Legend of the Digi-Destined
---By Blitzkrieg---

What would you think if I sang out of of tune
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song
And I'll try not to sing out of key.
I get by with a little help from my friends
I get high with a little help from my friends
Gonna with a little help from my friends

What do I do when my love is away?
(Does it worry you to be alone?)
How do I feel by the end of the day?
(Are you sad because you're on your own?)
No, I get by with a little help from my friends
Yes, I get high with a little help from my friends
Gonna try with a little help from my friends

(Do you need any body?)
I need some body to love
(Could it be any body?)
I want somebody to love

(Would you belive in a love at first sight?)
Yes I'm certain that it happens all the time
(What do you see when you turn out the lights?)
I can't tell you but I know it's mine
Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Oh, I get high with a little help from my friends
Gonna try with a little help from my friends

(Do you need any body?)
I need some body to love
(Could it be any body?)
I want somebody to love
Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Oh, I get high with a little help from my friends
Gonna try with a little help from my friends
Yes I get by with a little help from my friends
With a little help from my friends!


"With A Little Help From My Friends"
By John Lennon and Paul McCartney
from Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles


                                                                                        Chapter 2: Together again


Leomon balanced effortlessly on the giant tree overlooking most of the forest. He hadn't seen the seven lights that he had been told fell from the sky; but he did hear them. He doubted that there was any one on this side of the island hadn't. What he did see was seven creatures scattered, unconscious, through out the forest. They didn't look like any Digimon that Leomon had ever seen. They didn't look like anything he'd ever seen period. Rather than attempt to wake them, Leomon decided that it would be wiser to wait and see what these creatures wanted.
Were they friendly?
Hostile?
Or maybe...
As he mussed to himself over the new arrivals' intentions, that thought flashed across his mind again. The same thought that came into his mind when he first heard about the new creatures: could they be the ones? Were these strangers the saviors he'd been looking for so long? "Stop", he thought to himself; the last thing he needed know was to get his hopes up. File Island was getting more dangerous by the day, he couldn't allow himself to be distracted. From his perch, Leomon saw that several of the creatures had awoken and were beginning to move deeper into the jungle. He leapt silently from the tree to follow them. Yes, he would watch the strangers. He would find out whether or not yet another danger had befallen File Island...
Or if it's deliverance had finally arrived.


