~~~ Chapter 1 - Donut Stole ~~~
At first, Abbadomon had been upset that it had been shunted out of the digiverse, and sealed off. It had spent an unknowable amount of time and energy thrashing against the barriers and firewalls the warriors who had defeated it had created. Worse, it had been locked out of the negative energies of the destructive datastreams of social media.
It had been forced to observe from a distance as those once-tranquil streams became raging torrents. In the void, it was forced to watch those negative energies swirl. Even a single tap would more than double its strength and entropic powers. But it was an ancient digimon, existing in the undercurrents of the digiverse since the very beginning.
It could watch, it was a patient god. Others would rise in its stead, mimicking its power and even a fraction of its form, rising up to end a digiverse or two all on their own. Most were defeated, never truly tapping into the lines of despair and ouroborosis. In some worlds, humans would be pulled in to defend their worlds.
So Abbadomon had waited, peeling away, chipping bit by bit at the various layers that kept its power from returning the world to nothing. The slightest whisper here, a virus there. Occasionally it took, and an avatar for its will would form.
Each time it grew too strong, so-called digi-destined would appear and pick up the battle against the godlike virus. On occasion, its emissary would succeed. A digiverse would lose to the glorious nothingness everything craved so much. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough. The number of victories was never enough. So many worlds needed to meet the sweet release of the final end.
Deserved to! Only when all was nothing would it itself cease to exist! It existed because pain, suffering, all existed. One phase would move to the next, and there was nothing else with the capacity or power to absorb the fruits of true randomness and noise in the eternal cycle.
Its eye turned to its current target, one it had been working on for a while. A world that was on the cusp of losing to the so-valued digidestined, the warriors of the status quo. But that was okay. They would only stave the end for a short time. All victories against it while it still persisted in the great void were only temporary, after all.
This time, it would try something new. Find a proper emissary. A single message across the webways opened a portal. It pulled out a profile from a world, one that never had a digiverse of its own, despite having a plethora of opportunities.
A character sheet, some descriptions. An entire line of corrupted evolution dedicated to the great nothingness! It smiled. Every one of its mouths smiled, menacingly. Like it always did.
"AhA hA HA," it laughed into the void when it located the correct soul. This time, in this world, nothing would remain!
~~~
It was sometime in November, two thousand and six. For halloween, my friends and I had a marathon of halloween-appropriate Tim Burton movies, ending in Nightmare Before Christmas. I was eating breakfast in our Texas house. You would probably know the city. The school district where they spent more than ten million dollars on the brand-new football stadium for high-schoolers.
"Why are you dying your hair black, Kaylee? You're as dark-haired as anyone else in this family."
Our whole gaggle of friends had just discovered deviantart and online art communities, along with a cascade of other things, like anime and fanfiction. It was my refuge from the endless sausagefest and (in my, very, very fourteen-year old mind) innumerable dumb jocks, preps, and stupid Texas pride. Freshman year the history class was Texas History, where the teachers and books basically summed up to "Texas Is Best!".
It did a good job of engendering my hatred of the state.
"Because only the blackest black will match the color of my soul!" I huffed at my mom at the breakfast table. She just gave me the most "I give up" look possible. The toaster popped, and I pulled the tarts of pop, nutella and made a super sugary sandwich. Slamming my notebook full of various colored pencil drawings,
I burst out of the door and headed to the ninth grader's bus stop, where I sat and waited for my friends, like the criminal I was. The crime? Being fourteen years old. I'd discovered My Chemical Romance, (along with everyone else as the Black Parade had just barely been released and was constantly playing on the radio). When they arrived, we would always try to glomp each other.
Also, everyone called everything gay. The boys who hung out with us were gay. I'd watched every halloween film I could get my hands on. I had a keychain with Jack Skellington on my backpack, attached to a Kingdom Hearts Keyblade. A pin with the Kingdom Hearts heartless symbol on the back of my backpack. I had a pair of black gloves with skulls I'd painted on and cut the fingers off.
Youtube had started to get big right around that time too— which was how I'd discovered digimon. I wasn't sure exactly where it came from, but I latched onto the Digimon fansubs that were uploaded. They were so much cooler and better than the English versions. The characters sounded so much more mature.
Except the girl characters. I hated them. Yep, I had been one of those girls. Mom eventually gave up making comments about my hair, and instead started to make comments about how she couldn't wait until I got a job or went off to college. Dad didn't pay a whole lot of attention to my antics, which was fine by me.
