---

The day was September, 3rd, the second day of the new School year, and the beginning of an adventure nobody would forget.

Today, for Connie Lauritsen, she was determined to make at least one new acquaintance for the school year; someone to talk to, maybe help her out with her homework, or even have come over to her house. She'd never had many school friends, other then the ones she had online, but this year, she wanted to change that. Grabbing her messenger backpack, Connie closed the door behind her, and began her walk to school.

Her house wasn't far from school, and after a half hour of walking, she'd arrived at her school. Like usual, she was early, and the entire place seemed devoid of life, with the exception of a few people who were also early birds. This wasn't unusual for Connie, as she enjoyed having such a large place seemingly to herself, and the quiet seemed to put her at ease. For the time being, she decided to head to the Cafeteria, taking a seat and pulling out her laptop.

---

"Day One: Weather is average for this time of year, a little on the warm side." Pat scribbled into a fresh black and white notebook. This would be the first of many of his logs for this year, and it was starting off on a nice note. He was positioned near the entrance of the cafeteria, and made note of everyone who entered. Some may call him neurotic, but it was something nice to dump his time into. He looked up as a fair skinned girl came into the room. He believed her name was Connie, so he wrote her in under that name into his book.

He watched her carefully, and decided to go over and greet her. A new school year could be a great opportunity to meet new people, couldn't it? Closing his notebook, and stuffing his pen into the pocket, he stood up made his way over to her. Pat asked, "Mind if I join you?" Before seating himself across from her, and saying, "Seems like a nice enough day for new beginnings, eh?" He smiled at her, and casually took out his notebook to make note of this interaction.

Tim sat at the table, quietly enjoying his food. Yes, he had already eaten breakfast at home, but there was nothing wrong with having a post breakfast, pre first period snack right? The Cafeteria was usually quiet around this time. It was nice to have a few moments of peace before classes started, and everyone started running around trying to make it to first period while chatting their heads off about meaningless things.

As he was eating, a girl with short hair sat at the table he was sitting at, and pulled out her laptop. Tim let out a sigh. Of all the tables to pick from, she had to choose a table where he was sitting at by himself. When someone purposely chooses to sit by themselves, shouldn't that tell people they wanted to be left alone? Well, it didn't matter. The girl was busy on her laptop, and would most likely leave him alone.

That is, until another guy with brown hair and glasses started talking to her. He took a seat across from the girl, and next to Tim. He immediately scooted over to the far end of the table. He hadn't bothered to learn the names of these people, and silently prayed they wouldn't say anything. Or that the bell would ring, and he could get out of here as fast as possible.

The girl enjoyed browsing the internet for whatever she could find, and had two sites she enjoyed the most. The first of which was called Rollr, and the other being Weirdpic. Both were notorious for art hosting, and she typically paid more attention to Rollr overall. In fact, she was so focused on her Laptop that she didn't notice Pat approaching, until his voice seemed to jolt her back to reality.

"Oh! Hey." She was a bit shaken up, her attention having been ripped form her laptop, but after a moment, she seemed more interested in talking. "Yep, i have a pretty good feeling about this year. Name's Connie."

Pat gave a smile to himself, "Knew it." He thought to himself upon the confirmation of her identity. "Pat." He responded while jotting down shorthand of their conversation, and glancing over to Tim, before saying, "How are you feeling about this year?" He asked pleasantly, and then saying, "I'm honestly just so glad to be back in school, I know it makes me sound like a dork, but I much prefer this to break."

She made a mental note of his notebook, not wanting to bring it up, it would make for a good topic later down the line. Instead, she shifted her eyes to the two guests, having not noticed the darker headed kid sitting there. She must have been too busy wanting to get online to notice him, woops. Ah well.

"No shame in that. I'm behind credits, so i'v really got to step my game up this year. Maybe we can be study partners!" She smiled at the idea, reaching into her backpack to pull out her scheduled. To simplify things, she had four classes, five if you could count lunch.

"Lemmie see your guy's scheduled, i wanna know if we have classes together." She laid down the piece of paper with her scheduled on it for all to see.

For a moment, Tim thought he was safe. They were having a conversation with each other, and didn't notice him. Then, the glasses wearing guy named Patrick, looked at him during their conversation. The other two noticed that Tim was there. Then the girl, named Connie, asked to see everyone's schedules. And she said guys plural. They knew he was there.

Tim dug through his light blue backpack, and pulled out his schedule. He figured he should say something. Even though they didn't directly say anything to him, it wouldn't be polite to just keep quiet. "Um..." Tim started mumbling. Racking his brain trying to come up with something to say, I-I-I'm.... Tim..." He said quietly and with a stutter as he put the paper with his schedule on it on the table. Only after more time hesitating, did he realized he forgot to say hello. "Hi..." His face turned red from embarrassment. That was a lot of effort just to say his own name.

