Digimon Story: Rainbow Traverse -- Chp 1

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Heart pounding. A blackened sky. Eyes aflame. A distant cry...

...

Alemana's eyes shot wide open. Birdsong and cricket chirps echoed all around him, as he stared transfixed by the canopy of green overhead. He felt sore all over, especially his head and back, as he tried to sit up from the bed he had made of a massive shrub he had never seen before.

[Alright, describe yourself. What are you wearing? What do you remember of last night?]

Alemana would look around wildly, eyes large as saucers as he tried to figure out where he was. Patting his arms, the Boy would inspect his dark skin- evidence of his Polynesian ancestry- and would feel around his face.. wincing as his neck gave a throne of pain. As he tried to get a grasp on his surroundings.. he would wander away from that strange shrub-bed and scrunch his face in thought. What had happened? He remembered staying late at school for basketball practice, and then decided to walk home instead of getting a ride from one of his friends mom. Ordinarily he would’ve been picked up by his older sister, Keilani, but ever since the end of summer his sister had been gone- busy with her new life as a college student, something that hurt him a bit more than he openly admitted. Alemana did everything with his sister- or at least he tagged along with her as often as she felt like bringing him along- and to suddenly be the only one in the house besides his parents.. well it was lonely- and boring. So he had been spending more time doing After -school activities.

That particular evening he was walking home alone, perhaps foolishly listening to creepy internet stories when something caught his eye, a little blur of movement near the bushes. At first his instinct was to keep walking, his imagination telling him that some sort of monster was in the bushes, but then the mystery animal would zoom from one bush to the next- and he got a better look. It was small and quadrupedal, and his brain likened it to a strange breed of designer pet, one of those custom bred cats that rich people sometimes bought- but it’s fur was a bizarre color. It was hard to see.. but it looked to be .. yellow? The very last thing he remembered was trying to get the strange cats attention before a piercing shriek got his- and he turned just in time to see a blinding pair of- headlights, maybe? - rushing towards him. Then he woke up here- where here was..

As the youth began to look around, he noticed just how wrong his surroundings were. The trees… had they always been so tall? As he followed them down to the base of their trunks, they only grew wider and wider. Wait, were those pipes coming out them? Large, steel pipes that bent perpendicular to the ground. A babbling brook snaked its way past them, coming in and out of view. But Alemana’s line of sight was broken by the sudden rush of birds erupting from the underbrush; a flash of many colors that grew smaller and smaller by the second. As they approached the trees, only then did the boy realize the colossal size of these trees! Which meant the brook would have to be a full-blown river!

At first, he didn’t realize what he was looking at, after all.. that was crazy. Unless he had just stumbled upon someone’s art project.. pipes didn’t just grow out of trees. Backing away from the strange arboreal abomination, he would begin to try to get to that brook. But as he took a look at these infeasibly massive trees and the strange birds.. his heart began pounding as he started to trot, and then run towards that river. And as he ran, against common sense he began calling out.

“Hello? Hello!? Is anybody out here? I’m lost, I don’t know how I got here! Where even is here?!”

*Rollz*

Just as the boy broke into a sprint, he caught himself at the last second as he spotted the sheer cliff beneath his feet! The sudden stop near threw him off balance, alongside a sudden rush of vertigo as he eyeballed the distance to the ground! Too high. Definitely too high.

[ Rolling = 3 6 5 +2= 16]

Alemana just barely avoided tumbling off the cliff, backpedaling until he practically collided with one of the titanic pipe-trees, arms spread wide, chest heaving from adrenaline. Wherever he was, it wasn't Hawaii anymore.. at least he didn't think so. There was state park near the town, sure... but the handful of times he took school trips to it, he was sure  the trees weren't THIS big.. nor were there sheer cliffs. As he tried to control his breathing, he then remembered that he had a phone... it was in his pocket when he was walking home.. maybe he could call his parents, or the police, or someone! He then jammed his hand into said pocket, hoping he still had it.

