Fanfic / Digimon Arcadia

In the world of the future, in the year 2210, humans and digimon live together after the worlds worlds were united by a group of Digidestined who fought against and brought an end to the brutal Metal Empire ruled by one of the Dark Masters, Machinedramon. The result was a brand new world based on Digital technology, with the corporation-ruled Arcadia—a super artificial city sitting in the middle of the Pacific—standing as the greatest World Power in it.

One day, a Datamon decides to take his young employees, the computer-savvy Taito Kaemon and the emotionless Shizuka Shizuka, out to get their first digimon at a Primary Garden. Along the way they pick up a pair of twins, Samantha and Ivan (AKA Nazo) after an incident with a pack of brutes, Gideon Dreyfus and the Ogre Brothers. When they reach the garden, they encounter a pack of anti-digimon protesters who the police, an encounter that culminates in a terrorist bombing the garden, which inadvertantly results in a hole opening in the digital world.

Cue Demonic Horde of Vilemon and his Devidramon, who also damage a nearby top secret laboratory containing the likes of old series Big Bads, such as Devimon, Lucemon, and Arcadimon. The children are saved, however, by the coming of a rainbow-light that grants them new digivices, D-Souls, and they discover their new partners, the escaped experiments. With these new powers, they successfully fight off the Devidramon, but victory is soured when a mysterious being, who seemed to be working for the military, saves Vilemon and seals the door between dimensions...

After this incident, these new Chosen Children determine to discover the truth behind the laboratory and to save the experiments that are now wandering all over the city. Or at least they would, if they could stop bickering, as their "team" is composed entirely of bickering, hormonal, and selfish teenagers, many of whom don't like each other or have major issues.

Nevertheless, as Taito Kaemon and his new group of Chosen Children work to understand each other and their new partners, they stumble into a world fraught with government conspiracy, dominated by greed for money and power, along with forces who seek to topple those who rule Arcadia, such as the allegedly digimon-hating Ragnor and his partner, Seadramon, or the Mirrored Marauder and his partner, a viral version of Greymon, who seek to resurrect the enemy the original Digidestined defeated, Machinedramon's Metal Empire...

Digimon Arcadia is a series written by The King Of Dastards and focuses, from the start, with Character Development, introducing a pack of heavily-flawed, generally unlikeable kids and spends time trying to make them so that, well, they're at least less hateable (namely, by showing exactly how they got that way). It's also wrought with mythology gags and references to the main series, particularly by keeping many of its traditions (such as the "main" character wearing goggles, for example), while at the same time treating the story itself very seriously, portraying a dark city suffering from poverty, a heartless government, and digital monsters who truly act like monsters.

Link to the first chapter of the first Story Arc, and a Link to the second Story Arc, with more promised to be on the way.

Tropes found in this work:

