Dark Beginnings

[kaito]

The sun was beating down on a small clearing, the heat made tolerable by a light breeze that gently stirred the branches. Kaito stood in the center, a fierce look on his face, facing a log that had been stood upright and partially buried to hold it in place. He settled into a stance, then begin his practice, striking the log in a series of kata's, starting slowly, then gradually working faster, going through the same routine that he had done for weeks. After a few particularly hard strikes, the log shifted, causing Kaito to pause and glare at it angrily. He immediately began moving it back into position, grumbling to himself. "Figures, just when I get into the rhythm of it, the blasted thing shifts..." He paused, looking around, sure he had heard a noise, then shrugged and continued re-centering the log.

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Akui, a Dracmon, watched Kaito from the trees, amused at the boys attitude.
Heh, he's a sharp one, he heard me snicker...I should be more careful if I'm gonna keep watching him...though maybe it's about time I approached him anyway...
Akui had arrived in the human world a few days ago, and had been scouting for possible tamers. He knew that it would be a way to gain power quickly, but he wanted to choose one who would be easily swayed to do what he wanted. He had watched Kaito for several days, considering the boy as a partner. He does this every day, seems he is trying to work out some anger...he should be the perfect partner, with that kind of frustration, he should be easily manipulated...well, here goes nothing... He quietly jumped down from the tree, and slowly walked into the clearing. "Pretty impressive skills..for a human anyway..."

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Kaito turned to stare at the strange creature that had just walked into view. Unsure of it's intentions, he settled into a defensive stance, just to be ready if it chose to attack. "What are you, and what do you want?" Akui grinned, wider than even the usual grin that covered his species faces. "In answer to your first question, I am Akui, a Dracmon, as for what I want...I wish to make an offer..."

Kaito stared intently at the creature, a look of uncertainty crossing his face. " Dracmon? As in a Digimon? You have got to be kidding me, do you really think I'd fall for a trick like that? Digimon are just a card game the kids play..."

Akui snickered, crossing his arms. " Not real, eh? Then explain this..." He sprung back to the treeline, landing next to a small tree. "Terror Claw!" A black aura surrounded his right hand, and he swiped at the tree, neatly slicing it in half. The top half of the tree toppled over, making a decent crash. "Well, am I real or not?" He said with a smirk.

Kaito gazed at him in shock, hardly able to believe what he just saw. Did...did that really just happen? Is he actually...wait...didn't he say something about an offer?
He looked at him intently once more. "Okay, so you're real...what did you mean by an 'offer' ?"

Akui grinned again, pleased at the way this was progressing. "Well, now you know that digimon are real, so let me fill you in on a few things...we show up here in your world quite often, and a few of us partner with a human. This offers the human a powerful companion, and the digimon can grow in power much faster with a humans help. I've been watching you, and I would like to extend an offer of partnership to you. You seem like an ambitious human, and one who is more than capable of taking care of themselves, not like the weak fools most digimon end up with...so how about it? Partners? "

Kaito stood there for a few moments, eyes closed, taking it all in. Finally he looked up at Akui and nodded. "Sounds interesting...I think...yeah, partners, as long as you don't mind being a sparring partner every once in a while? "

Akui nodded, amused at how easily his plan had worked. " Sure thing, I enjoy a good fight...so, then it's settled...partners. "

A glow began to emanate from the side of Kaito's backpack that had been sitting off to the side. Kaito walked over, opening the pocket and taking out a cell phone, which immediately shifted into a D-arc. " Whoa...I assume that is part of this whole partner thing? " Akui nodded and handed him three cards. " That's your D-arc, it shows that you're my Tamer. You can do several things with it, most importantly, you can scan these cards in battle to give me extra power during a fight. So, shall we look for an opponent to face to test it out? I'm sure there must be a digimon somewhere in this forest, I've been staying here because it's the perfect place to hide out..."

Kaito grinned, taking the cards and examining them. "Sounds fun to me...lead the way Akui, you would know how to find another digimon better than I would..."

Akui smirked, popping his knuckles. " Fair enough, let's go! " They immediately began searching the woods for an opponent.

[ambermon]

Ambermon sat, waiting inside her 'den' -- a deep hole in the ground beneath the roots of a large tree. Numerous blankets lined the walls and ceilings, the two entrances covered by rugs. One side of the den was dedicated to hers, and now her Dorumon's bed, the other side had holes dug out, each for holding various objects and food. She hated most of the stuff, but humanity's society made it impossible for anyone who wanted, to live purely. She had no choice but to rely on their cursed trinkets to keep herself alive.

