Digimon belongs to Toei Animation and to Sensations Animation and possibly other companies whose names I do not know. I'm only borrowing them temporarily, and I promise to return them when I'm done. The universe this series is set in was created by Lord Archive. Second verse, same as the first... ---------- Joan smirked as she finished reading the e-mail Colette had sent to the team after she and Gazimon had returned from the Digital World following her encounter with Genevieve and Lopmon. She knew that her little brother hung out sometimes with a girl named Genevieve, and this Genevieve's mention of her friends Ellen and Rene was all the confirmation she had needed. Still grinning Joan got up from the computer, nudging her partner with her foot as she did so. Elecmon pouted. "Joan, you made me mess up," she remarked, erasing the stray pencil mark on the paper. "Worry about your pencil sketches later," Joan told her. "We've got to pay Rene a little visit." The object of their search was currently in his bedroom, lying stomach- down on his bed and looking intently at the object he'd received from Genevieve's computer. He was so engrossed in his examination that Joan was able to catch him completely off-guard when she barged into his room. "Rene, we need to talk," Joan announced. She giggled as her brother fell off of his bed in surprise. "Ah! Joan!" he exclaimed in surprise. Pulling himself to a sitting position he asked, "Don't you know how to knock? What do you want, anyway?" His eyes widened as he caught sight of Elecmon standing next to his sister. Joan smiled smugly. "Rene, I'd like you to meet my Digimon partner Elecmon." "How do you do?" Elecmon said, dipping her head. "I'm glad to meet you, Rene." "Yeah, likewise," Rene said nervously. Looking to his sister he asked, "What's all this about?" In response Joan held up her digivice. "Little brother, welcome to the wonderful world of being a Digi-Destined." ---------- Rose Diaries - Paris Adventures 04 By Lady Iapetus Entry Two: The Odd Couple ---------- "Christ! Could this day get any worse?" Ellen huffed. She was still in a snit over the airline screw-up with her plane ticket two days earlier, which was compounded by the fact that one of her teachers had decided to be a prick about the entire thing. Now, after trying to see if the funky watch that had come out of Genevieve's computer would go back _into_ the computer, she found herself zapped from her home into the middle of a meadow in absolute nowhere. "Would you _please_ stop screaming?" a feminine voice behind her asked. "As grateful as I am that your voice carries and therefore allowed me to find you, it's now getting quite annoying." Ellen turned around, expecting to see another human being and preparing to rip into her just on general principle. What she found was a hawk or eagle-like bird, standing about a meter high, glaring up at her with her wings on her hips. Around her forehead was a leather band with a feather sticking up in the back, like the Native Americans were often depicted as wearing. Ellen was so surprised that her tirade died on her tongue, and all she could do was work her mouth silently. "That's better," the bird said. "Now I can introduce myself properly. I am Hawkmon, and I have the honor of being your Digimon partner." "...partner?" Ellen finally managed to get out. Hawkmon nodded. "Partner for what? Just what am I supposed to do with you?" Hawkmon looked at her as if the answer were completely obvious. "We help each other protect the Digital World, of course." Ellen walked away, resisting the urge to either scream or laugh hysterically. "This is nuts!" she exclaimed. "I've _got_ to be dreaming this; there's no other explanation for it. This absolutely _has_ to be some kind of crazy nightmare." "I _told_ you I heard someone!" she heard a familiar voice exclaim. Both Ellen and Hawkmon turned around to see four figures crossing a nearby hill. Two of them were human and appeared to be Rene and his older sister Joan. The other two...well, weren't human. The one walking by Joan looked like a red lizard with blue markings, and there was a white, miniature Tyrannosaurus Rex walking next to Rene. When he recognized who this new person was, Rene waved an arm above his head. "Hey Ellen! You got roped into this too, huh?" "This what?" Ellen asked. "What the hell is going on, Rene? One minute I'm trying to feed this thing back into the computer, and the next I'm standing here having a conversation with a miniature bald eagle." She brandished the device as she said this. "Hawkmon," Hawkmon corrected archly. Rene blinked. "Whoa. Calm down, Ellen. This is nothing to get excited over." "'Nothing to get excited over?'" she repeated. "You call getting kidnapped nothing to get excited over?" Joan decided to take the opportunity to step in and prevent any bloodshed from occuring. "Calm down, Ellen. Don't worry, you haven't been kidnapped and for that matter neither have Rene and I. You've been chosen to be a Digi-Destined, and so you were brought to the Digital World to meet your partner, which is Hawkmon I'm assuming." The avian Digimon nodded. "That's correct," she confirmed. "And you buy this?" Ellen asked in disbelief. The brown-haired girl shrugged. "I have since '01, when I was introduced to Elecmon here." Elecmon inclined her head in Ellen's direction. "A pleasure to meet you, Ellen." "Yeah, nice to meet you too," Ellen responded automatically. Turning to Rene she asked, "So what's your little friend's name?" "You can call me Snow Agumon," the