• Alternate Universe: Arcadia is set in a world of its own—or rather two worlds, really.
• Armies Are Evil: The mercenaries who work for Arcadia, Myrmidon, is composed entirely of greedy Armor-level digimon who seek cash and power and are lead by a scheming General Ripper.
• Arranged Marriage: Tiffany's arranged to be married to Maximilian Rehnquist III, heir to the company that's strongest in the city. She seems quite pleased, too, asides from him being not being genetically engineered like herself. She's lying, of course-besides her increasing disgust for the upper class, the fact Max actually likes digimon better is kind of a turn off.
• Bare Your Midriff: Tiffany in her motorcycle get-up.
• The Berserker: Atlas the Arkadimon.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Tiffany seems to be deliberately making this occur between her and Taito, either because she's genuinely attracted to him romantically (despite her denying it, since he's a "normal", poor, and Asian to boot) or just because she wants to screw with his head.
  • The answer: Neither. She did that as part of her Wrong Genre Savvy and assumed that, because he wears the goggles, she's supposed to be his girlfriend.
• Big Damn Heroes: Gideon and Varner in the chapter where they become partners.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: As per his normal digivolution path, Kurai has these. The traditional Bugs=Bad imagery is inverted though-his Dark Digivolutions are the Lopmon path, ie the Badass Adorable bunnies (Endigomon, Antylamon, Cherubimon).
• Calling Your Attacks: ...It's Digimon, it comes with the territory.
• Christianity is Catholic: Samantha.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Most of the Chosen Children's partners were evil digimon from previous series or evil versions of former main digimon, such as Agumon and Renamon.
• Deadly Upgrade: When Kurai dark evolves into Endigomon after Taito is hit by Gideon, who he had just confronted about how he had been hiding who his parents were.
  • And then again when Taito hits a Despair Event Horizon due to Tiffany's well-intentioned meddling, causing them to Biomerge into Antylamon. Oddly, he's a little less dangerous in this form, but only because he doesn't fight back.
  • Blue Cards act like this-they temporarily digivolve a Partner Digimon to Ultimate Level, but having them remain at that level for longer than five minutes is extremely dangerous to the Digimon in question. A Red Card...doesn't allow the Digimon to survive in the first place.
• Death Is Cheap: The original Digidestined's digimon are torn to pieces in the prologue, but they're all still alive, from being reborn by eggs. Later, deleted digimon are shown having their data being absorbed into their partner's digivice so that they can be recreated.
• Designer Babies: Tiffany's one, specifically created to be as beautiful, intelligent, and fitting to the Aryan ideal as possible.
• Disappeared Dad: Mr. Winters, the twins' father, who was murdered during a raid by a company to steal the secrets of Cortex, the company he worked for.
• The Dog Bites Back: When Kiva tries to use a Red Card on Mistymon, knowing that will kill him, and blaming him for driving him to that point. Mistymon is not pleased.
• Dystopia: Arcadia.
• Emotionless Girl: Shizuka, a fact to which Gideon is utterly oblivious.
  • Tin Man: This is because a botched intelligence-boosting procedure removed them, but it's shown she can feel them in a distant way, especially after an adrenaline rush caused a Restraining Bolt to deactivate. Think Data before his Emotion Chip was activated.
• The Empire: No longer present, but what Machinedramon's Metal Empire was. Of course, if Typhon and the Mirror Marauder have their way, it'll be back.]]
• Fantastic Racism: The spark that ignites the plot. Nazo starts off as this, but it wears off pretty quickly after he gets Atlas. Ragnor doesn't seem to change his position though, and refers to it as simply being willing to work with an enemy to fight his enemy.
• First Contact: Not between humans and aliens, but between humans and digimon, after Machinedramon's defeat.
• Five-Man Band: There are more than five digidestined, but there is a core group that roughly composes this:
  • The Hero: Taito Kaemon, although he also has the traits of The Smart Guy, and Kurai the Keramon.
  • The Lancer: Ivan "Nazo" Winters and Atlas the Arkadimon
  • The Chick: Samantha Winters and Albus the Lucemon.
  • The Smart Girl: Shizuka Shizuka and Inari the Renamon.
  • The Big Guy: Gideon "Hister" Dreyfus and Varner the Devimon.
  • The Sixth Ranger: The role is shared by Tiffany Clyne and her partner, Kary the Candlemon, and Kyrie Eleison and her partner, Cassiel the D'Arcmon.
• Flat "What": Sagitarrimon, after Nazo punches out his arrow.
• The Fundamentalist: Samantha shows traces of being this, probably as a reaction to her lawless surroundings.
• Guile Hero: Tiffany thinks she's this.
• Goggles Do Nothing: Subverted. Taito's goggles could do a variety of things even before they actually became his digivice.
• Heel Realization: She isn't a villain, but Tiffany realizes how utterly self-centered she's been acting when Kary temporarily bites it.
• Informed Judaism: It's made pretty obvious that Gideon's Jewish, starting with Nazo calling him the D-word. Later on, it turns out his parents AKA two members of the Digidestined are Israeli immigrants.