One day in art class I decided they weren't good enough, and wanted to make an ORIGINAL CHARACTER. The art teacher wouldn't let us draw guns, and made sure to let me know when she saw what I was drawing, but that was okay. I already had a plethora of ideas for that. The guy digimons were the ones that got guns anyway.
I grew out of it, alright?
Now though? Well, eventually I found a boyfriend, went to college, started a career, even had a kid, was married, all that shit. Things were good. Kyle was old enough (six years old) that we were even thinking of having another.
Then, one day, while I was driving to work, my phone and car went on the fritz, and I found myself face to face with a giant eyeless orb and infinite-many mouths. Little square particles floated off up into the abyss.
"Who are you?" I asked. 'What are you?' would have been the better question, but I caught enough anime in my time. When you're staring at a floating orb of indeterminate mass and clear villain phenotype? The red lines at the top of its head and gaping mouth and overly-flat teeth and infinite smiles were indicative that it wouldn't hurt to have some discretion.
I would say that I was awake and doing things for one second, and then found myself floating in the void, but quite frankly I wanted to say that I didn't even have memories of how I got to be there.
My next thought was 'Welp, looks like I'm going to be late for work.', and that just sucked.
"You are the original spirit of Renanullmon, no?"
It had asked, beaming the images of my old colored pencil character sheet directly into my head. I… was, actually. Oh my God, I had written that she was a human spirit in a Digimon's body (explicitly NOT A FUSION). One that had chosen to fight for the destruction of the digiverse because she… something something tortured past. Also, I couldn't NOT die a little inside at the black hair with the uh unsurprisingly-colored highlights (purple!) that ran down the back.
I had spent HOURS fussing over how to do the hair right.
"In my domain, your thoughts are laid bare! You are the original spirit! Your task is to break the final firewall and end the world!"
I would have said that he had the wrong girl, but the stupid, snarky part of me instead asked "What, so you can end the digiverse?" dripping with sarcasm.
It just smiled deeper and larger, grey fuzz glitching in and out, tassels with mirrored eyeless faces all smiling even more, letting off a million tasteless chuckles.
"First off—how am I going to do that?" I asked, not exactly credulous of the nietzschean god of destruction in front of me. It could also have been the Full Metal Alchemist god, but there were too many faces and not enough doors in the ether I had found myself in.
No, it was digimon. I sighed. It had to be digimon.
"Second—" I had tried to stay saying no. I really, truly did. I had, like, a career and family. A six year old kid that needed a fucking mom in his life.
"The strongest of the digigods are long dead! Only a few warriors remain!"
It ignored my question. And my objections. The world turned black.
Bastard.
"It doesn't really matter anyway," the voice said. "Do what thou wilt, the eternal cycle will continue. Because nothing else matters, Renanullmon!"
The fucking Bastard. Kyle needed help! We had just gotten started going through the bullshit vagueness of Common Core! He needed someone to push him to start to read harder chapter books with less pictures. Work could get fucked, but the money had been nice.
As light lines showed up. Not green, but red and grey, sight returned, a murky sky full of clouds. I would have made a comment about how incredibly edgy and cliche that whole bit was, were it not for the fact that I had been forcibly separated from my own reality as I was on my way to work, and that I was now falling through the sky.
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Green lines traced over my body, bits of what should have been my clothing and skin floating off into the clearly-digital-by-aesthetic abyss.
"Damn him", I muttered, wind whipping past my now incredibly long ears. I opened my arms and legs, which had all reformed, trying to slow my descent as much as possible. I landed on the side of a hill, skidding and rolling along the ground, smearing grass and dirt everywhere, kicking up rocks and dirt.
"Ugg," I moaned, face to the sky. It's said that if you ever fell through the sky and survived the fall you needed to not close your eyes, but rather immediately do things to keep the adrenaline running, so I sat up, and started to shout back at the closing hole that I had fallen through when a rock also fell out of the sky and hit me on the face.
"Bastard!" I said.
"Wh-What-are you?" a kid's voice squeaked out.
Your worst nightmare, I didn't say. I literally just plummeted out of the sky.
"The eye said a powerful Digimon was coming," it said.
I turned to look at the kid. Ragged clothes, sunk eyes. Dark Irises. Nearly-lifeless. Right. So this was happening. This was my new reality. The kid couldn't have been more than thirteen. Maybe the same age as the version of me that drew the body I now inhabited.
Fuck.
I was taller than the kid by a fair amount.
