From the last chapter…

Once they were all completely out of sight, no ripples or bubbles left on the surface of the water, Ryo pulled Rika into a fierce hug. Rika wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder, biting her lip to keep from saying anything at all. The finality of it hit them, there wasn't anybody else left.

At the edge of the trees, Tueno smiled.

Ch. 16

Rika could feel Ryo's ragged breathing against the back of her neck; feel his heart hammering in hurt, and rage, and loss. Her own hands were balled into fists, and the grip she had around his shoulders was slowly making her fingers tingle with lack of blood.

"Ho… holy shit…" Ryo whispered, squeezing his eyes closed, and he hugged her tighter.

Rika ran her teeth across her lip again, she wanted to tell him it would be ok, that the others were fine, that no matter how bad it looked right then, everyone would be alright when it was said and done. She pressed herself against him, wanting to relieve the pressure that felt like it was crushing her from the inside out. She didn't know what to say, because she couldn't guarantee that everything would be ok, that he wouldn't hurt anymore. That he would ever truly stop hurting. She sighed. "We need to find food, and we need to get out of here." Her whisper drifted out along the abandoned beach, the tracks of struggle in the sand slowly being washed away by the muted blue and grey surf

He nodded, feeling like he'd just relived a portion of his life he had never wanted to even think about ever again. "Ok… lets… let's go then." He took in a rough gulp of air and regained his composure, wanting Rika to see him acting at least kind of normal, hoping that if he could do that she'd be less afraid. They let one another go, and without looking at the ocean behind them started towards the woods.

---

It had been hours, and they hadn't seen a single other living thing. It made the going easier without any swamp bugs, but there weren't any birds, squirrels, people… anything. The whole situation was making the pair jumpy and nervous. They'd passed a few houses, but they were either completely ransacked or had something deceased outside them, placed there like some sort of gory warning to passers-by. The gloomy grey rectangles of down-town loomed ahead, and so that was the direction they headed, hoping to find an abandoned supermarket or bakery where they could get something to eat.

As they neared the empty shells of the buildings Rika realized how close they were to where Takato's house should have been, it was far closer then anything either or them knew down town, and the grey structures loomed forebodingly ahead of them.

"Ryo." Rika started quietly. "Takato's house isn't far from here, his mom and dad are always bringing home extra baking..."

Ryo looked like he was seriously considering the idea, and then a dark scowl appeared on his face. "I'm all for finding food, but what if his house is like… that one…" He jerked his head at the house behind Rika. She turned to see what he was talking about and stopped dead in her tracks. Someone's upper body was draped out a window on the second level of the home, the flower bed under the window was covered in shreds of another being's remains, and the family cat had been nailed to the front door by its tail.

Rika swallowed, squeaking a little in the horror of what she saw. "Well…" She said, her voice cracking shrilly. "Then at least we'll know, and… we'll have found something to take from a pantry… or maybe one of Takato's sweaters…"

Ryo put his hands on her shoulders and steered them both away from the particularly trashed home. "Ok, I'm just saying that it could be… not what we really want to see, that's all."

She nodded, taking his hand in hers. "We'll beat Tueno."

---

Ryo stomach rumbled as they came up to Takato's home, there wasn't anything dead outside where they could see, and accept for the broken windows, the house seemed mostly in order. He looked at Rika to confirm that they really were prepared to do what they'd originally decided. She squeezed his hand, and they started towards the door.

It swung open easily, the light switch to the left of the door frame forced a light in the kitchen to flicker on, the open doorway letting more grey light illuminate the front hall. Oldies music drifted out of the kitchen from the radio that had been knocked to the floor. Still holding Ryo's hand, Rika padded into the kitchen and glanced around. It was in relatively good shape, two pies cooling on the counter next to the broken jar of flour. Ryo tugged the fridge door open and peeked inside; two tall bottles of a fizzy drink were sitting on the rack just inside the door, he decided to grab two cans of iced tea instead, and the jug of water.

Food set out on the counter in front of them, Rika smiled at Ryo and produced two forks out of a drawer. He let her hand drop out of his and silently accepted a fork. They didn't bother sitting down at the table, merely dropping to sit cross-legged with their backs to the cupboards under the counter and devour their food. Neither said a word, but as more of the two apple pies disappeared, the more life the pair began to show again. Rika giggled at the small mountain of crumbs Ryo had collected in his lap, drawing a smile out of him.

Food finished, they put the dishes in the sink out of habit and headed upstairs to look for warmer clothing. In Takato's closet Ryo found them both shirts and jackets, while Rika checked her friends chest of drawers for a pair of full-length pants and a belt. Clothes found, they met on Takato's bed, sitting on the edge and deciding what to do next.

"You know what I want most?" Rika smiled to herself, amused.

Ryo raised his eyebrows. "No, what?"