Pat raised an eyebrow, as Tim seemed very nervous. He jotted down into his notebook a small profile of him, "Tim, Shy and seemingly withdrawn. Keep your eye on him." Before looked up and taking out his backpack, and extracting a green notebook from it, which had his schedule copied into it. He opened up to the inside cover. It showed that he was taking mostly advanced math and science courses, but he had the same History and English as the others. He then looked over at Tim and gave a light smile, "Don't worry, we're not gonna bite." Before pausing and adding, "Well, I won't at least." Before jokingly jerking his head towards Connie.

"Not in a biting mood today, so count yourself lucky!" She gave a toothy grin, clearly directed towards Tim, followed by hushed laughter. She examined the schedules, her smile remaining when she saw that the last two classes had all of them in the same room. Man, was making friends always this easy? Who knew.
Connie did make a mental note on Tim's behavior, stuttering, unusually quiet, all the symptoms of a shy kid. Her solution? Include him as much as, though it may be easier said than done, she was determined to make friends with the two, so she'd do anything!

Despite her passion burning on the inside, her outside composer was calm and happy, and she spoke. "Perfect, looks like we'll be seeing each other near the end of the day."

Connie's computer chimed, and a chat window popped up on her screen. Instead of an avatar, the window showed a peculiar symbol:



Alice: Hello children
Alice: There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy
Alice: Would you like to see for yourself?

<sysprompt Y/N>

Huh? Connie's gaze shifted from the schedules to her screen, seeing a new window not previously opened before, now taking up most of her laptop's screen space. more things in heaven and earth? What did that mean? She looked over at her two table mates, and showed the screen to them.
"Think it's a virus? It just popped up on my screen." She, if given the option herself, would have said yes, just out of curiosity to see what it was that the chat meant. She saw nothing that deemed it a virus.. but nothing on the screen gave access to close the chat, so it was stuck on the screen for the time being.

Apparently, their last two classes were all in the same room. Tim wasn't sure how to feel about that. These two seemed nice, but so did everyone at first. Tim was still a little apprehensive. He kept his gaze down, and twiddled his thumbs nervously. What was taking so long for that bell to ring?

Then, Connie turned her laptop to show everyone else, and asked if it was a virus. There was some chat thing was taking up most of the screen space. Why did the person on the other end call them children? They were teenagers, technically... And how the heck did they know that there were multiple of them for that matter? And was up with that weird symbol for an avatar? Tim was dubious. "Um... I-I-I don't know about that.... It looks questionable to me..."

Connie turned towards Pat, half expecting an remark from him, but when no such remark came, she decided to move on. Yes, it looked fishy, but if she knew anything about virus pup ups, they'd usually be flashy, and wouldn't be so specific as this one was being. And if it were a virus, she'd could just close whatever pop up decided to greet her, right? Making the final decision for herself, she pressed enter, selecting the Yes option.
"Can't hurt too much, right?" She stated, a smug grin on her face.

Pat turned his head to watch as she pressed the button, and raised an alarmed eyebrow, "That may not've been the best idea," He said, scribbling a note on the compulsivity that Connie seemed to have, "Don't blame us if you just fried your laptop dude." He said, and waited to see what probably horrible thing would happen next.

The moment Connie pressed Enter, the laptop's screen flared into a brilliant white, casting shadows of the students behind them. The light seemed to expand outward from the edges of the screen, quickly filling their vision.

---

When the light faded, the three of them stood in what appeared to be a huge canyon, with cliffs rising to either side of them and an indigo sky above.

Three creatures stood before them, looking up at their human counterparts as if they'd been expecting their arrival.

After the other two voiced there concerns with the sudden pop-up, Connie still decided to click on it anyway. Tim narrowed his eyes Of course, because no one ever listens to me. He thought.

Suddenly, the laptop's screen flashed a blinding white light. Tim had to shield his eyes from the sudden brightness. When the light faded, Tim quickly became aware that they were not in the Cafeteria anymore. Were they even still on earth anymore? They were inside a huge canyon, with cliffs rising to either side of them and an indigo sky above. "What happened?" Tim wondered out loud.

As soon as Tim saw what was in front of him though, his concerns went away. Three creatures stood before them. Tim immediately ran up to the bear looking one, and gave it a hug. "OH MY GOSH! You are so cute! Like a big teddy bear!"

Tim suddenly felt something poking on his back. He looked behind him to see a magenta creature with a horn growing from it's forehead, and seemed to wear a wolf pelt. "Kid, I'm your Digimon, not him!" The creature said in a gruff but still noticeably feminine voice.

Tim immediately let go of the bear thing, and gave this other creature a hug. "You're so cute too! You look like something I saw on TV!"

"Cute! Do I look remotely cute to you?" The creature flailed her arms around before releasing herself from Tim's hug.

"To be honest... Yes..."

The creature burried her face in her palm. "Gah! Look, the name's Psychemon."

"I'm Tim..."

Little to Connie's surprise, she didn't expect that to happen! She squinted her eyes as a bright, flashing light filled the room, her arms raising up to shield what little light she could, but it seemed to engulf her in a case of light, and dragged her into the laptop itself! Before she knew what was happening, she found herself dazed, sitting in what.. looked like a canyon of some sort. Looking up, she saw that the sky was a completely different color than usual.. weirdly purple, as if it were going to become night, and then looked to her side stop the three kids she had met moments ago.. and some strange.. things.
Connie blinked, her eyes locking onto the creatures; in contrast to what Tim did, she didn't eagerly approached these things, instead, she seemed frozen in place as she watched them come to life.

