OOC: We need to find a real name for this blasted thing, and as soon as we have one I'll rename this thread. But about time we got this rolling!
BIC:
Meital Klein was doing something typically Meital Klein-y.
That is to say, she was standing in the backyard garden of her house, staring at a rather large female Argiope trifasciata that recently set up a web there and making indeterminate little happy noises to herself.
It was a rather lucky find for her – autumn wasn’t generally the best time for arthropods, especially the schizophrenic sort of autumns that her part of Israel got, when the days flipped from cool and rainy to searing, humid, positively summer-like heat at the drop of a hat. This particular afternoon was one of the few in-betweens - where the sky was partly cloudy and the temperatures were nice and chilly. Perfect day for sitting outside in the garden for a while. Or standing and squeeing at spiders, as it turned out.
It was exactly the sort of thing she needed to make this day get infinitely better after another long day of dealing with utter idiots – or, as most people around her called it, high school. Not that she disliked studying – quite the opposite, seeing how most of her free time was spent exploring and researching things. No, what really drove her off the wall was the company - having to spend hours per day surrounded by what she was convinced were the shallowest, most vapid people on the planet Earth was headache inducing, to say the least. All her contemporaries seemed to do is obsess about appearances, social status and whatever lowest-common-denominator pop culture item was in vogue at the time – that is, when they weren’t manipulating and backstabbing each other through an intricate web of gossip-mongering and general fakeness. Meital generally liked webs – but that one could sod right off.
At least nowadays they largely left her alone. They tried this sort of shit on her in middle school, of course - but while some people might have let that drag them into crushing insecurities, Meital possessed the rare sort of personality that allowed her to turn adversity into confidence. She was content with who she was, with what she looked like and with what she liked - and that made her a rather difficult target. There probably were rumors and slander, of course – but everyone had those about them and she never really bothered to keep track. She had better things to do than keep up with this sort of bullshit and most of these things had something to do with arthropods. Insects, arachnids, crustaceans – if it had segmented legs and an exoskeleton, she was all over it. Most – if not all – of her immediate contemporaries seemed to find them gross or creepy. She found them adorable and made no bones about people knowing exactly how she feels. She was the weird bug girl and proud of it – and anyone who had a problem with it was not the sort of person she’d want to associate with, anyway.
It suddenly occurred to her that she should probably take a photo of the spider while the lighting was still good - She hasn’t featured a spider on her blog for a while and this lovely little lady could be a great addition. Reaching into one of her many pockets, Meital extracted her phone and turned it on – it wasn’t what one would call the latest model, but it had a really good camera and did what she needed it to do. That was good enough for her. Meital was a rather practical, utilitarian sort and generally valued functionality over appearances – and her own appearance spoke volumes of this. She kept her slightly wavy dark-brown hair in a shortish, low maintenance cut and often wore outfits that had lots of pockets, often in neutral earth tones and greens, with little jewelry aside from her trilobite necklace and a pair of small teardrop-shaped earrings. Today was no exception – she wore a light brown utility vest over a greenish-grey T-shirt, dark green cargoes and dark brown combat-style boots. With her tan complexion and honey-brown eyes, she almost looked like she was trying to blend into her surroundings.
She has barely managed to position the phone to take a shot when suddenly, a powerful gust of wind disturbed the spider’s web, causing its occupant to drop to the ground and scuttle off to hide from what may have been an oncoming bird. It was no ordinary gust of wind, though – it was too abrupt and had the distinctive smell of ozone, as if the air was electrically charged - probably exactly what it was, considering the sparks that manifested in her peripheral vision. Meital rapidly turned her head towards this new disturbance, only to see… something… drop down to the grass by a nearby hedge with a soft thump, a few errant sparks fading out into nothingness in its wake.
It was clearly an electronic device of some sort, but unlike anything she has seen before. It was blue, roughly the size of a smartphone – perhaps a little larger, definitely thicker – but its design was not right for a smartphone. Its general shape was that of a sleek rectangle with rounded corners and dark-grey hand grips, but its bottom-right side seemed to have a wedge taken out of it and its bottom-left side angled gracefully upwards towards the grip. The front of the device was dominated by a large cover of some sort - darker than the rest of the device and framed with thin white bands along its sides. There were two buttons – one along the side, where a power button would be on a phone, and one underneath the cover, where a home button would be.