"A shower. More then anything else right now I want to be clean, and not covered in other peoples' blood."

He grinned. "Makes sense. You want to go first?"

She poked him, a devil-may-care smile on her face. "You saying you want one too?"

He tackled her, laughing and pinning her to the floor. "Maybe I do… maybe I'll take the shower and keep it all to myself so you just have to stay dirty."

"Ryo!" She cried, trying to sit up. "Hey! That's not fair! I came up with the idea! Who do you think you are Akiyama?" She teased, wiggling and struggling in his grasp. "Let me up you!"

He pretended to think about it for a second. "Hm… no… I don't think I will. Shower's mine!" Without warning he sprang up, grabbed some of the clothes on the bed and raced down the hall towards the bathroom.

Rika sat up, glaring at the empty door frame. "Cheater!" She stood up and crossed her arms, glaring at the door once more before dropping herself onto the bed and deciding that perhaps it would be alright to take a nap.

It took Ryo about 15 minutes to wash all the grime, blood and sand off, he hadn't realized just how thoroughly the dirt had been ground into him. Feeling clean, rested and properly full for the first time in days he climbed out of the shower and toweled himself dry. He pulled on some of the clothes they'd borrowed from Takato, but as he reached for the shirt his fingers found a second pair of jeans. "Great." He rolled his eyes and picked up the jeans, sauntering out of the bathroom and back to Takato's room. "Rika – " He stopped mid-sentence as he caught sight of Rika through the open door. She was curled up on her friends' bed, using the two shirts as extra padding for the pillow. "Of course she's asleep," he rolled his eyes, "and I'm going to feel guilty for waking her up."

He took a few quick strides over to the edge of the bed and sat down, gently running his palm across her arm to wake her up. "Rika… Rika wake up, you've got the shirt I need, the clean shirt, the clean shirt I'm borrowing from Takato." She stirred a little, inching towards his voice. He grinned, that's cute, she'd kill me if I told her that, but that's cute. He traced patterns on her arm. "Rika, it's your turn to shower, and change into clean clothes, and give me a shirt."

She rolled over. "… and if I don't give you your shirt because you took the shower first?" A catty smile was playing at her lips, and one of her eyebrows was raised.

Ryo sighed. "I'm cold though…"

She sat up and rested her chin on his shoulder, pulling one of the shirts off the pillow and setting it in his lap. "Well, that's what you get for stealing the shower from me." She smiled and lightly placed a kiss on his neck, just under his ear. "I'm going to go get clean." Rika snagged the other shirt and made her way to the bathroom, shutting the door, and leaving Ryo sitting on the edge of the bed with a funny little smile on his face as he pulled the long-sleeved red shirt on over his head.

---

Both of them clean, full, and relatively content considering their entire situation, the pair decided to go to where Guilmon's old hide-out was in the park. Everything leading to the digital world had always started in the park, or some other natural area. They'd looked through the front closet at Takato's and found a small shoulder bag, and in the light brown bag they'd packed up two apples, some of the spiced bread buns, left over rice, and even a bit of left over pork that was still good. Each was wearing a borrowed sweater and pair of jeans. Ryo had on a red long sleeved shirt, and Rika a white and black 3/4 sleeved shirt she'd found in Ms. Matsuda's chest of drawers. Over all, they found themselves kind of sad to leave the house, even if it had been rather battered.

The walk to the park went by quickly, and it didn't feel like much time had passed at all when they reached the small cement room Guilmon had used. They stood in front of the gate, just looking at it. "S'been a while, hadn't it?"

Rika nodded. "Feels like ages since then, feels like all the problems we ran into then were so much easier to deal with now that they've been lived through."

They stood in silence for a while, just remembering. Neither made a sound, each trying to push aside the painful memories that were all too recent and vivid. Ryo shook his head. "We should figure out what to do next."

Rika looked around at the trees, fog was hanging everywhere like a thick, misty grey curtain. "We should find something alive, haven't you noticed? There aren't even bugs." She paused. "Not that that's a bad thing, but really, we haven't run into anything at all. That worries me."

Behind them, slinking through the low greenery, Tueno let a smug grin settle onto its' weasel-like features. And then there were two… it hadn't been easy getting rid of everything alive, he was pleased that the blue Tamer recognized such a thing as dangerous. It had taken a while, perhaps 18 hours to clear such a large area with nothing but Scubamon and other such devoted digimon. Tueno had even let a few humans stay and help, some that he had taken a particular liking to. All the same, these two were a special delicacy, they would be his.

"It's unnerving, you're right; but what do we do about it?" Ryo said, not mentioning the absence of Cyberdramon and Renamon, or anyone else.

Rika thought for a minute. "We wait. Tueno will come to us, it started this, so it will try and finish this."

