The Light At The End Of The Tunnel (Spirit Hunt)

He was dead, Komatsu, Tatsuyoshi was a dead man. He was in a land full of monsters, he had no idea how to get home, and he was laid out on his back in the bottom of a pretty deep hole, and he had missed school. His brother was going to kill him. Tatsu chuckled which was followed by a sigh of discomfort at the thought of his older brother searching for him. He had to get back home, and soon. Tatsu slowly raised his hand up above his face and glared at the device that he was clutching. “This is all your fault.” He dropped his arm back down to his side and stared up at the sky. He could tell it’d be getting dark soon, and there he was stuck at the bottom of a hole. “I should have just gone to school this morning.” He said to himself as he thought back about the events leading up to his current predicament.

“Tatsu get up.” The sound of his sister’s passing voice barely registered with the sleeping teenager who was currently sprawled across his bed. His alarm clock lay unplugged on the floor, and he didn’t even stir as Kira walked passed his room. About fifteen minutes later Kira walked passed his door again, this time throwing her towel at him as she passed, “You’re gonna be late Yoshi.” Another fifteen minutes went by and instead of his sister's voice he was greeted with a full backpack, that felt like it had bricks in it, which came slamming down onto his stomach. Tatsu shot up as fast as a human being could, his eyes wide open immediately, and his breath knocked out of him. Hie brother was staring him in the face.

Once he was able to catch his breath he was able to grunt out, “Ryu, I’m up… get this off me.. it weighs a ton.” The eldest Komatsu son lifted the backpack off of his younger brother with ease and sat down on his bed to get level with Tatsu. “Get up. Go to school. Do not be late!” Ryutaro was using his stern "I’m dead serious voice" when he issued those commands. Tatsu rolled his eyes and replied. “Yeah, alright, fine.” Ryu slowly got off the bed, glaring at Tatsu intently and headed out the door to walk Kira to school. Tatsu plopped back down on his back for about five more minutes before getting ready for class.

After getting ready for school, tatsu did a quick sweep of his pig sty of a room to search for his phone. He was actually in quite a bit of a rush at the time considering how long it took him to get ready and he knew that Ryu would find out if he was late. However he didn’t find his phone first, instead a device he had never laid eyes on before had caught his attention. He grabbed it and examined it for a moment. The device wasn’t very large, it fit in his hand, it had some sort of screen on it and a few buttons. After tapping the screen, giving it a shake, and jamming his finger on all the buttons tatsu just threw the foreign object in his bag, he’d figure it out later. He didn’t have time to mess around. Tatsu grabbed his phone off of the floor, he spotted it seconds after zipping his bag back up, and bolted out of the house.

Once he had put a good distance between himself and his house, Tatsuyoshi slowed down his run to a brisk walk. Tatsu looked down at his phone while he walked, the battery was nearly dead. He swore. He shot off a few texts to a few of his friends but before they could reply back a loud high pitched noise caught his attention. It took him a bit to realize that the noise was coming from inside of his bag. Tatsu stopped to open his bag and the noise resonated louder. He quickly closed the bag back up and glanced around. No one else had seemed to notice, or at least no one else seem to care, prompting him to reopen the bag. Tatsu reached in and pulled out the source of the noise, it was the strange device.

Before he knew it, Tatsu was no longer on his route to school. Instead, he was following directions that were coming out of the weird handheld object which was leading him to the Shibuya Train Terminal. The terminal was packed with people, both coming and going, but no one seemed to pay him any mind. Tatsu didn’t even hesitate to follow where the device was leading him when it seemed to be taking him to a platform that looked as if was shut down. When Tatsuyoshi came across a odd looking train, the device in his hand finally stopped giving out directions, it went silent. Tatsu looked up at the train, it wasn’t like any train he’d seen before but of course, without thinking twice, the boy boarded the train and seconds after he did, the Trailmon departed from the station. Tatsu was not making it to school on time.

The train was not very well lit, but in his car alone, tatsu could tell there were other passengers, he wondered where they were going. Tatsu walked towards a seat but was immediately stopped in his tracks. His entire body has stilled, he was in shock. Whatever he was seeing could not be real. He blinked a few times, and swore to himself that his eyes must be playing tricks on him. He slowly turned his head to the left to get a better look at the creature that was sitting… floating above the seat. It reminded him of that creature he heard about in a story before, one of those things that eats nightmares. The odd looking creature noticed Tatsu staring at him and stared back. Words had escaped Tatsu at that moment but they didn’t escape the monster. “You got a problem buddy?” His voice was deep and raspy and if Tatsu had assumed that thing could talk, he definitely wouldn't have expected it to sound like that. “Are, you a… a baku? Am I dreaming? Are you going to eat my dream?” He surprised himself when he was able to get those words out and the words he actually said surprised him even more. The floating creature, that had smoke below his body instead of legs, snorted and turned to face the back of the seat in front of him. “Pft, humans.” He said condescendingly. “I’m a BakuMON. I’m not eating anything and you're not dreaming you’re on your way to the Digital World. Now leave me alone.” Tatsu quickly took a seat far away from the Baku-whatever. That was the fastest Tatsu had ever compiled to anybody’s request.

