Chapter Sixteen
The room had all the charm of a crypt, being cramped and dimly lit, and the three empty suits looked like strange, futuristic sarcophaguses for fallen warriors lined up next to one another. Cables and wires fed into various ports on them and trailed across the floor, and Hikari took great care to avoid tripping over one as she stepped closer to the suits of powered armour. Gatomon jumped from her arms and landed before the middle suit, the improved variant of the Mark I if Hikari had to guess, and gave it a sniff.
'It smells kind of like a Digimon,' she said. 'Just faintly.'
'Well, Captain Ishida did say they used materials from the Digital World to make it,' Hikari said. 'So I guess that'd make sense.'
'Yeah,' Gatomon said.
Hikari took another few steps closer to the suit and ran her hand gently across the armoured surface, finding it smooth and cool to the touch, until she came across a rough carving on the upper left chest. It was hard to make out in the dim light but it felt like either a V or an X, and a moment later Hikari realised it was both, an homage to the second Digimon Daisuke ever had to kill and the one that probably haunted him the most.
The other suits had similar carvings in roughly the same locations, the only blemishes on otherwise immaculate gunmetal grey armour, which meant there was one on the Mark III as well and there would be one on the Mark IV, whenever that came online.
She took her hand away and stepped back to observe all three suits in turn, noting the various design changes made with each upgrade done. As expected, the two iterations of the Mark I were almost exactly alike with the improved model being slightly sleeker, slightly thicker, and bore a striking resemblance to another suit of armour, one from a film, but the exact franchise seemed to elude Hikari as she looked at the suits.
Then, it came to her and she said, 'They look like stormtroopers.'
'They look like what?' Gatomon said.
'The suits,' Hikari said, pointing at the first two. 'They look like stormtroopers from Star Wars.'
'Clones,' an irate voice said from behind them, making the duo jump and turn around to see a technician standing in the doorway. 'They look like clone troopers.'
He reached out without looking and flipped the light switch, bathing the room in yellow light, and gestured at the Mark I and its successor.
'There's a difference?' Hikari said.
'Yes,' the technician said. 'Stormtroopers were the soldiers of the Galactic Empire, made up of human conscripts, and the clone troopers were the elite troops of the Grand Army of the Republic, cloned from the bounty hunter Jango Fett.'
Both Hikari and Gatomon just stared at the technician once he finished, his eyes still on them and glaring, right up until he cringed and shook his head and said, 'Sorry, I've just spent the past two years hanging around the team that designed these suits. They get really passionate whenever someone refers to the Mark Is as being stormtroopers. It rubs off on you after a while.'
He entered the room proper to stand beside Hikari as she turned and peered up at the black T-shaped visor of the Mark I suit, saying, 'To think, the fate of the world was once in the hands of a clone trooper. We're just lucky nobody told Daisuke to execute Order 66.'
The technician chuckled at his joke, which was completely lost on Hikari and Gatomon, before pointing at the Mark II.
'That one they modelled after the suit from some upcoming game,' he said. 'What was it called, again? Crysis?'
'I don't know,' Hikari said with a shrug. 'My brother might know. He's into videogames.'
'Whatever it is,' the technician said. 'That's what they based the design around. Bunch of freaking nerds.'
'You're not exactly filling me with confidence about our chances,' Gatomon said as she scaled the Mark II and perched herself on its shoulder. 'Not if the best the world has to offer used videogames and movies as inspiration for these suits.'
'I think they did all right,' the technician said. 'Daisuke's still alive, isn't he? And the suits managed to perform their jobs well enough, didn't they?'
'That's hardly the point,' Gatomon said. 'We're still entrusting our fate in something that's a recreation of a fictional suit of armour.'
'More inspired by,' the technician said. 'And mostly in the helmet, as well. Some compromises have to be made to make these suits work as intended.'
He wandered over to a corner and picked up a dusty ring binder lying on a shelf, flipping it open and flicking through the papers contained within before stopping on the one he apparently wanted, showing it to Hikari and Gatomon. It was a full colour picture of a suit worn by the stormtroopers in Star Wars, or whatever they were called, shown from the front, sides and back, and looking between them and the Mark Is it was easy to see what the technician meant by their design only being inspired by these iconic fictional suits rather than a direct recreation.
The helmets did indeed bear the most resemblance to the stark white suits, mainly the T-shape of the visor, and perhaps the front of the chest piece and the legs, but the back and forearms had been radically redesigned to accommodate the rear thrusters and lasers. And, of course, the suit's colour was metallic grey rather than brilliant white. It was the same with the Mark II when they turned the page, of the helmet sharing the most similarities with the source material next to everything else.