• Innocent Cohabitation: Shizuka has slept with Taito several times when she spends the night at his house—literally, just sleeps with him. Gideon's rather shocked when he tells her this though, since he interprets it differently...
• Jerkass: Taito Kaemon, at times.
  • And Nazo, at all times. The sequel seems to show that most of Taito's jerk has transferred to him due to the power over Gideon's street being transferred to him has gone to his head.
• Light Is Not Good: Most of the Myrmdion.
• MegaCorp: Rehnquist, and the various other companies that make up the Arcadian government.
• Mini Mech: The Mekanorimon.
• Missing Mom: Taito's biological mother died in a car accident when he was only a child, and he hates his current mother.
• Mythology Gag: Loaded with them.
  • After Kurai is born, he introduces himself with "My name is Keramon", asks if Taito can count backwards from ten (then says he can't, ironically), and tells Vilemon "Not to interfere". These were all phrases from the American version of the movie in which he starred as the villain.
  • When Shizuka and Gideon are shopping for clothes, Shizuka tries on a shirt with a broken heart on it, the same type of shirt another partner of a Renamon, Ruki/Rika, usually wore in Digimon Tamers.
  • In Devimon's introductory chapter, he deletes a Pegasusmon. Pegasusmon happened to be one of the forms of the digimon who killed the original Devimon in the first season...
• No Transhumanism Allowed: Subverted. There's a company called BABEL that works to improve humans as they are. Taito hates them, however, for stripping Shizuka of her emotions, and they're lead by a man whose working with the current villains, so they're not exactly good guys.
  • Then it turns out there are at least a few of them who have perfected the process, and don't need fear losing their minds/emotions...and they want to enslave everybody who can't pay for the process.
• Noble Bigot: Nanzo. He insults Gideon's Judaism and dislikes digimon, but he's quite capable of seeing those views are unfair.
• Neighbourhood-Friendly Gangsters: The Maru-Matsu Gang. It's mentioned early on that Gideon doesn't bother women and his fearsome reputation as "The Beast" is mostly a result of primarily beating up on other criminals (which is a pretty much most of Ryuzaki) and people who make him angry. The Ogre Brothers are less picky in their targets, but mostly follow Gideon's lead.
• Robotic Reveal: Kiva and Malthus, the The Dragon and Big Bad, respectively, of the first arc are eventually revealed to have digitized themselves, effectively turning them into cyborgs.
• Polar Opposite Twins: Samantha is a responsible, sensible, Lawful Good girl. Ivan is an ignorant, violent, Chaotic Neutral thug who loves picking fights with people five times his size and monsters large enough to swallow him whole.
• Rich Bitch: Tiffany brute-forces herself into the group, solely because she wants excitement in her life and happens to have a D-Soul and an experimented digimon, too. She's not as bad as most members of this trope, at least not yet.
  • She's a little more deep then most examples-she understands how cruel the upper class can be in Arcadia and she desperately wants out of the soul-crushing culture.
• Running Gag: Poor (Ice)Leomon doesn't even get a break in fanfiction...
• Turns Red: Atlas whenever he gets really mad.
• Unstoppable Rage: Atlas absolutely shreds Ice Leomon when he inadvertently harms Nazo.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Antylamon, the Dark Biomerge of Kurai and Taito. Great going because you couldn't keep it in your pants, Tiffany.
  • Thankfully, Taito is brought back from the brink before he could digivolve further into Cherubimon. Yes, that Cherubimon. Which, fittingly, would make him exactly like the other two Cherubimon we've seen (began as sympathetic, circumstances out of their control turned them into relentless Evil Overlords).
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Tron was Taito's first partner, but it's a Mekanorimon, a type of digimon that is generally run by other intelligent beings. This doesn't stop people from chiding him for treating it poorly. [The reason being that, from Taito's view, Tron has about as much personality as the average tank. After he's shown irrevocable proof that Tron has some self-awareness, Taito starts to act more civil towards it.
• Wicked Stepmother: Amelia, as far as Taito is concerned. It's just him. He just convinced himself otherwise when he discovered she was his father's mistress for a while before his real mother died. Realizing that she's a genuinely kindhearted and loving individual is partly what snaps him out of his Dark Biomerge.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Part of Tiffany's problem is that she assumes the Tamers' team dynamic is typical for Digimon, and that as the most feminine of the Tamers, she's meant to be the local Gogglehead's (ie, Taito's) girlfriend. Even ignoring the fact that she's wrong about being The Chick (that title belongs to Sam), she is more or less completely wrong about this: Taito is an embittered Teen Genius who already has his heart set on The Smart Guy (although admittedly, he gives up and starts going after Sam eventually), most of the Tamers only work with each other out of necessity, and even after they come out of their shells, they still don't follow typical Five-Man Band roles.