white T-Rex replied in a voice that was of a higher pitch than Ellen expected from a dinosaur. Rene grinned. "Isn't he cool? We met him just a few minutes after Joan and I got here. Its like he was waiting for me to show up." "I _was_ waiting for you to show up!" Snow Agumon said. The pair shared a laugh while Joan rolled her eyes. "Well, if you two are finished joking around, how about we keep going?" Joan asked. Turning to Ellen she explained, "Before we found you I was giving my brother here a tour of the Digital World. You're welcome to come along if you want." Ellen shrugged. "Sure. It'll give me something to do until I figure out a way home, or else a way to wake myself up." Hawkmon shook her head in exasperation as she took to the air and the rest of the group started walking. "If its getting home you're worried about, there should be a television coming up here in a little bit," Joan called over her shoulder. "I'll show you how to work it, if you still want to leave." Ellen stopped in her tracks. "...television?" ---------------------- Some distance away, a Fugamon was tramping through the woods in search of something or someone to bully around. He had no logical reason for doing so; he was just bored. And he was a Viral; Virals were supposed to pick on the small and weak. Stopping for a moment, Fugamon thought he heard voices approaching his general area. He grinned to himself; scaring the daylights out of a hiker would be great fun. ---------------------- "So, the Digital World is as big as the Earth?" Rene asked. Being new to the whole business of being Digi-Destined, he and Ellen understandably had quite a few questions (although most of Ellen's seemed geared towards going home). As Rene was a hobbyist geographer, he was interested in the geographical layout of the Digital World. Joan nodded. "As far as we've been able to guess, yeah. Each team of Digi-Destined has its own specific area of the Digital World that they have to protect and keep the peace in. For example, the Eastern coast of the continent of Server and nearby File Island falls under the Odaiba team's jurisdiction, although they share File with teams from California and Mexico City. Teams of Digi-destined of rarely cross over to another team's region in the Digital World, though the Candian team seems to have made a bit of a habit of it." "Canada has a Digidestined team?" Ellen asked incredulously. "Yes," Joan answered. "Six kids, all from Edmonton. We met one of them about a year ago when he 'ported over here." "'Ported?'" both Rene and Ellen echoed. This time Elecmon fielded the question. "Anyone with a D-3 can use that type of Digivice to open a digital portal on any computer. Depending on how the portal is set, they can also be used to go over to other countries or other regions of the Digital World." "Some of us prefer more conventional means of transportation, though," Joan interrupted. "Especially as 'porting to, say, the U.S. would mean you'd be in the country illegaly." "So what you're saying is that its rare for a Digi-Destined team to journey out of its assigned region of the Digital World, but it does happen?" asked Ellen. Joan nodded. "For example, the California team had to help out the Oklahoma team a couple years ago. The only ones that rule doesn't seem to apply to are the kids we call Wandering Digidestined. They aren't part of a Digidestined team, but they wander around different regions of the Digital World and help out various teams when and where they're needed." "Does France have one?" was Ellen's next question. Joan giggled. "Technically yes, you could say," she answered. "His name is Allan, and he's from England originally. But he helps out our team from time to time, so you could say we 'share' him. I think the last time we saw him was during the Christmas invasion two years ago, but I'm not entirely sure on that." Rene tried to steer the conversation back to the earlier topic. "So what's Paris' general area?" he asked. "What's it like? "There are a few small towns scattered around our area, but we've mostly got plains and forests, and the forests of French Bread and the Valley of Mirrors. But nothing as impressive as the Seine or the Eiffel Tower. And nothing as interesting as the Forest of Irrelevent Street Signs." "What?" Ellen asked skeptically. "Run that by me again?" Elecmon laughed. "It's a forest over on File Island that has street signs stuck to the trees everywhere, like they just grew there. One of the Japanese Chosen, Yamato Ishida, dubbed it the 'Forest of Irrelevant Street Signs,' and that's what its been named ever since." Ellen blinked, turning this information over in her mind. "...okay," she finally said. The Digimon, aside from Elecmon, had been silent this whole time. Snow Agumon was content to just walk beside his partner, knowing that there'd be time enough for questions once they got back to Rene's home. Hawkmon, on the other hand, was having second thoughts about being a partnered Digimon. Her human partner wasn't acting very enthusiastic about it. _I wonder if I can get a different partner?