'Do I even want to know what game they looked to for inspiration with the Mark III?' Gatomon asked dryly.
'Halo,' the technician said, turning the page again. 'The first one, actually, and I hear they're sticking with the franchise for the Mark IV, too.'
The cat Digimon could only groan at hearing that and Hikari had to agree, not liking the revelation herself, but at the same time she couldn't deny the suits had indeed served their purpose well. Daisuke was still alive and the infected Digimon were still being defeated, and if the trend continued then she could find herself willing to put up with whatever eccentricities the design team had.
But still…
She shook her head as the technician snapped the folder shut and replaced it, leaning casually against the wall beside it as he looked at Hikari and Gatomon, likely awaiting whatever other questions they had about the suits. They certainly had some, about their capabilities and the details behind their construction, but another one entirely entered Hikari's head.
'Can I try one on?' she said.
It took the technician by surprise, and herself to a small degree, but he just shrugged and nodded and moved towards the Mark II. With a flick of some small button, he caused the back of the suit to open and unfold enough to allow a human operator to enter, which is exactly what Hikari did.
The inside of the suit had a sharp smell of metal with an undercurrent of stale sweat, a testament to the thousands of hours Daisuke had spent within it, and soon she was smelling her own bodywash as the armour closed around her, sealing her from the outside world. For a fleeting moment, claustrophobia tugged at Hikari when she tried to move her arms and found they wouldn't respond, coming up against an immovable shell, and her vision dropped away to nothing. Then, the room faded into view as the suit's visor opened up.
Gatomon was standing before her on the floor, staring up at the thin strip for a visor with a look of concern on her face, and behind her was the technician with his back to them both as he typed in something at a wall mounted computer terminal.
'All right,' he said. 'We'll do a partial system start up. No weapons, no propulsion, nothing beyond bringing the operating system online. It should come online and register you as a user, then reject you because you're not Daisuke. That's how this usually plays out.'
'Okay,' Hikari said.
'Initiating system start… now,' the technician said, tapping the enter key on his keyboard.
He turned to watch the suit as Hikari heard a faint click come from somewhere, then a faint hum and whine as the electronic components of the suit came online and started spooling up. Lines of code raced past Hikari's vision as the system booted up before fading away and leaving her sight clear once more. At least, it did for a scant second. Additional lines followed, though slow enough for Hikari to actually read and recognise them as being part of some kind of diagnostic report.
SUIT ONLINE/TEST MODE
POWER SYSTEM/OFFLINE – EXTERNAL SUPPLY
POWER ABSORPTION SYSTEM/OFFLINE – TEST MODE
WEAPON SYSTEM/OFFLINE – TEST MODE
PROPULSION SYSTEM/OFFLINE – TEST MODE
AUTO REPAIR SYSTEM/OFFLINE – TEST MODE
SUIT INTEGRITY/100%
SYSTEM NOMINAL
USER DETECTED/AUTHENTICATING
What happened next felt akin to a gentle pulse sweeping from the front of her head to the back, followed by a momentary bout of vertigo, as the suit did whatever it did when authenticating a user and Hikari did her best to shake her head to clear it, but the suit was still immobile and refused to budge in the slightest. All she managed to do was strain her neck a little and watch as the words INVALID USER/DENIED appeared on the visor before her as the suit came to the conclusion she wasn't Daisuke.
The lines vanished and all Hikari was left with was the sight of Gatomon and the technician watching her, unable to move or do anything.
'Figures,' the technician said, shrugging, and he span around to tap in a shutdown command on his computer.
The visor shut again and the sense of claustrophobia came back to Hikari when it did, and stopped as the suit unfolded around her and released its grasp. She took a few shaky steps back and braced herself against the wall as the Mark II sealed itself up again and powered down, ready to continue waiting for Daisuke to come by and use it once more. She breathed in the musty air of the storage room to clear it of the scent of Daisuke's sweat then reunited with Gatomon and the technician on the other side of the three suits.
'And here I thought having a DigiDestined try donning it would do the trick,' the technician said. 'Guess not.'
'Did you expect anything spectacular to happen?' Hikari asked.
'Kind of,' the technician said. 'Up until now, we've only ever put regular soldiers and GIs inside the suit, not fully blown DigiDestined like yourselves. A popular theory was that it might unlock the suit for others to use, but now we know otherwise.'
