[quote=272-392-xxxx][code]Hello everyone. This is ApolloKnight. My name is Asher.[/code][/quote][quote=890-455-xxxx][code]This is Clockmaker. But I don’t think my parents would be happy with me if I gave my real name to people online.[/code][/quote][quote=Asher][code]Thank you for joining us.[/code][/quote][quote=Cavan][code]Ey apollo[/code][/quote][quote=Alice][code]Welcome Asher (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ[/code][/quote][quote=Clockmaker][code]Did everyone here really receive their partner digimon from the game?        [/code][/quote][quote=Asher][code]I believe we have Clock. And it’s no likely coincidence either.[/code][/quote][quote=Asher][code]Anyway. Please let me account for my radio silence.[/code][/quote][quote=Asher][code]I went to check where Vorvomon fell from the sky last night. And that’s when I found a portal that pulled me into another dimension. The digimon’s world.[/code][/quote][quote=Alice][code](°ロ°) (°ロ°) (°ロ°)[/code][/quote][quote=Cavan][code]Damn bro[/code][/quote][quote=Asher][code]As I zipped through some blindingly bright tunnel and found myself in a location that looked vaguely similar to that glowing mushroom dungeon from the game. Although it was too dark and I didn’t think it was wise to explore on my own.[/code][/quote][quote=Asher][code]Anyway, it’s incredibly important that you go to the digimon’s crash site and go through these portals. It’s where you’ll receive a partner device. Like from the game, but besides its similar design, its functions aren’t entirely clear to me yet.[/code][/quote][quote=Alice][code]A digivice? \(°ロ°)/[/code][/quote][quote=Asher][code]But I have learned one important feature. It is our connection to the digimon world. And it’s how I got back home.[/code][/quote][quote=Asher][code]From what I can gather. This device has the ability to open and close portals from our world to theirs. Like from Point A to Point B.[/code][/quote][quote=Clockmaker][code]That sounds a bit dangerous. What happens if you get stuck?[/code][/quote][quote=Asher][code]Let me clarify. The original portal seems to close on its own, once you and your digimon partner go through it. Probably to prevent others from using it too. So I had to reopen it, by holding the device in my hands and imagining a location clearly in my mind. Which then immediately sent me and Vorvomon back to my pictured location. And the portal is still there now.[/code][/quote][quote=Clockmaker][code]I think I understand. But what happens if that experience was just a fluke? I mean, have you repeated that hypothesis?[/code][/quote][quote=Asher][code]I wanted to get back to share this information with you all. So I’m afraid that I haven’t tested it yet. But I will do so, if that means making sure that my guildmates stay safe.[/code][/quote][quote=Cavan][code]I got no idea how to find a portal[/code][/quote][quote=Alice][code]Just look around (~˘▾˘)~[/code][/quote][quote=Cavan][code]Citys huge its gonna take forever[/code][/quote][quote=Clockmaker][code]Muchomon climbed through my window to get out of the rain. So I wouldn’t know where to look.[/code][/quote][quote=Alice][code]Try looking around first (~˘▾˘)~[/code][/quote][quote=Clockmaker][code]And apparently he forgot too.[/code][/quote][quote=Afton][code]I have one in my yard.[/code][/quote][quote=Alice][code]What (°ロ°)[/code][/quote][quote=Afton][code]Headed home right now to confirm.[/code][/quote][quote=Asher][code]Alright then. Just don’t stay there for any longer than you have to.[/code][/quote][quote=Alice][code](°ロ°) Stay safe Afton![/code][/quote][quote=Cavan][code]Damn its like some scifi movie[/code][/quote][quote=Afton][code]I’ll send pictures when I get there.[/code][/quote]
[center][h3] [/h3][/center][h3][hr][color=#BB818D]Afton Reimer[/color][/h3][hr][sup][i]Los Angeles  ||  Morning[/i][/sup][indent] [/indent]
[color=#BB818D]“Again, Dad, I’m fine,”[/color] Afton said as she hopped out of the car and walked towards the front door of their house. [color=#BB818D]“Go back to work.”[/color]

“Alright Daise,” her father said, shifting his car into gear, “take care of yourself. Love you!”

