WoS Chapter 1 Part 1: Zoe

Chapter 1 - For Want of a Nail?

-Izumi-

The circular symbol blinked one more time before the display turned blank. I spared it only a glance, too busy catching my breath. “Now, it is up to you, to decide your destiny,” it read.

With shaking fingers, I reached up and fixed my hat. Around me, the other three children picked themselves up off the floor. I made a face as a blond boy finally removed his elbow from my gut. He didn’t even apologize. Rude.

The elevator opened and the others wasted no time to head into the freedom beyond. I didn’t like any of them anyway. Bracing myself against the elevator’s wall, I pushed myself to my feet. I hesitated with a hand curled around my phone. How to describe what had happened?

Since pressing “yes” to the mysterious message, my phone had sent me all over Tokyo! The time limit had been so steep; I barely made my connecting trains! At least, I finally reached my destination: the sub-basement of Shibuya Station. I didn’t even know there were so many lower levels, much less elevators that plummeted at train-like speeds! I was starting to think that something supernatural was going on.

That at least cheered me up a little. Finally, something interesting was happening! I made my way through the elevator doors.

Before me was a vast, circular train station with at least six trains waiting for us to come aboard. I pressed my lips together. Guess it was open season on supernatural events today. It looked like the mysterious woman had called half the district. My elevator buddies were long gone, lost in all the kids milling about. I stayed back and tried to figure out what to do next.

The last message said I should take a train at 18:00 from this station. Several mounted message boards proclaimed that every train present would leave at that time. No destination mentioned. Well... if that wasn’t mysterious. I checked my phone again, but the display was still blank. Did that mean any train was okay?

I walked down the stairs and watched the other kids amble around the trains, chatting. Everyone here got that message, and most arrived in groups. I rolled my eyes. Weirdos. I wouldn’t want to be around so many others. Most of them didn’t even look like they wanted to board a train which gave me a leg up. Honestly, I couldn’t wait to find out where this was going!

I settled on a rusty brown train that wasn’t receiving any attention. Perfect. But when I made it to the door, helpfully opening with a depressurized hiss, I still hesitated. Everything that brought me here came crashing down on me: the desperate wish to break the routine, the call of adventure.

I stuffed my phone into my skirt’s pocket and entered an almost-empty compartment. The only other occupant was a girl my age. She sat across the aisle rapidly typing into her phone.

My mood still wasn’t the best, especially after that crowd outside, but I clung to the hope for something different. I settled in across from the other girl.

I was all for ignoring her when she suddenly put her phone away. She looked up and greeted me with a friendly “Hello!”

My startled “Hi.” came out a little more reserved.

I seemed to have stumbled upon a chatty person, since she continued, “I’m Keisaki Kanbara, nice to meet you! But well, you can call me Kei, for short.”

I shifted to a more comfortable position on the yellow cushions and introduced myself as well. “I’m Izumi Orimoto.” I paused, thinking back to my two-year stay in my mother’s home country. “But you can call me Zoe.”

Keisaki took the uncommon nickname in stride and said, “Great! Good to have you on board!” She made a grand gesture at the empty train and giggled to herself.

Well, this was a more positive reception than I expected. Ever since I came back to Japan, I’ve had a tough time getting along with kids my age. As if I’d brought back some kind of social disease. I gave Keisaki a more thorough look. She had unruly brown hair, shoved into two short ponytails, and tanned skin. Her shorts were of an unidentifiable brownish colour—the closest comparison I came to was khaki. Next to her was a red and yellow rucksack.

She followed my gaze and grinned. “Be prepared. I really didn’t know what to expect. So I brought some general stuff, like pen and paper.”

Now that she mentioned it, I hadn’t prepared anything. I also hadn’t expected to board a train to wherever we were going, so that was only fair.

I shrugged. “Good thinking.”

“I hope this is going to be good,” Keisaki went on. “I gave up cake for this trip.”

I scoffed and said with mock offense, “How dare you!”

When she frowned, I almost regretted saying anything. But then she just rolled with it. “Well, it wouldn’t have been for free. I would’ve had to endure my younger brother whining. Kinda sours the experience. What about you? Do you have any siblings?”

There was just something radiant in the way Keisaki talked. I couldn’t help but be drawn in. I found myself grinning back, and for the first time since coming to Japan, I didn’t feel left out.

