"You're a what?"
Arata glanced down at Keramon, who returned his heartfelt eye roll with a curious look. Aiba was always a ditz, seemingly in his own world. Even back before they met—just by conversations come and gone in the Enjoy! Chatroom—Arata knew that this kid was something else.
"A Cyber Sleuth!" Aiba stopped walking, smirking and holding his chin up in a very proud pose. Arata, letting out a small bark of laughter, turned on his heel to face him.
"Yeah, okay. I'll play your game. What's a 'Cyber Sleuth'?" He crossed his arms as he asked, obviously tired of this kid's bullshit. They had a real job to do: as hackers, they had to get to the bottom of this. It wasn't the time for playing cops and robbers with the digital monsters ahead of them.
Aiba pouted, and Arata couldn't help but smirk. "Y-you know…a Cyber Sleuth. It's a super cool job and all, and…"
Arata watched as Keramon and PlatinumSukamon attempted to converse with one another, finding Aiba's pile of shit so much more interesting than his make-believe. Those two really did look like something out of a cartoon or a comic book. Frowning as a memory was jogged, Arata stopped the sputtering Aiba, narrowing his eyes. "Like in the comics? A Cyber Sleuth, like a guy who figures out crimes involving nefarious internet users?"
Aiba's eyes lit up. "Yeah!" He was excited, but that seemed to make Arata a little bit angrier.
"Well, you gotta tell me all about it!" Arata's frown deepened as Aiba stood there, dumbfounded. Maybe he thought he was stupid for being interested? "Shit. Nevermind. I lost my interest. Stop wasting so much time!"
Arata walked on into the unknown, Aiba in tow with the Digimon lagging behind. He made in no more than twenty steps down the hallway before his curiosity exploded. "Alright, tell me! What kind of things do you get to do? What's your boss like? Is this why your Digimon is so strong? You solve "cases" with it? Ugh! What are the cases like?"
Aiba, taken aback by this sudden onslaught of questions , laughed nervously. "Well…"
"We beat up the bad guys!" PlatinumSukamon exclaimed in a voice that was very much too high for Arata's liking. "And the little Digimon that get places they shouldn't."
Arata narrowed his eyes at the excitedly bouncing tongue before looking at Aiba, whose embarrassment was apparent. Missing more than a few beats, Aiba nodded excitedly. "Yeah!"
Irritated with how little information he got and unwilling to ask for a third time, Arata turned away and continued to walk. From what it sounded like—and by the look in Keramon's eyes and the distance it held from PlatinumSukamon now—they both understood that this ally could, in the end, be a foe. Arata was surprised about that run-in with that cop/detective lady and how Aiba just ran away with him. Wouldn't a "Cyber Sleuth" who "beats up the bad guys" be keeping an eye out for hackers, too.
But this idiot, he probably didn't even know what was going on. Out of the corner of his eye, Arata could see the ditz conversing with his pile of shit about something probably unimportant. There was no way…
"Hold up." There was something else out of the corner of Arata's eye. "Someone's been following us…"
