I was careful to put the overly large backpack on the floor of the train, between the four of us, as we rode the three stops across the Rainbow Bridge and into Odaiba. I had gotten past the point of caring about the chaos that was the strange coincidences in my life. I guessed that I had been returned from the digital world specifically to Ichiro's apartment because that was the last place I had physically been in the human world, and that probably held true for the strange girl when she had picked up Wallace and Mimi from New York. When they questioned her about how long it had taken her to get them here, she had complained about the effort in carrying two unwieldy lumps of flesh instead of one, many thousands of times the distance of her last errand. I was just thankful she admitted that it was her who had ripped open the fabric of reality and not me.

There were worse places than the Ocean that that menacing hole in the sky could have led to.

The early morning commuters were steadfastly ignoring the gaping tear in the sky that was hanging ominously outside the carriage windows. They were more interested in the blond foreigner travelling with a blonde local dressed as a goth and a girl in a little black cocktail dress with unbearably pink hair, who kept sniffing loudly to fight off her tears. But just as they were able to ignore the hole in the sky, we were able to ignore their furtive looks.

The news that Yamato was dead and Taichi had killed him had hit Mimi hard, as I knew it would, but I had not realised that she had only just learned of Koushiro's fate as well. Had I known that, I might have found a more tactful way to allay Wallace's irrational fears that Alice was going around killing people, than to simply say that she was with me when Yamato was murdered.

Seeing her slump to the ground in shock and agony had been truly awful and even though part of that agony was fuelled by her ignorance of what was truly going on, I could not bear to tell her anything about the entity inside Taichi or the fact that he had probably killed my boyfriend too, or where I had been since that horrid incident.

I wanted to tell her everything, but I knew now was not the time.

In the end all I had said was that Sora had gotten away, but I hadn't been able to contact her since.

Besides which, I myself was still coming to terms with what I had seen and learned after I had been saved from an eternity of watching blurry soccer in the dream world. In the scheme of things, not telling an old friend the entire truth about the danger she had put herself in by coming to Tokyo right now to save her some anguish and worry, was not that big of a deal.

The only problem was that it meant I had no excuse to leave her behind when I left for Koushiro's. I had tried to make her stay to keep her safe, telling her that I could handle my brother alone, but as soon as I mentioned Koushiro's apartment, Wallace had said something about emails and she had become determined to not only go with me, but to take him and the Alice-girl with us.

I eventually caved.

Taking them to where Taichi was was likely to be putting them in great danger, but so long as I was with them they would be safe.

It was me he wanted.

I worried though. The last two times he had been in a room with girls from our destined group, he had tried to seduce us, and the last few times he had been alone in a room with guys from our group, they had been met with knives in the back. With Mimi visibly distraught beside me, I wondered how strong her resolve would be if he gambled on his honeyed words once again.

"So Mimi, what's the deal with you and Golden Boy over here?" I asked, trying to convey a tone that said I was trying to take her mind off what had happened, rather than actually pumping her for information.

She sniffed and looked at me sideways.

"Don't get your hopes up; he was in love with me from the moment we met," she gave me a conspiratorial smile. I was glad that I had enticed her into the conversation, even if it was not in the direction I wanted. "What is it with you and blond boys?"

"My boyfriend was dark, thank you very much," I said, my offence overriding my urge to interrogate her instead, "and besides, I'm still mourning for Daisuke,"

"Golden Boy would be more than willing to take him off your mind, trust me,"

"But I thought you said he loved you?"

"He doesn't love me, he loves the idea of me, the Japanese-ness of me – you can see it in everything he does. Kissing you on the hand as soon as he saw you, making his computer program look like her, and then wishing really hard so she would come to life…" she lowered her voice to a whisper, "Clearly he's too big of a weeaboo to take seriously…"

I was thrown just enough by her mid-sentence slip into English that I missed my chance to ask exactly what she meant by her suggestion that Wallace had created Alice when she herself had claimed to have a mother. Mimi sighed as we pulled up to our stop, and before I could compose myself we were caught in the mad crush to exit the carriage.

Mimi's dress had been a problem throughout the journey, with creepy businessmen 'accidentally' knocking into her and lingering against her far longer than warranted, and so the three of us formed a triangle around her as we were squished through the doors. Mimi had her hands on Wallace's back, and Alice and I were behind her, with me clutching Ichiro's rucksack to my chest and the blonde girl affecting the same cool air of indifference she had had for the entirety of our journey.

It was not as if I had not tried to find Mimi a change of clothes, but no matter how hard I looked I could not find the pale-yellow blouse I had been wearing the night I had torn apart my brother's room in search of alcohol. This was despite the fact that the contents of Ichiro's wardrobe and laundry basket were strewn across his apartment in a similar fashion, and could be catalogued with a mere glance.