So, we sat in that empty compartment, waiting for destiny, and talked. Keisaki had two brothers, but (as she admitted after I told her that I envied her) felt disconnected to both. In return, I told her my mother was in Italy and that I’d spent the last two years at my grandparents’ house. She moved to my side so I could show her some pictures of Italian beaches. She’d never even left the prefecture!

We got stuck on our favourite sports. Keisaki was an avid basketball player and me? Her mistake for asking. I enlightened her about the powerful freedom in running. I was gushing about the feeling of wind in your face when the door snapped open. We looked up expectantly at the heavy-set boy climbing up the stairs. I nearly made a face at his atrocious blue jumpsuit. He lost several million points with me from the start for giving us that look. He followed it with a wink and a “It must be my lucky day!” Could boys our age already be sleezy?

Either Keisaki missed the vibes, or she was more willing to put up with macho behaviour, since she remained friendly. “Hi there,” she said before introducing herself as Kei. “And this is... Zoe,” she finished mischievously.

I was tempted to roll my eyes but just nodded. “Hi.”

“I’m Junpei Shibayama,” the boy said, his grin splitting his face in half, and his tone suggesting he’d let us in on a big secret.

“That won’t do,” said Keisaki, throwing him off his game. Almost by itself, a smug grin appeared on my face. “You need a nickname. Zoe, help me out here.” She motioned for him to sit down anywhere and turned to me. My expression fell and I shot her a horrified look. I did not expect to be put on the spot like that!

“Uhm, I don’t know?” I said, frazzled. Several unpleasant nicknames at the boy’s physique sprang to my mind but I didn’t want to be cruel. Come on Izumi, I thought to myself. Don’t judge from the first appearance!

“Hey now! You can make ‘Zoe’ out of ‘Izumi’, you gotta have some idea for the man of the hour!” Keisaki said. She shot me a very meaningful look.

I stared back in surprise. Then, the grin crept back onto my face. This could be fun!

We spent the next couple of minutes trying to settle on what to call the brown-haired wannabe-womanizer. He sat down on the bench opposite us. Keisaki continued her little side-comments and confirmed my suspicion that we were on the same page. Who would’ve thought having someone else to share in the joy of making fun of deserving victims could be so entertaining?

“How about Jun? I mean, Kei is just short for Keisaki after all...”

“Nah, that’s much too ordinary for a bombastic personality like ‘Mr. Hero’ over there.” My overseas connection kicked in again, and I giggled. “How about JP? Jun Pei, see?”

“JP? Hm... that does have a nice ring to it.”

“You can’t change my name just because you feel like it!” Junpei shouted, his frustration painting his face all red. “There is nothing wr—”

The train door interrupted his angry outburst, sliding open with an aggressive hiss. Through the opening gap, some punks shoved a crying little boy into our compartment. Before I could process this, the train came alive. I hastily grabbed a handhold as it started to rumble away from the platform into a dark tunnel.

Keisaki was immediately on her feet. She stood at the window and raised her gloved fist at the two boys outside responsible for the blubbering mess on our carpet. “Seriously, what jerks!”

I inspected the tiny boy with slight concern. All I could see was an enormous balloon-like hat, and shaking shoulders clad in a white T-shirt.

I traded an awkward glance with my companions, but no one was ready to deal with the kid. Finally, Keisaki and I teamed up on Junpei: “Do something!”

He sighed in dramatic defeat and walked over to the little boy, rummaging around in his overalls’ many pockets. His approach was met with a loud wail and stuttering protests that sounded like, “I didn’t even want to be here!” which came to a sudden halt when Junpei presented a chocolate bar.

Keisaki sat next to me again, still grumbling about bullies. She perked up after the chocolate calmed things down. “Awesome, JP!”

“My name isn’t JP!” he protested just as the new boy said with wide, star-struck eyes, “Thank you, JP!”

Keisaki gave me a victorious grin and I shook my head in amusement.

“Anyway,” Junpei said while he helped his charge to his feet, “the annoying girl is Kei, and the blonde one is Zoe. What’s your name?”

The boy, who had to be at least three years younger than us, gave us a watery look. It lasted only a moment, then he stared forlornly at the chocolate in his hands. “Tomoki Himi... And I... I didn’t...”

Keisaki seemed to anticipate more crying and was desperate to keep the peace. “Then we’ll call you Tommy, okay?”

“Tommy?” he repeated, confused.

