Hello again! This time we're off to see how Keisuke and his group are doing.

Case 4: Unchanging

If there was one place Keisuke could always rely on, it was the Hudie Cafe. Great friends, great wifi, great coffee...

"Just how many cups of coffee have you had today?" asked Yu.

"Uh..." Keisuke honestly had no idea.

Yu sighed. "And then you wonder why you have so much trouble sleeping at night..."

Well, technically Keisuke had trouble sleeping because of nightmares from a time that no longer existed. But Yu didn't need to know that, nor did anyone else. Still, maybe the gray-haired boy had a point.

"Seriously, you're gonna die of overwork at this rate," said Yu. "You shouldn't be taking so many cases back to back."

"Are you my boyfriend or my mom?" grumbled Keisuke. "...Sorry, that came out a little...Anyway, that's why I decided not to take the Shikishima case on top of everything else." That was a lie too, of course. He could never trust anyone or anything from that company. Not after everything that happened before...

"Well...baby steps, I suppose," said Yu with a slight smile. "Speaking of taking it easy, why don't you take the evening off? We could go down to Shinjuku Ni-chome for a bit, maybe see a movie? Oh, or we could go to EDEN to-"

"No," said Keisuke. "A date's not a date unless it's in the real world."

"...Oh."

There he went again. Keisuke wanted to punch himself. "Sorry...Anyway, a movie night sounds good! My last case was pretty exhausting..." Lily's cases always were, of course. Few things were more sobering than putting the dead to rest, often forcefully. Even if it let him see his Digimon partners again, and get even the slightest news on Erika...Hudiemon..."Oh yeah, wasn't that new Yakuza movie coming out today?"

"Oh yeah! Tiger Drop!" said Yu. "Hold on, let me check the times..."

Just then the door chimed open, and the other two members of Hudie walked in. Ryuji was as stern as ever, while Chitose bore his usual easy grin. Right behind them was ex-Hudie member Arata, laughing about something.

Keisuke smiled too. It was good seeing everyone relaxed and happy, their lives stable and unchanging. So unlike that other timeline that didn't exist anymore, thanks to some "chosen" that Keisuke didn't even know...so Keisuke should really stop thinking about that timeline at some point.

"Yeah, so we just make them forget about ever breaking in," said Arata, as he, Ryuji, and Chitose sat down at a nearby coffee table. "Problem solved."

Keisuke and Yu politely listened to them. It was easy to talk about hacking stuff like this here, since the place was so small. Most customers had their senses plugged into EDEN anyway.

"Isn't that a little dangerous though?" asked Chitose. "Setting a trap to tamper with mental data like that?"

"If a hacker is trying to steal information from a big company like Shikishima, they don't need to be treated gently," said Ryuji firmly.

"Besides, like I said, it'd only be the latest logs," said Arata. "Your latest experience in EDEN isn't permanently saved until you log out. So it's not gonna delete their whole life or anything. Probably just a few hours, maybe a few days if they're maniacs. But that'll be enough to keep them from remembering anything they stole. Maybe they'll even forget how to hack in there in the first place. We can always throw in some tracking for good measure."

"What if it's one of those Digimon things though?" asked Chitose.

"Then it gets deleted," said Arata. "That way people will think twice about throwing their precious Digimon at it. You'd be surprised how easily people get attached to them."

"Oh my god, there was this case the other day..." Chitose began, holding his forehead. "There was this guy trying to date one. A Lotusmon I think? Said it was his destined partner or something."

Ryuji scowled.

There was a long pause from Arata, before he groaned. "That's...not how that works..."

...Really? thought Keisuke. Sure a Lotusmon had a very...feminine figure, as certain Digimon did, but it was still a Digimon. Even he wasn't that desperate...being bi sucked sometimes.

"So yeah, I noped right outta that case once I knew what it was," said Chitose. "I swear some people will do anything to get laid..."

"Tale as old as time, unfortunately," said Arata with a sigh. "There's a reason Rule 34 is the most well-known rule of the Internet..."

Keisuke had to agree. Some things never changed. And some things never should.

"Well, next showing's gonna start in fifteen minutes," said Yu. "You ready go?"

"Yeah," said Keisuke, standing up.

More laid back chapter this time. It'll still take a few more drabbles before the plot starts to really kick into gear. Though this is a slower-paced story overall, at least for the time being. A lot of things to set up in the earlier chapters, not to mention the POV switching each chapter. The hardest part of planning this story at first was figuring out how to format the chapters.