Many of you have probably seen this 👆 before, but if you haven't? It should pull at your heartstrings, I have watched it multiple times and it still pulls at mine. 💧
I know it's NOT quite New Year's yet, but I AM dedicating 2025 to ALL of those who died before us, whose Spirit has risen up in ALL of YOU fighting today.
WE "ARE" Winning‼️
So Thank You to ALL of you who took that oath and to ALL of those digital warriors I serve with. YOU are my tribe!!! 🤔
Digital Fighters
A Human Adventure AU
Chapter 1: And So It Begins
Seven kids find themselves abandoned in the woods with no knowledge of who they are, only that they are a type of augmented human being capable of downloading fighting skills to their minds and upgrading themselves into more powerful forms. A surprise attack forces them from their safe forest clearing and into a world where survival of the fittest is law.
A/N: Hey, guys! Meg here. I figured in honor of Odaiba Day I’d finally upload the first chapter of my Digimon Adventure gijinka AU. I had to do quite a bit of world-building combined with some fake sci-fi science for this project, but it’s been rather fun. Thank you for reading!
Even at night, the city thrummed with electricity and anticipation. A bright yellow haze hung in the sky, emanating from countless streetlights and blotting out the stars. The moon itself was new; its dark edges were scarcely visible unless one strained to find them. Four figures moved as quiet and dark as shadows through unlit alleyways and back roads. If they were seen, they were ignored. Frightened tenants turned out their lights and closed the curtains as the figures passed. The time of anticipation was over. The Masters had arrived.
Unaware their time was running short, the Agents worked hard in the lab at the center of the city. They busied themselves with checking on and making adjustments to eight human-sized chambers built and laid out across the laboratory floor. Connected to each of these chambers was a much smaller device, roughly similar in size and shape to a smartphone. Each chamber had their own uniquely-colored device, plugged in and charging atop them.
One man in particular, a white-robed individual with brown hair bound in a small ponytail, sat in front of a computer configuring small cartridges that matched the colors of the small devices. He was almost finished, only needing to download information to the final pink cartridge; the task had gotten familiar to him now, and he sat back in his chair, lazily allowing the download to complete.
“How's that last crest coming, Gennai?” One of the other Agents questioned, absentmindedly clearing off and organizing the countertops.
“Almost done, now,” Gennai said. The crest finished its download and ejected.
Then, the lab darkened. A disturbing silence fell over the building with the absence of the electricity's constant background noise. Gennai and his companions froze, exchanging uncertain glances. A blown fuse? A distant thunderstorm? Or had their deadline arrived earlier than expected? Their answer arrived in the form of a distant explosion that rocked the building. Several of the Agents rushed to grab weapons and ran out into the lab's vast corridors, prepared to confront their enemies.
A hole was torn through the wall by a fiery blast. Gennai slipped through the opening, peering through the smoke and into the hallway. He could see various enemy robots and minions doing battle with his colleagues, and then, easily cutting through Agents and ushering more soldiers forward into the fray, the formidable threat of the four Dark Masters slowly advancing toward their target. They seemed unaffected by the violence, approaching with a casual ease, as if the Agents' struggle meant nothing.
Gennai hurried back into the lab with the chambers and slammed a large emergency button on the wall. The chambers themselves began lowering into the floor. Gennai grabbed a weapon for himself and leaped into hole in the floor; a mechanical door closed over top of him. He landed easily in the cockpit of an underground jet and began making preparations to evacuate. The engine roared to life. Gennai looked over his shoulder to check the storage area behind him, making sure all eight chambers had been secured in the back of the jet. Then, he took off.
One of the Masters – a tall, barrel-chested monstrosity clad in gleaming armor with a helmet resembling a dragon's face and muzzle – came into the laboratory to find the chambers he sought missing. He heard the roar of the jet's engine and used the massive gun in his possession to blast a hole in the wall; looking out into the city, he saw Gennai's craft speeding away into the darkness. The Master grunted disdainfully, hefting his weapon up on his shoulder once more, firing the gun-cannon at the distant target.
