Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon nor do I own Battle Royale. All of the characters (and there are a lot of them) are mine, except for the ones that you recognize from Digimon.

Summary: A Digimon version of the Japanese film "Battle Royale." Davis, TK, and Kari are stuck on an island with the rest of their 9th grade class, separated from their digimon and the other digidestined, and it's kill or be killed. Only one of them can make it out alive. Can they do it? No character bashing.

Author's Note: Firstly, a warning. For those of you who have seen the film, this will not be surprising to you, but for those of you who haven't... This story will contain a lot of violence, death, blood, and gruesome imagery. If this is not your kind of thing, back out now. The story will also contain light cursing. I've kept it light to try to keep it in the spirit of Digimon, but some scenes just kind of screamed for it.

Secondly, there is no character bashing in this story. I know many stories that have TK, Davis, and Kari at the forefront usually end up with one of them being villainized or something else equally silly. This is not the case here. There will be hints of Takari, Daikari, and even Daikeru if you wish to look for it. However, there will be no mutual romance at any point in the story between these three characters. A few mentions of one-sided affections, but that's it. This story is about friendship in the face of some of the worst circumstances possible.

Thirdly (and yes, this is getting quite long), I use the dub names and dub information for my story, but I do try to make the location obviously Japan. Because of this, the amount of time between seasons are 4 years instead of 3 like in the original.

Lastly... Sadly, the digimon are not involved in the story. They do exist, and the characters were still digidestined, but the digimon do not have a big role to play.

So, please review! I love constructive criticism and just little notes of encouragement! Mostly, I would just like you to...

Enjoy!

Battle Royale: Digimon

Chapter One: The Field Trip

At the turn of the millennium, Japan was in a state of near collapse. Unemployment was sky high at 15%; millions of people were out of work. Poverty led to the youth of the nation acting out, attacking their teachers and boycotting classes. Youth crime started to soar. Many blamed this on the three terrorist attacks that Japan suffered in 1994, 1998, and 2002, attacks that were deemed to be the work of "monsters" at first, a story – many realized – that could have only been thought up by the children that they were starting to fear. Losing confidence in the nation's youth, the adults looked to the government for some sort of solution. The government responded with a drastic and brutal new measure.

FINAL EDUCATION REFORM ACT

Also known as:

THE BATTLE ROYALE ACT

The act dictates that a randomly selected class from grades 7 to 12 will be taken to an undisclosed location to participate in a three day free for all. All students must fight each other to the death until there is only one survivor in the game. The act was proposed and then passed, and now it is time for the first class to be chosen.

x X x

Monday, August 1, 2004. Odaiba Middle School.

The 9th grade class was gathered outside the school as they waited to be loaded onto the busses. The teachers were trying to keep them all under control, but they were all talking too excitedly to really be able to hear the teacher's instructions despite the fact that it was still very early in the morning. On any other day, most of them would still be too tired to string together two sentences. But not today. Today, they were all headed out for a three-day class trip to Kyoto; it was a 72 hour reprieve for the parents of the loud teens.

"What are you doing?" Kari Kamiya asked.

She was looking over her best friend's shoulder as he fiddled around with his D-Terminal. Her face was flushed from a slight fever that she was fighting, but she wasn't about to let that stop her from going on this trip. She remembered how much fun Yolei had when she had gone, and it was bad enough that the trip had been cancelled last year due to bad weather. She didn't want to miss her chance this time! TK Takaishi looked up with a small smile, and he shifted closer to her so that he could show her the email he was composing on the little computer device.

"I'm sending Matt a reminder not to make any plans for Thursday," TK said, finishing up the message. "I don't want to miss our annual trip to Shibuya to honor Pumpkinmon and Gotsumon because of this."

Davis Motomiya leaned in to look at the message as well, but TK had already hit send before he got a good look at it. He scowled lightly at his golden-haired friend before letting out a long sigh.

"Kind of sucks that we have to miss the picnic tonight," he said.

Kari nodded. "But it's for a good reason, and everybody understands why we can't be there. We'll just have to have our own memorial and celebration when we get back."

TK moved to put his D-Terminal into his front jean pocket. "That's what me and Matt are doing," he said. "Unless he forgets and schedules band practice during our hangout time again."