He shrugged noncommittally and that was the end of that. Hikari had no other questions for him about the suits so she scooped Gatomon up off the floor and left the room, leaving the technician to turn off the lights and close the door, drifting back to her borrowed quarters to sit on the bed. She pulled out her phone and dialled Takeru's number but he didn't answer, so she left a voicemail asking him to call her back, then Hikari flopped backwards and lay staring up at the ceiling as the silence of the hangar turned barracks filled her ears.
'Why did you want to try the suit on?' Gatomon asked, breaking it.
'Because,' Hikari said. 'Like the technician said, maybe having another DigiDestined wear it might do something. I want to help out.'
'Is that the only reason?' Gatomon said.
'No,' Hikari said.
She sat up again and shifted her attention to the floor below her feet, elbows resting on her knees, saying, 'I wanted to see if having me specifically triggered anything. The suits are supposed to be a new kind of Digimon, almost, and being bonded with Daisuke I figured it might have picked up some of his traits. You know, like how Veemon had a crush on you.'
'What were you expecting to happen?' Gatomon said.
'Anything, really,' Hikari said. 'Just… some kind of a reaction to having me wearing it.'
'But nothing happened,' Gatomon said. 'So either the suit's not enough of a Digimon to do anything like that, or Daisuke doesn't have any feelings for you anymore.'
'Yeah,' Hikari said quietly, recalling the harsh tones he had used when speaking to her last, or the deathly glare he had thrown her way, a far cry from how he had once looked and spoken to her.
She gave a soft sigh and picked Gatomon up, holding her closely, lamenting the apparent loss of a once close friend due solely to her own actions and seemingly self-serving memory. Worse, the rest of the DigiDestined had splintered because of her and now they had three or four distinct factions. Would they ever be able to recover from it, she wondered. Part of her hoped so, but another part had doubts.
Another sigh, more resigned than before, escaped Hikari's lips as she slipped into a limbo state that the silence of the barracks only added to, losing all sense of the world around her, and it took Gatomon calling her name and shaking her shoulder to bring her out of it. She shook her head and blinked and looked down at the Digimon, saying, 'What?'
'Daisuke's coming back,' Gatomon said. 'They just made the announcement.'
'Already?' Hikari said. She pulled out her phone to check the time, and was astounded to see it was only half past four in the afternoon. Had she spaced out for that long?
'Yeah,' Gatomon said. 'Do you want to go see him?'
'I don't think he wants to see me, though,' Hikari said.
'Maybe,' Gatomon. 'But it couldn't hurt for him to see you waiting for him, could it?'
'I guess,' Hikari said.
She nodded and lethargically got to her feet, feeling her joints creak and pop in protest after so long of inactivity, and with Gatomon still in her arms she made her way outside to the tarmac apron where a dozen soldiers stood waiting, Captain Ishida amongst them. Worryingly, all of them bore concerned looks on their faces and when Hikari turned her gaze in the same direction of theirs, she saw why.
A thick trail of black smoke followed the speck that was Daisuke as he flew to the base, dropping lower and lower with each passing minute until he was barely clear of the neighbouring buildings, and he didn't so much land gracefully as he did crash onto the ground in a great shower of sparks and screeching metal. Up close Hikari could see that his suit had taken a serious beating, worse than before, and smoke continued to pour out of the various cracks in the armour plating and the thruster units on his back.
The soldiers rushed forward once Daisuke was down and stopped, straining against the weight of the suit to haul him upright, and half carried him into the mechanical hangar which had its great doors already open and waiting to receive them. Hikari hurried after them and watched as the Mark III released its hold on Daisuke who slumped dumbly to the floor, covered in a mess of bruises and welts, until a trio of medics made themselves known and took him away from everything.
Hikari watched him go before making her way over to Captain Ishida as he spoke with two of his subordinates, his face a grim mask at being told bad news.
'It's going to be offline for at least ten hours,' said the first soldier, glancing at a PDA. 'The auto-repair function needs that long to bring everything back up to meet minimum combat requirements. Longer still to return to full capacity.'
'How long is that?' Ishida said.
'Twenty-four hours,' the soldier said. 'That battle did a number on the Mark III, sir. It's not rated to handle four Ultimate Digimon all at once. Structural integrity is down to 33%, and that's the least damaged component. The weapons are offline, propulsion was barely enough to maintain flight, and it was losing power at a rate of-'
'Save the damage report for later,' Ishida said, waving him off. 'I just wanted to know how long it was going to take.'