Ambermon's gaze darted to the south entrance as it shook, but relaxed as that familiar purple nose poked in. He was dragging a plastic bag behind him. "This all should last us the night." Dorumon muttered, dropping his burden in the middle of the den. Amber looked inside. There were a few things they couldn't use. Chicken breast and eggs they had no way of cooking. Flour and baking soda was useless. But there was some fruit, mushrooms, bread, cereal, pre-made sushi rolls and a carton of milk they could use.

Ambermon took out the good stuff, leaving the unusable items in the bag which she set aside. She took the milk first, unscrewing the lid, and after taking a sniff, drank a bit of it. Dorumon meanwhile ripped open the sushi rolls, and eating his own share. "Here. Drink as much as you want, it won't last long anyways." said Amber. Dorumon nodded and accepted the carton, pushing the tray of sushi rolls toward Amber.

Dorumon had never known a human quite like Amber. He had watched other humans with digimon partners. They had treated them as nothing more than pets or tools of destruction. Such selfish creatures. They may have saved both the human and digital worlds in the past, but Dorumon did not doubt for a second that they would have let the digital world fall in a second if their own world was not in danger.

He had never even intended to end up in the human world. He had been fighting along side the resistance against an army of digimon that had attacked his home. He still wanted to fight, defend his friends, destroy those responsible for the attack. But he was here, trapped in this world. The only thing he could do was destroy the digimon who had betrayed their own kind to side with the humans that threatened their own kind. Pick them off and reduce their threat to the digital world best he could.

The only positive thing he had gotten out of this horrid mess was discovering Amber. He still had doubts about his decision, but he knew not all digimon were evil, so there obviously were some exception in the humans. Few, but they were obviously there. He wasn't about to stop and ask if anyone was evil or not though. Fishing out the liars would take too much time. Amber had been lucky, but he wouldn't waste any more of his time when time meant everything.

Amber ate the remaining Sushi rolls, and for once in her lifetime, she looked... Happy. If one looked at her now, they would not see the hateful girl who had learned to despise her own species, but a young woman who looked nearly normal. Dorumon had been a blessing on her life. A spark of light in the darkness that surrounded her. The one friend she could trust. The only living creature in the world she ever felt any connection with. Whenever she was with Dorumon, she felt okay.

Dorumon drank about a third of the milk down, before handing it back to Amber, who screwed the lid back on, then tossed, both the milk and the garbage from the sushi tray in the bag with the other useless junk. Dorumon then stalked to the northern entrance, poking his head out, sniffing. He could hear something outside, a strange noise like someone chopping wood. He could also smell digimon. "Ambermon. There is a digimon out there." He growled.

Amber nodded. "Lets deal with them then." She said, pulling on her metal claws. Dorumon had stolen them for her with great difficulty, and they had been of great use to her. They headed out, carely stalking through the cover, Dorumon tracking the digimon's scent. After a while, they came across a human and a Dracmon. Ambermon glanced over to her partner, but he used his tail to block her way.

Dorumon listened intently to their conversation. Of course, yet another weakling digimon, incapable of fighting on their own pathetic strength, betraying their race for the sake of their own power. He'd show them. "Oh how pathetic." Dorumon snarled as he slinked out of the bushes, glaring back and forth between the human and Dracmon, Amber following him close behind, her expression no different than her partner's. "How weak, how greedy, how desperate one must be. Siding with some human, no different from any other human who threatens our kind. Betraying your own kind, for power you are too weak to get on your own." He rambled on, though ending his rant with one blunt statement. "You are dead! Metal Cannon!" He snapped, firing an orb of metal at the Dracmon.

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[Mirei]

Ahh .. another day in the forest. Life was still a bit lonely for the palmon who made of it her home since a few weeks ago, but eventually got used to it and now tried to get the best out of her situation.

By now she knew very well every nook and cranny of the forest and knew what places were good to free walk around and which places were dangerous, one of them being that thinly veiled underground hideour where a human girl and her digimon partner lived. The palmon at first tried to contact them and make friends with them, but there was an air of danger coming from those two, who always looked like they were angry with everything. What's more, the dorumon seemed to be quite aggressive and actively was sniffing for intruders. The palmon luckily blended very well with the forest and smelled like the vegetation of the area, becoming undetectable by digimons with powerful noses and refrained herself from getter closer to that dangerous area.

There was a shrine too in the forest, the place where she appeared the first time she emerged into the human world. That was another place to avoid as humans visited it very frequently and she could run into the ever scary adult humans whom were rumored to eat digimon.

Anyway, this time she wasn't lurking near the hideout of that dangerous duo but simply spying a human who lately came to the forest to train his body. When one is lonely as this palmon, even spying from the distance humans was enough to keep her emotionally stable.