***************



"Really? You only see him once or twice a year?" Tsunomon remarked, more than a little surprised.
"Yep," Matt sighed "Birthdays usually. I don't think Dad's seen T.K. sense he was three. Mom won't let him anywhere near the little guy."
"But wouldn't T.K. want to see his father?" asked Tsunomon, thoroughly confused. This whole concept of "parents" was new to him, but he'd leaned enough from Matt to know that there was something fishy in what he was hearing.
"Yea, but she just won't let him"
"But why would she do that?" said Tsunomon, quite lost.
"Why the hell does she do anything?" Matt growled to himself before explaining: "See, Mom has to have everything and have it her way. If anything looks like it will interfere with her running the show, BAM!" At that, he slammed his fist into his hand with a loud thwack to illustrate before continuing: "She's mad enough that I went of to live with Dad, so she's paranoid that he will too. And the thing is, she's probably right. I bet she'd even make me stay away from T.K. too, but then he'd definitely ditch her."
"Gee, after being raised by someone most of his life, I'd think that he probably want to stay with that person." mussed Tsunomon.
Stay with the old witch? I don't think so Matt thought to himself. He didn't say it though.
Matt and Tsunomon had been walking through what at first seemed like a forest for some time now. However it was steadily looking less like a forest and more like a jungle. Everything about the place creaped Matt out. First there were the trees; the looked, for the most part, like ordinary trees, but the bark was this bizarre purple-ish blue. And the leaves were too green, almost neon green. What was worse was the sky. Put simply, the sky here looked like a kaleidoscope from hell. Every color imaginable was swirling around above his head in an almost hypnotizing fashion. With the bizarre, unearthly noises emanating from every place that couldn't be seen added to the mix, this jungle became the physical manifestation of just about every nightmare Matt ever had.
Unless, of course, he was having a nightmare.
He still hadn't been able to decide whether or not that was what was going on. While it was true that there was a huge amount of detail to what he was seeing, Matt had had some very detailed dreams over the years, and all the things he was seeing just seemed to be too incredible to be real. First and foremost among these things was Tsunomon. Tsunomon looked like large, round bean bag with a cartoonish face that resembled a cress between a bear and a wolf. That may sound a little threatening, but Tsunomon actually looked quite harmless, it's hard for a creature without limbs to be imposing. The only thing that looked threatening about him was the large horn that shot out of his forehead. Tsunomon had tried valiantly to explain to Matt what was going on, but, while he'd gotten most of it, it hadn't helped convince Matt that this wasn't all in his head. Supposedly, This place was called the "Digiworld" and all the creatures that lived there, including Tsunomon, were called "Digimon". aside from his companion, the only digimon Matt had seen thus far was a giant bug-like creature called Kuwagumon and, given the fact that he'd tried to eat them, Matt wasn't sure that he wanted to meet any more.
"Well, enough about T.K.," the little digimon picked up "didn't you say that some other humans were with you?"
"Yeah, there a pretty motley crew. Let's see...There's Izzy, he's a total computer geek. Then there's Mimi, she's a real girly-girl, and there's Joe, he's a total wimp; a real nerd too. Then there's Sora. Now Sora's all right, she's not all weird like the others. See she-" Matt was about to elaborate on Sora's virtues when he noticed the puzzled look on Tsunomon's face.
While most of Matt's dialect was new to the digimon, he'd been able to figure out most of it, but there was an odd omission in Matt's over view he'd noticed "I though you said there were seven of you, I only count six so far."
"Oh, yea, there's also Tai." Matt added dismissively "He's this scrawny jerk who's an expert at being a pain in the neck."
Before he could continue the insults, Tsunomon looked up with a start and shouted "Hold on a second!" So for a second, the two stood in silence.
"Some one's coming." Tsunomon whispered "You wait here. I'll go see what it is."
The little digimon then hopped, with surprising speed for a creature without limbs, up the tallest tree in view to take a look.
"What do you see? Is it that bug thing again?" Matt called.
"No. I'm not sure what it is. I've never seen anything that looked like this before." came the reply.
Realizing that it could well be one of the others, Matt called back "Well, what does it look like?"
"It's head looks very bizarre. It almost resembles a big, brown mushroom."
"That'd be Tai, all right." Matt said with a laugh.
"Your friend's a mushroom?"
"Well, he's not a mushroom, but he's actually not that different from your every day fungus." was Matt's sarcastic answer.
Not sure how serious Matt was, Tsunomon hopped down from the tree and said "Come on, let's go find him."

