“I’m sure that all of this must be very confusing to you” Continued Tai, “and for that I apologise. I will help you as much as I can, but… I don’t have all the answers.”
Rydan looked at him thoughtfully. “Okay. Why don’t we start at the beginning. Where are we, and who exactly are you? I mean, your name doesn’t exactly help us much, does it?”
Tai nodded. “That’s understandable. This place is always a little confusing when you get here for the first time. This place, this forest, this whole world – it is not what you would call real. It’s kind of between real and not real. It exists entirely in a digital plane – a parallel world, in a way. It’s always been rather confusing for me, I’m afraid, so I’m not going to be much good at explaining it. You’ll find some things around that explain it better than I can, at any rate.”
Looking at Cody, he added “You will probably be the one to figure it all out – you seem to be the smart one here; after all, you do have a laptop….” Tai Chuckled to himself for a moment, then composed himself.
“In a nutshell, this is the digital world. It’s inhabited by Digital monsters, or Digimon as they like to be known. Some are small, some are large, some powerful, some weak – but they all have a few things in common, like the fact that none of them are inherently evil. Well, I say that, but… Well. That’s for later.”
Kimmy frowned. “So what are these things, then? You said that they were digivices or something, right?”
Tai nodded. “Yep. A digivice is a powerful tool – it identifies you as a digidestined, and will link you to your own partner digimon. They allow you some control over them, in a way. Yours also seem to be able to change into other things, which is something I haven’t seen before. I dues they identify you as the next generation of digidestined.”
Dave looked up. “Okay, you’re going to have to tell us what that is, too; you keep saying it, and I don’t think any of us have any idea what it means.”
“I was getting to that.” Said tai, frowning slightly. “Whenever
the digital world is in peril, it somehow calls a group of children from the
real world into this one. Once they are here, they get a partner digimon. But,
it’s always been children – until you lot. You’re obviously
quite a bit older than a bunch of kids.”
“
The digidestined are usually in the digital world for a reason. So far, there
have been four generations of digidestined. The first came to the digital
world shortly after it was created, and never left. The second came for a
time, and left – however, they returned a short while later. The third
generation was rather unique – it was composed of a couple of members
of the second generation. They constantly travelled between the real and
digital worlds, rather than staying here. The fourth generation stayed mainly
in the real world, and ventured into the digital world some time later. It
seems you are the fifth Generation of digidestined. If you are in the digital
world, then you obviously have something important to do.”
Rydan decided it was once again his turn to say something; “That answers a lot, but there’s still a lot of things that are bugging me – like who you are, for a start.”
Tai frowned again. “Well, I never was very good at explaining everything. Ah well. I was the leader of the second group of digidestined. Initially, there were seven of us – unfortunately, I am the only one left. My friends and I were at summer camp, and we got sucked into this world – nearly the same spot you came in, actually. After our task in the digital world was complete, we returned home. My younger sister was in the third generation – once they were successful in their task, life went a bit… weird. Me and my digimon partner, Agumon, decided to become ambassadors for the digital world. A few years later, I was contacted by an old friend of mine by the name of genai. As it turns out, he was the leader of the first ever digidestined, and had stayed behind in the digital world to guide the next group who came along – you see, the second generation of digidestined – that was my lot – were guided by genai. He explained a lot of things, and helped us with the odd bit of info when he could. When he contacted me, he was getting on a bit – in fact, he was dying. He needed someone else to take the reins when he died, and chose me – I was the next leader, so I was the logical choice, I guess.”
He took a deep breath and continued. “Just as genai waited to be a guide for us, so I have waited to be a guide for you. The fourth generation of digidestined were not in the digital world for long enough for me to make contact with, so I could not aid them; however, they did their job admirably, and they were guided by another digi-destined. Unfortunately, it seems that I’ve exhausted most of the knowledge I can pass on to you – to become what I am today, I had to make certain sacrifices, and am now bound by some rather weird rules. For instance, I’m not allowed to eat pasta anymore. But, more importantly, I can not tell you more than I already have – most of what you must know must be found out for yourself.”
Rydan didn’t seem impressed by this at all. “That’s a bit of a cop out! So you just show up here, tell us where we are, reminisce a bit and that’s it, you’ve probably got some kind of job to do?”
“I’m afraid so” Sighed tai “It was the same in the past, and it must stay the same in the future. And, to add to the confusion you’re probably feeling, I’m afraid I will have to go now. I hope to speak to you soon – maybe I’ll be able to tell you more about a few things, eh?”
Rydan opened his mouth to retort, but Tai seemed to flicker and fade, as if he was simply fading away…. And then, with a small “Pop!” Noise and a flash of light, he was gone.