“Yeah, we could be Team Nickname and—” she began, but at that moment the train left the tunnel and went into overdrive.

The sudden speed change flung us out of our seats, and we crashed against the compartment’s back wall. The impact forced my phone right out of my hand, and I was sure I hit my head when I sailed past a support rail. Blinking furious tears out of my eyes, I unfolded from the ground. The rest of the compartment was in various states of disarray, little Tomoki probably doing best, what with being cushioned against Junpei.

“Ow,” I said, rubbing the back of my head and reaching for my escaped phone. My coordination was lacking, probably because my vision was still fuzzy from the fall. Just as I finally had the darn thing in my hand, checking if it survived the rough shove about as well as I did, something completely extraordinary happened.

Yes, weirder than the ten-story elevator drop or the fact that I went on a train ride into the unknown. With wide eyes, I stared as the phone I’ve had for a year now, started glowing. Not just its display, the entire thing!

In a matter of moments, a swarm of sparkling particles washed over the phone and transformed into something… else. “What…?” I whispered. I drew the device closer to inspect its metallic casing. It was lavender and pink, colours that immediately spoke to me on a personal level. This wasn’t a phone, not anymore, even if it still had a small display and two buttons.

I was still working through these feelings of wonder and… purpose, so it fell onto the others to make a move.

Keisaki, with an athlete’s grace, was first to spring to her feet, waving around her own device. “What just happened?”

I stared at the red and black thing in her hand and quickly checked over Tommy and JP, the latter helping the kid to his feet. As I expected, their phones had also left their boring existence behind in favour of an overhaul and colour change. They all had the same small display screen now, and two buttons.

To our collective shock, a familiar voice resonated from the devices. “This is your D-Tector.”

It was the woman who had herded us to the train station with her vague messages about destiny! The... D-Tector even displayed her circular symbol!

“Welcome to the Digital World.”

For an introduction to a new world entirely separate from our own, it was honestly underwhelming. It didn’t stop me from rushing to the window and staring out into the vast nothingness surrounding the train. We definitely weren’t in Tokyo anymore! For as far as the eye could see, there was a featureless black void with only our single train track riding over it. White fog congealed over support beams that seemed to end only in darkness. Not even the sun, shining brightly out of a clear blue sky, could lighten such blackness. It was as if the land below us had vanished and forgot to take the rails with it.

Before I could worry about what was awaiting us, a grey speck appeared in the distance, the first sign of solid ground. As the train approached, large metal houses distinguished themselves. Smoke clouds rose from the furnaces deep within, hovering over the entire city. The airspace wasn’t as empty as before and we lay eyes on some of this strange world’s inhabitants: just outside the window, a swarm of white blobs passed us.

“Okay,” Keisaki said, bunching up one of her ponytails in a nervous hand. She fell into a seat next to me, so I sat down as well, looking at her expectantly. But her attention was out the window and she seemed rather pale to me.

I drummed my fingers in agitation while JP pulled Tommy to a seat. We all cringed at the little boy’s sniffles. Nobody said anything until our train came to a halt in the metal city. A welcoming sign in Japanese informed us that we arrived at the ‘Terminal of Flames’. A bit of an unexpected name after the black void. I followed the others to the door which opened with little fanfare. None of us felt compelled to move, unsure of our situation and the metal platform just below us. A curious assortment of creatures crowded around the train. They were tiny, grey balls that did not even make it past my knees despite raising their angled ears in curiosity. Unblinkingly, their sea of red eyes peered into our compartment and suddenly, I was even less inclined to move. Especially when they started whispering amongst themselves in flawless Japanese.

The creatures here spoke Japanese! Grey fluff balls that could talk! I might have taken a step back at their curious speculations about our very “humanness”.

Sadly, someone took offense to our hesitation. A wave of pressure from inside the train pushed us onto the platform, the creatures dispersing with hooting shrieks. The pain of landing in a heap for the third time today had me too stunned to fully realize what just happened. Thankfully, the train itself quickly nullified my lapse in deduction. It slowly drifted backwards while voicing its displeasure with our careful approach to the new world. “I hope you weren’t planning to camp out inside. I got other places to be!”

The train could talk too. I could only stare, gobsmacked, as its four yellow eyes regarded us with disappointment.

It said a few other things, that it was called Trailmon and that it was a digimon and the like. But I was still stuck on the fact that we spent the entire train ride inside a sentient being and nobody told us!

