I mashed the R key and faced the front of the laptop to the ground. A few seconds later, the laptop lit up and Gabi emerged on his knees.

He was in worse shape than I expected. The back of his jacket had been ripped apart, and a few places were tinted red. His leg was just as messed up, the pants leg was ruined and I could see a giant bruise underneath.

They hit the wooden floor and he immediately fell forward. His hands scrambled over the wood like he was searching for something.

"Where is she, where is she?" I could hear him mumble over and over again. He must have been looking for Pagumon. I got to my feet and placed my hand on his shoulder.

"Gabi, the R key takes her back to the digital home, remember?" I told him as he stopped in place. He turned his head towards me as I reached down to take his helmet off. He needed to calm down and having that dumb helmet probably wasn't helping.

"Right, the digital home," he muttered as I took the helmet off his head. Despite what he'd gone through, his face and head were untouched. He tried to get back to his feet only for me to put my hands back on his shoulders to force him back down.

"Hey be careful, you're leg's not in the best condition right now," I warned as he started trying to crawl forward, "Gabi you need to stop."

"No, I need to see her," he reached out for the laptop. This was getting out of hand, I needed to get him settled down somewhere before he hurt himself even more. "I need to make sure she's okay."

"Francis, get down here!" I yelled. It was a risky move. We kept Francis upstairs where he could keep watch and divert people away from the basement in the event of a worse case scenario. But right now I needed muscle to get Gabi off the floor.

"Roxie?" The door burst open and I heard him gasp. He came down the stairs as Gabi tried to reach his way up to the table.

"Come on Gabi, you need to rest…" easier said than done. The only thing we could use was the couch covered with a bunch of random stuff. Other than that… we had to get him out of here.

"Come on, I got you man," Francis reached under Gabi and propped him up on his shoulder. I glanced down to quickly check he was helping the right leg. Once he was stable, Francis turned to me. "What happened to him… no I can ask later. He needs medical attention, and he needs it now. Can you take off some of the stuff from the sofa, just enough to sit him down?"

"Are you sure? I mean…" I looked at him again and the quickly spreading red on his back and on his leg. The mess of purple flesh down there flashed in my mind as I winced. I gave up and started clearing the sofa. "Okay you're right, he needs to see… someone. But how are we going to do that?"

"Okay, if we take off the jacket and boots, it looks like a relatively normal outfit. We can hide those down here and then… I have someone we can call," he set Gabi down on the sofa before rubbing his forehead.

Gabi, for his part, just stared blankly at the laptop.

"Listen, I need you to trust me on this. My cousin has a clinic and I think I can manage to get him to look at Gabi no questions asked. But we need to call him over now. I'll do that while you take off his shoes and jacket."

"Alright," I reached over Gabi as I took his jacket off and tried to keep the blood off my fingers. His boots were off only a few seconds later. The whole time a little voice in the back of my head whispered that this should have been Gazimon's job.

I did my best to ignore it. As hard as it was to ignore what was growing between the two, it was neither the right time or place. Once I was done, I placed both jacket and boots in a bag which I hid among the clutter of the basement.

I got back to Gabi just as Francis came back downstairs.

"Okay, so he'll be over in a couple of minutes," he announced as he watched Gabi from the top of the stairs. He stared at him for a couple of seconds before looking back over to me. "I thought you guys said that clothing damage gets reversed when he comes back to the real world."

"Yeah we checked but… all we did was cut a hole in a sock using a pocket knife," I explained as everything Gabi went through in the last hour played again in my head, "there's so many reasons why it could be different."

"Well, what happened?" he took a seat at the table as I started telling him everything.

After Roxie had stopped me from getting to the Digital Home the next… hour maybe… had passed by like a blur. Someone else had come into the basement and the next thing I knew I was going somewhere else. Roxie and Francis were with me, so I wasn't scared. And they'd even taken the laptop with them.

I only came back when I felt something sting my back. I was laying down on my stomach in what looked like some sort of small hospital room. The smell of alcohol filled the room. Roxie was sitting off to the side and watching me from a chair.

"Where am I?" I groaned before trying to get up.

"Whoa, careful there kid, you took one hell of a beating," a voice I didn't recognize said before I felt another burning sensation. I looked at Roxie who got out of her chair and slowly walked up to me.

"Gabi, this is Francis's cousin Luke. He's a doctor with a small private clinic. He's agreed to help you out, no questions asked." I relaxed at that last part, only to stiffen up again when I felt another sting.

"Yeah, well I may take it back," I winced, "I have no idea what you got yourself into kid, but if there's someone out there doing this to people, I have to call the cops. I'm applying disinfectant because your back and leg are covered with so many scratches, you're basically guaranteed to get an infection. The only good news I have is that you probably don't have any broken bones."

"Don't worry…" I winced in pain again, "the thing that did this, isn't around anymore."

"You know that doesn't help your case right?" another sting fell on my back. "What you're saying an animal did this? Because there's not a lot of animals which would do something like this."

"Something like that yeah," I groaned as I let the pain take me to sleep.