'Between ten and twenty-four hours, sir,' the soldier said. 'That's the best I can offer.'
'Great,' Ishida said with a groan before turning to the second soldier. 'How are we looking from your end?'
'Slightly better, sir,' the other soldier said. 'The spike in cases over the past few days is something we've seen before, and if the pattern repeats here then we should be now seeing a large downturn in the number of infected Digimon.'
'Enough that we can do without Daisuke?' Ishida said.
'Yes, sir,' the soldier said, but he still seemed apprehensive over something.
'What is it?' Ishida said. 'Now's not the time to be withholding potentially vital information.'
'Yes, sir,' the soldier said, nodding. 'It's just… As far as we could tell, there was only going to be one Ultimate level Digimon at that battle, not four. We detected a single energy spike concurrent with a Champion digivolving to Ultimate, not four.'
'So those other three Digimon just appeared out of nowhere?' Ishida said.
'That's what it looks like, sir,' the soldier said. 'None of the other units mentioned having a target depart their battle space and take off in Daisuke's direction, and neither did we detect any spikes heading his way.
'The only conclusion we can come to is that they came from the Dark Ocean.'
'That's worrying,' Ishida said. 'And here I thought they'd be coming for Hikari.'
'In all likelihood, they still are,' the soldier said, subtly glancing at the girl in question as she lingered nearby. 'Daisuke represents the biggest threat to their plans, however, and taking him out would be the most logical first step in accomplishing that.'
Ishida glanced over his shoulder at Hikari, a neutral look on his face, then turned back to the soldiers.
'Agreed,' he said. 'All right, head back to your departments. If anything changes, for better or worse, I want to know about it. I'll contact Nerima and update them on our situation. It's going to be a tense twenty-four hours.'
The two soldiers snapped to attention and saluted, then span on their heels and hurried off to their tasks to leave Hikari and Gatomon alone with Ishida, who finally turned to face her full on with his impassive expression.
'This way,' he said, gesturing for Hikari to follow him out of the hangar into the relative peace of the outside world. 'Things have taken a turn, in case you missed it.'
'I heard,' Hikari said as she followed the officer. 'Do you really think the Dark Ocean is going to start targeting Daisuke now?'
'Possibly,' Ishida said. 'Strategically, he is the biggest threat they face in the long run. We're about the roll out the Mark IV in a few weeks, giving him the ability to fight on par with Mega levels, and they can't infect him like they would a Digimon.
'But at the same time, we can always replace Daisuke should he die and rebuild the suits if they're destroyed. Really, they should be gunning for you with everything they've got and taking you somewhere we, as yet, lack the ability to reach. But they haven't.'
'And what does that mean?' Gatomon asked.
Ishida looked at the Digimon and shrugged. 'Truthfully, there's so much we don't know about the Dark Ocean that we can barely be certain of what their ultimate goals are. Maybe they have to achieve victory under certain conditions to ensure it lasts, or they're just trying to keep us guessing and reacting to them rather than seizing the initiative.
'Or, they screwed the pooch today and that trio of Digimon was supposed to be coming here, but ended up crossing paths with Daisuke instead. Without any solid intelligence it's impossible to be sure of anything.'
'There's a comforting thought,' Hikari said.
'Yeah,' Ishida said. 'I'm none too happy about it, either.'
He blew out a resigned breath and rubbed the back of his neck, a grimace on his face, then shook his head and waved Hikari and Gatomon off as he headed for the middle hangar, where his office was situated. They watched him go for a moment before making tracks for their room in the far hangar which still felt empty and silent with only two people occupying it, and Hikari spent the better part of an hour talking with Miyako on the phone about everything that had transpired today, from her fight with Takeru and her reunion with her parents, and then the return of Daisuke after being ambushed.
She would have preferred to speak with her best friend face to face but Miyako was over an hour away, if not more given the roads would be rammed with people heading home from work, so over the phone was the best she was going to get right now.
Hikari ended the call after promising to have a proper get together with Miyako once she'd finished her relocation to the new base, tossing her phone down onto the bed beside her to experience once again how silent the hangar was. It wasn't just that there were no human sounds coming from the soldiers as they relaxed in the rec room or cleaned their dormitories, there were no sounds of the outside world period. No rumble of traffic, or rustling of the wind, or chirping of birds. It was as though beyond the four walls of her room there was nothing.