He rolled his eyes lightly, obviously not that annoyed. It wasn't a common occurrence, but once had been enough for TK to never let his big brother live it down again. Whenever he wanted something, he would always remind Matt about that one time that he had left him waiting at the subway station for three hours. Considering how bad Matt had felt afterward, it usually worked, too.

"Well, while TS and his brother are off doing whatever," Davis said, sliding his arm across Kari's shoulders, "why don't you and I celebrate together?"

Kari shrugged his arm off with a patient smile. "Actually, Yolei was talking about having another picnic on Saturday for everybody, and Tai thought it was a good idea."

Davis groaned, and TK laughed at him. Finally, the doors to the bus opened, and all of the students shuffled closer, ready to pile on board so that they could head out. But Mr Fujiyama, their teacher, held up his hand to get all of their attention.

"Wait, class!" he called out. He walked up to the bus driver that had just stepped off of the 50-seater and handed him a camera. "Can you get a photo of us all?"

"Oh, can you get one on this too?" Kari asked, stepping forward and pulling her camera off of her neck to give to the driver.

Most of the class groaned at the idea of a class photo, but TK and Davis shared an amused glance at Kari's excitement. The 40 students joined together in a group with Mr Fujiyama in the middle. Davis threw an arm around TK and Kari's shoulders, and the three friends beamed happily as the driver took a photo on both cameras before passing them back to their respective owners.

"Let's go!" Davis called out.

He led the near stampede onto the bus and headed straight to the back with the other troublemakers of the class. Nobu Narita crashed into the gogglehead as he joined him. He was a fellow soccer player and Davis's best non-digidestined friend. Davis grunted as he was nearly crushed, and he looked around to realize that he had been separated from TK and Kari. But much to the soccer player's pleasure, they hadn't grabbed their own romantic bench away from him. Instead, Kari was sitting with her friend Minami Fukazawa as they giggled over the picture that Kari was showing off on her camera, and TK was near the front of the bus with a few of the basketball team including Tenchi Arai, Fumiki "Mickey" Ito, and Gai Kudo.

The bus took off with a lurch, and Nobu led the class in a loud cheer as they started on their journey. Nobody – not the troublemakers who had convinced Mr Fujiyama to sit in the back with them, not the gang of bad kids who were figuring out how many banned items they had managed to sneak into their bags, not the Yearbook staff who was giggling over Kari's picture, not the dorks who were using this time to study, not the basketball all-stars who were excitedly talking about this year's championship – Nobody realized that this trip was going to change their lives…

Except for the bus driver and tour guide who stood at the front of the bus, a grave expression on their faces. Even Mr Fujiyama was in the dark as they continued forward toward what he thought was Kyoto. He loved these kids. He had since he had mentored most of them in summer camp. But he noticed something strange as they headed out onto the highway. The road, for some reason, was not only void of any other cars, but it was also lined with military jeeps. He cocked his head to the side, confused.

"Mr Fujiyama! We're going to have free time to roam around, right?" Davis asked, oblivious to what was going on outside the bus.

"Aw, man! You're not going to make us sit in on a bunch of boring lectures, are you?" Nobu continued.

Mr Fujiyama shook his head of his distraction before laughing. "Don't worry. There will be plenty of mindless breaks from the educational part of the trip."

Nobu looked at Davis. "He knows us too well."

Davis laughed before getting up to walk through the aisle toward Kari. Mr Fujiyama didn't even bother to tell him to sit down. Everybody else was seat swapping as they saw fit, so he knew that the warning would fall on deaf ears. Davis leaned against the back of Kari's seat to see what she was looking at.

"Is that the class picture?" he asked.

Kari looked up at him and grinned before she held out the camera. "Yeah, you want to see?"

He took the camera from her, grinning too, as he took in the picture. That was until he saw that Nobu had been standing behind him, giving him bunny ears. He glared over his shoulder.

"Nobu!"

"I'm innocent!" he swore.

Kari and Minami laughed. Davis sent a rude gesture toward the back of the bus, and Kari rolled her eyes before she got up and grabbed his wrist.