Her eyes, however, immediately jumped to the small screen that seemed to display the time.
Suddenly, she felt very uneasy. A part of her brain – conditioned to be constantly on the lookout for suspicious objects – screamed at her to stay as far away from it as possible, call the police, it may be a bomb. But that couldn’t be right. For one, to the best of her knowledge terrorists haven’t mastered teleportation as of yet – and even if they had, why would they target a random house rather than a public place? It just didn’t make any sense.
Anyway, it looked a bit too coherent and advanced to have been cooked in some terrorist’s garage.
Against her better judgment, Meital picked the device up and looked it over. The front featured a small logo – a stylized DTD – on its bottom right corner and some kind of an arrow-like banded design along the bottom left. The back of the device appeared to feature the same logo, but larger, and the banded arrows surrounded it. There was some kind of a scanner on the back of the device, but like the rest of the device, it seemed to be inert.
“Well this is… new.” She murmured to herself “Shitty timing, but…”
She soon realized that her comment had another layer – the clock was not set according to her timezone. She wasn’t even sure according to what timezone it was set. The internet would probably know - but even if it did, she doubted it would know anything else about the device. It occurred to her that maybe she should attempt to activate it and attempt to extract more information about it – but if this device was sent over by someone capable of teleportation, who knew WHAT would happen?
Curiosity got the better of her. She pushed the button.
For a second, nothing happened – then the cover seemed to snap open and disappear in what almost looked like a dissolve into pixels, revealing a large, blank touchscreen. Blank, save for two words that appeared on it shortly after.
“… Commencing Upload?” she read. “Upload of what?”
Then there was the flash of light and the feeling like she was dissolving. Zeroes and ones danced in her peripheral vision before that too was taken from her. Only two words ran through Meital Klein’s head as she disappeared.
“Ahhhhhh, blyad.”
The first sensation that came back was the sound of waves and what might have been seagulls, dial-up modems or both. Then the scent of saltwater and the faint feel of spray against her face. Then the strange device she was still holding in her hand. In the sort of tingly, hazy sensation of coming to after oversleeping, reality reasserted itself – or at least, she thought it was reality. Something was not quite right.
Where the hell was she?
Hazily, Meital opened her eyes and pulled herself up into a sitting position. For a second, she thought she might have hit her head somehow. She was on a beach, that much was certain – but it wasn’t any sort of beach she has ever seen before. She was currently in a small sandy enclave of what appeared to be an otherwise rocky beach. The water was a deep greenish-blue – almost artificially so – and some of the rocks that were submerged in the water seemed to be covered in a strange, wiry type of seaweed. In the opposite direction, the beach seemed to stretch on quite a ways, clumps of grass stabilizing the sand as the land behind it rose into what appeared to be a forested hill. It made her think of assorted photographs she’s seen of beaches in different places around the world – only masterfully photoshopped together. The sky, though, was nothing that belonged on Earth. The only thing it had in common with what she registered as sky was its general location above her. The rest… her mind couldn’t really process it exactly – it was a myriad of colors that she felt like her eyes were not supposed to be able to see, a veritable cornucopia of lights and shadows, zeroes and ones, clouds and circuitry. Ribbons of data coalesced overhead like the rings of Saturn, forming and erasing. Her eyes were drawn to it and at the same time pushed away. It was beautiful. It was terrifying. It was alien as fuck and she loved it.
And then, her mind registered a presence - watching her from the safety of a nearby tide pool was a creature that looked even more alien than the sky.
“Oh look!” Meital giggled “A kitten!”
The “kitten” in question resembled what most people would call a pillbug – except it was the size of a large housecat and its body was a variety of colors that resembled ancient bronze in various states of corrosion. Nevertheless, its carapace had an odd metallic sheen and what almost appeared to be vague circuit-like relief on each of its plates. It regarded her with a curious, intelligent red-eyed look, an iridescent flash of light running across lighter teal protrusions on the sides of its plates for a moment as it twitched two pairs of antennae – the lower one much longer than the upper one.