To say that Tai was happy to see Matt would be an understatement of apocalyptic proportions, thrilled doesn't even cover it adequately. "MAN, it's good to finally see a face that doesn't have fangs or antennas or something else coming out of it!" laughed Tai as he gave Matt a bear hug that came dangerously close to cutting off his air flow. Matt, despite himself, was glad to see another human as well; fortunately for Tai. If he'd been anything less than thrilled, he wouldn't have ignored the urge to sock Tai upside the head in response to the hug.
"Hey, lay off, man!" he responded instead "Where are the others?"
At that, Tai's face darkened "Oh, please. If I had seen any one, any one at all, would I be glad to see you? I haven't seen a single sign of intelligent life on this rock." he said, trying to cover up his discouragement..
"What do you mean ? I've been here with you the whole time!" shouted a round, pink thing behind Tai.
"Oh, hey, you haven't met. Matt this is Koromon. Koromon, Matt."
"Hey! You've got one of those things following you too?" remarked Matt.
Ignoring Matt, Koromon shouted to Tsunomon "Cool! You found your partner too!"
"Yep!" he answered proudly "We've been looking for you and the others. I bet they've found there partners too!"
"What?" Shouted Matt and Tai, almost in unison. Matt continued with "There are more of you?"
"Uh huh," answered Koromon "there are seven of us in our little group. We've all been waiting for you guys."
Hmmm...If they were waiting for us, they must have known we were coming. I wonder who told them? Matt thought to himself for a moment before getting back to the more pressing matter "Well, we were going to look for the others down in that valley, but I guess you did it for us."
"Yeah, nobody, we know down there." Tai sighed "But the jungle's supposed to thin out off that way." he said as he motioned to his right "That sounds like some place worth checking out."
"OK, let's go!" shouted Matt, already on his way.
"HEY! Wait for me!" cried Tai, running to keep up.
Behind the two, Koromon and Tsunomon hopped along together. "So, what do you think of them?" Tsunomon asked, motioning ahead towards Tai and Matt.
"Well, I guess I pictured them as being a little bigger." Koromon answered
"They sure don't look like anything I've seen before. What's that big black thing on... uh, what's your's named again?"
"Matt," Tsunomon explained "and the thing is called a jacket. They're supposed to be worn to stay warm, but he says he just wears it because he likes to."
"He must get cold easily." Koromon wondered.
"That stuff on-what's his name? Oh, yea-Tai's head looks pretty weird too." Tsunomon commented. Then he remembered some strange writing he'd seen on Tai's clothing "By the way, what's a Hendrix?" he asked.
"Oh, what ever you do, don't ask him that!" Koromon answered urgently "I did and it took him, like, two hours to finish telling me."
"You're joking, right?" laughed Tsunomon, incredulously.
"No way!" replied Koromon, serious, but with an odd grin on his face "He just stopped dead in his tracks, took a deep breath, and then I just had to sit there and wait for him to run out of words."
"Well, what is it, anyway?" Tsunomon pried.
"Some human that made music."
"You mean they have humans that actually make music?" said Tsunomon, surprised. They had music in the digiworld, but nobody actually invented it as far as he knew. It had always just been there.
"Uh huh." answered Koromon "But I hope he did it better than Tai. He tried to show me and it was horrible!" Koromon then let out a ridiculous sounding howl to illustrate. After taking a moment to laugh, the two scurried of to catch up with there partners.


***************



It took the better part of that day, but Matt an Tai were able to find the others. Sora had found TK shortly after she woke up and had been looking after him until they found them. The four found Izzy trying to collect sap from one of the gray/purple trees.
Apparently, he'd been at it for some time, because he wouldn't he wouldn't quit until he'd gotten through the ridiculously tough bark. As it turned out, the tree was completely hollow. Izzy was pretty annoyed at this, but the knowledge latter came in handy when they found Mimi. Some how, she'd managed to land in the middle of one of the trees, and everyone else had to help her cut a hole to get out. Joe was making use of the odd trees as well, except he was hiding in the branches on the top and wouldn't come down no matter how much the others yelled at him (they finally had to put together a rough lasso and drag him down).
As Tsunomon and Koromon had suggested, all of the others had digimon following them just like Matt and Tai. They all were the same in the sense that none of them were very big and all seemed to resemble a cross of a beanie baby and an acid tripper's fantasy. Outside of that, they really had very little in common with each other.

Yokomon, who said she was Sora's, looked a bit like a pink onion with petal like antenna coming out of her head and a ring of toe-like projections below her to provide locomotion.

Motimon, Izzy's little companion, was more of a pink sock puppet. Although he didn't have any legs on his stubby base, he did have two short arms with three finger-like stubs on each.

While Yokomon might have looked like a plant, Tanemon, Mimi's digimon, actually was; looking like a walking bean sprout. She had four hoof/feet and a sprout with two leaves coming out of the top.

Much to Joe's displeasure, he was followed by Bukamon, who, unlike his companions, actually looked like what we would consider to be a normal animal. He had the overall appearance of a very small seal, with the glaring deviation of a bright orange mohawk.

T.K.'s new friend was Tokomon, a little, white ball of fluff with red cheeks and four tiny legs. He'd have seemed totally harmless if it weren't for his surprisingly numerous teeth.

With the task of finding each other completed, the seven kids and there companions found themselves faced with a much more daunting task:
Finding a way of getting back to where they'd come from.
It was this nut that, camped around there makeshift campfire, they tried to crack.

