,” the male voice on the other end answered.

The man quickly stood up and walked away from his bed and his wife, past his daughters’ rooms and down the stairs to the kitchen in order to make a cup of coffee. “I’m coming into the office,” he said into his phone, a little louder now that he was well out of earshot of his family. “Send a drone to observe the situation as it develops.”

“With all due respect, sir, one of our fliers would be apt to get fried in this weather, a monetary consideration that might attract more attention than we normally like from the feds and the American taxpayer.”

Looking out the window, the middle-aged man saw that, sure enough, streaks of lightning were still arcing across the sky, long after the weathermen had predicted that the storm would let up. One more sign that pointed to this being the real deal. Too many times before had he been the victim of false alarms and missed opportunities, with only a few fleeting successes on the record to balance it off. “Fine,” he said coolly, turning his attention back to the conversation at hand, “but I’ll be there in twenty, no traffic at this hour, and when I get there I want a full report with every detail on this possible lead. If this is a sure thing, I want our people to have everything they need to handle this.”

“Yes sir,” came the reply, and then the call ended.

A small smile threatened to break across the man’s face as he went back upstairs to get dressed. Despite his last minute attempts to hedge his bets with words like “possible” and “if”, he could sense that this time it was really happening. Sense it in the strange circumstances of the night and even the state of his body. The possible smile made another attempt to bypass his defenses at the thought. The first part of that thought made him sound like the well-studied man of science he was. The latter half, however, sounded akin to a half-senile geezer who thinks his knee can predict the weather. Nonetheless, when he went to pour the first cup of coffee of what looked to be a night full of them, his hands shook in anticipation.

Soon enough all of his efforts would have been worthwhile, he told himself.


* * *

In ideal weather, the journey would have been short, but Joshua was careful of the slick roads and the lightning that split the sky in great violent forks, and that, combined with his stopping to check his bearing on his altered phone, lengthened it considerably. Led by the glow of the streetlights, the boy and his bike gradually moved closer and closer to his destination. Finally, on the crest of a small hill, Joshua saw something that made him hesitate. Below him was a construction site that, despite the speeches of politicians and the proclamations on the fence surrounding the largely-abandoned project, would not be anything close to resembling a new office building anytime soon. More strange than the failure of the promised development to materialize however was the only partly transparent fog that engulfed the area. Part of him wanted to turn back, go home, go to bed, and forget all about this. But Joshua had already come this far and was already awake and soaking wet from the weather, so he hopped off of his bike and wheeled it down to the fence line, leaving a long thing line in the mud where the bike had tread as he did so. After leaning his transportation against the barrier, the teen started to climb the chain link wall, going over the top and into the fog.

Once he passed through the mist, Joshua found his visibility less obstructed. On this side of the perimeter, the fog still hung heavy in the air, but seemed far less oppressive for some reason. After wiping the rainwater off of his glasses, Joshua found himself staring at the strangest sight of his life up to that point. He pinched his forearm, but the short quick burst of pain informed him that he was not dreaming. He really was seeing two monsters fighting.

Well, perhaps fighting was the wrong word for it. What Joshua saw was a small flying demon harassing a round blue-feather bird who was waddling around, its large red eyes wide with fear. “Oh my God,” said Joshua breathlessly, “they’re Digimon.”

Both of the creatures in question stopped their conflict and turned to the source of the sound. The airborne one’s eyes narrowed and its lips curled in a sneer. Its victim, on the other hand, ran as fast as its yellow feet could carry it and jumped behind Joshua, clutching at his wet pants leg. “You have to help me,” the avian pleaded, “he’s going to kill me!”

Before Joshua could say a word, the bat-like Digimon snarled, “You’re going to have a human do your fighting for you? Pathetic!” Then the angry creature spread his wings wide and gave a cry of “Bat Flutter!”, causing dozens of tiny bats to begin streaming forth from in front of their summoner. The river of small shrieking furry bodies made a beeline for Joshua and the Digimon behind him and began making dive-bombing attacks on the duo, nipping and biting whatever they could get ahold of and ignoring and bouncing back from any of the repeated efforts to swat them away.

After letting out a curse through gritted teeth when one of the mammals nicked him again, Joshua cried out, “Run!” and took off for the skeletal structure of beams and supports behind them, trying to ignore the sickening squelching sound caused by running through the mud. The bird-like Digimon followed as best he could despite still being beset by a number of the airborne bloodsuckers.