Most people would probably be a little wary of what was obviously an alien creature – but Meital was too far into squee-mode to notice. She took a step in the creature’s direction – and the creature, in response, retreated a little deeper into the tide pool.
“It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.” She said, a grin on her face “I just… Oh my god you’re adorable!”
“… You really think so?” the creature chirped quietly. Meital did a double-take for a second – caught by surprise – before her excited grin came back full force.
“And you talk too!” she said “Yes, yes I do! Oh wow. If this is a dream, it’s the Best. Dream. Ever.”
“Well, I don’t know about that…” the creature responded, scuttling a little closer “But yes, I can talk. Thank you, I don’t get that often. If you don’t mind me asking… You’re a human, aren’t you?”
“Last time I checked, yeah.” Meital nodded “What are you, though? You remind me a little of those deep sea giant isopods I read about online, but I certainly don’t remember them being as colorful… Or talking… Uh. This is probably going to sound crazy but, er, can I pet you?”
She reached out a hand, placing it on the rock but still a safe distance away from the creature, letting it come to her. The creature seemed to mull it over, then slowly approached her, lightly brushing its antennae against her hand. It tickled a little – and she could help but giggle a bit as she brushed her fingers gently against the creature’s back plates. They were surprisingly smooth and warm, and felt like a mixture of metal and chitin. The creature’s eyes seemed to glaze over contently as she did so, and it emitted a sound that could be a series of clicks, a purr or both.
“Well, you’re not too far off.” The creature said “I’m Isomon. Crustacean Digimon. Pleased to meet you!”
“Nice to meet you too, Isomon. I’m Meital.” The girl replied, then paused for a moment as the word sank into her mind “But… Digimon? As in… Digital Monsters? Like the card game?”
“I don’t know about a card game, but yes, Digital Monsters.” Isomon replied. “This is the Digital World, after all.”
“Wow. Of all the obscure children’s card games, this is the last one I expected to fall straight into. I wonder if I’ll ever get the chance to run into a few of my favorites… But how did I get here?” Meital blinked, holding up the blue device in her hand “The last thing I remembered was this thing acting up.”
A flicker of recognition appeared in Isomon’s eyes.
“But that’s… well, that explains everything.” Isomon responded “This thing you’re holding is a Digivice. A Digital Touch Device, to be precise. It is a construct of the Digital World, designed to form connections between Humans and Digimon. You’re saying it brought you here?”
“Seems to be the case. It sort of appeared in my back yard while I was trying to take a photo of this really gorgeous spider. Scared her off, sadly. I hope she’s okay. In any case, I picked it up and figured I might as well try to turn it on – y’know, try to figure out if it has some kind of owner information on it or something – and… well yeah. The next thing I know, I was here. Talking to another adorable arthropod. That can actually talk back. Oh wow. No one’s going to believe this when I get back home. Still... Why me? And how did this thing find me? And can it get me back home, too?”
“Well. I could try to take a look at it, if you don’t mind.” Isomon responded “I have a sort of knack for interfacing with machinery.”
“By all means.” Meital grinned, placing the device on the rock – noticing that not only the cover was back up, but the time display was blank. The device was now completely inert. She furrowed her brow a little. “Assuming whatever brought me here didn’t break it.”
“Let’s see.” Isomon twitched its antennae and then adjusted them - the lower antennae reaching to the sides of the cover while the upper ones rested against the base of the device. Numbers seemed to dance behind the creature’s eyes for a moment, then it retracted the appendages and turned its gaze back to the human.
“And… Done.” It said “The Digivice is in perfect working order. It’s simply on standby mode, waiting for you to find your partner Digimon and link up with it. I don’t know if it can get you home, though. Something else sent it to your world. Probably as a last resort, really… you’ve picked a terrible time for a visit.”
“… The way I see it, I got yoinked into an alien world and the first creature I meet is adorable AND friendly. Can’t be that bad, can it?” Meital grinned, and the teal projections along Isomon’s sides had a ripple of red run through them. It seemed to be fighting an urge to curl up into a ball – and Meital realized that it was probably an equivalent of a blush. “Sorry. I can’t help it. Just stating facts. I do that.”