Tueno's grin widened into a smile, and it slipped out onto the path behind the two Tamers. "There is no need to wait." They whipped around with little cries of surprise, just as they caught a glimpse he flicked back and changed position, on top of the hide-out now. "Surprised?" He snickered, flicking away again as the pair whirled to face him.

"You're pathetic!" Rika cried in frustration. "Scared of us or something? Why won't you stand still and show yourself properly?"

Tueno smiled, re-appearing around them to accent his next sentence. "Why would I do that? That's far… too… simple…" The voice came from everywhere at once, making the fog ring with his laughter.

Ryo and Rika stood back-to-back on the cement path, glaring at the trees bordering them. "Come out Tueno!" Ryo yelled. "What do you want now?"

Like black lightening, Tueno flashed across the path, sailing on a downwards angle. As he passed Ryo's face, a single, whispered word penetrated the fog. "Her…"

---

She coughed up water, dizzy, her chest hur, as if something had been crushing the air out of her. The first breath of air was painful, almost enough that she didn't try for another. The third started to fight off the dizziness, and by the seventh her vision was beginning to swim back into clarity. She stayed as she was for a while, gasping, her breathing slowly returning to a normal rate. Once she felt slightly better, she opened her eyes and twisted her head, trying to see if anyone else was around. It seemed as if they were contained in a bubble of air, still under water, with no gravity. Kenta and Takato were near the centre of the bubble, Henry right at the bottom, Renamon near the edge opposite Cyberdramon. Kira was just starting to come around not far from Kenta and Takato. Overall, the situation seemed to be improving. Jeri smiled to herself, and gently jostled Calumon into consciousness. "Hey… Calumon, wake up."

The little digimon coughed water and then came around abruptly, trying to sit up in the strange environment. "Wh… where are we? What happened? Aren't we dead?"

Jeri laughed quietly at his wakening comments. "I don't think we're dead, I think… well I think we're in a bubble."

Below them Henry groaned and opened his eyes, looking around confusedly. "Did… Suzi!" His troubled face broke into a relieved smile at seeing his sister as she responded to her name.

She grinned. "We're ok!" Lopmon hugged her Tamer's arm fiercely. As each of the Tamers came into full alertness, ideas began to be exchanged as to how they'd managed to come by the bubble they were all in. Kenta was the only one still completely unconscious.

"I think it's got quite a bit to do with him," Meiko stated, brow wrinkled a little as she thought. "Can anyone reach his D-arc?"

Suzi 'swam' through the air the few feet to the boy, his D-arc was clutched in his left hand, and after a few moments of prying at his fingers, it came loose. "There's a picture on the screen of some kind…" She said, and then sent it towards Kira and Meiko.

Kira caught it, looking at the symbol that glowed on the screen. "I think it's his crest, or the rough equivalent." She pulled her cobalt Digivice out of her jacket pocket. "My crest isn't on my screen, any ideas what it means?"

Meiko accepted Kenta's D-arc from Kira. "They tend to glow when they're active, don't they? Only for a moment at a time though, say, while a digimon is using it to digivolve. Why it would glow like this for longer then that…" She trailed off, shrugging her shoulders.

Takato looked down at Henry. "You told us about those things, crests." He looked kind of pensive for a moment. "They sure haven't done a lot to help us so far, at least not with us knowing about it."

Henry shook his head. "Rika's crest saved her life, and I think Kenta's is keeping all of us alive right now."

Kira and Meiko looked at one-another, confused. "Henry…" Meiko asked slowly, "what exactly is Kenta's crest?"

The Chinese boy looked over at the pair. "Kenta's crest is life." Terriermon nodded his agreement, confirming his Tamers' statement.

Kira's eyes widened. "If one person is using everything they've got to keep 13 others alive, it can't last indefinitely, we need to get ourselves out of this situation right now. We don't know what this is costing him."

The Tamers all nodded, glancing at the unconscious Kenta. Marineangemon looked sleepily up from where he was by Kenta. "I can get us out, I can de-digivolve."

Jeri nodded. "That's right, you're a Mega most of the time, aren't you?"

Marineangemon nodded, eyes drooping shut momentarily. In Meiko's hand Kenta's D-arc glowed brighter, covering everyone in the bubble in a pearly light. Marineangemon started getting larger, and larger, and larger. "Stop!" Takato yelled. "Stop! You're going to pop the bubble!"

"Hang on tight! Grab onto my back!" Cried the large digimon, still growing bigger, and in the middle of his digiovlution.

Henry frantically kicked, not knowing how to swim up and grab on. Kira 'swam' strongly down towards him. "Don't let got of the back of my jacket, ok?" Henry nodded. Kira checked to make sure the Oollamon and Terriermon were with them, and then made her way up to the back of the de-digivolving digimon.

