MPC65A: Dead Daves are the Enemy.

It is currently the middle of the night, and you sleep upon the bed of your recently acquired pirate ship. It is not the most comfortable thing. Old springs poke at your back and sides as the ship slowly rocks back and forth among the waves of the Digital Sea. The thought had occured to you to just Digiport your way home every night like Amelie did, but this was part of the experience, you told yourself. Your companion and friend, the ModokiBetamon Ziggy, sleeps on his stomach against your chest as your arm wraps lightly around him. Right now, despite the discomfort, you are in a deep slumber. Possibly the deepest you have ever been.

You feel like you are floating through a haze of old memories in bubbles, surrounded by vast nothing, but every one of them is blurry and unrecognizable. Any time you try to focus on one, it moves past your vision and disappears before you can place it. Eventually, you settle down on some ground and feel a distinct POP from around your body. Were you in a bubble of some sort? After it disperses, your surroundings become more clear. You find yourself in a familiar area. This is the field next to French Middle School back in your home town. Had you not had to uproot and move to Shibuya, this is where you would have been going in a couple of years.

You used to live near here. In fact, you can see your old house just down the street. You have never been inside the school before, but there is a tennis court next to it, flanked by both the school and the large open field you find yourself in now. You begin the look around the place. It seems empty, but that is fairly normal. Unless it is right before or after school, there is rarely anyone around. Yet this feels almost too empty. There are no cars in the school parking lot, nor any in the street or driveways of the many houses within sight. Nobody being at the school could be explained away by it being Summertime. It was incredibly hot right now, after all, but what about everywhere else? You know your family always parked their cars in the garage, so not seeing their vehicles wasn't all that odd. But did everyone else around here? You honestly can't remember having ever paid attention to that detail before. Maybe that was normal.

Without much thought of anything else to do, you begin to walk down the slight incline towards the road, and towards your house. Suddenly, you hear another POP from behind you. It is the same sound of the popping dream bubble that brought you here. You turn around and see facing you, maybe twenty feet away, a familiar face. But what is familiar about it? You can saw with certainty that you have never seen this person before, but you also are acutely aware that you know them. He looks to be about the same age as you, and bares a shirt that you truly wish you had in your collection; a cartoon-style rendering of the Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue crew posing with their blasters, helmetless. You are very jealous. At his feet is a small amphibious being that you recognize as a ModokiBetamon. Not just any ModokiBetamon, but YOUR ModokiBetamon.

"I don't like this, David."

You look straight down towards the source of the voice. It is your good friend and companion, Ziggy, your ModokiBetamon. He has been by your side this whole time. But why hadn't you realized it until now? You are certain he has been at your feet since you escaped the bubble you started in.

Everyone is searching for a world where they belong. A place of light, free of falsehood.

It's difficult for you to parse what was happening before you were under attack by....yourself? No, but close enough. Luckily your friend here was already on the defensive. Ziggy focuses on a piece of ground in front of him and activates his Aqua Tower.

Electricity isn't something that can be tangibly attacked or pushed away, but it can be redirected. That directional alteration is exactly what your partner wanted to achieve here. Water began to bubble under the grass, but there was no spout that emitted from the ground like normal. Instead, this one was pointed below ground, at about a fifteen-degree angle back towards their aggressors. As the technique pushed away and compressed the loose dirt and mud, it created a sort of underground puddle. Electricity will always take the path of least resistance, and water, while not a terribly reasonable conductor, does so better than all the loose dirt, grass, and air. This means that when the electric attack got to the point where Ziggy's attack had been created, it instead moved downwards and, most importantly, harmlessly away from you and your partner.

You may not understand everything happening right now, but one thing is clear. You are under attack by someone very similar to yourself. Gah. It's that thought again. How exactly do you know this is you? The only similarity is that he also has a ModokiBetamon. And yet that's how you see this other David. There it is again. You know his name is your name. Why? It's like how sometimes in a dream you have knowledge that you aren't sure where you got it, but you know it is true. Were you dreaming? It is certainly possible, considering all the circumstances. However, it all feels far too real. Like you know that there are real consequences for what happens here. Again, something you know that you don't know how you know. It's all too much for your brain to handle, so you decide to stop thinking about it. You are under attack.

Ziggy didn't launch any sort of counter. Instead, he just stood his ground directly in front of you. Your own personal frog knight. He began to spark and crackle with electricity. Wild and chaotic bits arced all over his small body, building up for something big. You have never seen him quite this tense, or this electrified. Just how much energy can your partner generate?

"Who are-?" You abruptly cut yourself off. There is no need to ask that question. You already know the answer. "What are-?" Nope. Try again, buster. Keep working through those 5 Ws of questioning and maybe you'll find the right inquiry. "Why are you doing this? We haven't done anything to you." You are somewhat afraid of the answer. Is it possible you also have an inkling of the truth behind that question, too? Not particularly wanting to get caught up in something so dangerous, you shift your weight on your feet a bit, intending to turn and run if this doesn't end up going well.

Everyone is searching for a world where they belong. A place of light, free of falsehood.