"You can call me kaylee…mmmm—" I stopped in my tracks— my voice was so, so incredibly smooth. I sighed, my tongue brushing up against my teeth—which were incredibly sharp. My mouth was not the shape it should have been, either.
In fact, the grey fuzz in front of my eyes wasn't blurriness at all. It was fur. I took stock of myself. Thick thighs, a huge bit of chest fur. Sexy voice. Next up, a giant evil clown was going to show up and turn us both into dolls to add us to its collection as they destroy the world.
Or something.
It wasn't my voice at all, which was throwing me for a loop, and caused me a good few seconds of dissociation. I'd have killed to have a voice so silky smooth, even as an adult, so I wasn't complaining. I was wearing a black skirt with skulls on it, with a black leggings that went below the skirt.
"Kaylee…mon?" the kid suggested. "The eye said they would send someone powerful enough to stop the digiwarriors."
If the sunken, lifeless eyes didn't tell me something was off with them, their sheepish monotone and non-reaction to the fact that I just fell out of the sky definitely did. Not seeing anyone else around, this kid was my de-facto partner.
I looked down at my hands. Not hands, but paws with extended claws on the end. I wiggled my finger-equivalents a bit. More dexterity than regular paws. I had little gloves with a tie looped around the middle finger. Black gloves. Purple highlights. Grey, black and purple fur.
Somehow, that bastard had gotten a hold of me after finding my ancient edgesona. It had, so far, followed the description on my colored pencil character sheet, the shapes in the bandanna were shifting like Rorschach from Watchmen. Renamon, but dial up the edge and goth, with a slight bit of "xD SO random!!1!" mixed in.
Okay, it wasn't quite that bad. The body I was in now was definitely a fourteen year old's attempt and making an edgy Renamon with a tragic backstory. I couldn't hate on my past self too much. That Kaylee had elected not to give the character sheet boobs.
A few rays of sun in a sea of bullshit, but a few rays nonetheless.
Now, the question was whether or not I would actually be able to leverage it to get back to my home.
The kid approached me, but wasn't looking at me. Instead, he was looking at the ground, where the rock had fallen. My blood went ice-cold when I noticed the grass and dirt around it was glitching out.
God, I wasn't really the type to freeze up in dumb situations, but for real, that anger was real— the highlights on my gloves and body shifting to red— yeah yeah okay, I got it!
"Don't touch that," I said, the snappy venom causing even that kid in permanent dissociation to jerk back.
Fucking hell. Why would you ever want your emotions to glow? Oh right, because fourteen year old Kaylee thought glowing features were cool. Per the sheet, the colors shifted between coding for apathy, rage, sadism, and masochism. The four emotions of deviantart Kaylee.
Just don't tell anyone that I wasn't listening to MCR on my ipod nano, that I wouldn't skip over Relient K or Modest Mouse. They were only there because I needed something that I could listen to around my mom I swear.
Well, okay, there was a world where young Kaylee was right. Having parts of your body glowing different colors based on your mood might have been pretty nice. Things like:
"Don't talk to me right now, hub, I'm pissed at the neighbor lady who keeps taking her dog out and letting it shit in our damn yard and then Kyle drags that shit in the house. And also you missed Kyle's first basketball game because you slept in."
Yeah, a being mood ring glowstick for that dense hockeypuck might have been nice. Yeah, I sighed. Let it out.
At least, if you remembered right Kaylee, the digimon world didn't run one-to-one with real-world time, so with luck, you can figure out how to return to being human and go home.
Or, I could just say fuck it and go home anyway. We could figure out the whole "return to human" bit after.
Decisions, decisions.
The kid stood in silence, just staring off into nothing as I got my emotions under control and managed to shove the freakout-o-meter into a freezer, where it could be kept nice and safe. When the highlights on my gloves turned grey, I figured I wasn't in immediate danger of exploding.
It was a nice package and all, one to be opened on another day. We could call in the bomb squad as a treat.
Some mountains in the distance, a few hills, no water to speak of though. The clouds in the sky were a sickly grey, not the kind of rain you would actually want to drink.
"Mmmm what happened here?" I said, testing my voice out some more. I just couldn't get over how sexy and adult woman it sounded. Fourteen year old Kaylee never imagined having an adult voice this silky smooth. Adult me didn't imagine having a voice this nice. Even more, it didn't come from a voice box. My mouth didn't move as I spoke.
That was a bit freaky, not gonna lie.
"We're in a side world," the kid said. "I hacked it."