Jeri and Takato took a head count, making sure that everyone was indeed tangled in the shaggy brown fur sprouting up beneath them. It wasn't a full second after they'd finished counting that the bubble, already stretched to its limits holding in the new digimon, popped. Water gushed in all around the Tamers, tugging at their heavy clothes and trying to tear them from the back of their rescuer. Renamon held the unconscious Kenta in one arm, Cyberdramon sheltering the pair as best he could from the brunt of the waters force. Suzi almost panicked for a second as the cold water hit her face, the instinctive panic of someone thrown back into the element that had been a death sentence not long ago.

They burst to the surface, everyone taking in deep, gulping lung-fulls of air. Zudamon reared his head, hammer held in one massive paw. "Are you all still there? On the back of my neck?"

Takato regained his composure, taking a second to really look at the digimon. Huge grey-plated shell covered Zudamon's back, the scale of the creature was gigantic, and all the Tamers and digimon fit with plenty of extra room on the back of his neck, just behind his ears, in front of the shell. "We're all here Zudamon, let's find land!"

---

Ryo stopped breathing, for what seemed like eternity the word echoed in his head. 'Her'. He reached for Rika behind him, groping desperately for her hand. "No!"

Tueno finished sailing past Ryo's face, landing silently on the grass and disappearing into the fog again. He had no reason to request Rika specifically, other then that she had single-handedly defeated Landersmon. What he did know was that she, the blue Tamer, could cause an extreme amount of damage to the silver Tamer if she were suddenly… not there. Rika reached back for Ryo's hand just as Tueno flew back across the path in front of her. She hardly had time to take in a breath to yell before her feet left the cement pathway.

"Rika!" Ryo whipped himself in a full circle, looking for her. 'Her'. Why? Why does he want her! "Rika!"

---

Zudamon reached land in under five minutes, the ocean was his territory, the water his kingdom. The swarms of Scubamon had seen the huge digimon coming at them on the beach, and had hastily scattered. As soon as the teens had clamored off his neck, he de-digivolved completely into Bukomon, and collapsed into the sand, asleep. Kenta sat up dozily in Renamon's arms. "What's… happening?"

Meiko looked up at Renamon. "Do you mind carrying him for a while? He's completely drained." Renamon shook her head. "Thanks."

Henry made the next observation. "I have a very, very bad feeling, and I think we should try and find Ryo and Rika right now, no waiting. Renamon and Cyberdramon are here, so it's not like they've got a lot of protection."

Kira grinned. "Meiko, I think we can provide a lift."

Her friend grinned back at her. "I knew there had to be a reason we're here, it's not like we've been a huge help up until now."

"Oollamon, digivolve!"

"Cellomon, digivolve!"

Suzi wasted no time in catching up. "Lopmon, Matrix digivolve!"

Oollamon was engulfed in flames, leaping out the top, eyes smoldering like embers. Roughly one and a half times the size of Kyubimon, Sierramon's paws were still lit with fire and she still had her tiger's coat. The fur on her cheeks was flicked back and formed into black spikes, a plate of black armor covered her forehead, and two more plates covered her shoulders. Her fangs extended enough that even with her mouth closed, they could be seen peeking out over her bottom lip. "Yeah!" Kira cheered.

Cellomon seemed to dissipate into the shadows playing across the ground from the flames Oollamon had been covered in, she emerged out of nothing with fierce green eyes. The same size as Sierramon, Tanzamon was black, a pair of silver ribbons sprouting from her shoulder blades. Gauntlet-like gloves appeared on her front paws, the same silver as the ribbons. "Woot!" Meiko laughed, happy to see her digivolved partner again.

Lopmon digivolved into Antylamon, giving her Tamer a rare smile. Suzi smiled right back at her.

Sierramon and Tanzamon crouched long enough for the Tamers to climb up onto their backs. Bukomon was picked up by Antylamon, and Suzi was placed on the shoulders of her digimon. "Lets go!"

Henry laughed, and Takato called from Sierramon's back: "Hey! That's my line!"

---

Rika felt her feet hit a solid surface again, the top of Guilmon's hideout. "Ryo!" She cried, twisting frantically, trying to wriggle out of Tueno's grip. She stepped backwards, her foot only half on the edge of the roof. "Let me go!" As she pushed herself backwards she fell off, flailing in the air for a second before coming down on Ryo. His knees gave out and the pair hit the cement path like a ton of bricks.

Ryo had hardly hit the ground when he rolled over and covered Rika, sheltering her from the hail of gravel and other small debris that came down from the roof. He took a moment to cough and catch his breath, registering that it was his bad leg that had given out. He stood up, and pulled Rika to her feet close behind him, his hand tightly gripping her wrist. "Done yet?" Ryo yelled, his voice slightly hoarse, more of his weight on his good leg.

Tueno disappeared from the rooftop. "Of course not, haven't you figured out which of you dies first?"

---

s/k: Well, there we are, another chapter done. Only one more to go!