“Well, thank you again.” Isomon chirped “But with the spreading corruption zones driving Digimon mental and tearing the world apart… Whatever’s causing this is not your average glitch, and it sure isn’t a Digimon of any sort I’ve heard of. If Digivices were sent into your world, it must mean that the Digital World itself is getting desperate -”
“So let me get this straight. This gadget means that I was randomly picked by a parallel world, loosely connected to a form of creature-based merchandise, to help save it from some arbitrary destruction by forming a bond with a digital monster?”
“Pretty much, yes.” Isomon nodded.
There was a pause.
“… I think I’m turning Japanese.”
“What’s ‘Japanese’?”
“Trust me,” the girl sighed “You don’t want to know.”
For a world under the threat of destruction, the beach seemed very calm and peaceful. The girl and the Digimon walked side by side through sand and rocks, the crustacean keeping up surprisingly well. A cool ocean breeze was blowing and the odd light show in the sky provided an almost surreal, dream-like feel to the setting. The two were currently en route towards what looked like a lighthouse in the distance, in a direction she assumed was north (the compass she kept in one of her pockets couldn’t orient on where it was no matter what) – Meital thought it seemed to make a natural place to head towards in search of more lifeforms, while Isomon admitted that it was always curious about the landmark but never risked getting close to it. When Meital offered it to come with her, it seemed surprised but happy – and the two were now idly chatting as they pressed on.
“Hey, Isomon?” Meital asked “What can you tell me about this area?”
“Not much, really.” Isomon responded “It’s a beach and there’s a lot of it. I haven’t really travelled too far beyond it land-wise. It’s really beautiful underwater, though. I wish I could show you, but you humans don’t seem like you’d be able breathe underwater.”
“Guilty as charged, I’m afraid.” Meital grinned “So in a sense this is as much of an adventure to you as it is to me!”
Isomon paused for a moment, mulling it over, then twitched its antennae.
“Yeah, I guess it is!”
“Well, I couldn’t ask for a better companion.” The girl smiled. “This is going to be awesome.”
BIC:
Meital Klein was doing something typically Meital Klein-y.
That is to say, she was standing in the backyard garden of her house, staring at a rather large female Argiope trifasciata that recently set up a web there and making indeterminate little happy noises to herself.
It was a rather lucky find for her – autumn wasn’t generally the best time for arthropods, especially the schizophrenic sort of autumns that her part of Israel got, when the days flipped from cool and rainy to searing, humid, positively summer-like heat at the drop of a hat. This particular afternoon was one of the few in-betweens - where the sky was partly cloudy and the temperatures were nice and chilly. Perfect day for sitting outside in the garden for a while. Or standing and squeeing at spiders, as it turned out.
It was exactly the sort of thing she needed to make this day get infinitely better after another long day of dealing with utter idiots – or, as most people around her called it, high school. Not that she disliked studying – quite the opposite, seeing how most of her free time was spent exploring and researching things. No, what really drove her off the wall was the company - having to spend hours per day surrounded by what she was convinced were the shallowest, most vapid people on the planet Earth was headache inducing, to say the least. All her contemporaries seemed to do is obsess about appearances, social status and whatever lowest-common-denominator pop culture item was in vogue at the time – that is, when they weren’t manipulating and backstabbing each other through an intricate web of gossip-mongering and general fakeness. Meital generally liked webs – but that one could sod right off.
At least nowadays they largely left her alone. They tried this sort of shit on her in middle school, of course - but while some people might have let that drag them into crushing insecurities, Meital possessed the rare sort of personality that allowed her to turn adversity into confidence. She was content with who she was, with what she looked like and with what she liked - and that made her a rather difficult target. There probably were rumors and slander, of course – but everyone had those about them and she never really bothered to keep track. She had better things to do than keep up with this sort of bullshit and most of these things had something to do with arthropods. Insects, arachnids, crustaceans – if it had segmented legs and an exoskeleton, she was all over it. Most – if not all – of her immediate contemporaries seemed to find them gross or creepy. She found them adorable and made no bones about people knowing exactly how she feels. She was the weird bug girl and proud of it – and anyone who had a problem with it was not the sort of person she’d want to associate with, anyway.