The 'teddy bear' was about to greet the female human.. that was, before he found himself trapped in the embrace of a completely different guy!
"Grrr! Stop that!" He said, struggling to break the grasp of Tim, but found that he willingly let him go when Psychemon got involved. Dusting himself off, he met eyes with Connie, and walked over to her. Connie, of course, was tensing up every step the bear-like creatures made towards her..

"I'm Bearmon, we're partners now." He said simply, and extended his leather protected paw out to the human. In hesitation, Connie simply watched the creature, before raising her own hand, and laid it on the paw of the 'Bearmon'.
"I'm.. Connie.."

Pat covered his eyes as an unnaturally bright light filled his vision, and he heard the sounds of the cafeteria fade away. Soon he found himself standing inside a canyon larger than any he'd ever seen. He gasped, as he patted himself down, and realized that he didn't have a notebook. Now, at the strangest time of his entire life, he couldn't record anything.

"What the heck?" He asked, as he took out a pen, and decided that he'd just have to take notes on his body. He scrawled onto his arm details about the area, so distracted by all the new things happening to him, that he didn't even notice what appeared to be a tiny ninja right in front of him.

"Um, hello?" Kotemon said, and knocked Pat on the head with his sword, "I've never met a human before, but do you all write on yourself like his?" he asked.

Patrick looked up after the sword was knocked on his head, and blinked, before jumping back and kneeling down in front of him, "What're you?" he asked, peering all around the creature. He wasn't so much alarmed as amazed that such a thing as this could exist. He peered into the being's glowing eyes trying to understand it.

"My name's Kotemon!" He said, happy to finally be noticed, "And you're Patrick! We're partners!" He explained, jumping around Patrick, "Nice to finally meet you." Kotemon said gleefully.

"Partners?" He wondered, trying to keep his eyes on the Kotemon, "What'd you mean? Did you send those -?" He cut himself off as he realized the others also had some kind of monster talking to them, and he went back for his pen to take notes on all of them, "This is insane," He breathed, peering between the three Digimon.

Further down the canyon, Alice stood on the cliff and watched the trio of newcomers through a pair of binoculars. Tsukaimon was perched on her head, and several Gazimon stood at the cliff's edge, waiting for the order to attack.

"Hm. Looks like the new portal code was a success. What do you think of them, Tsukaimon?"

"They look like a bunch of wimps. Let's just kick their butts!"

"No, I don't think so... Those Digimon are bonding with them rather quickly. I think they have potential to grow much stronger."

"Then let's get 'em before they get strong! I could Digivolve and wipe 'em out in a minute."

"Of course you can. But then their data would be useless. You've already proven you can defeat Rookie-level enemies, so they wouldn't make you any stronger than you already are. If they became stronger, though, then there would be a reason to absorb their data."

"Aw, fine. I guess it would be kinda boring. Can we at least throw those crappy minions at them?"

"I think so. But not yet."

"WHY THE HECK NOT?"

"If the first thing that happened was an attack, they might not return to the Digital World. Then we'd have to start all over again. Let them get drawn in deeper before we reveal ourselves."

Tsukaimon huffed and hopped off Alice's head, pouting.

"Whatever. This better be worth the wait."

Connie released her grip on the grizzly creature, and looked over to the two others.. it looked like no other kids had appeared besides Tim and Pat, and herself respectively. She began to feel a sense of guilt.. had she caused this? Did saying yes trigger this?!
"O-okay. Listen, i didn't know that would happen when i said yes!" She replied, suddenly ready to defend herself. In all honesty, she didn't expect something so extreme to happen when she replied, and began to panic lightly. Worse of all, she was beginning to realize the situation they all were in; not only were they not in the cafeteria, but they weren't near civilization at all! They were now completely stranded, stuck with these creatures!
She sat down, pulling her bag off of her body and reaching in. She seemed to be taking deep, wavy breaths, as her panic seemed to overwhelm her, and she pulled out what looked like an inhaler. Undoing the top, she put it to her lips, taking a breath of the medication, and sighed lightly afterword.

Bearmon was curious as to what Connie had pulled out, his face leaning in to sniff the strange device.
"What's that?" He asked, but before Connie could answer, his nose dove elsewhere, into her bag, and began to rummage through it. He pulled out a notebook, opening it, and seeing.. pictures. Hand-drawn images of what looked like wolf dudes, characters of shows, even pairs of characters being all lovey dovy! The notebook was practically filled with drawings, save for a few extra pages near the end.

Connie, noticing the bear creature looking through her notebook, blushed, and snatched it away from him.
"Don't look at them! They're not even that good!" She stated, a bit defensive that the bear would even do such a thing as look through her stuff.. She grabbed her bag, putting the notebook back, and closed it off.