Unlocking the door, Afton slipped into the shaded room and made a beeline for her bedroom. In she went, not bothering to knock as she opened the door and tossed her bag against the foot of her bed. 

[color=#BB818D]“Hopmon, come out,”[/color] she said, then paused to wait for the digimon to reveal itself, which it did, tumbling out of her closet after a second of rustling.

[color=#A62A15]“Afton! You’re back!”[/color] Hopmon said, bouncing to her side. [color=#A62A15]“I was so bored waiting around, especially after Dad left. This place is so boring! How do you have fun?”[/color]

Though she heard Hopmon’s words, she chose to ignore them, turning towards the door. [color=#BB818D]“Follow me,”[/color] she said, leading the way out and towards the screen door in the living room. The meteor had landed 

[color=#A62A15]“Where are we going? To the outside? Oh, isn’t this the place I landed yesterday? Smells like it. Smells dry, hot, and… empty.”[/color] Hopmon paused at Afton’s side outside the opened door, looking around at the barren yellow foothills of dried grass and dirt, which saw color in the form of the hardiest of weeds and native shrubbery. [color=#A62A15]“Is this place a desert?”[/color]

[color=#BB818D]“Yeah,”[/color] Afton said, crouching and looking at the patch of loose dirt. She could still make out a strong ebbing quality to the air above the patch, through which the world appeared to waver. 

Pulling out her phone, she snapped a picture of the strange air and sent it to the group. Text messages started popping up immediately.

[quote=Cavan][code]woah[/code][/quote][quote=Alice][code](°ロ°) (°ロ°) (°ロ°)[/code][/quote][quote=Cavan][code]does it move?[/code][/quote][quote=Afton][code]I’m going through.[/code][/quote]
With the text sent, she slid her phone in her pocket and waved Hopmon over. [color=#BB818D]“Get ready,”[/color] she said, picking him up and tucking him under as she would a basketball.

[color=#A62A15]“Get ready for what?”[/color] he asked, wiggling in the crook of her arm. [color=#A62A15]“Are we doing something?”[/color]

[color=#BB818D]“Yeah,”[/color] she said, leaning forwards to touch the waver, finding that her hand almost seemed to move forwards without her, drawn towards the visible folds in the air until she made contact with and was sucked into nothing.

The world went white, bright, and featureless, but Afton registered a very clear feeling of movement. [i]She[/i] was moving. Where and how, she had no idea, but onwards she zipped until suddenly she hit the floor, deposited unceremoniously back into existence. 

[color=#A62A15]“Woah, what was that?”[/color] Hopmon asked, wiggling out of her hold and dropping onto the floor to start bouncing up and down. [color=#A62A15]“That was fun! Let’s do it again!”[/color]

His words flew right past Afton, whose attention was wholly absorbed by their new surroundings: a world of shadowy violet, splotched by the rainbow in the form of every form of flora possible. Another glance around confirmed what Asher had said over text. This was indeed the mushroom forest every player spawned in on their first day, though Afton had portalled here herself this time around. What she was missing, now, was the digivice, which Asher had said she would “receive” after going through the portal. In the game, a line of text had popped up, and the device had been added to her inventory, but did that apply now?

[color=#A62A15]“What’s wrong?”[/color] Hopmon asked, bouncing over to her side. [color=#A62A15]“What’re you looking for?”[/color]

Afton froze mid-pat, one hand on her back pocket, in which the unmistakable outline of something she’d never had could be felt. Reaching into it, she grabbed the digivice, holding it up to what light was available in the forest. [color=#BB818D]“This.”[/color]

[color=#A62A15]“That?”[/color] Hopmon cocked his head, staring at it. [color=#A62A15]“What is that?”[/color]

[color=#BB818D]“A digivice,”[/color] Afton said, turning it in her hands. The device itself was a dark red, highlighting its white buttons, which Afton pressed after a brief moment. On the third button, the device’s screen lit up.