"How'd you learn to hack the digiverse?" I asked, dusting off bits of digital dirt and grass that stuck to me. Being furry and fuzzy was definitely weird. Especially the shape of my legs, which while approximately as wide as I had given the character, decidedly effeminate and digitigrade.
"Tsumemon taught me how."
Unfortunately, I was thirty years old. I had a career and family and all that shit to get back to. It was just us two on the plain, the sky was fading off into grey. "Where is Tsumemon?" I asked.
The kid pointed behind us, at an ominous black cloud in the distance. With both three-fingered hands, I shoved the palms covered over my face. This wasn't real. Couldn't be real.
It was all so goddamn edgy and made no sense. That I knew exactly why that creature had chosen me, specifically was the icing on the migraine cake.
"Hey, kid. Got a mirror?" I asked. It still didn't register exactly what had happened. Nothing felt real, like there was a distance between me and my body and the world around me.
The kid pulled up the backpack they had been wearing and started rummaging around in silence.
I ran my hand through the top of my head, the tuft of black and purple fur that was going down the back of my head. I did it before Zoroark existed, at least! That wasn't much consolation.
Watching my highlights start shifting to a reddish tone, exactly how stupid the situation was, was also shoved into the freezer.
Grey. Good. Grey was the best color.
Giving furry creature designs a tuft of extra fur on top, making it black and giving it purple highlights? Peak design. Peak! I'm lucky the character design wasn't drawn in fishnet stockings or given boobs and a hot topic t-shirt and an edgy falcon-based boyfriend off a particular bird character from Maximum Ride.
I'd later discovered spiked collars, bracelets and boots, but had started to fade out right when my friends got their ears pierced and I chickened out. It helped that the boy I was crushing on got addicted to playing Halo online and stopped hanging out. It also helped that I eventually became an A student, and would later fall into B's and C's.
Yeah, I was an edgelord teen as a kid. Too interested in unironically saying "omg!", sometimes with "zomg!" instead. "xD bestie" to the other edgy kids in art class.
Oh god, the items.
"I'm still missing some items I need," I told the kid. "I'm not going to be strong enough yet."
Ignoring that there was a solid chance Abbaddomon had, or could send our hacker kid my colored pencil drawings was the safest path for all measures of my dwindling sanity. Freezers were extremely effective.
Finally, I was ready. Everything was only barely-processed but if I wanted a chance to actually get home, I needed to act fast. Before I got all swept up in Plot. Luckily, the kid was even more out of it than I was. Hopefully if he got some food in him he'd perk up and be able to help me get out of this hell.
I picked up the digivice lying on the ground, the grass of the digital plane that had been glitching in its presence.
"Isn't that… for me?" the kid said.
"Nope," I said.
"Figures. The other kids all had one. I never got anything nice." A faint hint of a smile. "Tsumemon and I had to take everything we have."
Was I going to bother explaining all this that had happened to me to the kid? Call me a bitch, but no. No, I wasn't about to explain that until a few hours ago I thought this world was fictional. Especially not to a probably-important character. Nor was I going to explain exactly what my character was.
"Tell me what you know about the eye, kid" I said, looping the broken digidevice around my neck, the mouth-shapes on the bandanna that covered the lower bits of my face shifting into smiles the same shape as the menacing orb's face.
Good God, I was edgy.
"What eye?" he asked, rummaging around his bag.
"What's in that bag of yours?" I asked. If the kid didn't know, I wasn't going to dig. Talking too much about the bastard would probably cause the exact opposite of trying to get home.
"Oh, just … stuff. Yeah, stuff. Like control rings and collars and stuff for hacking." The kid pulled one out and activated it, a red light scanning me before it went inert.
"Huh. It doesn't work on you. There must be a bug," he said.
I towered over the kid.
"Don't try to use that on me. It will make it difficult for me to help you," I said. I later would realize that it sounded like I was committed to help the kid with destroying the world or whatever. Not like it truly mattered. If a random human kid could build ominous-looking, probably-mind-control collars, or hack an entire area, then the digimon universe wasn't terribly stable.
"All right," the kid said, putting on his backpack, standing back up. "I don't have a mirror here," he said, standing up and putting the backpack on. "But there is one at the castle."
"Well, if we're going to destroy the digital world, then why not start from the ominous, evil castle with black, glitchy clouds looming over it?"
"Yeah," he said, pulling out a remote-looking device from his backpack, opening a portal into a hallway full of candles and spiked statues of armor. I followed him through.
~~~