With her unwillingness to wear any of his t-shirts or my jeans, I had instead used the short span of time we had left before we caught the train to place some more food into the bag. The kitchen area had scarcely been touched compared to the rest of the apartment, and in a moment of forward-thinking genius I grabbed the bottle of sake Ichiro told me he had been given on his eighteenth birthday as well.

The added melancholy of realising that it was never going to be opened on that 'special occasion' he was saving it for was unpleasant, but in the end it had only steeled my resolve to do what was necessary.

Right now though, as we emerged into the open air that melancholy was forgotten, if only for a moment. Through the crowds of faceless salarymen I thought I recognised a black leather jacket, out of place amongst the hundreds of cheap suits.

I followed after it and the shock of flowing dark hair I convinced myself I had seen trailing after, all thoughts of shielding my friend lost.

"Hikari!" Mimi cried as I searched for another glimpse of the jacket, but I had lost sight of it. Turning back to see what the commotion was behind me, I saw Mimi and Wallace holding a once again unconscious blonde girl and I made a split-second decision to ditch them.

"Sorry," I replied to the protestations behind me as I awkwardly half-jogged after my quarry, dodging an only slightly thinning crowd, "but this is safer for everyone,"

Alice would return from her fainting spell, but if I didn't hurry after this spectre of hope that somehow Ichiro had survived my brother's wrath right now, I would never know if I had seen what I thought I had seen, or if more visions from my dream world had followed me back here to the human one.

If they had followed me it meant that my jump back had caused more damage to the fabric of reality than I had bargained on. I had been willing to accept that the price for my return meant that portals could be opened again, but there was always the risk that that one trip could rip open the fabric of reality for good. And that was before Alice tore a hole in the sky.

I hoped against hope that who I had seen was the real Ichiro as I moved towards where I thought he was headed. I thought back to his trashed apartment and realised that I had not seen his jacket amongst his scattered wardrobe. It was entirely possible that he had somehow got away from the thing Taichi had been turning into, come back to the apartment to find me gone, trashed the place and left wearing his favourite jacket. I put any questions of what it would mean for him to have escaped that no-win scenario out of my mind, simply because the alternative would be so much worse. Him possibly being in league with Taichi or having amazing evasive skills were both on a level I could handle, but realities colliding were another matter entirely.

My worry was short lived though, as the crowd thinned I spied the figure in the jacket again and realised they weren't quite as tall as my boyfriend had been and their hair was only shoulder length.

Annoyed that I had gotten my hopes up and worried unnecessarily, I decided to make the most of my head start to Koushiro's apartment. If I could get there and stop Taichi from whatever it was he had been trying to do remotely from Sorato's apartment before Mimi and company arrived there too, they would never have to be put in any danger at all.

The figure wearing a carbon-copy of my boyfriend's favourite jacket struggled along the pavement and to my surprise turned into the Izumi's apartment building before me. A strange coincidence, but in a city as big as Tokyo two people going to the same place at the same time was hardly all that noteworthy. As I passed them on my way to the staircase I could not help but risk a quick glance towards them as they waited for the elevator. At that moment they turned away from me and dumped an energy drink into the bin I had just passed and I hurried on, realising with further annoyance that I'd mistaken a woman for a man I knew intimately.

Cursing myself for my stupidity once again, I laboured up the stairs with my cumbersome pack and exited on the top floor only to find that the woman was already there. Her jet-black hair was combed around in front of her face in a manner that struck me as odd for some reason. There was also something odd about how her hand was hovering in front of the Izumi's crime-scene-tape adorned door, switching between a fist and open palm, as if she was unsure whether to knock or enter unannounced. But there was no reason to think anyone would be inside, was there?

I couldn't tell if the tape was broken or not from where I was. Maybe if it was it would explain her interest in his apartment, but regardless of her motivation I could not let her inside.

I called out a hushed "hey, get away from there," and she turned towards me.

Instantly, I knew why I'd found her hairstyle odd.

I was used to it being tucked behind her ears, and decidedly more ginger.

"Where have you been?!" she replied at a similar volume, astonished.

She slunk over to me and embraced me almost unwillingly. "I was so worried about you," she said as I pushed away from her. This was the fourth hug I'd received in the past day or so, and the other real one had only happened an hour ago – I didn't need it, and besides, it didn't feel like she wanted to give it. She wouldn't even look me in the eye.