However, this time something was different: a digimon appeared out of nowhere and and after slicing through a tree that did nothing to them tempted the human with vain promises of power, he clearly was evil, even more evil than her old friend devimon from the digital world.

The Palmon felt indignation for the lack of respect the dracmon had for nature and decided to abandon her neat hideout and tell them to stop being mean, but then the terrible duo she learned to avoid appeared, speaking about death, greed and other things and the dorumon attacked, spitting from his foul mouth a ball of metal. The palmon had divided feelings regarding this situation: the dracmon deserved punishment for hurting a poor tree, but the dorumon was a digimon with an aura of danger that could cause even more damage to the poor forest. At the end she decided to do something despite the danger that represented getting in the middle of those two dangerous digimon.

"Don't fight in the forest!"

She left her most exquisite hideout not even the cunning dorumon could've detected and extended her vine-like claws to capture the metal ball. One wouldn't known just by looking at them, but palmons were fairly strong digimon and she stopped the metal ball on its tracks after catching it with her claws and dropped in on the ground, where it would harm no one and safely disintegrate a few seconds later. Had she not stopped it, the metal ball would've impacted into a tree and damage it badly in the case the dracmon dodged it.

"Both of you stop hurting mother nature, those trees and flowers did nothing to you, evil digimon!"

Neither the dracmon nor the dorumon seemed to respect nature, the dracmon sliced in half a poor tree and dorumon couldn't care less about the collateral damage his brutal ways could cause. It was more than clear that those digimon were of the kind that would be hard if not impossible to befriend.

[zetsumei]

Kaito had grinned at first when the purple digimon had appeared, glad they had located an opponent so quickly. His enthusiasm had dulled a bit, seeing the fervor at which it had, clearly not going to be an easy fight. All thoughts of excitement were gone however as soon as it attacked suddenly and violently, though Akui had been spared the damage by the appearance of a second digimon. Crap, this is more than I think we can handle for now....the purple one seems hell-bent on killing us, and the plant thing over there is spouting hippie nonsense...maybe a retreat is in order He glanced at the cards Akui had handed him, taking note of one that might be of assistance. Now, if we can just buy some time...wait, the D-arc showed Akui's attacks...maybe if we..that should work, time to give it a shot... He took a defensive stance and called out to Akui. " Akui, stun him, we should get outta here!"

Meanwhile, Akui had been sizing up the opponents. As far as he was concerned, the Palmon probably wasn't much of a threat, but the other one...he had a strong feeling that that attack would've knocked him half-unconscious. He had come to the same conclusion as Kaito, retreat, and do it fast! He nodded at Kaito's command, raising his palms in Dorumon's direction. " Eye of Nightmare!" He fired the paralyzing attack, then jumped back, ready to either run, or defend himself if need be.

[ambermon]

Dorumon spat as his attack was blocked, not by the Dracmon, but the vines of a Palmon. The metal ball instead dropped from Palmon's vines, and onto the grass, where it disintegrated, leaving a patch of bare earth. Dorumon simply rolled his eyes at the Palmon. "No respect for nature? You just killed dozens of blades of grass to save a tree that likely wasn't even going to be hit. Good going." Dorumon snickered at the Palmon.

Idiot Palmon one might as well complain about people stepping on bugs. Stepping on a few just couldn't be helped. He thought, rolling his eyes. He would deal with this Dracmon, then see if the Palmon needed to be sorted out afterward. "Keep your nonsense out of this." He huffed, then went to fire another metal cannon. However, he got trapped in the Dracmon's stare, and was instead frozen to the spot, unable to move. "Dorumon? Dorumon move! Move now!" Amber called, a note of panic as she watched her partner stand frozen, standing before two enemies.

[Mirei]

Oh the hypocrisy! The dorumon was really a very mean digimon, comparing the always energetic grass, which always recovered from any hardship in no time and gave its life to the animals who are it, with the strong and long lived tree, which firmly would endure even forest fires, but whose recovery speed was slow and any damage would take years to heal.

The Dracmon seemed to be a bit more considerate, but the palmon could never imagine what kind of things he had in mind as he answered not to her criticism and instead attacked with paralyzing beams at the hypocrite dorumon before jumping back as if ready to prepare himself for defensive maneuvers.

"I think the one that should feel bad is you for using dangerous things in the middle of the forest. One of my friends warned me about digimon like you who would try to confuse me and blame me for what they do, and your metal balls were going to hurt the trees and the grass even without me doing anything!"

True, she was naive and didn't know very well about how the world worked, but thanks to her friends and the time she stayed living alone in the forest let her understand a bit more about the world and the different kind of people she might met. At the time of that incident it was really a blessing that she omitted the part about her friend being a human for the foe felt only hatred for the human race and any digimon who bonded with them.

