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"A Coupling You Can't Stand"

Someone was missing. Even amid the sea of emotions the Tamers being reunited with their partners had created, Rika could feel something was off. She scanned the immediate area, knowing full well that they had all been present not more than a few moments ago, until a sudden lack of irritation in the back of her mind clued her into who she was looking for.

Pulling herself away from Renamon, Rika walked up the stairs to the utility shed, and towards the portal that had just facilitated their reunion. She quietly pushed the gate open, not surprised to find Ryo and his own partner, hunched over a hole in the ground that led to the portal to the Digital World.

"Abandoning ship again?" Rika asked, loudly enough that Ryo stood right up as he turned around to face her.

"Kind of a blunt way of phrasing that, Wild Cat," Ryo replied, with an uneasy grin on his face, one that seemed to be trying and failing to maintain his usual cockiness.

Rika crossed her arms. "How would you phrase it then?"

For what might have been the first time since they met, Ryo had no comeback for her. Instead, his expression sank, his eyes looking blankly down at the ground between them.

"I don't want to go," Ryo answered. "Thing is, I can't stay.

"Uh-huh." Rika rolled her eyes.

Ryo raised an eyebrow. "It's true."

"You seem convinced, at least."

"Because it is! Look, with the way Cyberdramon gets-"

Ryo cut himself off as he gestured down at Monodramon, who stared back up at him with a blank look on his face. In this form, Ryo's partner was no more dangerous than any of the other Digimon. While difficult and even a bit volatile at times, he wasn't an uncontrollable monster, something that seemed to be sinking in for Ryo at that moment.

"That's what I thought," Rika declared.

Again, she couldn't bring herself to be surprised, or at least a voice in her head told her she shouldn't be. The voice insisted Ryo's previous championing of teamwork had all been empty words. Just like another person from her past, he made promises, but walked away the second that keeping them became difficult.

"It's what I know, Rika," Ryo finally said after a pause.

Rika wasn't sure if it was how lost he seemed or just the simple fact that he used her actual name, but she found herself giving Ryo a second thought. The truth was that the rest of them only had vague ideas as to how much longer he had been a Tamer than the rest of them, and how long he had spent wandering the Digital World by extension. There were a number of specifics that Rika wasn't aware of, and if her own past was proof of anything, it was the consequences of jumping to conclusions without all the facts.

"You know..." Ryo said suddenly, just before she could give him the benefit of the doubt. "You could come with me."

"And why would I do that?" Rika could feel her anger almost instinctively trying to push its way out.

Ryo shrugged. "Because it would be fun. The King and Queen of the Digital World, heroes of the battle with the D-Reaper, wandering the digital landscape and fighting evil wherever we might find it."

Rika simmered. "And just walk out on everyone and everything I care about? Just use whatever excuse I can so I never have to look back? Is that it?"

Any enthusiasm Ryo was showing dissipated. "It's what you did both times we met in the Digital World."

Rika paused, both events he was referring to sticking in her mind. The facts were that she hadn't been much better on those occasions, though another voice in her head argued that that wasn't the point.

"Yeah, well, that was then," Rika explained. "I'm trying to be better than that."

Rika took a second to look Ryo up and down one more time, not feeling like she was getting much of anything from him. He tended to be difficult to read when he wasn't being uncharacteristically quiet.

"And I thought you were better than that too," she added.

The shed went quiet for a moment, followed by Ryo's eyes starting to wander between his partner and the portal. Finally, they settled on Rika as his usual cocky grin appeared on his face.

"You're really gonna miss me."

"Oh, as if!" Rika snapped, her reflexive anger bubbling back up.

Ryo crossed his arms. "Uh-huh."

Rika turned to leave the shed, knowing that Ryo was already committed to his journey to the Digital World, as well as questioning why she was even trying to stop him in the first place. She stopped midstep, however, and took a deep breath. They all still had a lot of growing to do, so she knew she couldn't hold that against him.

"Just..." Rika turned her head just enough so she could see Ryo in the corner of her eye. "...be careful out there. I'd hate for something to happen to you before we've had our rematch."

Ryo gave a thumbs up. "It's a date then."

Rika felt her eye twitch as she looked forward again. "You can ruin anything!"

"Time will tell, I guess."

Rika spun right back around, ready to fire back. By this point, however, both Ryo and Monodramon had vanished.

A smirk found its way to her face. For whatever reason, she was okay with him having the final word, at least for the time being. Knowing her luck, he would turn up again eventually.

Author's Note:

What always gets me about these challenges is the number of "Least Favorite" prompts that always find their way in. I'm of the opinion that these things should be more celebratory and more focused on the good than dwelling on things we don't like. Still, I'm [generally] a completist with a tendency to editorialize, so I won't be skipping any prompts. Best I can do with these is try to strike a balance between fair and honest.