Chapter Text
The voices of three children are echoing from mossy stones. On the pool of water, small feeble waves keep brushing on the edges of the short coastline. Soon the voices of the children start to get stronger and in no time a boy managed to climb on top of the rocky sand hill, smirking victoriously as he does so.
”Why you guys are always so slow!”, the boy yelled, raising his hands up into the air as a mark of boredom of kinds. Soon another boy who was out of breath and a tad bit shorter appeared on the bottom of the hill. ”We'll see about that!”, he answered and after catching his breath the boy started climbing up after the first one.
”Be careful boys!”, a voice spoke out loudly and soon after a girl showed up bit further away from the rest. She didn't seem to be very thrilled about the little tag game of theirs on the coastline. ”When you are able to get over here we can go explore the ruins.”, the boy on top of the rockery said, taunting the others with a smug smile on his face as he took few steps backwards to start climbing down the other side of the rocky hill.
Without looking at where he's going, the boy didn't notice the clumsy pile of small rocks in the rockery, making it crumble under his step. In no time the small crumbling escalated into an elevator of sliding rocks under his foot escorted by the boy's surprised screams as he kept sliding down the rocky hill. Rockery that broke down right under his feet leaded into the cavern that now had been exposed.
”Gouki!”, the boy who was climbing towards the top yelled with scared tone in his voice as he picked up his pace. Soaring up the hill, he watched out for unstable footing and at the same time trying to take a glimpse into the black void of the hole where even evening sun wasn't allowed to shine its rays. The earlier rock slide had raised up clouds of powdered minerals that filled the air, deepening the darkness around the hole, making his attempts of seeing anything at all utterly useless.
”Oww...”, the boy whom was called Gouki whimpers as he stands up to see where he had ended to. Gouki couldn't see a thing so he took his backpack from his back and rummaged its interiors, managing to find a flashlight that he had taken with him just in case. Around him were only stones, mossy pieces of old crumbling houses and other little things that were of no use for him. In the ground the sand was moist and the stones were more mossy than the ones on the top.
”Gouki! Are you okay!? Answer me!”, the yelling above Gouki managed to point his gaze to the opening from where he had dropped down. ”I'm fine! Try to come up with how I can get out of here guys!”, he answered and took a better look around his surroundings in hope of finding another exit.
A little bit above from where he was standing there was a small crack and he thought that'd be the best place to dig himself up from. So did Gouki think as he started to climb up the steep ground ravaged by the earlier landslide. ”Shun! Atsumi! I found one crack from here, come over here and try to dig it open from outside!”, Gouki called his friends before he placed down his flashlight and backpack next to himself as he started to throw stones and rubble out of his way. One after another he was able to see more and more of dim last shining rays of late evening sun, hearing his friends working hard on the other side of the stone wall.
After a little while Gouki's attention was stolen by a deep dark red machinery that had been exposed under the rocks as he threw away some rubble and stopped his little excavation towards the freedom, taking the machinery in his hands carefully. It was a tad bit bigger than a mobile phone and it's small screen had cracked a bit. The machine seemed to be in a bad shape and most likely broken.
”L..INK...P..E..T_EX?”, Gouki spelled the faded letters slowly from above the screen in the light of his flashlight, trying to clean up the device from all the rubble and dust.
”Gouki?”, he was startled and brought back to the current situation by Shun's voice putting the device down onto the backpack and continuing to dig his way outside. ”Keep going! I just found something interesting.”, Gouki answered to his friend, continuing to move the stones and rubble away, dropping them deeper down to the cavern. Soon he was able to see light and smell the fresh air.
”Gouki! Thank god!”, the girl, Atsumi said when she saw her friend finally getting out from the rocky hole fine and dandy with exception of few bruises and scratches there and there. Gouki took his backpack and flashlight, without forgetting the old machine behind him, as he went back outside to his friends. He turned off the flashlight, stuffing it into his backpack before showing the deep red mystery machine that he found to his friends.
”Look at this, it's a ”PET”, but I've never seen one like this before on anyone.”, Gouki explained as Atsumi and Shun curiously examined the machine. ”It looks beaten up, it probably got broken and thrown away by someone ages ago.”, Shun announced his speculations as he straightened himself up and wiped off dirt on his hands onto his clothes. Atsumi seemed to agree with Shun judging from her nodding. ”Throw it away and lets get going. We can go explore the abandoned mansion some other day. We must get home and make sure that you're fine!”, the girl speaks his mind in a worried tone in her voice, but Gouki doesn't seem to care about girl's words at all. His attention was fixated onto the machine he had found.
Without a word Gouki sat down and set down the beaten up box on his lap and took a machine of about the same size from his backpack. It was a square-shaped object just like the deep red one he had just found, but still so much different compared to it's predecessor. The same word ”PET” was written on Gouki's blue-yellow device.
”What you're doing? Thinking about asking from Thunderman if he knows anything?”, Shun asked when he saw what his friend was up to. ”Yeah, I think he'll recognize what model we're dealing with and when these were produced.”, Gouki answered to his friend's question, raising the machine in front of his own face.
”Thunderman, we found an old PET. Can you examine it if I link you to it? It might be busted though.”, Gouki asked and the character on the screen opened its eyes, now looking at Gouki. ”If its not broken I should be able to inspect its data.”, the character answered with a calm voice. The boy nodded and pulled a cord from the top of his device, setting down his own PET before picking up the old pet from his lap into his hands. It took Gouki some time to find the corresponding hole for the cord from the old model but he finally did find it and linked the two machines with it. ”All ready, you can begin Thunderman.”
Thunderman nodded, disappearing in a flash from the screen of the blue-yellow machine. The trio turned around to monitor the black-red PET device that was held by Gouki. For a while there was a deep silence, but suddenly the black-red PET started to react by crackling a bit.
”The place is wrecked, I'm not sure if I can find anything before its fixed. I don't know how much information have been lost in this kind of destruction, but its still possible to fix this.”, Thunderman's voice echoes from Gouki's PET device. The boy nodded and smirked.
”We're taking it home and make dad fix it! My little brother has been whining for ages about wanting a PET so maybe by reprogramming we'll get this one working.”, Gouki says and was just about to pull the cord off as the red-black device started to crackling again.
It was as if he was hearing words. Gouki moved his head closer to the device to hear better, noticing that the screen tried to turn on. Shun and Atsumi ducked back down closer to the machine to hear better what crackling was hiding underneath.
”En..”, a quiet, ragged voice could be faintly heard within the crackling that was drowning it out.
”Enzan..”