The shot missed, but did enough damage, scraping open the bottom of the aircraft enough and loosening the straps on one of the chambers. Gennai yelled in frustration as the chamber eventually broke through its ties, rolling out of the whole in the floor and plummeting into the forest on the outskirts of the city. He pounded the steering wheel with one tightened fist, but continued flying straight – after all, keeping the remaining seven safe was more important than going back for one.
Back in the lab, one of the Masters, this one a tall, thin man obscuring his face with a black and white mask, carefully surveyed the losses on both sides. All of the Agents, besides the escapee, were dead, and their corpses littered the floors around his feet. However, the one who had fled had single-handedly defeated the purpose of their mission – to obtain the special cradles the Agents worked so hard to construct, their final and most powerful weapon against the Dark Masters' advancing conquest.
Maybe all was not lost, though. The Master spotted the stack of crests sitting atop Gennai's former desk. He lifted one of them by the edges, careful not to smudge Gennai's fingerprints, and with a wave of his hand he lifted the prints from the cartridge as if by magic. The Master's eyes gleamed as he recognized whose fingerprints he'd found – the one survivor, the escapee. With another elegant gesture he corrupted the data in front of him.
One of the other Dark Masters, who appeared to be a child-sized puppet, asked, “What did you do to him?”
“An aging curse,” the other mused, a smirk playing on his curved lips. “In a matter of weeks he will become old and weak and senile.”
~
Months had passed since the seven children awoke by themselves in a clearing in the midst of a forest. All they knew about themselves was that they were human, but a strange sort of human that Tento called an “augmented lifeform.” He explained to the others, who didn't possess his sort of intelligence, that their brains could connect to something called the “cloud” and use the Internet to... mess with reality... or something. Tento was a whole lot more eloquent than that, but Agu didn't quite get it. All he knew is that he could, for whatever reason, mentally convert the world around him into data, and change it around with his mind.
Agu was a sort of unofficial leader. His cheerful outlook and kind, optimistic way of speaking kept the group from falling apart. He was loyal and unashamed of anything – some could even say reckless. He had sand-blonde hair, sun-seared dark skin, and vivid green eyes that glittered when he grinned, along with a pair of dark brown goggles covering his forehead. So far, the strange accessory had proven to be useless, but he kept them around just in case. Besides – they'd become his signature.
The others were varied and diverse in appearance. Gabu concealed most of his own fair blonde hair – a few shades lighter than Agu's – beneath an unzipped blue jacket with the hood up. He was broad-shouldered and thick, the sort of person who looks vaguely chubby until you realize that's just all muscle under there. In contrast, Biyo was a tan, lean twig, round-cheeked, and with a small but downturned nose and a messy sprout of pink hair above alert, birdlike eyes.
Shorter than the others, Tento could often be found hunching over things and staring at them through a set of green-tinted magnifying lenses fastened to the top of his glasses. His dark brown hair was immaculately swooped to one side at all times, and the brown shell-shaped pack strapped to his back was where they initially found all of their rations that first confusing day in the forest. He was often accompanied by Palm, a short and plump little brown-skinned girl with wavy leaf-green hair topped with a pink beanie. The green cardigan she'd been found in was slightly too large for her and hung long over her fingertips. The third member of their clique was the outspoken and quick-witted Goma, a pale skinny man with a wild firetruck-red fauxhawk and a toothy sideways smile. Though Tento didn't seem much for human contact, he and Goma liked Palm's company, and she became the center around which their trio revolved.
Pata appeared to be the youngest of the bunch, though none of them really knew how old any of them were, so it was possible he was just immature. Pata clung to Gabu and adopted him as a sort of protective older brother figure, following him everywhere and helping out with chores. His ginger-auburn hair was chin-length and mussed, and he wore a little bomber hat with the built-in goggles over his eyes, creating weird tan lines between the upper and lower halves of his face.
Their only possessions were the trees around them, months' worth of rations that someone left behind for them, the weird machines out of which they crawled upon waking up, and seven strange devices that sometimes allowed them to upgrade their “augmentations.” None of them had figured out yet what triggered these upgrades, but every time they happened, it would download a “.MON” filetype and give them each a new name. They'd all just kind of learned to accept it. After all, they never knew anything different.