[color=#A62A15]“Afton?”[/color] 

The shade of uncertainty in Hopmon’s voice prompted Afton to look at him, and she was surprised to see that he was glowing—faintly, but clearly. An outline of white surrounded him, getting stronger with every passing second until suddenly the light engulfed him, lengthening into a beam that shot into the sky. Glancing down at her digivice, Afton saw the words, “[code]Hopmon digivolve to: Monodramon[/code]” flash across the screen. Then all at once, it ended. The beam of light retracted into itself and her digivice went out, leaving her standing in front of what was very much now a Monodramon.

[color=#A62A15]“Hey! I’m a Monodramon again!”[/color] The purple dragon spun in a circle, holding up each wing separately as he looked himself over. Now over two times taller and several times larger, Monodramon was no longer as easy to look over as he was while he was a Hopmon. Where he was barely a foot tall before, he was now solidly two feet tall, if not more. His claws were now prominent features, each stretching over an inch long, and as clearly as Afton remembered her character’s avatar back in the day, she had to admit that seeing a Monodramon in real life was quite a different experience. 

After another few seconds of admiring himself, Monodramon looked to Afton with a grin. [color=#A62A15]“How about that?”[/color]

[color=#BB818D]“You’re going to be harder to hide now,”[/color] she said, looking around at their surroundings again. As Asher had written, the forest was dark and Afton agreed that it wasn’t a good idea to stick around. Still, she took a moment to stand there, taking in the digital world’s color with her own eyes. On a monitor, colors were vivid, but they held none of the realistic properties experiencing them in real life did. The dampness of the forest, the vague scent of moss and mulch, the lukewarm temperature that likely drove growth as much as it did laziness in its inhabitants—those properties were all lost in a screen-based experience, however much text and lore the game tried to throw at its players. 

[color=#A62A15]“Buzz off,”[/color] Monodramon said suddenly, his voice lowered and hardened, more growl than talk at that point, and Afton stared at him. Then, the bushes rustled, and it all made sense.

[color=#A62A15]“Yeah, that’s right, run,”[/color] he said, clacking his teeth together, one side of his mouth hooking as he puffed his chest. 

Afton gave him a nod when he looked over, then turned back to where they landed. [color=#BB818D]“Let’s get back.”[/color]

[color=#A62A15]“Aw, can’t we stick around? This place is way more fun than the human world,”[/color] Monodramon said, his voice bordering on a whine. 

[color=#BB818D]“We’ll be back,”[/color] she said, holding the digivice up at the spot. Though it felt strange doing it, Asher had outlined the process already. When it came to figuring the situation out, Afton had to hand it to him. He wasn’t a guild leader for nothing. 
[center][h3] [/h3][/center][h3][hr][color=#FBE3BF]Cavan Maynard[/color][/h3][hr][sup][i]New York  ||  Morning[/i][/sup][indent] [/indent]
[quote=Afton][code]Back. I ended up in the Mushroom Forest too. Found the digivice in my pocket. Didn’t stay for long.[/code][/quote][quote=Alice][code](°ロ°) (°ロ°) (°ロ°) It’s real! It’s happening!!![/code][/quote]
Cavan sat up on his bed from where he’d been slouching on his bed. It’d barely been a few minutes since Afton sent the photos and said she was going through, and she was already back. Had she been that quick?

[quote=Afton][code]Time doesn’t seem to translate between dimensions properly. I was there for around ten minutes. My Hopmon digivolved into Monodramon.[/code][/quote][quote=Alice][code](°ロ°) What? How??[/code][/quote][quote=Afton][code]I pressed the rightmost button on my digivice and he digivolved. Maybe connecting to it was enough to bring him to rookie form. He said he was a rookie before arriving.[/code][/quote]
As Cavan’s eyes flicked over the messages, a smile grew on his face. [color=#FBE3BF]“Get ready, we’re going to the digital world.”[/color]

Tunomon looked up from where he was resting on a pile of Cavan’s clothes, a mixture of confusion and hostility in his eyes. [color=#5B6356]“How?”[/color]