“Well, that’s all from me. Have fun at the Flame Terminal,” Trailmon concluded. It was slowly backing away to the series of sidetracks just off the … coast? Cliff? The black void past the Flame Terminal.

“Wait, wait, wait! Where are you going?” Keisaki found her voice first. “How are we supposed to get back home?”

Seemed like she already had her priorities straight.

“How should I know? That wasn’t in the deal.” Trailmon told her, rolling its four eyes. It slowed down for a moment, making a clicking sound from the back of its very metallic throat. Oh right, did I forget to mention that this Trailmon had a gigantic mouth below those eyes? With extremely sharp teeth?

“You know what? There’s one thing you could do. Collect the Spirits of the Legendary Warriors. That might help,” Trailmon added, his voice growing fainter as he moved away.

I had no idea what he meant by ‘Spirits’ but it seemed obvious to me that if we wanted to get back home, he as a talking train would be our best shot.

This wasn’t lost on Tommy, who had been suspiciously quiet. Now the little boy saw his only hope of getting out of this involuntary adventure disappearing over the horizon.

With a speed I didn’t expect of him, he shot to his feet and pushed past the horde of knee-high fluff balls. His frantic eyes never left the retreating train digimon. I froze with alarm. Tommy’s escape would end abruptly at the bottomless chasm waiting beyond the platform!

Keisaki evidently thought Tommy wouldn’t realize his imminent demise and was on her feet just a few seconds after him. “Get back here, you little idiot! Zoe! Help me catch him!”

Honestly, without her calling me to action, I would have watched the events unfold in horror. As it was, I cursed the slight restriction of my skirt and rushed after the fleeing kid. Years of consistently being top of my class in sprinting finally paid off as I overtook Keisaki and easily caught up to Tommy before he even came close to the dangerous cliff.

“What were you thinking?!” I heard myself shriek. He clearly wasn’t thinking anything useful. He was crying and fighting my hold and only when Keisaki joined me in my efforts to drag him back were we making any progress.

“Seriously, are you stupid?” Keisaki shouted. Her harsh tone took me aback and I let go of the kid, who had given up on fulfilling his secret desire of becoming a high wire artist. Now he just stared at the fuming Keisaki in fear as she tried to shake some sense into him. “You could’ve killed yourself! Didn’t you notice the gigantic flipping chasm down there?!”

“Hey, enough!” I stepped between the two. I had gotten along surprisingly well with Keisaki, but it occurred to me that I had just met the girl an hour ago. I really didn’t want to take Tommy’s side since I didn’t do well with constant wailing, but something in the way Keisaki treated him rubbed me the wrong way. “He’s just a kid!”

JP and the horde of grey creatures finally reached our position, and he frowned at the argument. My reaction had Keisaki guiltily taking a step back. I just crossed my arms with a hard look.

Again it fell to Junpei to deal with Tommy, and he produced another bar of chocolate. “Are you okay?”

Tommy said nothing but accepted the treat.

Keisaki awkwardly wrung her hands and finally offered, “You want to go home, right? Well, the train mentioned that collecting spirits would bring us back home, right?” She finally acknowledged the little “digimon” around us who were eyeing the chocolate with awe. “Uh... hi... Do you happen to know what spirits the, uhm, train talked about?”

One of the grey balls with weirdly shaped ears... hands... started hopping up and down. “Of course we know what Spirits are!”

Another one, identical to the first, continued just as excitably, “They are the remains of the Legendary Warriors!” They would have continued their explanation if it weren’t for a sudden flash of heat behind us.

I spun around to the other side of the platform where the trail began its way across the chasm and gasped. The entire area around the edge was alight with green fire! We were quite a distance off, but its scorching heat made my skin itch.

“What is that?” JP shouted, taking several steps back.

The group of little grey digimon huddled together and fearfully watched a four-legged shadow stalking around the flames. One of them whispered, “That’s Cerberumon!”

“He’s looking for the Spirits, too!”

“He’s been here for days!”

“And he keeps destroying the town!”

That sounded utterly terrible. I really couldn’t deal with that after Tommy flirted with death! I didn’t know what to do or say.

Keisaki stared at the fire with a burning expression but felt my gaze and turned around. Her expression changed and made room for rational concern.

“That’s horrible,” she said hastily, “but I don’t really want to run into that thing! We need to get away before it comes after us! Where can we go?”