This uneventful way of life went on and on, with Agu and some of the others becoming restless, though little Palm, softspoken Gabu, and level-headed Tento often talked the rest of them out of wandering off. “Someone obviously left us here and supplied us with food,” Palm would always say. “We should stay in case they come back for us.”
As much as the others – Agu, Biyo, Goma, and Pata – wanted to go beyond their borders of their clearing, they saw the truth in her words, and reluctantly resisted their urge to explore.
But they had so many questions.
“Who are we? Can all humans do these things with their minds?”
“How old are we?”
“Why can't we remember anything before we were here?”
“What are these strange devices, and why do we have them?”
These questions gnawed at them from the inside. Even Palm, who encouraged the others to silence these thoughts to suppress their urge to wander, found herself hoping someone would come back to them with an explanation. This couldn't just be all there was, right? There was some reason, some purpose, to the seven of them being stranded like this?
One day they were all awoken from inside their metal chambers by a muffled buzzing noise. The children spilled out of their sleeping places, blinking groggily into the morning sun; then, they spotted the source of the noise. A man was descending upon them. He was tall, obviously older than them, and decorated in a sort of tough, smooth armor that resembled the outer shell of beetles. From his shoulder blades sprouted a pair of insect-like wings that created both the noise and a furious wind that bent the boughs of the trees as he lowered himself. The children could not see his eyes through the hard shell-like visor that covered half his face, and his mouth was stretched open, baring large, pointed teeth that had obviously been augmented for biting.
Without any sort of speech or warning, the stranger dove at them. The kids wasted no time in scattering, shrieking in terror. Tento threw himself under a fallen tree propped up on a rock, and realized the device in his hand was reacting; he pointed the eye of the device's camera toward the stranger. “Kuwaga.MON,” it told him. “Adult level. Virus type.”
He looked up from his hiding spot and realize Kuwaga had cornered several of the other Child-levels at the edge of a cliff, menacing them with the pincer-like weapons attached to his arms. Gabu stood protectively in front of Pata, while Palm clung tightly to Goma, mouth agape in fear. Agu, Tento, and Piyo emerged from the woods and rushed to their companions' sides. They were all frightened, but resolute.
Agu shouted in encouragement, “Guys, it's time to use those powers we downloaded!”
The sensation was strange; they all mentally reached into themselves, willing their powers to surface, as if something lying dormant at the bottom of a body of water was being pushed to the top. Then, all at once, the attack launched forth from them – Agu and Piyo's fire, Gabu's icy-cold beam, Pata's burst of air, Goma's wave of water, Tento's electricity, and Palm's vines. The assault caught Kuwaga off guard, and he stumbled back in shock; however, their abilities only angered him.
With a roar and a summoning of inhuman strength, he threw his fist to the ground, causing a massive fissure in the cliffside. The earth moved under their feet. The children felt their stomachs jump into their throats as the cliff crumbled beneath them and dragged them along in a massive rockslide; even Kuwaga got pulled along, having underestimated the power of his fist. Barely managing to eke out their screams over the rush of adrenaline through their bodies, the children plummeted toward a river. Only Goma thought quickly enough to summon his own water-based powers, calling up a school of fish to catch them and break their fall.
Between the “OOF!” of all the kids landing and the rush of water as the fish transported them to the shore, they all stumbled with uncertainty onto dry land, hearts pounding, legs shaky and weak, and disoriented. Agu grasped onto a tree branch and hauled himself onto his feet, glancing back at the rubble. Kuwaga was nowhere to be seen.
“Well,” he muttered. “I suppose staying in one place really isn't an option anymore.”
They all looked up. The cliff looked a million miles away. Had they really fallen so far? None of them had the energy to climb such a thing back to their makeshift home.
Tento looked at the river. “I read online that civilizations often form near rivers due to the importance of water to human survival. If we follow the river, perhaps we should eventually stumble upon other lifeforms.”
“As long as they're not like that one,” Pata whimpered.