"Why are we even thinking about trying to get home?" Joe whined, curled up in a ball away from the others "We don't know how! We don't know if it's even possable! I mean, for all we know, we could be on the other end of the universe! We could be in another dimention! And I'm sure there are plenty of other, worse thing that I haven't even thought of yet!"
"I don't think it's possible for there to be a bad thing that you can't think of." Tai moaned.
"Joe what chance do we have of succeeding at anything if we act like we've already failed?" Sora admonished.
"Well, we're going to fail, so I'm just getting a head start." Joe grumbled.
"As it is, we don't have anything to fail or succeed at." Izzy pointed out, deep in thought
"The only suggestion I've heard was T.K. idea about looking for an airport."
T.K. wasn't with the others, after they ridiculed his airport idea (insuring some severe yelling at from Matt as a result) he decided to leave the planning to the older kids and was playing with Tokomon.
"Hey, that guy looks a little like me!" squealed Tokomon about the little yellow creature on T.K.'s shirt.
"Hey yeah! I bet you'd look a lot like Pikachu if we painted you yellow!" T.K. said.
"You think we could try it some time?" Tokomon asked.
"I don't know, I painted Mom's cat once, and she got pretty mad at me." sighed T.K.
Meanwhile, back at the campfire, the others were hard at work planning there next move:
"Say, you know what? If you stare long enough at the sky here you start trippin'." mumbled Tai.
"Will you please concentrate, Tai?" shouted Matt "We need to work out a plan of what to do here!"
"That's what I'm doing." said Tai, out of it "I do all my best work when I'm tripping."
Matt figured that he knew better than to pursue that line of conversation any further, so he just shut up.
Izzy, however didn't.
"I certainly hope you don't mean that you make a habit of it." he said. Then Izzy suddenly had an idea. "Do you think there's any one here that would be capable of helping us?" he asked the digimon.
"Well, capable, yes. But willing? I'm not so sure." answered Tsunomon.
"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Sora warily.
"Well you see," started Motimon, in a knowledgeable vocabulary that didn't seem to fit his squeaking, cartoonish voice "the outer rim of File Island is populated by many villages of digimon."
"You should see the Tanemon village!" Tanemon interrupted "It has the prettiest little beach you've ever seen! You can just lie there for hours and hours and forget about everything! It's great!"
"OOOooo!" sighed Mimi "That sounds great! HEY, lets look for help there!"
"AHEM!" sounded Motimon, trying to sound imposing but coming off more like a baby's chew toy getting run over. "I was just getting to that. I'm afraid that the seven of us are none to popular in these settlements."
"Why?" asked Matt "Did you get kicked out?"
Before Motimon could answer, Joe wined "Great, not only are stuck in some freak show, who knows how far away from home, with weird little things following us; but now it turns out that they could be exiles! And you don't get exiled from someplace for no reason. Maybe there criminals! What did you do?" that last part he directed at Bukamon who had perched himself on his shoulder.
"Hey, I didn't do anything!" shouted Bukamon "Well, OK there was that little incident with the landslide, but that wasn't really my fault! I can prove it!"
"No one made us leave any where" Yokomon explained "It's just that we aren't from any of those villages to begin with."
"You see, they're inherently suspicious of any digimon that aren't from this island and, because we don't hail from one of the villages, they decided that we qualify." added Motimon.
"Wait a minute!" interrupted Yokomon "We're all quite welcome at the Yokomon village."
"That's because they're Yokomon." Koromon pointed out "Yokomon welcome every body."
"As I was saying..." Motimon shouted to regain the other's attention "Given there feelings about us, it doubtful that anyone in the villages - excepting, of course, the Yokomon -" he added, seeing the nasty glare Yokomon shot at him "would even consider helping a group of humans like you. We've never seen anything like you before."
"I dunno, I think Leomon's shaped kind of like them." mumbled Koromon, absent mindedly.
"THAT'S IT! LEOMON! Koromon, you're a GENIUS!" shouted Tsunomon.
"WHA-? What? What'd I do?" shouted Koromon, startled.
"We can get Leomon to help us!" "That's it!" cried Motimon in agreement "Leomon! He knows everything!"
"What are you talking about?" remarked Yokomon, incredulously "We can't go find Leomon!"
"Why not?" asked Matt.
"Is this Leomon from one of the digimon villages, too?" wondered Izzy.