The digimon formed a giant heap for a private discussion, and Kei tapped her foot impatiently. She constantly looked back to the fire; I couldn’t help but copy her. I couldn’t see the stalking shadow anymore.

“We’ll bring you to Elecmon if you give us some of that stuff!” one of the grey balls said, jumping away from the pile. She eyed Junpei with a dangerous gleam in her red eyes.

“Huh?” the boy said, blinking at being singled out. A swarm of hungry eyes followed his flailing arm and the chocolate bar it held.

“Just do it JP!” Keisaki hissed, looking two seconds away from just pushing him towards the digimon.

He scratched the back of his head but the increasing heat from the platform’s edge spurred him into motion. He handed over one chocolate bar to the cheers of the crowd.

“Okay, then just follow us!” one of the little grey puffs called, hopping off toward a stairwell further back along the platform.

As we descended, the grey creatures introduced themselves as Pagumon. They lead us deeper into the Flame Terminal, further and further away from the rampaging Cerberumon and its dangerous green fire. It took us a good five minutes until we reached a quieter part of the town. JP had to hand over a second chocolate bar to keep the little Pagumon entertained once we stopped in front of a metal house with flowerpots on the windowsills.

Kei knocked on the door, still utterly confused as to what was going on and why exactly we were here. But hey, at least we weren’t in any danger of catching fire anymore!

The door opened and for half a second, the hope of seeing another human flared. Then, I grimaced when instead, a red-furred snout appeared in the frame.

“...Hello? Oh. You are humans!” a striped digimon with long ears and a magnificent tail exclaimed in surprise. She reminded me a bit of a carnivorous species of rabbit. Without letting us get a word in edgewise, she turned back into the house and shouted, “Dear! Reheat the soup! We’ve got guests!” 

That’s how we left the Pagumon behind and ended up around the dinner table of the friendly ‘Elecmon’ couple—it was hard to say “no” to the well-meaning digimon. A few of the white blobs I saw on the train ride, Poyomon, lived here too and fluttered around us. Elecmon fondly introduced them as her children, yet they didn't look at all alike. Maybe they went through some kind of metamorphosis like a caterpillar into a butterfly? I amused myself with the thought of Poyomon spinning a cocoon and emerging as Elecmon.

Keisaki watched the husband stirring a large pot on a vintage stove. “But... why are you helping us?”

We just stumbled in, and they wanted to feed us, no questions asked?

“You’re the first humans I’ve ever seen!” the wife said, going around the table placing soup plates and a table mat in the middle.

Since nobody else seemed likely to say anything (I certainly wouldn’t! The entire situation was just too strange), Keisaki cleared her throat. “Uh… for us, this is all new. Hehe… Is that why you’re just…” She gesticulated at the table and finished lamely, “Giving us food?”

The Elecmon wife paused, the last soup plate clutched in her dull claws. One of her ears gave a little twitch.

“Cherubimon wants us to believe that everyone is an enemy.” A faraway look appeared in her eyes. “It’s awful what’s happening on the Metal Continent.”

Her Poyomon children chirped in sympathy.

“But!” the Elecmon husband said from the stove. He opened a drawer so his wife could retrieve some spoons. “We won’t be playing into Cherubimon’s hands. Flame Terminal is the last city of Fire Country and we’re proud of our hospitality. Now, have some of our famous tomato soup!” He brought the pot around and placed it on the table mat.

“Who’s Cherubimon?” I asked, frowning. I moved out of the way so the Elecmon wife (that was super annoying, didn’t they have names?) could ladle out the soup.

“Oh, of course you wouldn’t know, how silly of me,” she said. Her tone was a mixture of long-suffering and disturbingly cheerful. “Cherubimon is the mad leader of the Digital World. Our very own Angel of Wisdom and Truth! He’s destroying everything to fight the rebels on the Metal Continent, but don’t you worry! You should be safe here.”

The reality of leaving our human world behind came down on me. The spoon shook in my hand. Things had been happening so fast, I’d barely had any time to think. The situation still felt surreal even with the soup’s spicy flavour in my mouth. We were in a city of sentient creatures that didn’t even remotely resemble humans! It was too much to take, and I was really glad about the food. While I was withdrawing, the others at least were warming up to our hosts.

Surprisingly, JP was asking the most questions, and listening with rapt attention when the Elecmon elaborated on that war on the Metal Continent, far across the ocean. How was he able to just absorb all this? I would probably never know!