It had the unwanted effect of making her feel absolutely isolated and alone, despite Gatomon curled up next to her, and the urge to talk with someone else reared its head. The only problem was that she wanted to speak with someone in person, not over the phone, and there weren't all that many people who could fill that criteria right now.
Gatomon was the first candidate that sprang to mind but they had more or less spent the entire day together, so Hikari discarded her as an option. She dismissed Captain Ishida out of hand too, given he was probably up to his neck in paperwork and calls with his superiors, and she vetoed most of the other soldiers as well for much the same reasons. They all had their jobs to do and none of them needed a teenage girl to come along and distract them with conversation.
That left only one real candidate for her to speak with, though their relationship as late wasn't exactly a welcoming one that invited casual conversation between the two. Even so, it wouldn't hurt to at least try and reach out to him, maybe start making inroads on rebuilding what she had broken.
'I'm going to see Daisuke,' Hikari said as she stood up, waking Gatomon from her nap.
'Do you think he wants to see you?' Gatomon said, fixing a bleary eye on her partner.
'Probably not,' Hikari said. 'But I have to at least try and show him I want to make up for everything I've done, right?'
'I guess so,' Gatomon said. She stretched out and added, 'Do you want me to come with you?'
'No, thanks,' Hikari said, shaking her head. 'I think it'd be better if it was just the two of us.'
'Okay,' Gatomon said. 'I'll see you when you get back.'
'Hopefully not too soon,' Hikari said as she tried to affix a brave smile onto her face, finding herself dreading the prospect of actually going to see Daisuke.
He had, after all, made it perfectly clear how poorly he thought of her during their last encounter and she had no doubts that his current state might exacerbate his feelings, for better or for worse. But, she would do well to follow both his example and that of Taichi's of being courageous in the face of adversity.
With that in mind Hikari left her room and headed for Daisuke's, encountering no other soldiers along the way. They were probably all still hard at work doing whatever it was they did, like fixing the suit or analysing the data it had pulled in, and for a brief moment she wondered if Daisuke would actually be in his room. The medics had rushed him off somewhere to assess his wounds, and who knew how long that actually took.
Then she saw the faint glow of light coming from beneath his door and heard the faint creak of someone sitting in a chair and knew Daisuke was home, for lack of a better term, so Hikari approached his door and gently knocked on it.
'Daisuke?' she called out. 'It's Hikari. I was wondering if we could talk a little.'
About what though, she had no idea. Her planning hadn't gotten that far, most of her fully expecting Daisuke to either ignore her or tell her to leave him alone before they could even get to the point where they were talking to one another.
To her great surprise he didn't send her away immediately or ignore her, but got up out of his chair and shuffled to the door which he cracked open, staring at her through the small gap he had created. Even through a small sliver like that, Hikari could see a variety of emotions on his face, first and foremost of which was disdain, obviously, but so too was mild surprise and maybe even an undercurrent of anticipation.
'You're early,' he said.
'I am?' Hikari said. Up until a few minutes ago, she hadn't even known herself she was coming here. How had Daisuke known?
'Yeah,' Daisuke said. 'But whatever. Come in.'
He pushed the door open and stepped back, allowing Hikari entry, and she quickly moved past him into the room. Like hers it was sparsely decorated with minimal personal touches beyond a few items from home and some other souvenirs acquired after two years of travelling the globe, and her eyes were drawn to a single framed photo sitting atop the bedside cabinet. It was of Daisuke and Veemon, side by side, dirty and sweaty but smiling, and she quickly recognised it as the same group photo she had in her scrapbook from when they were rebuilding the Digital World.
Daisuke had cropped everyone else out of it beyond him and Veemon and blown up what remained, losing some of the quality in the process, but the bond between them was still recognisable. She heard the door shut and began turning to face Daisuke, still at a loss about what to talk about, but all thoughts pertaining to having a conversation were abruptly discarded when she found Daisuke's lips pressing up against hers, his tongue worming its way into her mouth, as one hand took firm hold of the back of her head whilst the other groped her breast.
Her reaction was immediate and Hikari jerked her head away from Daisuke in shock and horror, her hands coming up to try and part their bodies, but only partially succeeded. Despite his slight, malnourished frame Daisuke still retained a great deal of strength that, for now, was enough to overpower whatever resistance Hikari could muster.
'What the hell are you doing?' she shouted him.
'Taking what I'm owed,' he rasped back as his hand continued to work at her breast, clumsily caressing it in a way that was anything but pleasing.
'What you're owed?' Hikari said, trying to push him off her again. 'Daisuke, what the hell are you talking about?'