[color=#FBE3BF]“Through a portal, apparently,”[/color] Cavan said, sliding off his bed and grabbing his skateboard. Then, looking around, he picked up his sports bag, emptying its contents onto the floor and setting it on the floor with its flap wide open. [color=#FBE3BF]“Would you mind catching a ride in this bag? I’m pretty sure walking around with you next to me is a bad idea.”[/color]

Tunomon eyed him dubiously. [color=#5B6356]“Why? If anyone’s not minding their own business, a good tackle should change their mind.”[/color]

[color=#FBE3BF]“Well, I said already, but you can’t just go around tackling people,”[/color] Cavan said, adjusting his bag idly, his mind focused on his words, struggling to find phrases that didn’t come off as aggressive, dismissive, or otherwise triggering for Tunomon. [color=#FBE3BF]“Humans who fight each other get in trouble. They get captured and locked up.”[/color]

Seeing that Tunomon looked nowhere near convinced, Cavan shook his head, sighing. [color=#FBE3BF]“Look, just trust me, okay? As soon as I find the portal, we’ll go through and I’ll let you out. But if you go around walking in the human world, someone’s probably going to try and hurt us.”[/color]

[color=#5B6356]“Okay,”[/color] Tunomon said cautiously, bouncing over to the bag, then into. [color=#5B6356]“What’s that?”[/color] he asked, staring at some sharpie scrawls along the side of the bag’s interior. 

[color=#FBE3BF]“That’s a list of trick name ideas,”[/color] Cavan said, running a hand down the list. [color=#FBE3BF]“It’s old and I should really get back into it.”[/color]

Tunomon grunted in response, clearly done with the conversation, but wasn’t, and his eyes lit up as it caught on a particular idea he’d scrawled down.

[color=#FBE3BF]“Hey, how do you feel about the name ‘Baxter’? After one of the steepest streets in LA. Thirty-two percent grade. Epic skate street,”[/color] Cavan said. [color=#FBE3BF]“Or just ‘Bax’. Sounds cooler anyway.”[/color]

Tunomon was silent for a moment before grunting again, and Cavan grinned. 

[color=#FBE3BF]“Bax it is,”[/color] he said, zipping the bag and hefting it up with a grin.
[center][h3] [/h3][/center][h3][hr][color=#F44B52]Alice Takigawa[/color][/h3][hr][sup][i]Tokyo  ||  Night[/i][/sup][indent] [/indent]
[quote=Alice][code]If you both ended up in the mushroom forest, maybe all our portals lead there (• ε •)[/code][/quote][quote=Afton][code]Could be.[/code][/quote][quote=Alice][code]We could all meet in the digital world then (╯°□°)╯(╯°□°)╯(╯°□°)╯[/code][/quote][quote=Afton][code]Sounds doable. Mushroom forest isn’t that big.[/code][/quote][quote=Cavan][code]sweet. last one there loses[/code][/quote]
[color=#F44B52]“This isn’t a race!”[/color] Alice hissed to no one in particular, one hand holding her phone and the other rifling through her closet for something to wear into the Tokyo night. 

[color=#7867D8]“Are we really going to try and find a portal to the digital world?”[/color] Dorimon asked from where he sat on Alice’s bed. [color=#7867D8]“I don’t remember where I landed very well either. The impact left me pretty rattled and confused. I just felt like climbing up here was the right thing to do, so I did.”[/color]

[color=#F44B52]“Well I’m glad you did, but yes, we’ll be going to look for where you landed,”[/color] Alice said, stuffing her arms through the sleeves of her oversized jacket as she walked over to her bed. [color=#F44B52]“Here, I’ll hide you in here,”[/color] she said, pulling open the side of her jacket and motioning for Dorimon to hop over.

[color=#7867D8]“Okay.”[/color] Dorimon hopped into her arms carefully. [color=#7867D8]“You sure you don’t want me to walk? It’s pretty dark outside, and I’m pretty good at hiding.”[/color]

[color=#F44B52]“Nah, it’s fine,”[/color] Alice said, adjusting her grip with a smile. [color=#F44B52]“You’re not that heavy anyway.”[/color]

That was a partial lie, and Alice suspected that Dorimon knew that. Still, he didn’t say anything, and she was grateful. Even though he was only about the size of a soccer ball, he was heavier than any cat or small dog she’d tried to pick up before, likely because he was much rounder and denser than any cat or small dog she’d seen before. 