When the train finally stopped Tatsu was a little hesitant to disembark and he might not have if it wasn’t for that thing in his hand going off again and advising him to get off of the Trailmon. Tatsu stepped off of the train, bag in one hand, weird device in the other. The device was giving him instructions again, but Tatsu was no longer giving it any of his attention. There were more monsters, everywhere. There weren't many that looked a lot alike either, and none of them looked anything like the baku thing he had talked to. He was once again at a loss for words. It took him a moment to come back to reality and realize that the contraption in his hand was still giving him directions. He had the brief thought to ignore it but he quickly dismissed that idea when he noticed other humans. There were many more monsters than people but the fact that he wasn’t alone in a world of monsters made him feel a little better. Tatsu looked down at the device, gripped it tight, and darted out of the terminal like it had instructed. He had come this far, he might as well see where he ended up.

Tatsu wasn’t moving as fast as he was when he was back in Shibuya, there was a lot more to see in his current surroundings than there was back home which was slowing him down quite a bit. Giant dinosaurs walked by, other large flying bugs were chatting it up with some enormous flower creatures, and some girl was sitting on the shoulder of a really big teddy bear. Tatsu had never seen anything like what he had just seen, however the boy continued on. He wasn’t sure if it was the slew of monsters or just the fact that the environment was so unfamiliar but whatever the reason, Tatsu felt uneasy and almost unwelcome in the city, and he didn’t protest to the small device one bit when it lead him out of the city passed the giant gray wall.

The city Tatsu had just left looked amazing, almost to amazing for words, but it couldn’t hold a candle to how astounding the surrounding area looked. The beautiful green fields looked like they went on for miles. There was a light breeze that made the grass appear to be dancing across the fields. Tatsu couldn’t help but smile.

Tatsu continued to follow the directions given out by the gadget in his hand, which had seemed to get a lot more enthusiastic the farther away from the city they got. Tatsu hoped that meant he was close to whatever it was leading him to. Tatsu hadn’t thought about school all day, he had been gone from home for hours and all of his attention was completely immersed in finding whatever he was being led to. His eyes were fixed on the mechanism he was clutching tightly in his hand as it continued to get louder and louder. Which is one of the reasons why he didn’t notice that his next step would result in him plummeting down a ridiculously deep hole in the ground, the other reason being that the grass had successfully acted as camouflage for the hole.

When Tatsu came to, the device was no longer making any kind of noise nor was it giving him any more directions. Tatsu continued to stare up at the sky, his body sore and in quite a bit of pain, he wondered how exactly he was going to get out of that hole and more importantly out of the monster world. As it got dark and the last rays of the sun faded away Tatsu took the device, that had caused him to be stuck in a hole in the middle of who knows where, and chucked it against the wall. Right where the cursed contraption hit, the dirt crumbled away revealing a small tunnel which had a small dim dark light coming from inside. Tatsu lifted his head slightly to get a better view and then sighed. “I knew it, I’m dead.” He sighed. The doohickey that led Tatsu there began to let out it’s high pitched noise again prompting Tatsu to slowly push himself off the ground and make his way over towards the tunnel. “I’ve come this far, might as well keep going.” He said as he scooped up the device.

The tunnel wasn’t long, but it was short in height, even for Tatsu. He had to keep his head bowed down to make it to the end. At the end of the tunnel there was a small dirt room, which made Tatsu realize that the hole, tunnel, and room had to be man made, or at least monster made. The only thing in the small circular room, was an odd looking… totem, which was also the source of the dim light. The weird device went silent again. Tatsu raised it up to look at it once more which triggered the totem to react. The dim light shot from the totem to the device, or vice versa, Tatsu wasn’t sure but whatever was going on, it looked like the totem was being drawn into the device and then it disappeared. Tatsu glared down at the machine in his hands in disbelief. He could see an image of the totem on the little screen and then both Tatsu and the device started to glow.

The light that had enveloped Tatsu and his D-Tector was a dim dark light but it still blinded the boy. When he was able to see again, everything seemed bigger. He had a lot more room in the cave room and the ceiling was much farther away than before. He went to look back to the digivice and didn’t recognize the hand that was holding it. He frantically examined himself, and quickly came to the conclusion that the body he was in was not his. He looked more like the monsters he had seen earlier. He was little, and purple. A red bandanna was tied around his neck and on his chest was a little mean looking smiling face. He had little skinny legs, big clawed feet, and… a tail! “I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead.”