One of the Poyomon ignored him and landed next to my plate, fixing me with shining eyes. “Why did you come here?”

I swallowed awkwardly and avoided his eyes. I couldn’t speak for the others, but it appeared to me like we all just had nothing better to do at home. Except for Tommy, who was actively looking for a fast ticket back to our world.

Thankfully, JP came up with a better answer and held up his yellow and blue D-Tector (its design neatly fit his outfit, very thoughtful of the higher entity out there who gave us these things). “Someone called us here.”

This sparked a clutter of excited conversation as every digimon present burst to voice their opinion. Finally, the Elecmon husband called the younger digimon to order and then asked us, “Then you came here to save us?”

I blinked. What made him think of that?

“Save you from what?” Keisaki asked, just as confused.

“From Cherubimon, of course!” Elecmon answered heatedly. “We just told you that he’s the one destroying everything! Did you see the chasm outside? That’s his work!”

I didn’t see how this explained anything, but it clearly was a huge problem. “That’s terrible... But how can we help?”

Considering that Cherubimon apparently had the ability to create country-spanning bottomless pits, I failed to see how anyone could stop him.

The hopeful smiles of the Elecmon family faded, and the Poyomons’ jelly-like bodies seemed to shrink in front of my eyes.

“We don’t know,” the Elecmon wife finally admitted. Then her ears perked up. “But you must have come here for a reason!”

“Maybe we did...” Keisaki said. “Maybe we really were sent here to help!” She looked at me with an unreadable expression. To me, it almost looked like she wanted to prove herself. “But...” she trailed off and glanced at Tommy, who balled the fabric of his T-shirt in his hands and wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. “Isn’t there a way for Tommy to go back to our world?”

The little boy looked up, hands ceasing their endless kneading.

“I mean, didn’t the Trailmon say something? What are these Spirit things?” she continued. The explanation of the Pagumon had been a bit lackluster, and honestly, I’d already forgotten all that happened back then except the green fire. I didn’t need to worry about being out of the loop though.

The Poyomon were falling all over themselves in their excitement to explain, until their father quickly silenced them. “Calm down, my children! The humans don’t know our history. We need to start from the beginning!” He pointed at the wall opposite from the entrance. A small altar was mounted there. It showed a circle of stylized kanji surrounding an angel.

“In ancient times, the entire Digital World was at war. But the Great Angel Lucemon was powerful enough to stop the fighting. That’s her picture, in the middle. For a while, things were peaceful, but then the power she wielded made her corrupt and cruel. No one was able to oppose her until the Ten Legendary Warriors came along. You can see them represented by the ring of elements surrounding Lucemon here. They defeated Lucemon but lost their lives in the battle. Today only their Spirits remain, and these Spirits are said to have the power to make wishes come true!”

We remained silent through the explanation. I barely noticed that JP pulled a small notebook from his pockets and scribbled something down. I was trying to digest that we were not only in an entirely separate world, but that it had its own history of violence and magic.

“Alright,” said JP. He frowned profoundly, an unexpectedly thoughtful expression. “And the thing from earlier wants the Spirits, too? With the green fire?”

“You’ve seen Cerberumon? That brute has been snooping around the city for a week now,” Elecmon said disdainfully. “But he only recently became violent...”

“Well, then it’s settled, right?” Keisaki said, standing up. “We’re going to find the Spirits, get Tommy home and save the world!”

Putting it that way made it sound quite ridiculous, but the digimon present took it as an incentive to cheer.

Now I was frowning too. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help. I just wasn’t sure if this was the way to do it. What would finding these Spirits even entail? How would we go about that? Still, I got up and followed the others outside. We lingered there for a moment longer, us humans from another world, and I was about to thank our generous hosts for their splendid (if spicy) meal when… Well. When Keisaki’s D-Tector had other plans. Its urgent beeping interrupted all conversation, and she drew it from her pocket in bewilderment.

The sight of a familiar circle greeted her. The female voice from before soon followed: “Embrace your destiny and find your Spirit.”

A hologram of a black and green grid took shape above the display of the device, a red dot marking our position and an arrow pointing to the location of the Spirit. At least, I thought it did. Oh so… that’s how we were going about finding these Spirits. Got it.

If only it would really be that easy, but we’d kind of forgotten something important. Humans in the Digital World just weren’t a very common sight… And prone to attract attention!

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