Still, the most treacherous part of the night had yet to start: Alice needed to get out of her apartment without alerting her parents. Though they slept early, her mother was a light sleeper, and any stray creak or crack could summon her from bed. Luckily, Alice had experience sneaking around the house at night. She was a master at getting to and from the kitchen, where she filched snacks many a night when raids happened at odd times, and it wasn’t until she reached the front door that she hit the first snag in her plan. With its chain lock and creaky hinge, her front door was a worthy adversary that she’d never tried to best. All she could do was try and go as slow as possible as she unlatched the hatch, holding her breath in prayer as she opened the door one achingly slow millimeter at a time.

[indent][i]C r e  a  k[/i][/indent]
Alice froze, one hand on the doorknob and the other starting to tremble from supporting Dorimon’s weight. One second passed, then two, and when her parents’ bedroom continued to stay quiet, she breathed a sigh of relief, slipping out the door and carefully closing it behind her. 

[color=#F44B52]“Whew, hard part over,”[/color] she said, as the elevator doors closed. 

[color=#7867D8]“Are you afraid of your parents, Alice?”[/color] Dorimon asked.

Alice’s brows shot up. [color=#F44B52]“Wh—no! No, why would you think that?”[/color]

[color=#7867D8]“You seemed to be afraid of letting them find out that you leaving tonight,”[/color] he said. [color=#7867D8]“I know some digimon who have ‘protectors’ that treat them more like prisoners than anything.”[/color]

[color=#F44B52]“What? No, it’s nothing like that,”[/color] she said. [color=#F44B52]“It’s just that I don’t know what I’d tell them if they found out I was going out. I mean, I would get in trouble, maybe, but it wouldn’t be that bad… ”[/color]

She trailed off, then shook her head. [color=#F44B52]“No, I love my parents. They just worry a lot sometimes.”[/color]

[color=#7867D8]“Okay,”[/color] Dorimon said, which Alice was beginning to understand as the phrase he said when he didn’t really understand, but felt that he should say he did anyway. As much as she disliked the non-confrontational attitude of his application of the phrase, she appreciated the sentiment, It was a mature thing to do, she figured, and she vaguely wondered whether she could be that mature. 

[color=#7867D8]“I think I’ve seen that tree before,”[/color] Dorimon said when they exited her apartment building. 

The tree in reference was a leafy ginkgo tree, and Alice walked towards it, looking around expectantly. [color=#F44B52]“I don’t see a crater anywhere.”[/color]

[color=#7867D8]“Over there,”[/color] Dorimon said, pointing at a row of bushes. [color=#7867D8]“I think I landed by those.”[/color]

Alice walked over, squinting in the darkness. With the streetlights behind them, her shadow made it difficult to properly make out anything near the bushes. [color=#F44B52]“I don’t see anything,”[/color] she said as she peered over a bush, taking a few more steps forward. [color=#F44B52]“Are you—”[/color]

She’d stepped into the portal, she figured, and before she knew it she was wherever the portal unceremoniously dumped her, the moist forest floor dampening her pants. A glance around revealed a hazy purple forest, and she shot to her feet, patting herself down as Dorimon hopped to the ground, shaking himself off.

[color=#7867D8]“Are you okay, Alice?”[/color] Dorimon asked.

[color=#F44B52]“Yep, fine! Fine,”[/color] she said, looking around again. [color=#F44B52]“Right, so, digital world, mushroom forest, digivice,”[/color] she said, fishing the device that had appeared in her jacket pocket. [color=#F44B52]“Now, digivolution.”[/color]

The bushes rustled, and she froze, looking over with wide eyes. The shadows made it difficult to make anything out, but Dorimon no longer looked friendly, his mouth held slightly open to accentuate his jagged jaw.

[color=#F44B52]“W-who’s there?”[/color] Alice asked, voice trembling as she clutched her digivice, attempting a brave face, which was rather difficult to do knowing the vast number of digimon capable of obliterating her existence.