I woke up in a comfortable bed. My first instinct to try and get out of it was met with pain all over my back. I looked down and spotted the mess of bandages over my chest. They'd even cut off a chunk of my pants leg to bandage up the spot where the plant hit the back of my leg.

I laid back and tried to relax a bit. I tried feeling all of my limbs and digits. My arms and right leg were fine but… trying to do anything with the other leg caused an immediate burst of pain. In any other situation, I would have let myself rest here… where was I?

I tilted my head up and let my eyes adjust to the gloom. I was in a small room with not much in it besides a bed and a small desk built into the wall. All around me were posters describing medical conditions and how to check for their symptoms. The desk was mostly empty, just a sink, some cabinets underneath and… the laptop.

I took a few deep breaths and braced myself as I slowly sat back up. My chest hurt with every little movement, but I could bear it. Once I was up, I swung my legs over, one at a time. First the good one, followed by the hurt one. I winced as I lifted the leg up and moved it over off the bed. I carefully let go, making sure it wouldn't swing and hit my other leg.

And then came the hard part. I took another deep breath before shuffling forward and feeling the cold tile under my feet. I waited two seconds before getting back up.

I stumbled forward the second I put any weight on my bad leg. My hands reached out and grabbed the edge of the table, catching me just before I could go sprawling all over the floor. I dragged myself forward and reached the PC, opening the PtoD converter and firing it up.

I appeared in front of the digital home. The first thing I thought was that I'd lucked out. The second was the immense pain I felt the instant I put any weight on my bad leg. I hissed a breath before slowly making my way into the Digital Home.

My first instinct was to call out for Gazimon, but I didn't want to wake her up if she was asleep. Instead I hobbled in, using one of the walls to keep myself steady. I kept my eyes glued forward as I slowly shuffled my way to her bedroom.

I'd only seen her room a couple of times before. It didn't have much, it was just a bare room with a large circular bed in the center. I'd felt the bed once with my hand, and it'd felt pretty soft. No covers though, apparently Gazimon preferred to just use her fur to keep the cold away.

Just like she was doing now.

I let out a sigh of relief as I walked in and saw her lying fast asleep on the bed. She still had a couple of her injuries, but she was better than that last time I'd seen her. I let myself relax and rest myself against the wall.

Big mistake. I hit the wall a little harder than intended. Her ear twitched, and for a second I hoped she'd stay asleep. Instead, her eyes started fluttering open.

"Gabi is that…" she half mumbled until her eyes finally opened. She placed her paws on her bed and pushed herself back up, "Gabi what happened to you?"

"Don't worry about it," I told her while coughing out a laugh. "oh it hurts to laugh."

"Why are you here, don't humans take forever to heal?" She jumped out of bed and rushed over to me. She got in close and looked over my bandages. She hesitantly reached out and placed a paw on my shoulder and gently pulled me forward. I didn't try to fight her as she peered over and got a good look at my back.

"Gabi," She set me back down and narrowed her eyes at me, "the last thing I remember is getting hit by that digimon and going flying. Now I wake up in my bed and you're covered in injuries. Tell me what happened."

Any idea of telling her a lie or trying to downplay what happened vanished. I started the story, telling her everything. And as I told her everything, something in me started to change.

From that first moment I'd escaped, to now, my brain had been laser focused on making sure Gazimon was alright. Now I had her right here sitting next to me, injured but alive. I was also patched up and I was going to pull through. Without concern for Gazimon or myself culminating my every thought, a new emotion rose up in their place.

Rage.

Blonde guy had gone out of his way to lay a trap for me, and gotten someone else mixed up in it. And for what? Because he thought I was some kind of… hacker super villain? I was out there, doing what I did to help others who the law didn't care about, reaching out for my own justice.

And then this guy had waltzed in, called my justice false and denied it to me and any who may need it?

As I sat there with my back to the floor and covered in injuries the only thing I wanted to do was get back up and make sure his sister and her friends walked free. The more I thought about his words…

"Just cut it out with your whole… hacker super villain thing and stop messing with innocent people."

The more I wanted to go out and do just that… Keep going with my hacker super hero thing and going after those would hurt the innocent.

Deep within the rebel drive, one half of purple circle appeared.

By the time I was done telling the story, Gazimon paws had dropped to her sides. I could see tears in her eyes.

"So I failed again then," she bitterly bit out, "All this training, and I still ended up being useless. You got hurt again… I really am just a dumb weak rookie."

She sniffled and I forced myself up to pull her into a hug.

"Hey it's not your fault we keep running into…" what had she called it again… oh right, "champions. We just have to be more careful from here on out. We'll go slower, check for traps, always have an escape…"

"No it's not good enough," she cut me off, pulling out of the hug, "I keep saying that I'll get stronger. That I'll be able to keep you safe, but I never do. That's done, from now on… I'll be sure to protect you."

I could see the fire in her eyes. They'd always been there when this topic had come up, but they'd never burned this bright before.

Deep within the rebel drive the second half of the purple circle appeared.

"Okay," I said simply as I sat back. "So then, where do we go from here?"

"You said that the Blond guy went after his sister to get us, right? Feels kind of wrong to just leave her like that," I smirked, looked like she was already on the same page as me.