"No, and that's just the problem." sighed Yokomon "We're not sure where he live. All we know is that it's deep in the jungles of the island. We'd never make it even if we knew where to look."
"Yokomon's right." concurred Tanemon "No one from the rim of the island ever goes very deep into the jungle. In fact, I don't think any one else has ever come as far as we did to find you."
"Yep, that's us!" laughed Bukamon "Explorers! Adventurers! Pioneers!"
"That's just my point." Yokomon insisted "given how hard it was for us to get this far there's no chance of us surviving a trip all the way in."
"Man, you guys whine more than Joe." mumbled Tai "The seven of us are each ten times as strong as you. Well, I don't know about T.K., Mimi, and Joe, but the rest of us are at least."
"Well, I don't know about that crack about Joe and Mimi," said Sora, with a scolding eye cast at Tai "but he does have a point, we can help you."
"Whoa, wait a minute!" interrupted Bukamon "I don't think you quite understand the idea here. We're here to protect you, it doesn't go the other way around."
"Well, ether way, I think it's getting to dark to do anything." broke in Matt, looking at the sky. While most of the colors were still there, it had all taken on a murky blue hue that was darkening it considerably. "I assume that you have nights here." he said.
"That we do." answered Tsunomon "And you're right, we don't need to be running around anywhere in the dark."
"Well, in that case," said Izzy stretching "I suggest that we get comfortable. Is seems we won't be going anywhere soon."
With that, the group of ill-equipped adventurers gathered up what they could to make the night's stay more comfortable (aside from Matt ho had left to collect T.K.).
"Oh, man! I thought I had a pillow in this case!" whined Mimi, rummaging discouraged through her suitcase "Well, I guess it's all right, It probably wouldn't have been a good idea to use one on this dirty ground any way. How would any one have gotten the stain out?"
"You'll get a neck cramp from sleeping on that suitcase, but at least you won't have any laundry!" poked Joe sarcastically, patting the duffel bag that was about to become his pillow.
"Shut up." growled Mimi as she tried to cover up just how uncomfortable the suitcase actually was. Then she noticed Tanemon, who was sitting right by her head, and got an odd glint in her eye. "Say, now," she said, feeling her to make sure she was as soft as she'd remembered "you'd love to do something to help out your pal Mimi, wouldn't you?"
Tanemon, guessing what Mimi had in mind, backed away "I'd love to help, Mimi, but I really need to keep my petals looking there best."
"Oh, don't worry," chimed Mimi as she grabbed Tanemon any way "I'll get them all fixed up in the morning."
Tanemon was about to protest further, but was distracted by an ear splitting howl from Tai. Looking over, the found him gingerly cradling the finger that Tsunomon had nearly bit off.
"What the hell did you do that for?" he shouted at Tsunomon.
"Well when I commented to Matt that your hair looked like a mushroom, he told me that you had a lot in common with a fungus; but, frankly, you don't taste a thing like one." When Tai look over to Matt for an explanation (though he really didn't need one) he could see that, despite the fact that his back was turned, he was laughing his head off.
"Oh, very funny Matt." Tai growled as he put a few feet's distance between himself and Tsunomon.
"How could you possibly think Tai was a mushroom?" asked Tanemon from underneath Mimi's head "It should be obvious that he's not,"
"I wouldn't be talking about what's obvious if I were you." admonished Joe "Not after what I heard about your little rescue attempt when Mimi was in the tree."
"Oh, man, I still can't believe you did that!" laughed Bakumon "You try to get her out of the tree by getting yourself stuck in it with her?"
"Hey!" cried Yokomon "Mimi was wedged, upside down, in a very claustrophobic area. With a suitcase on top of her! Tanemon was trying to offer emotional support in what could have been a mentally and emotionally traumatizing situation!"
"Yeah! What she said!" concurred Tanemon, clearly not comprehending what Yokomon said, but figuring that it was in her defense.
"Can you all please stop shouting at each other?" interrupted Sora (at quite a high volume herself) "We need to get some sleep, and You're not making it any easier!" At that, a silence fell over the campsite that the others had previously thought only a mother could bring about.
"That's better." she said before curling up to get some sleep.
"Whoosh." said Matt.
"Tell me about it." replied Tai
"AHEM?" responded Sora at this continuing noise. Figuring that they knew what was good for them, Tai and Matt shut up and everyone had an quiet, uninterrupted night.