"Me? What happened to you?" I took a step back and took this Sora in. Dark hair, dark circles under her eyes and dark jeans all made the pale, slightly too small, yellow blouse she was wearing under the leather jacket stand out. It was a combination severely out of character for someone whose tomboy-chic styles were famous in the fashion industry for their understatement.

I mean, the jacket is the same as Ichiro's, I thought to myself, and that blouse looks like it could be mine and we have very different tastes in clothes… And why would she dye her hair?

She lent against the wall beside me.

"Yesterday morning the police sent out a plea for help locating us in connection with Yamato's death, and our photos ended up plastered everywhere," she pulled her hair back behind her ears. Despite now looking more like the Sora I knew, the return to her more familiar look made her appear even more shattered in contrast. "Takeru was paranoid about a phone call from his mother, so we took his car from Jou's and ditched it at Ichiro's and used the hair dye we'd found and a few bits of clothing to disguise ourselves – we figured that you wouldn't miss them, what with you in the wind and no way for Ichiro to have survived… – and it worked, no-one looked at us twice on the train to Iori's,"

"What's this about Jou?" I asked, struggling to follow what was going on.

"Well after… 'the incident', Takeru wanted to see you, but you were gone, and he started getting a bit frantic, so I told him to take me to Jou's where I ended up passing out from drinking too much of the beer he had bought for some party he was going to have before all of this… He's a fugitive from the police as well now – turned out Takeru was right about his mother"

Jou on the run. I could scarcely believe it.

"Is he–" I remembered myself, "Are they all okay?"

Sora took the time to yawn excessively before she replied, still staring absently out over my shoulder, "Hopefully they've all stayed put but they could be out trying to catch mist with their bare hands for all I know, I haven't seen them for a whole four hours…"

"Sora," I ventured, seeing her wobble slightly, even though she was being supported by the wall, "you didn't walk here did you?" Iori lived in Nerima, and if she had left at three in the morning, there wouldn't have been any trains running.

"Yeah," she laughed wearily, "I haven't slept since I passed out either, and I've still got a massive hangover as well," she pushed herself off the wall and steadied herself, "but I'm the only one that can get through to him to stop this madness,"

I put a hand on her shoulder.

"It's okay Sora, you can stay here and rest, I'm sure I can–"

"No," she said forcefully, pushing me away, "And don't you dare say anything about how I don't know how much danger I'm putting myself in, or that it's a lost cause – I wasn't watching on a screen," she said looking at me square in the eye for the first time, "You didn't have to step around the faceless cadaver of a man you shared everything with for the better part of a decade to leave the room, but I did. I had to face that the only other man who came close to sharing that same level of intimacy with me, had made me want to betray him minutes before he killed him. And then, after your brother pleaded with me that something else was going on and I didn't listen, it was my anger that forced those wings and horns out of him,"

She had rendered me speechless, and worked herself to the point of tears in her rage, "I made him have to go through that, Hikari. I was the one who saw him in pain, heard those tormented screams when he realised what he'd done – and I didn't think…"

"You can't think like… you couldn't have known…"

I couldn't think of anything to say that would calm her, or make her understand that I understood how she was feeling.

"And your boyfriend, when he told me to run I didn't realise he wouldn't follow…" her eyes softened, looking for forgiveness and then answers as she asked, "What made him think that my future of trying to live with all this pain and guilt was worth the loss of his own?"

"He wouldn't have thought about it like that. He just wanted to make sure you were safe. That's always been his thing…" I had to stop there for fear of mirroring my companion's emotional display. I had done enough though, because Sora had calmed back down and was once again readying herself to enter the Izumi's apartment.

"Now it's my turn to repay the favour," she said with an air of finality that I wasn't sure I understood.

"But wait," I said grabbing her wrist as she turned away from me, "I can't let you just go in there, do you even have a plan?"

She nodded slightly in answer, then shook her head, "Do you know what it is that's taken your bother over?"

The real question was, did she? I thought back to the shaky laptop webcam footage I'd seen of her looking back at Taichi, at the shadows that I couldn't make out in the chaos bursting out of him. But she had seen what they were, and what she had seen had made her run, instantly.

She knew.

I nodded.

She told me her plan. It was the same as mine had been, except for a few key details.

I turned around and searched my bag.

"No, not… Ah! There it is…" I muttered, turning back to her and proffering the bottle of sake. She took it from me with unspoken understanding.

Sora had nothing else to lose, and nowhere else to go should she fail, and that meant that she was our best chance of quelling the beast inside my brother.

I saw it now. The battle for Taichi's soul was hers, not mine.

After all, if there was one person who could possibly defeat the Demon Lord of Wrath with mere words, it was the Destined Child of Love.