Author's Note: Yes, I know, the fic was marked "Complete." I blame the Israfels. They gave me more inspiration. Frakking angels...
Anyway, this is a continuation featuring Ruki's thoughts on the matter (sort of an expansion of the second AN). I see her mother as the type to get Ruki a therapist after seeing the Big Red Blob of DOOM, and realizing that she has no frame of reference to help her daughter with... stuff.
Disclaimer: See previous chapter.
\_/-~=o=~-\_/
"So, out of all the... situations... you wound up in, why does that moment stick out?"
Ruki drew one knee up to her chest as she considered how to word her answer. It was an interesting question, though she'd never asked it of herself. Why, out of multiple skirmishes with wild Digimon, a head-to-head with a digital god, and a desperate siege against a Lovecraftian horror, did simply being nearly shot keep waking her up at night?
… Now there was a thought.
"It was simple. I didn't have to think about it to realize that I was... that I almost died, and I was helpless. All the other times, things were either too weird for me to really see how much danger I was in, or I could do something, fight back."
Her voice cracked at one point.
"But that time? Renamon was at the other end of the garage, I'd already seen what those bullets could do to metal and concrete, and... I saw the muzzle flash..."
The woman across from her leaned forward at this. "You saw the muzzle flash?"
"Right when Guilmon tackled Garugomon. If he'd been... if he hadn't..."
Ruki was hyperventilating now, trying to hold herself together. It wasn't quite working.
"If he'd been just a little slower, I'd be dead right now, and so would everyone else."
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Author's Note: How's that for Fridge Horror? And let's be honest here: she's saved the other tamers so many times that everything would have gone to hell without her.