'You know exactly what I mean,' he growled at her. 'Choosing that blonde pretty boy even after you strung me along for all those years. I'm taking everything I'm owed from you, and more.'
He tried to kiss her again and Hikari caught the scent of whiskey on his breath, and the glazed look in his eyes, and quickly realised he was more than a little drunk right now. She tried to pull away but again, his body was stronger than it looked and soon their lips were meeting for another passionless kiss. Then, his hand left her breast and began creeping downwards for the waist of her jeans.
Knowing where his fingers intended to travel, Hikari violently jerked her hips away from Daisuke's and managed to break free from his hold at last. Except, he was standing between her and the room's only exit, and he seemed livid with her.
'Stop struggling,' he said. 'You're not supposed to fight back this much.'
He lunged for her and they grappled in the middle of the room, he trying to get a firm grip on Hikari and she trying to escape from Daisuke, and for a split second it seemed like she was going to come out on top. Adrenaline was flooding into her system and giving her body a much-needed boost of strength, enough to overcome Daisuke, and escape seemed like a very real possibly. Right up until Daisuke dodged behind her and used some kind of technique that knocked her off balance, and pushed her towards the room's desk.
The next thing Hikari knew, Daisuke had her bent over it with one hand keeping her head flat against the wooden surface and the other forcing her arm up her back, almost to the point it felt like he was going to pop it out of the socket. Then she felt him sprawl on top of her, his mouth inches from her ear, and Hikari whimpered and shivered as she heard his ragged breathing.
'The more you fight, the more painful it'll be,' he said. 'And the longer it'll take. So just give me what should have been mine all those years ago, and it'll all be over.'
She could only whimper again in response, tears streaming from her eyes at the pain coming from her in shoulder and the terror of being assaulted so by someone she had once considered a friend. It couldn't be happening. It just couldn't. She refused to believe that Daisuke was seriously considering raping her, right here and now. This had to be some kind of cruel practical joke, a sadistic means of getting back at her for all the misery she had caused him that had gone too far. It had to be.
And yet, Daisuke showed no sign of ceasing his assault on her body. The hand that had been keeping Hikari's head down shifted to fumble with the top button of her jeans again, struggling for a few seconds until it accomplished its task and started on the others, popping them off one by one like some grotesque and macabre countdown, and then his fingers were groping the outsides of her underwear.
Hikari tried to throw Daisuke off again but all it did was make her shoulder burn with pain as he twisted it some more and she quickly stopped, letting out faint cries as he pulled her jeans down and his hand ran up and down the bare flesh of her legs.
'That's more like it,' he said in a hoarse whisper. 'Just let it happen. Maybe you'll even enjoy it.'
'Please,' she whimpered back. 'Please, Daisuke. Stop it. Please. Whatever I did, I'm sorry. Okay? I'm sorry.'
'It's too late for sorry,' Daisuke grunted.
She felt him struggle with the belt, button and fly of his own trousers and before long, Hikari could feel his erection pushing up against her backside with the only thing standing between it and its ultimate goal was her underwear. Daisuke gave a perverse moan of satisfaction as he went back to touching the insides of her thighs, the tips of his fingers slowly but surely climbing higher and higher, and a sudden thought struck Hikari startling clarity.
Daisuke intended to rape her.
This was no joke, or prank, or means of getting even. He had long since passed the point where he should have stopped and kicked her out of the door, mortified and traumatised but otherwise intact. He fully intended to carry out this attack on her, regardless of the consequences it would carry.
A terror unlike anything else Hikari had felt before, more than even when they had faced down MaloMyotismon, swept across her and made her body turn cold. With that feeling came a second, larger surge of adrenaline into her trembling, half naked body that gave the strength necessary to hurl Daisuke off her and back several paces.
He staggered and fell to the floor, tumbling on the trousers down around his ankles, and the back of his head slammed into the metal frame of his bed with a resounding clunk. His whole body went slack with that but Hikari didn't see this, orientating herself onto the door, and ran for it as best she could whilst trying to pull her own jeans up.
Sadly, much Daisuke, she tripped over them and found herself flying towards something hard and unyielding as a result. The only saving grace was that it was a door that opened outward, and a cheaply installed one at that. Her shoulder slammed into it and Hikari felt something go crack, followed by an immense wave of pain, but the door burst open and deposited her into the corridor beyond. Unfortunately, she kept on going and the door opposite rushed up to meet her.
She met it head on and everything went dark.