It suddenly occurred to her that she should probably take a photo of the spider while the lighting was still good - She hasn’t featured a spider on her blog for a while and this lovely little lady could be a great addition. Reaching into one of her many pockets, Meital extracted her phone and turned it on – it wasn’t what one would call the latest model, but it had a really good camera and did what she needed it to do. That was good enough for her. Meital was a rather practical, utilitarian sort and generally valued functionality over appearances – and her own appearance spoke volumes of this. She kept her slightly wavy dark-brown hair in a shortish, low maintenance cut and often wore outfits that had lots of pockets, often in neutral earth tones and greens, with little jewelry aside from her trilobite necklace and a pair of small teardrop-shaped earrings. Today was no exception – she wore a light brown utility vest over a greenish-grey T-shirt, dark green cargoes and dark brown combat-style boots. With her tan complexion and honey-brown eyes, she almost looked like she was trying to blend into her surroundings.
She has barely managed to position the phone to take a shot when suddenly, a powerful gust of wind disturbed the spider’s web, causing its occupant to drop to the ground and scuttle off to hide from what may have been an oncoming bird. It was no ordinary gust of wind, though – it was too abrupt and had the distinctive smell of ozone, as if the air was electrically charged - probably exactly what it was, considering the sparks that manifested in her peripheral vision. Meital rapidly turned her head towards this new disturbance, only to see… something… drop down to the grass by a nearby hedge with a soft thump, a few errant sparks fading out into nothingness in its wake.
It was clearly an electronic device of some sort, but unlike anything she has seen before. It was blue, roughly the size of a smartphone – perhaps a little larger, definitely thicker – but its design was not right for a smartphone. Its general shape was that of a sleek rectangle with rounded corners and dark-grey hand grips, but its bottom-right side seemed to have a wedge taken out of it and its bottom-left side angled gracefully upwards towards the grip. The front of the device was dominated by a large cover of some sort - darker than the rest of the device and framed with thin white bands along its sides. There were two buttons – one along the side, where a power button would be on a phone, and one underneath the cover, where a home button would be.
Her eyes, however, immediately jumped to the small screen that seemed to display the time.
Suddenly, she felt very uneasy. A part of her brain – conditioned to be constantly on the lookout for suspicious objects – screamed at her to stay as far away from it as possible, call the police, it may be a bomb. But that couldn’t be right. For one, to the best of her knowledge terrorists haven’t mastered teleportation as of yet – and even if they had, why would they target a random house rather than a public place? It just didn’t make any sense.
Anyway, it looked a bit too coherent and advanced to have been cooked in some terrorist’s garage.
Against her better judgment, Meital picked the device up and looked it over. The front featured a small logo – a stylized DTD – on its bottom right corner and some kind of an arrow-like banded design along the bottom left. The back of the device appeared to feature the same logo, but larger, and the banded arrows surrounded it. There was some kind of a scanner on the back of the device, but like the rest of the device, it seemed to be inert.
“Well this is… new.” She murmured to herself “Shitty timing, but…”
She soon realized that her comment had another layer – the clock was not set according to her timezone. She wasn’t even sure according to what timezone it was set. The internet would probably know - but even if it did, she doubted it would know anything else about the device. It occurred to her that maybe she should attempt to activate it and attempt to extract more information about it – but if this device was sent over by someone capable of teleportation, who knew WHAT would happen?
Curiosity got the better of her. She pushed the button.
For a second, nothing happened – then the cover seemed to snap open and disappear in what almost looked like a dissolve into pixels, revealing a large, blank touchscreen. Blank, save for two words that appeared on it shortly after.
“… Commencing Upload?” she read. “Upload of what?”
Then there was the flash of light and the feeling like she was dissolving. Zeroes and ones danced in her peripheral vision before that too was taken from her. Only two words ran through Meital Klein’s head as she disappeared.
“Ahhhhhh, blyad.”
