Okay, so I've brought it up here before, but I have a fanfic I'm working on over on AO3. It's called Some Kind of Cyberpunk, and it's a Yoroiden Samurai Troopers/Digimon fusion fic.
Why, you ask? Because I could. But mainly because some years ago, I got a secondhand or more copy of the old Bandai DVD release of the Gaiden and Legend of the Kikoutei Armor OAV. One side had the dubbed Ronin Warriors version, and the other had the subbed Samurai Troopers version.
Gaiden is a WEIRD story. I think I read somewhere that it was a thank you for fans who supported the series. It's two episodes for a story that absolutely needed at least three or four, and it shows. Anyway, the storyline involves the Troopers discovering that their friend Seiji has been lured to America in order for a sorcerer and a mad scientist that I've described as an absolutely unlikeable version of Peter Venkman to experiment with controlling his armor via technomystical means. They meet up with a girl named Luna who wants revenge for her dead brother, and end up having to go to Los Angeles' Little Tokyo neighborhood to confront the culprits. Seiji is unhooked from the computer he's been hotwired into, and Luna dies taking a blow for the sidekick characters Nastui and Jun while trying to stab the sorcerer when he goes after them.
The OAV ends with them back in New York, reuniting with their friends, and Ryo throws a bouquet of flowers off of a bridge, presumably for Luna.
That's it. The events of this little storyline are never mentioned again, aside from the implication that Shuu has had to use the rest of the money he won in Gaiden to pay for their trip to Africa in the next OAV. The final OAV storyline, Message, is done mostly in monologues by the Troopers over flashback footage, and Seiji's episode never mentions the use of his armor to murder innocent people. Ryo's episode never brings up that a girl who loved him died in his arms, a smile on her face.
And that irked me. But more than that, I was inspired. Because as the computer freaked out over the Kikoutei super armor, I remembered how in Digimon lore Ikkakkumon was discovered in the computer of an Arctic research base. And then I wondered what kind of Digimon could have resulted from a teenage boy with mystical armor made from a demon lord's corpse being hotwired into a computer with occultic programming.
I organized what would become the prototype playlist that acted as a soundtrack. The characters came next. Dianamon has always played a major role in the story, but as the plot evolved, so did her role. Much has been made about the fact that she can shift to a human form. As of right now in the story, the reasoning behind that is a mystery to the characters, who are still in the dark about many things.
Sage has always been meant to be a riff on the Ronin Warriors dub, but it's also a misinterpretation of his first words when encountered. He is an embodiment of the program used to control the Korin armor (and something else), and due to the extensive connection with Seiji, has his memories up until a certain point.
The people who discovered him are original characters, a necessity for a series so focused on the core characters that there is pretty much no one else important to the series. Background characters are rare in Samurai Troopers, and the title characters and their three companions are always kept separate from them. Anyone else who interacts with them are either enemies or are going to die. That's it.
So I wanted a way for the OCs to be able to connect. And that's where Rachel and her parents come in. Rachel and her friend Jason like doing urban exploration, a practice of wandering around places that are obscure or off limits. This can be hazardous, due to various circumstances like building conditions, people, and surprise animals.
Rachel learned self defense from her father, a man who had joined the army after she was born to help his little family. After he was stationed in Okinawa when she was three, the events of the first arc of the Samurai Troopers TV series occurred, and he was among a group from his base sent into Shinjuku when the populace went missing. His experience would lead to a great deal of PTSD, an honorable discharge, and an eventual career as the paranormal consultant for the city of Los Angeles due to it. He's still amazed that that turned out to be an actual career choice, but has set up a network of informants and associates that keep an eye on the City of the Angels.
Rachel herself is a young foul mouthed blonde woman with a tendency to think with her fists when she's angry, something that has gotten her into trouble in the past. An encounter with a bully in kindergarten led her to her friend Jason, a quiet nerdy boy with black hair that's always falling into his eyes. They've been friends ever since, and he treats their exploration hobby like real life dungeon crawling, making maps and researching the places they visit. He gets a lot of help from Rachel's mother Laura, a librarian at the LA Public Library. A fellow nerd, Laura speaks her mind, a habit her daughter has picked up on (much to her chagrin).
A report about a hidden tunnel in a cemetery outside of a long abandoned Buddhist temple in Little Tokyo sets off the events of the story. There have long been stories about that part of the neighborhood, as the property had been known to be associated with a man who had a reputation as a sorcerer. People who crossed him tended to end up in bad shape, dead, or just never seen again and presumed dead. Wanting to check this out before the neighborhood kids get curious and investigate it themselves, Richard calls his daughter, asking her and Jason to help look things over before closing it off.
Needless to say, they find more than they bargained for, A burned out computer on a raised platform above a pool of water. Wires leading into the pool below, weighed down by a white shape that moves in a way that Richard Does Not Like. Scattered papers and notes about a process to mesh magic and technology, using what sounds like a teenager lured to the place for that specific purpose. An old army knife and a bloodstain. And then there's the boy who shifts like satellite signal in bad weather, who can give off static and emit lightning. Using what information they can gather from him and the notes, they form a theory about what happened.
They think Sage is a remnant created from a boy that died down in that moldy pit that still smells of ashes and rot.
They aren't right. But they're not wrong, either. They're just missing a great deal of information. Either way, they mean to track down his companions, the mysterious Samurai Troopers. Because they deserve to know that their friend is still alive, in a way.
But what's going to happen when they meet? What are these strange beings that call themselves Digimon, and just what can they do?
I have had a LOT of fun plotting out this story. It's been in my head for about ten years now, and I'm still tweaking it.
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