Preface

Digimon Universe: Invasion Of The Aqualians is a follow up to the Digimon Universe series I worked on as a teenager. Digimon Universe was a group project story involving multiple people leaving their novel-like posts on a forum called "Digimon Universe RPG". Describing what this is to someone who's never participated in anything like it isn't easy, but imagine that you're writing a novel with a group of friends, but each one of you is only in control of specific characters. There is a head leader of the novel who drives the story by controlling all other non-main characters, the villains, and even a couple of main characters of his own. Each post describes the actions and feelings of a character, and it reads like an excerpt from a novel. If your character speaks to or interacts with another forum member's character, that forum member will write a response post describing how his character responds to yours.

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Example:

Poster 1: Bob was unsure of what to say regarding the current political climate. He spoke up "The country really is divided isn't it? Is there any way we could ever come together and unite under a common goal?"

Poster 2: Sam frowned and shook his head. "I know how you're feeling, Bob. I've felt the same way. Our current problem has such simple solutions, but there's no many conspiracy theories surrounding the trustworthiness of the government. It will take a lot of effort. But I have faith in humanity." Sam let that last comment hang in the air before taking a swig of his Coca-Cola sitting right there on the table.

Poster 1: Bob folded his arms behind his head and leaned back. "Faith in humanity. Must be nice. I hope that faith rewards you, my friend." Bob said.

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The original Digimon Universe series was just like this. I controlled two humanoid characters named Evander Glovion and Jessica Amber. I also controlled their Digimon partners; Evander's Ladybugmon, Terriermon, and Agumon, and Jessica's Leormon, PawnChessmon, and Gabumon. There was another poster who went by "Mario" who controlled his own characters and their partner Digimon, but he also drove the story along by controlling the villains and other important characters. There were two other forum members as well, who also had human characters and their partner Digimon.

At around 30 episodes in, Mario decided to quit the novel-like project. But being so invested in it, I decided to write up the rest of the series on my own in a Word document. I saved these episodes in an e-mail on my Yahoo address and 15 years later, compiled them into Google Doc documents and exported them as PDFs. At the time of writing this, I have made these PDFs public on my side blog "The Weeb Outlet". I'm writing this because as I think back to the original Digimon Universe series, I realize that there was a lot of lore that went unexplored. Most of the Digidestined came from other planets; Aqualia, Felinia, and Devillis. Yet very little of the background of those planets and species were explored throughout the course of the story. Most of the story took place either in the Digital World and on Earth. And while the characters talked about their home worlds and briefly visited them in the final arc, much mystery regarding those home planets remained. I hope for this to be the first in a series of non-profit, fan fiction novels that will explore the worlds of the other Digidestined. With this one, we explore the world of Jessica Glovion, Evander's childhood friend turned girlfriend turned wife.

Connection To Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

You will notice throughout this novel references to characters and plot points from Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, the video game released for the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. In the universe in which Digimon Universe takes place, Evander lived through all the events that the main character Takumi Aiba did in the games. This decision was made when I played through Cyber Sleuth the first time using all of the Digimon who are partners in Digimon Universe; Agumon, Gabumon, Terriermon, Gatomon, BlackGatomon, etc. Those who are familiar with the Pokemon Franchise know that the writers of the Pokemon anime do this with Ash and the video game protagonists. Ash always assumes the role of the protagonist in the Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, etc. games and does the things they do despite only being based off of Red from the Pokemon Red and Blue games. For example, in the Diamond and Pearl games, Lucas is the one who travels around Sinnoh collecting gym badges and ends up saving the world from Team Galactic. In the anime, it's Ash. So what I did with Evander and Aiba is the same as that. "Digimon Universe: Cyber Sleuth" is set in a different universe than "Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth".

Those not familiar with Cyber Sleuth needn't worry if they hadn't played through that game and played through it's (fantastic super awesome) story. The current story is written so that even if you're not familiar with Cyber Sleuth, you can still follow what's going on. Aside from one major plot point and a few occasional references by the characters, the events of Cyber Sleuth are irrelevant to this story. And all connections brought up will be explained through character dialogue and/or narration.

Do You Need To Read The 54 Episodes Of Digimon Universe from 2006 To Enjoy This Sequel?

No, not necessarily. The story is written for anyone to pick up and follow along. While there will be references to Digimon Universe (2006) and while I do recommend reading that first, you won't be totally lost if you start with this one and read that one later.