The boy pulled out his smartphone, racing to put in the passcode. Then, it happened. The moment he unlocked the final digit, the screen began to glow a solid color, emitting a quiet but sharp, metallic shrill. Right before his eyes, Alemana watched as his phone warped and shifted in his hand like water. Size, shape, even coloration, by the time it ceased moving, it was barely recognizable. The metal device was now encased in an elongated octagonal frame. Encasing the screen was a rectangular ring of reseda-green metal with bizarre symbols etched into it. And as the screen darkened, the following words slowly appeared:

++//User Designation: Alemana Sonson. Welcome++

His fingers were fumbling for a moment before he finished imputing his password to unlock his phone, and once the device began to glow and transform he gave a startled shout. His impulse was to drop the phone, but for a reason he couldn't understand he couldn't- it was like his hand was paralyzed, his fingers unable to loosen and let it fall from his grip. And once the glowing faded and he could behold all the changes that befell his phone, his jaw hung open.

"W-what.. what the hel- I mean.. what the heck!?" he blurted out, turning the device over in his hands. "This... that's not possible.." he whispered as he looked at the welcome message. Though he wanted to throw the device away, he hadn't forgotten about his desire to call for help.. so he tentatively tried to see if his phone still acted like, well, a phone.

Tapping the screen, Alemana found the layout had changed just as much as the rest of his phone. Four hyperlinks were present, but only half of them didn't have a percentage bar next to it saying "updates underway". One kinda looked like the Firefox logo. The other? A compass...

The boys heart sank as he saw that all the previous apps were gone, replaced by these four mystery links. He would stare at them for several hard moments before he then looked at the logo that he hoped was a web browser, and would then press it. If it was a browser, maybe he could connect to Facebook or something, and send out a message for help. After all, he seemed to be getting at least some sort of signal out here in this bizarro land, seeing that his newly mutated phone was getting system updates.

“C’mon.. c’mon..”

Opening the browser revealed a list of pictographs similar to the ones carved into the boy's new phone - each symbol shifting in place and changing as if the program was cycling through them. Only the top one revealed alphabetic letters, and as if anticipating Alemana's desires, the phone opened the link - the script blinking inverted coloring as a new window popped up.

Connecting... it read over a black background, the punctuations making up the ellipses slowly going up to three before starting over again and again.

As if an eye, the window's text blinked before changing into a static-heavy video. The boy could make out a silhouette, but there was so much interference the only thing that was certain was that someone was on the other end.

"++Al---wHe---aR-----++"

So much static... yet the voice... it sounded familiar...

Alemana’s eyes grew wide as he saw the display as he saw that shape, and when he heard that voice, a part of his brain then sparked into overdrive. It was heavily distorted.. but he could make out enough to recognize the voice at least slightly, and he immediately began yelling at the phone.

“Hello? Hello!? Is that you sis?! It’s me Alemana! I- I woke up somewhere in these weird woods.. I don’t know where I am! There’s these stupidly big trees with pipes growing out of them! Please, help me sis!”

The static noise intensified. Suddenly, the window shrank out of view. The compass app was now bouncing up and down, with its needle spinning round and round. From it, a new window popped up. This one showed an eight-sided prism. Inside it, a ball of light glowed gently as the prism rotated in place. The video call-window then reappeared next to it, and then both shrank -- no... zoomed out, to reveal a grid map! A segmented line arched its way from the prism towards a gemlike green arrow head, under which glowing ripples emitted.

++Caller's approx location++ read the screen. ++1/4 mile, north-west++

Watching the device seem to activate a map function, and while he was still freaking out.. he was starting to admit that maybe this change to his smart phone wasn’t too bad after all. Looking over the map, and seeing where it was telling him to go, the kid would put on a brave face as a plan started to form in his head.

“Stay where you are sis, I’m coming to you!” And he would begin following the compass, a look of determination on his face.

Ideally, this would only be a twenty minute walk, assuming he didn’t accidentally throw himself off another cliff face.

[Now there's a thought >xD ]

[Alright, roll meeee... Athletics ]