Square One

[Akiko]

The girl wakes with a start, sitting bolt upright and then deciding maybe she should lie down again, and quickly. Her head is throbbing, and she burrows her fingers into her black curls as if she needs to hold her skull together. She sinks back to the ground on her back, groaning again. She barely recognizes the sound of her own voice. She sounds smaller than she would have expected. She feels the pressure of sticks and brown earth beneath her. She recognizes these things, knows what they are called ... but still doesn't know what SHE is called.

She blinks her green eyes, intense as lazers, glaring at the canopy of the forest. Yes, that facial expression feels just about right. Her head is a world of pain, beneath the obvious head trauma, rivers of fury and pain of a deeper kind.

"Who am I?" she asks the trees, but they don't answer, and as her vision clears, she sees a thousand images bouncing around her, trees in a different world, cars racing down freeways, a crowd of people moving down a busy city street. She scrambles back into a sitting position, shuffling backwards til her back hits a tree trunk. She whimpers, her eyes huge, then closing. She buries her face in her hands, shaking ... it's too much, this place.

[MatrixTamer]

Through the clamor of the screens surrounding the girl, the sound of footsteps could be heard. Then were quiet at first, then gradually got louder until the point where she could be certain they were coming from her world and not the one the mysterious trees showed. Then, slowly, through the trees could be seen a figure that much resembled a pile of rocks. Except these rocks had two big yellow eyes and a grinning mouth. And it was moving.

As the strange creature approached, its smile became wider and wider until it looked as if someone had sliced half-way through its head with a very large sword. Its eyes, too, grew wider as if shocked by what it saw. Then it exclaimed in a loud, cheerful voice, "Hey! You're a human! You're an actual human! Oh, Kouji will be so pleased! Hurry, come with me!"

It ran a few feet in the direction it had come from, then stopped and looked back to see if the girl was coming or not. From the look on his face, he seemed to expect her to understand exactly what he was saying and hurry after him, but that clearly would not be the case.

[Akiko]

The girl looks up, her face twisting in fear fading into barely contained rage. Her hands are tangled in her curls, pulling her roots, the pain keeping her in some amount of control. She bristles at the approach of the digimon, her teeth grating together. If only she could think who she was ... how she got here.

"Who's Kouji? What are you? Where am I?"

[MatrixTamer]

The Gotsumon cocked its head at her words, not understanding how she could be so oblivious to the situation. After all, he was pretty sure this was a human, and the only humans he knew of were Kouji and his friends. Therefore, shouldn't she know who Kouji was? But, as he could gather from her words, she didn't.

"You don't know Kouji? Well, he's a human, like you. He's also a Legendary Warrior! And I'm Gotsumon. I'm not really sure where we are, though... I've never been this far from my home."

He hoped she'd be satisfied with his answers; he really had no idea what else to say.

[Akiko]

The girl raises a brow, "Legendary Warrior? I must have hit my head really hard."

She gets gingerly to her feet, a wave of undirected anger rolling over her. She looks down at herself. She is wearing black jeans and a black tanktop, and over the top of it all, a long black trenchcoat. She has several knives strapped to her tough little-girl frame. She purses her lips a little, "What? Am I legendary warrior too?"

[MatrixTamer]

The Gotsumon merely shrugged. It was apparent that her carrying knives didn't make him think of her as a warrior. After all, there were so many knife-bearing Digimon in the world that most certainly weren't warriors. At least, not legendary ones.

"I dunno, but you can ask him when we get there," he said, attempting to convince her to follow him by jogging a few steps forward. "Come on! We promise him to find any of his human friends. And, well, you're human so I guess you count, too!" He edged forward a little more and looked back again, waving his hand to signal she should come with him.

[Akiko]

The girl hesitates, but then moves to follow the Gotsumon, mostly for lack of anything better to do. She shudders a bit, her muscles tense with anxiety and wariness, even though she isn't even aware what she is frightened of, if anything.

She pushes her hands into the pockets of her trenchcoat, eyeing the strange trees, and then deciding to focus on Gotsumon's back instead, not particularly liking the strange feeling of vertigo and impending memory.

[MatrixTamer]

OOC: This is being continued in the Red Ruby Rocks thread "Caught Between a Rock and the Hard Truth", for anyone who didn't pick up on that.