"C'mon," she said as she started to drag him toward the front of the bus. She muttered, "Excuse me," to each of the students that they pushed past they until they finally got to where TK was sitting. He and Gai were leaning forward as they looked over the back of Tenchi and Mickey's seat having an animated discussion. Davis reached forward and tapped Gai on the shoulder.

"Move it," he said without preamble.

TK looked over at him and gave him an unimpressed look. "Davis," he sighed.

Gai rolled his eyes at Davis's attitude, but as a sign that he was used to this, he got up without much argument and moved to sit in the seat across the aisle from Mickey. Kari adopted an apologetic look as she slid in next to TK, and Davis squeezed his way into the same bench next to Kari.

"Sorry about that," Kari said.

TK smiled and shook his head. "He'll get over it. What's up?"

"I wanted to show you this," she said, handing the camera over so that he could see.

He grinned as he studied the class photo. Kari brought a hand up to try to subtly cough, but that was kind of hard when she was sandwiched between two very observant boys.

"You still sick?" Davis asked.

"No…"

Ignoring her, TK brought a hand to her forehead to check for himself. He made a concerned noise as he brought his hand back down.

"You're still a little warm," he pointed out.

"I'm fine," she promised, looking between them. "Really. My medicine is in my bag, and I'm not contagious anymore, and even my doctor said it was okay that I go as long as I didn't do any rigorous activity."

TK and Davis exchanged a look over her head, making a silent pact to make sure that she didn't go against the doctor's wishes. Kari rolled her eyes, finding them teaming up against her to be almost more annoying than them fighting over her. Either way, she couldn't win, and yet she loved them both still. She nudged TK and gestured to her camera to make him grab it before she guided his hand up in the air over their heads.

"Stop worrying," she demanded. "And say cheese!"

Davis and TK leaned in closer to Kari and grinned up at the camera before TK snapped the picture. Kari took the camera into her hands and flipped it over to look at the viewing screen. She smiled and looked at her two friends.

"That's a good one," she said.

But before TK and Davis could get a good look at it, the bus entered a tunnel and everything within the bus went dark. Davis groaned.

"Great, now I can't see anything!"

TK laughed and moved to get up. "Hold on, I have a flashlight in my bag. Davis, switch with me," he said, shuffling past Kari and Davis to get to the aisle where his bag had been dropped.

Davis rolled his eyes but listened as he moved to take the window seat so that Kari remained squished in the middle. The last thing TK remembered was sitting on the edge of their bench seat, facing the aisle, and digging in his bag as he looked for that flashlight before he passed out. And he wasn't the only one, either.

The dark bus filled slowly with an undetectable gas, lulling all of the students and Mr Fujiyama into an easy rest. Only the bus driver and tour guide at the front of the bus were unaffected thanks to the gas masks they had on their faces. The bus kept driving, heading toward its undisclosed destination, but definitely not heading toward Kyoto. No, the students of Odaiba Middle School had a different destiny tonight.

Of course, the people in charge had not exactly anticipated the power of the digidestined. As TK rest there, sleeping with his head against the back of their bench seat as he sat there sideways with his legs stretched out across the aisle, his digivice on his belt started to beep quietly. And then a small flash of light exploded from it, illuminating TK's face, before dying down just as quickly. Almost immediately, TK started to rouse from his sleep. Confused and hazy, he looked around the bus, trying to figure out what was going on. Everybody was asleep. Some students were even dumped in the middle of the aisle, as if they had fallen out of their seats and not woken up.

He looked toward the front of the bus, and he could see the tour guide standing there, her back straight as a needle. She turned her head slightly to address the driver, and TK caught sight of the gas mask on her face. He tried not to panic. TK looked over his shoulder at Davis and Kari. Davis had his face pressed against the window, completely out, and Kari was leaning against TK, using the space between his shoulder blades as a pillow. He quietly reached behind him to shake Kari's knee, trying to rouse her, but she didn't even react.

Something wasn't right and TK had been a digidestined long enough to know when not to question his instincts. Quietly, he pulled his D-Terminal out of his pocket and quickly wrote out a message to Matt. He was so busy compiling the message that he did not hear the tour guide walking up the aisle toward him until it was too late. He saw something coming towards him out of the corner of his eye. The baton hit him across the head, hard.

His only solace was that he had been able to hit SEND before everything went black.

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