With the dorumon immobilized for the dracmon's attack, she was free to asses the damage caused by the monster's metal ball, the grass was a bit flattered but no more harm was caused. Maybe if the metal balls caused damage by burning or harming with energy, the ground would've suffered, but the metal ball was just that, an heavy metallic sphere and other than flattening the grass, did nothing else.

"Now be nice digimon and stop fighting, all digimon should be friends, just like me with my plant digimon friends Lala-chan and Arurau-chan"

The palmon hoped they stopped fighting and quietly walked a few meters away from them, hiding behind a tree as she started to breath slightly faster. Dealing with that dorumon that even a dracmon feared was scary and she was surprised she managed to stay relatively calm in front of that digimon with an aura of danger. That dangerous creature was even scarier in person, something about his cruel and hatred filled eyes caused a great deal of fear within the palmon.

[kaito]

Both Akui and Kaito sighed with relief that the paralyzing move had worked. Kaito heard Amber calling out and rolled his eyes. " Figures, he has a tamer...let's get out of here quickly..." He began to run, moving quite swiftly away from the area, quickly disappearing into the woods. Akui made a rude gesture towards Dorumon, gave a quick wave to Mirei, then followed Kaito's lead, also vanishing quickly. That Palmon could be useful in the future, I'll have to remember that she's around here. Hopefully that wave will have been friendly enough to get her a bit more amicable, better a friend than an enemy, that Dorumon is more than enough enemy to have to deal with...

They both stopped after a while, deeming it far enough away that it was safe to rest. Kaito leaned against a tree, breathing hard. "I..I think we lost them...I hope...he would've been a pain to actually fight. If we run into him again, we'll use hit and run tactics, stunning him and getting a hit in, then evading him again. Sound good?" Akui grinned, plopping down on the ground near Kaito. " I like the way you think, I couldn't have come up with a better plan myself..."

They both sat there for a few moments, catching their breath, and thinking of the next encounter, Kaito running through the battle in his head, and Akui thinking of how wonderful it would be to shred that annoying Dorumon and absorb his data...

[ambermon]

Dorumon remained frozen for a while, and the Dracmon was given the opportunity to escape, which it took without hesitating. When Dorumon finally snapped out of it, there was no point in even going after the duo. He'd track them down later now on the Palmon, he could only shake his had.

"In a perfect world, everyone would be friends. But we don't live in that world Palmon. Our world is filled with those who would destroy our loved ones, and enforce their will on you the second you let your guard down. Enemies don't listen to talk. While you babble on about 'everyone should be friends' to your enemy, your enemy will be busy devouring Lala-chan and Arurau-chan's data, and then your own. If you are fine with that for sake of saving a few bits of vegetation that might be destroyed in battle, then that is your own business. But I prefer my friends alive, and I'll fight all who threaten them. Don't get in my way again. Preventing me from stopping those who would kill my friends is no worse than if you had destroyed them with your own vines, and I won't ignore that threat twice!" Dorumon growled, before turning around and heading back into the bushes, Amber following close behind him.

[Mirei]

The scared palmon didn't manage to listen much of what the dorumon said, she only heard the part about how only in a perfect world everybody could be friends and that's all, she was too focused in getting far away from the paralyzed dorumon to pay attention to his last words and by the time she stopped next to a tree to calm release all the stress from having to deal with those two weird digimon, she was too far from the beast digimon to hear anything else

She took a breath during the small pause and retreated further into the forest as soon she checked that the dorumon wasn't following her, he could do many nasty things to the little garden she was raising if he had a battle there.

"Shana-tan, Hanako-tan, arurau-chan and lala-chan ... that dorumon was sooo scary ..."

She spoke with herself alone and wondered why some digimon simply refused to be friends, they surely were very weird and silly if they didn't want to make more friends and preferred to fight each other. To her, fighting was bad and makes people sad, and anyone who likes to fight was bad by default.

The plant digimon looked at the place where she planted some seeds and poured some water on them, telling herself that no matter how bad things got, the flowers would always be her friends and that someday everybody would be able to become friends. And so her day continued uneventful after witnessing the dark beginning of the alliance between a human and a dracmon.

[exit thread]

[kaito]

After a minute of rest, Kaito stood up, brushing off the various twigs and leaves that had gotten stuck to his clothes during the escape. " Well, that was enough excitement for me today, how about heading home? Tomorrow I'll go see if I can find some more of these cards, maybe a few that will help us take on that Dorumon, how about it?" He said with a grin. Akui chuckled and nodded. "Sounds good to me..."

They began walking home, keeping a close watch for any more digimon that might cause them trouble.