The bats seemed to only be able to go so far from the Digimon flapping his wings to stay in the rain and fog-filled air in the center of the worksite, so Joshua and the stumpy blue creature were able to duck around some of the rusted pillars of metal and find a hiding spot behind a row of long-abandoned portable toilets. Once he thought they were safe, the teen came to a stop, his form hunched over as he caught his breath. “Are you okay?” he asked in-between a couple of undignified gasps.

“Well, I’m alive,” chirped the avian Digimon, “which is more than I hoped for!”

“That’s great. So what’s our plan?”

“I thought that running away and hiding was our plan,” the creature stammered.

Joshua turned around to respond. “We’ve got to take the fight to that flying jerk.”

“Fight? Oh, no, no, no, I don’t fight.”

“Why not?”

“Digimon who fight end up dead,” the azure monster stuttered. “I like living quite well enough, thank you very much.”

“A Digimon that doesn’t fight,” Joshua marveled. “What kind of Digimon is that?”

“Well, I’m Penguinmon.”

“I’m Joshua, Joshua Kleberg,” the human replied, holding out his arm for a handshake. Instead of taking him up on the offer, the feathered creature recoiled in fear. Joshua sighed and retracted his limb, saying, “Never mind.” He looked at the phone still in his hand. “Maybe I can call someone.” He fumbled with the still strange device, but froze when he pointed it at Penguinmon in his scrabbling and the screen came to life. A picture of the Digimon before him was on Joshua’s screen along with all kinds of information on Penguinmon’s species, attribute, attacks, and more. The teen stared at the machine in his hand through rain-flecked glasses, amazed less by the information on his screen than by the fact that it was there at all. “I think I have a Digivice,” he whispered, holding the apparatus with a newfound sense of reverence.

“A what?” the chubby bird queried.

He looked up, but before he could elaborate, Joshua’s eyes widened. Flapping his leather wings frantically and with a sadistic grin on his face, the other Digimon from earlier had rounded the end of the row of toilets and was flying rapidly toward Joshua and Penguin. “Found you!” he cackled, and then produced another sizable syringe in one of his claws. With a cry of “Demi Dart!”, the missile was launched at his startled blue target.

When Joshua raised his faze, his phone had come up with him and promptly identified the assailant as DemiDevimon. The fact was obvious now in hindsight, but the time for kicking himself for getting lost in the fog of three a.m. thinking. No, now was the time for action.

So as soon as he saw the needle-tipped weapon come forward, Joshua dived at Penguinmon, pushing the startled bird over with enough momentum that the pair slid across the muddy ground, causing the dart to fly past them and sink into the muck behind them. The duo had only gone a few feet, and Joshua got off of the Digimon and spat out a mouthful of what he hoped was mud. HE turned to the winged Digimon and attempted a smile. “You alright?”

While the teen’s jeans had been soaked through by mud, his torso had been blemished only by the spray of earth given off by the slide. The small Digimon who had been tackled bore the brunt of the maneuver. Still, Penguinmon looked up, his red eyes blinking through a muddy mask, and gave the best smile his beak could form. “Yeah, I’m okay!”

“Good,” said Joshua. He turned his attention to the airborne foe that had attacked them. “You get away,” he continued to the avian creature, “I’ll try to hold him off.”

“You’re going to hold me off?” Demidevimon laughed. “You’re just a stinking human! Weak, stupid, ugly-“

While the snickering monster had been mocking him, Joshua took a few steps forward and, in the middle of Demidevimon’s litany of insults, reached back and punched the dark-colored Digimon between his eyes. The blow sent the basketball-sized bully spiraling through the air, where he swore and flapped his leather wings as he tried to regain his bearings.

After he recovered, the blue-black Digimon shouted, “What kind of idiotic human are you?”

“The kind of human that’s giving one last chance to take the easy way out,” Joshua responded. He balled his fists and tried to find a stable stance on the soft ground. Despite his words and the fact that he just landed the first punch of his life, the teen was scared.

Demidevimon must have sensed it because his mouth widened into a smile that showed off his yellowed fangs. “Real Digimon always choose the hard way,” he snarled, “it separates the strong from the weak.” The sinister-looking Digimon spread his wings and rasped, “Evil Whisper!” A black fog spewed from Demidevimon’s mouth and surrounded Joshua’s face in a dark mist. The teen’s gait weakened and he sunk to his knees in the mud, his hands clutching at his temples as his vision, already blighted with the falling rain and the fog, was now restricted by this artificial darkness, his nose overwhelmed with a stench of rot and decay, and his ears were filled with the sound of violent, hateful chanting.

Through this violent sensory overload, Joshua could only partly make out his attacker as the flying monster produced one more dart in one of his claws, and said, “Guess you aren’t anything special after all.”