~*~
The first sensation that came back was the sound of waves and what might have been seagulls, dial-up modems or both. Then the scent of saltwater and the faint feel of spray against her face. Then the strange device she was still holding in her hand. In the sort of tingly, hazy sensation of coming to after oversleeping, reality reasserted itself – or at least, she thought it was reality. Something was not quite right.
Where the hell was she?
Hazily, Meital opened her eyes and pulled herself up into a sitting position. For a second, she thought she might have hit her head somehow. She was on a beach, that much was certain – but it wasn’t any sort of beach she has ever seen before. She was currently in a small sandy enclave of what appeared to be an otherwise rocky beach. The water was a deep greenish-blue – almost artificially so – and some of the rocks that were submerged in the water seemed to be covered in a strange, wiry type of seaweed. In the opposite direction, the beach seemed to stretch on quite a ways, clumps of grass stabilizing the sand as the land behind it rose into what appeared to be a forested hill. It made her think of assorted photographs she’s seen of beaches in different places around the world – only masterfully photoshopped together. The sky, though, was nothing that belonged on Earth. The only thing it had in common with what she registered as sky was its general location above her. The rest… her mind couldn’t really process it exactly – it was a myriad of colors that she felt like her eyes were not supposed to be able to see, a veritable cornucopia of lights and shadows, zeroes and ones, clouds and circuitry. Ribbons of data coalesced overhead like the rings of Saturn, forming and erasing. Her eyes were drawn to it and at the same time pushed away. It was beautiful. It was terrifying. It was alien as fuck and she loved it.
And then, her mind registered a presence - watching her from the safety of a nearby tide pool was a creature that looked even more alien than the sky.
“Oh look!” Meital giggled “A kitten!”
The “kitten” in question resembled what most people would call a pillbug – except it was the size of a large housecat and its body was a variety of colors that resembled ancient bronze in various states of corrosion. Nevertheless, its carapace had an odd metallic sheen and what almost appeared to be vague circuit-like relief on each of its plates. It regarded her with a curious, intelligent red-eyed look, an iridescent flash of light running across lighter teal protrusions on the sides of its plates for a moment as it twitched two pairs of antennae – the lower one much longer than the upper one.
Most people would probably be a little wary of what was obviously an alien creature – but Meital was too far into squee-mode to notice. She took a step in the creature’s direction – and the creature, in response, retreated a little deeper into the tide pool.
“It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.” She said, a grin on her face “I just… Oh my god you’re adorable!”
“… You really think so?” the creature chirped quietly. Meital did a double-take for a second – caught by surprise – before her excited grin came back full force.
“And you talk too!” she said “Yes, yes I do! Oh wow. If this is a dream, it’s the Best. Dream. Ever.”
“Well, I don’t know about that…” the creature responded, scuttling a little closer “But yes, I can talk. Thank you, I don’t get that often. If you don’t mind me asking… You’re a human, aren’t you?”
“Last time I checked, yeah.” Meital nodded “What are you, though? You remind me a little of those deep sea giant isopods I read about online, but I certainly don’t remember them being as colorful… Or talking… Uh. This is probably going to sound crazy but, er, can I pet you?”
She reached out a hand, placing it on the rock but still a safe distance away from the creature, letting it come to her. The creature seemed to mull it over, then slowly approached her, lightly brushing its antennae against her hand. It tickled a little – and she could help but giggle a bit as she brushed her fingers gently against the creature’s back plates. They were surprisingly smooth and warm, and felt like a mixture of metal and chitin. The creature’s eyes seemed to glaze over contently as she did so, and it emitted a sound that could be a series of clicks, a purr or both.
“Well, you’re not too far off.” The creature said “I’m Isomon. Crustacean Digimon. Pleased to meet you!”
“Nice to meet you too, Isomon. I’m Meital.” The girl replied, then paused for a moment as the word sank into her mind “But… Digimon? As in… Digital Monsters? Like the card game?”
“I don’t know about a card game, but yes, Digital Monsters.” Isomon replied. “This is the Digital World, after all.”
“Wow. Of all the obscure children’s card games, this is the last one I expected to fall straight into. I wonder if I’ll ever get the chance to run into a few of my favorites… But how did I get here?” Meital blinked, holding up the blue device in her hand “The last thing I remembered was this thing acting up.”
