The Next Step! [Kai/Ren/Whatever.]

In a few hours' time RaptorSparrowmon had flown two humans and two digimon what must have been hundreds of miles. They'd passed over the treetops of a dense jungle, which gave away to a crystal-white shoreline broken by another fantastical-looking city. Barely slowing down, he'd kept right on flying out over the water until he'd come into sight of the strangest set of islands Ren had ever seen. Islands dotted the sea below them seemingly at random, some small and some rather large. Smoke and ash could be seen rising in a sullen column over the largest island. Oh- and they were all shaped like ones and zeroes. Binary code scattered at random among the waves.

Ren fell to the sand, laughing at the sheer amazement of it all. Sitting up, he brushed the sand out of his hair and grabbed the fatigue cap he'd pulled from his bag early on in their flight. That and the sunglasses he'd donned at the same time kept the sunlight from being outright blinding when RaptorSparrowmon slipped above the clouds. He'd spent most of that time eagerly chatting with Luce', Kai and his two partners- Kuro and Shiro, a KoKuromon and KoShiromon, respectively. He'd learned a bit about digimon and this digital world. It had taken Luce' a few times to explain digivolution, but he mostly got it. And now these freakin' islands, man.
 
With a groan, Ren stood and stretched muscles cramped with several hours of riding on a big metal bird. The gleeful, mildly crazy grin had hardly left his face during the trip and sprang back full-force as he spun around to take in the island Luce' had deposited them on. It was one of the smaller  zeroes, if Ren wasn't mistaken. Grandpa taught him to pay attention, to navigate. He figured it would serve him well in the Digital World.

"I don't think I want a fight with whatever a Seadramon is Luce'," he remarked. "All Grandpa's letter said was 'Look for the Ocean' and there it is," he said with a negligent wave. "This is your world, not mine. I'm open to ideas."

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Spirit Hunt - Crabmon (Sprite/Rookie)

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The only thing the got in their way that first night was too little daylight and a lack of preparedness. The sun touched the horizon only a couple hours after they landed on the beach, so they made a rough camp having explored only a little of the jungle surrounding them. Ren got a fire started but they had too little to work with and too little light to fish. They made themselves comfortable on the beach, content to start their adventure, whatever it may be, tomorrow. They however set a nominal watch, just in case. One person awake to keep an eye on their group.

It was early, too early when Lucemon woke him with a soft whisper of "Ren Campbell." For a minute Ren hadn't known where he was, why he was lying in the sand, and panic had set in. Then he remembered, surprised to find he still hadn't drowned, and chuckled a little to wake himself up. Satisfied he was awake, Lucemon sat with his back to a nearby palm tree, wings folded around close to his body. He was almost instantly asleep. Ren felt a pang of jealousy; he'd always been a lousy sleeper. Sitting down against another tree with a view of their little camp and the jungle beyond, Ren leaned back to admire unfamiliar stars.

When Ren jerked upright the sky was lighter, and he realized with instant shame he'd fallen asleep. He rubbed his bleary eyes with one hand, stifling a yawn as he looked around for the noise that woke him up. There it was again, behind him- metal clinking together... like... keys. Keys? Grandpa's key ring! Ren whipped around, drowsiness forgotten in his alarm.

The sight before him was pale-lit in the late night/early morning. A little monkey with what looked like light green fur crouched with its back to him. Ren could see a largeish slingshot on its back, and caught the tell-tale jangle of keysas it turned to peer back at him over its shoulder. Clutched there in its tiny hands- a crab-shaped charm holding a key ring. "Hey!" he hissed. "Give that back!" Groaning at his own reaction, Ren sprinted off after the spooked digimon as it scampered towards the forest line.

Even at the time, Ren didn't know why he didn't call the others for help. It was dumb, running off into the jungle and yet run off into the jungle he did. In his pocket, his 'digivice' lit up and announced to him in a muffled voice: 'Monmon. The small monkey digimon. Stay under cover or risk his slingshot!' He couldn't help but laugh. "Thanks, that's real helpful." He had little breath left for commentary, as it took everything he had to keep the agile Monmon in sight once it reached the jungle.

The going only got steeper with the rising gradient underneath his feet. They were going uphill and he was losing the damn monkey! Ren lowered his head and pumped his legs even harder, dodging tree trunks and jumping over tree roots. He burst out of the trees and kept going a moment before some instinct caused Ren to raise his eyes and set his heels, windmilling his arms and pulling himself to a stop at the crumbling edge of a gently curving cliff. The inside of the zero.

Below him, a lagoon surrounded by the safety of island walls, easily big enough for a small village. At several places along the cliff, waterfalls burst through the stone to clatter and splash into the pools below. Before him, a fallen tree lodged in a cleft in the rock stretched out over the water below and, of course, at the tip of the fallen tree perched the Monmon. Still holding the key ring.

"Let it go, little monkey. Please." He took a step up onto the log, testing it. Seemed solid. The Monmon just watched him curiously. "Come on, little guy..." he took another step up; the Monmon reached over its shoulder towards the boomerang. "Seriously, be nice. That thing's mine." The Monmon looked down at the keyring, seeming considerate. Its legs tensed, Ren saw it coming, and made a dive for it.