Before Demidevimon could carry out his final assault, Penguinmon stepped in front of the incapacitated human. “Leave him along,” the short creature stuttered.

The flying monster sneered at this interference, but was undeterred and pulled his body to launch his projectile. But before the blue-black Digimon could follow through, Penguinmon spread his stubby wings, as wide as possible and shouted, “Ice Prism!” A soft blue glow emanated from his yellow beak and coalesced in a simple three-dimensional shape. Then, a short burst of energy knocked Penguinmon back into Joshua’s huddled form as the small frozen object rocketed toward Demidevimon. It tore through one of his leather wings, causing the small Digimon to lose his grip on the syringe and sensing him into a tailspin. He landed in the mud with a sickening squelch. The untethered missile spun in the air and then began to descend, its needle facing down, and sunk into the downed Digimon’s face, right between his eyes.

The needle exploded in a cloud of white fragments, but the damage had already been done. Demidevimon’s body was dissolving into a flurry of shimmering flecks, starting from his mangled wing and from the top of his head where the fumbled weapon had pierced him. His breathing came in raspy gasps and his tallow eyes looked at Penguinmon and Joshua hatefully, the latter having been freed from the effect of the dying creature’s last attack. “Losing to you two,” he coughed, “is some kind of sick joke. This wasn’t part of the plan. Not part of the plan at all.” With those last words, Demidevimon finished transitioning into data. The fragments hung in the air for a bit, then floated into the air as the strange white fog lifted.

“Wow,” said Joshua, “I think you just saved my life.”

“Guess that makes us even then!” Penguinmon chirped.

The human looked up at the sky. The heavens were still obscured by heavy clouds, but the lightning and the rain had stopped, gone with the strange fog. Joshua wiped his glasses clean as best he could with his shirt and put them back on. In the light given off by the streetlights outside the construction site, he looked filthy, covered in mud and his shirt and body cut by the attacks by the bats summoned during the fight. He looked at the small Digimon that had saved his life who was also caked with wet earth and looked completely unsure of his next move. “Hey,” Joshua said to the navy-colored avian, “do you have anywhere to go?”

“Um, no. I suppose not,” was Penguinmon’s response.

“Come back to my house with me then,” the teen said. “It’ll be a bit of a hike, but we can get you cleaned up and get a roof over your head. Come on.”

The duo headed to the fences and after Joshua helped the awkward Digimon over the barrier and, after retrieving his bicycle, walked toward the road, leaving tracks in the mud.


* * *

Over an hour later, a long car on that same road housed an angry man. He slammed the dashboard of the imported car with the flat of his hand and swore for what felt like the hundredth time during the drive. He had gone into the department’s office, but although the reports that he had been handed as soon as he walked through the door had all been quality work, the biggest mistake as he saw it had already been made. Over the phone he had been told that the breach was taking place in Minneapolis. The detail that had been left out was that it was occurring on the edge of the city, just over the border from Edina. If he had been told this, if he had had the data sent directly to his phone instead of going all the way to the Department’s headquarters, he might have been able to observe the two Unknowns himself.

Instead he had only found out after driving into the city, and the time spent getting there and back had been valuable time lost. Now the Unknowns had likely dispersed into the surrounding area leaving only a failed opportunity. The man got out of his car and slammed its door shut. He looked out at the fenced-in construction site where the Department’s computers had eventually narrowed down as the most likely location where the Unknowns’ emergences had occurred.

There was no noise at this late hour and the man was about to give up when he noticed an indentation in the mud off of the side of the road. Curious, he took out his phone and turned on its flashlight. It was not just one depression, but a whole score of them, distorted slightly by the erosion caused by the rain, but still stark. There were two sets of tracks. The first consisted of a single line left by a bicycle and shoeprints heading toward the chain-link fence at the bottom of the hill. The second consisted of the same coming back up the slope to the asphalt, but now joined by imprints left by some sort of clawed feet.

The man followed the tracks down to the edge of the construction site and back to the road, ignoring the growing filth on his polished black shoes. The trail stopped dead as it reached the paved surface of the street. There was no following it any further, but the man’s mind was still racing. This was an interesting development. Someone else had gotten here first and had encountered one or both of the Unknowns, taking one with them when they left. As he got back into his car, questions rushed through the man’s mind, all devoted to analyzing this data and trying to decipher who would have had the tools to detect an emergence and the ability to force an Unknown to accompany them.

He drove back to his home digesting this latest development as he drove. Others were taking an interest in these monsters, and that was dangerous. His men needed to step up their work to analyze and contain not only Unknowns, but also to find out what this new force at play is. Still, his previous bad mood had evaporated. There was work too much work to be done.