A flicker of recognition appeared in Isomon’s eyes.
“But that’s… well, that explains everything.” Isomon responded “This thing you’re holding is a Digivice. A Digital Touch Device, to be precise. It is a construct of the Digital World, designed to form connections between Humans and Digimon. You’re saying it brought you here?”
“Seems to be the case. It sort of appeared in my back yard while I was trying to take a photo of this really gorgeous spider. Scared her off, sadly. I hope she’s okay. In any case, I picked it up and figured I might as well try to turn it on – y’know, try to figure out if it has some kind of owner information on it or something – and… well yeah. The next thing I know, I was here. Talking to another adorable arthropod. That can actually talk back. Oh wow. No one’s going to believe this when I get back home. Still... Why me? And how did this thing find me? And can it get me back home, too?”
“Well. I could try to take a look at it, if you don’t mind.” Isomon responded “I have a sort of knack for interfacing with machinery.”
“By all means.” Meital grinned, placing the device on the rock – noticing that not only the cover was back up, but the time display was blank. The device was now completely inert. She furrowed her brow a little. “Assuming whatever brought me here didn’t break it.”
“Let’s see.” Isomon twitched its antennae and then adjusted them - the lower antennae reaching to the sides of the cover while the upper ones rested against the base of the device. Numbers seemed to dance behind the creature’s eyes for a moment, then it retracted the appendages and turned its gaze back to the human.
“And… Done.” It said “The Digivice is in perfect working order. It’s simply on standby mode, waiting for you to find your partner Digimon and link up with it. I don’t know if it can get you home, though. Something else sent it to your world. Probably as a last resort, really… you’ve picked a terrible time for a visit.”
“… The way I see it, I got yoinked into an alien world and the first creature I meet is adorable AND friendly. Can’t be that bad, can it?” Meital grinned, and the teal projections along Isomon’s sides had a ripple of red run through them. It seemed to be fighting an urge to curl up into a ball – and Meital realized that it was probably an equivalent of a blush. “Sorry. I can’t help it. Just stating facts. I do that.”
“Well, thank you again.” Isomon chirped “But with the spreading corruption zones driving Digimon mental and tearing the world apart… Whatever’s causing this is not your average glitch, and it sure isn’t a Digimon of any sort I’ve heard of. If Digivices were sent into your world, it must mean that the Digital World itself is getting desperate -”
“So let me get this straight. This gadget means that I was randomly picked by a parallel world, loosely connected to a form of creature-based merchandise, to help save it from some arbitrary destruction by forming a bond with a digital monster?”
“Pretty much, yes.” Isomon nodded.
There was a pause.
“… I think I’m turning Japanese.”
“What’s ‘Japanese’?”
“Trust me,” the girl sighed “You don’t want to know.”
~*~
For a world under the threat of destruction, the beach seemed very calm and peaceful. The girl and the Digimon walked side by side through sand and rocks, the crustacean keeping up surprisingly well. A cool ocean breeze was blowing and the odd light show in the sky provided an almost surreal, dream-like feel to the setting. The two were currently en route towards what looked like a lighthouse in the distance, in a direction she assumed was north (the compass she kept in one of her pockets couldn’t orient on where it was no matter what) – Meital thought it seemed to make a natural place to head towards in search of more lifeforms, while Isomon admitted that it was always curious about the landmark but never risked getting close to it. When Meital offered it to come with her, it seemed surprised but happy – and the two were now idly chatting as they pressed on.
“Hey, Isomon?” Meital asked “What can you tell me about this area?”
“Not much, really.” Isomon responded “It’s a beach and there’s a lot of it. I haven’t really travelled too far beyond it land-wise. It’s really beautiful underwater, though. I wish I could show you, but you humans don’t seem like you’d be able breathe underwater.”
“Guilty as charged, I’m afraid.” Meital grinned “So in a sense this is as much of an adventure to you as it is to me!”
Isomon paused for a moment, mulling it over, then twitched its antennae.
“Yeah, I guess it is!”
“Well, I couldn’t ask for a better companion.” The girl smiled. “This is going to be awesome.”