_ Snow Agumon stopped walking all of a sudden, raised his head and sniffed at the air. "What is it, boy?" Rene asked. "'Boy?'" repeated Ellen. "Rene, he's a midget dinosaur, not a puppy." "Hmph!" Hawkmon harumphed. "It just so happens that Digimon have extraordinarily good sense of smell, especially dinosaur and dragon types like Snow Agumon here. He probably smells another Digimon nearby." Snow Agumon nodded. "Hawkmon's right; there is another Digimon around here." "What kind?" Rene asked. "We can't usually tell that by smell, Rene," his partner replied with a grin. "Unless its a Sukamon, of course." "Ew!" Elecmon and Hawkmon chorused. "Don't worry; it's not a Sukamon," Snow Agumon assured them. As if that sentence had been a cue, a red ogre-like Digimon leapt out of the edge of the wooded area that the group had been approaching, club held high. "It's a Fugamon!" Snow Agumon shouted as instinct kicked in and the kids and Digimon ran. "A what?" Ellen yelled over her shoulder. "An Adult-level Digimon, Viral class," answered Joan. "Coarse, rude, and just generally annoying." Ellen looked up at her partner, who had once again taken to the air. "You're my partner," she said. "Aren't you supposed to protect me or something?" "Are you crazy? You heard what Joan said!" Hawkmon returned. "That guy's an Adult!" "So?" "Elecmon, Hawkmon and Snow Agumon are currently Child-level Digimon," answered Joan. "If they went up against that guy without evolving, they'd get slaughtered." She turned to Elecmon and asked, "You ready?" Elecmon nodded. "Ready! Elecmon, evolve!" A pillar of light engulfed the lizard-like Digimon, leaving in her place a Digimon with the body of a horse and head and torso of a human. "Kentarumon!" "Oh, good! A Digi-Destined! That makes this more fun!" Fugamon grinned as he advanced at Kentarumon. "We'll see about that. Hunting Cannon!" She growled as Fugamon side- stepped the attack. Fugamon grunted. "Not bad. My turn. Evil Hurricane!" Kentarumon braced herself against the attack. But Joan wasn't ready, and was thrown back a distance of a couple meters. With Joan out of commission Kentarumon de-evolved to Elecmon. "Joan!" Rene called in shock. He then turned to the red ogre and shouted, "You're going to pay for that!" "All right! Snow Agumon, evolve!" Snow Agumon cheered. Light engulfed him as it had Elecmon. When it died away in Snow Agumon's place was a blue version of their opponent. "Hyougamon. Icicle Toss!" After attacking, Hyougamon lunged at Fugamon and the two opponents locked hands. "How does it feel to pick on someone your own size?" Hawkmon and Ellen watched the fight from the safety of the sidelines. Hawkmon was trying not to give into the urge to take to the air and start raining Feather Slashes down onto the Fugamon. "Ellen, he needs my help," she told her partner. "I can evolve and help Hyougamon, but only if you allow me to." Ellen looked down at her Digimon. The expression on her face was unreadable, but after a couple seconds changed to grim determination. "I trust you, Hawkmon. Go for it." "Hawkmon, evolve!" Hawkmon's form disappeared in a pillar of light, replaced by a large bird-like creature. "Cockatrimon!" Cockatrimon hurried into place so that she was standing behind Hyougamon. "Hyougamon! When I say the word, get out of the way as quick as you can!" "Got it!" When Cockatrimon gave the signal Hyougamon planted one foot in Fugamon's abdomen and pushed himself away. Cockatrimon waited until he was clear before launching her attack. "Petrifier!" The energy from her attack hit Fugamon, and before everyone's eyes he turned to stone. Their job completed, the two Digimon de-evolved. "That was fantastic. You were just great!" Rene exclaimed. He looked over at Joan, who was just joining them. "You okay, Sis?" "Yeah, I'm fine," Joan answered. "Nice job, you two." Ellen walked over to the stone Digimon. "Is he dead?" "Not unless someone or something tips him over and he breaks," Hawkmon answered. "The spell should wear off in a couple hours." "Which means we'd better find that television if we want to get home," Joan said. "C'mon, everyone, follow me." Snow Agumon tapped the stone Fugamon with one claw. "Rock solid!" he joked. The pun was met by groans from the rest of the group. "What?" ---------------------- Dear Diary, I'm still in minor shock as I write this. I can't believe that I was chosen to be a Digidestined. Heck, part of me is still wondering if I'm just dreaming all of this. After our adventure in the Digital World all three of us ended up 'porting out in the LaSalle's den, even though I'd gone in through a portal on my home computer. Joan says that landing on your feet after going through one of those things takes a lot of practice; I believe her! Getting home wasn't too large of an undertaking, although Hawkmon complained about me carrying her instead of allowing her to walk. Fortunately Mom still hadn't gotten home by the time we did, so I was able to sneak her in relatively easily. Apparently Joan gave my e-mail address to the leader of our team, Catherine, because there was an e-mail from her waiting for me when I got done with dinner. It was addressed to Rene, Genevieve and myself inviting the three of us to a team meeting that weekend at some girl's house. Must be one of those "welcome-to-the-team" informative things. Guess I'll find out when I go. ---------------------- Author's Notes: The Digidestined from Canada mentioned by Joan is from _Digital Diaries: Adventure 2003_ by Shaun Garin. Its a series set in the Diaries universe dealing with a team out of Canada. There is precedent in the series for Digi-Destined crossing over into other teams' territories. A good example would be Michael in the episode where Miyako earns the Digimental of Purity/Sincerity. Upcoming Entry: Rose Diaries - Entry 3: All You'll Need to Know Catherine calls a weekend meeting of the French team at Colette's house, and the three new Digidestined learn just what they've gotten themselves into.