There was a tense moment of airtime, followed by a tenser moment of scrambling against fur and treebark. Fingers found purchase on the cool metal of the keyring, there was a disorienting jerk, and the log wobbled drunkenly. When Ren opened his eyes, he was holding a branch in one hand- and the key ring in the other! Grinning triumphantly, he turned to look to the nearest branches for that troublesome digimon. He was rewarded with the sight of a grinning green monkey releasing a drawn slingshot. Something smacked into his shoulder, Ren's balance tipped, and then he was falling.

His first thought was crazy: At least I have the keyring. But the whole thing was crazy. He was falling in an island shaped like a zero. His friend was an angel. People could turn into digimon and his digivice was glowing and making that squealing noise again and he was looking for the Ocean! 

Execute: Sprite Evolution!

The body that splashed into the lagoon was much different than what fell from the cliff. Turns out Kai was right... Finding it much easier to slip along the water now, Ren began to make his way back to camp. Maybe he could grab a few fish on the way...

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Nova Edit: Approved

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((Beg pardon for the interruption, we now resume your regular post order. Ren's not at camp at sunup.))

    Kai didn't notice Ren was gone until he woke up, and realized it was well past the time he should have been woken up for his shift on the watch. He roused groggily as Lucemon approached him. "No.. He never woke me for my shift, so he must have left during his." It struck him that Ren's shift was quite a while ago. "Maybe he's in trouble! We should look for him!" he said, sitting up suddenly. This was a rude awakening for the black and white Digimon sleeping on his chest, as they fell to his lap. "Hey! What was that for!" Shiro complained as Kuro busied herself with grooming her rustled fur, though Kai felt her irritation towards him.

    "Sorry, you two. It's important, though. Ren's gone missing!" He turned to Lucemon. "Do you think you could fly over the island and look for him? It would take forever to search by land, and he could be in trouble."

Lucemon quirks a brow as he sees the Crabmon change into Ren Campbell. So. Humans can turn into Digimon. How interesting. He wonders how this came about to begin with, or why they can do this. Certainly worth exploring. It could be holographic trickery, of course, like his holosuit bracelet. That would be the simplest explanation.

Fire. He can do that. "Armor Digivolution. Lucemon digivolve to...RaptorSparrowmon," Yeah, sure, that's necessary. "Raptor Edge," The edges of his wings begin to glow with golden light as he flies past a small tree, practically obliterating it. Snatching up the pieces, he flies them back to where their previous fire had been, and hovers above it. The emerald wing-joints light up, "Emerald Thunder,". A bolt of green electrical energy arcs from each spherical joint, and hits the wood. Some is scattered, never to be seen again, but the bulk of the wood remains in-tact, and quickly catches fire.

His work done, Lucemon drops back to the sand and degenerates, an innocent smile on his face. What the hell was any of that? "You said you had a story, Ren Campbell?"

Ren kept his enthusiasm in check, watching Luce's display of digivolution as he restarted the fire rather spectacularly. Once the fire was going, he waved Lucemon, Kai, Kuro and Shiro over eargerly, spitting the fish he'd gathered on a few thin sticks and setting them to roast. With his friends gathered and food sizzling, Ren began to share his adventure from the previous night. He told them with some embarrassment about falling asleep on his watch, of waking up after the Monmon managed to steal his grandpa's keyring. He recounted the mad chase through the jungle, culminating in his nearly slipping off the fallen tree and down a cliff when he tried to recover the mischievous little digimon.

"So I'm kneeling on this tree, holding on for dear life with the crab charm in one hand. The damn Monmon hits me with that ridiculous slingshot, and next thing I know I'm falling towards the water from high enough to turn me to pulp. This thing starts glowing," he went on to explain, negligently waving his digivice in one hand while he turned the fish with the other. "Then that crab charm from my Grandpa's chest began glowing too, then just broke apart into this ribbon of what I swear to you looked like digital code. The digivice absorbed it, and bam. I hit the water as a Crabmon."

"It's no metal death bird, Luce' I'll give you that. But still." He pulled the fish from the fire, offering one to each of his companions. "Kai, how the crap did you know that was going to happen? This place is crazy."

Crazy, perhaps. But it was difficult to make that sound like an insult when he couldn't stop grinning. The crazy was kind of awesome.

    "I told you," Kai took a bite of fish, before passing the rest to Kuro and Shiro so he could talk. "I met another guy who could do it. He turned into BigAgumon, though, a giant orange lizard thing with a big head, not a crab. He said that what let him do it was called a spirit totem. Apparently there were more of them to find, and they'd allow him to digivolve further. " He took another fish, and again, shared it with his partners.

    "Sorry, Lucemon, but in my experience, that isn't how it works. The other guy, his name is Scout, by the way, he transformed in the human world. And there wasn't any danger. He just transformed. The Digimon with him suggested that conversion to data was part of the process. I think our bodies here are flesh and blood otherwise, though." He paused and mulled it over. Explaining this stuff wasn't easy, when he barely understood it himself.

"Hm. Conversion. Interesting. I suppose there's no way to tell if you're flesh or data, at the moment, without one of you dying. However. let's avoid that, shall we?"

He rubs his chin thoughtfully, "You should practice digivolving. I'm not sure how easy it is for humans. It might be something you need time to get used to. Besides, there's nothing wrong with Crabmon. They're able oceanic hunters. And their pincers have great strength, especially for their size," He shrugs, "I don't know why you were chosen, over others, but there must be a reason. If you wish to keep searching, I'll join you for the time being. I'd like to explore the human world more, but I suppose I can delay that for now,"

Besides. He can easily move back-and-forth between the dimensions.