Warnings: Depression, memory loss

Chapter Six: Slippery Slopes of Ice and Fire

"I hate being paranoid. I hate it because it's usually right and there's something under the surface. The problem is that it usually has nothing to do with me. I wish it did. Then my self-centered behavior would actually make a lick of sense."

Sayo could almost smell the emotions wafting off of Hikari right now. The nerves, the uncertainty, the actual form of sentences. She appreciated that. That meant this silence wasn't born from how much she wanted to lie, but how much she felt safe saying.

Considering her many dealings with Kowloon Co in the past couple of years, she'd had to learn the difference. Learning sucked, honestly.

Sayo, therefore, waited for an answer. Seeing as Hikari wasn't throwing things at her, she could afford to wait.

Finally, Hikari threaded her fingers into Tailmon's fur and said, "We met once, when we were younger." She waited for the surprise, but Sayo gave away none. She was trained better than that and too tired to try. "You and your friends tried to help us take care of a problem. It was training, you said. You all were supposed to go to Snow Zone. I had no idea where that was or what that was. But we had a picnic together." She swallowed. "You all had never had clementines before. You even tried to fly with the picnic blanket."

Sayo frowned pensively, playing with Titrel's chain. The other young woman's words struck her, rather like a chord or something like one. "Fly?" She latched onto that thought, that significant thing that didn't make sense. She couldn't fly now after all. "I could fly."

Hikari nodded. "Yeah. You never explained how it worked or anything. You all just could. Like Peter Pan, I guess. I had to learn. " Sayo only blinked, at a loss. "You don't know who Peter Pan is?" Sayo shook her head and a pang went through Hikari's chest. She tried to smile it off. Sayo knew that expression too, though. That was the look of someone who had to hold something else back, tamp down on the truth because they didn't know what she would do, like the animal she was.

"Show me your weapon," she said instead, because that was what she had wanted in the first place. Never mind the last year of longing that didn't belong to her as she had tried to remember what was so important, as she tried to remember the past everyone was afraid of her knowing. That she tried to remember something beyond needles and a man's gloved hand and his pity telling her something, something really, really important before being dragged away by Spencer Daimon and someone else telling her he was completely wrong and that wouldn't happen and he wouldn't let it.

(And that he would protect her and keep her safe, whoever he was was a liar and bad things happened to him to make him go away forever and honestly she wasn't sure if she cared or not no matter how much he meant to her and vice versa, because if she had meant anything he wouldn't have made such an idealistic promise)

She needed to pay Spencer a visit, come to think of it. He might have some answers and unlike her uncle, he would at least give her scraps. And he probably would like to know there was a Chosen Child here.

If Taiki, the little sneak, hadn't told him already. Bastard.

Hikari swallowed and nodded, pulling something small and plush from her pocket. It fit more on her shoulder than her palm but sat there completely still for a few moments. Then it stretched like an actual puppy, yawning and letting out a little 'wan' sound.

Sayo had to fight that long, family bound instinctual urge to melt at the sight of something that cute. "Wow," she said instead, voice hoarse. "Really?"

Hikari grinned, a little bit proud at managing to get Sayo off guard in a new, more humorous way. "I was eight," she said with a laugh, pocketing the plush once more. "She was very accommodating to my needs."

"She?" Sayo repeated.

Hikari smiled peacefully. "That's right. Now come on, let's do this work."

Sayo looked at her and the dullness still did not return to her eyes. They were wide and incredulous and maybe even a little annoyed. Then she puffed out a breath of air and managed to smile. "Yes, ma'am."

Hikari called that a victory, if she did say so herself.

For a while, they worked in silence. Sayo typed slowly, mumbling to herself in agitated annoyance. She repeatedly shook out her fingers, rolling her eyes at herself.

"Can you just say your stuff out loud?"

Sayo shook her head absently, typing another string of lines. "Security hazard with you in the room and Chief's security. Don't want to get her in trouble for something she can't help." She rubbed her eyes. "Besides, I've been busy with other stuff, other education stuff. They need to figure out if it applies. I think it does but their decision will help determine a lot."

"If what applies?"

Sayo glanced at the device now flopped on Hikari's shoulder. Then she gave a weary smile. "Magic."

Breakfast interrupted the two of them, which was good because both of them were on the floor from the sheer amount of tedium produced by all of the electronic form filling.

"I thought I had most of this done already," Sayo muttered, slumping into her chair. Hikari just yawned. Her Tailmon had been peacefully bathing in the much stronger rays of sun equivalent, but the smell of fish - salmon, perhaps? - had woken her up.

Hikari grinned at her. "You're turning into such a glutton."

Tailmon swiped at her ear in play, getting much like an electric spark in reply. Sayo smiled a little as they left the room, Jeanne zipping back into one of Hikari's pockets.

"Clothes shopping with Frisk after breakfast." Shinta could sound as chirpy as he wanted to, it wouldn't make Sayo believe him any more than she already did. "Tutor should be here when we get back. Would you like to come along, Yagami-kun?"

The formality was just unnerving, considering this man could bend her into a pretzel with ease and all of that. Or at least she thought he could. "I… yes, if I could… I need supplies..." Though how she was going to pay for them was anybody's guess.

"I've got you covered." Sayo waved her hand. "I have a surplus."

Hikari squared her shoulders to look her in the eye. Sayo had no clue what to do with the constant weird eye contact aside from look to the side. "All right."

Sayo nodded smartly. Julia laughed at them, grabbing mashed rice (more than likely smashed, the girl really did enjoy weaponizing the spoon) out of the air. "Darja," she said simply, wiping her hand. "No."

The toddler squeaked. "Yes!"

"Oh she can talk," Sayo muttered.

"She's a chatterbox in every other language but the one I understand," Ryouma agreed, taking to the napkin. Then, very suddenly, he rose to his feet and moved towards the door.

"Could you let the boy knock," Julia asked him, going ignored. Shinta snorted over his… whatever meat that was. Hikari heard the sound of twin laughs across the hall and squinted. Tailmon didn't look up from her lap as Ryouma returned with Taiki's hand in his-oh.

Huh.

Hikari blinked once, then dipped her head in greeting. Taiki smiled back, elbowing Ryouma in the shoulder.

"Move," he mumbled. "You're blocking traffic."

"Your hair blocks traffic," Ryouma replied, nonetheless doing as asked. They all settled and Hikari's eyes went wide at the sight of the food now put onto her plate. Staying where she had prior to now had been great, and she had been warned it would not be, two good meals in a row felt unnatural.

She almost wanted to refuse but common sense kicked in.

She ate.

Sanada Arata was apparently a tutor, but all Sayo could help but think was that he couldn't tutor his way out of a closet.

He was wearing a onesie and a sweater. The hood was pulled so far over his head she couldn't see his forehead until he pulled it down. His black hair was scraggly from the lack of a comb, and his face pale and pinched. He yawned a lot. Probably had just woken up.

He dwarfed her, of course. Talosian puberty hadn't given her height. But he hunched. She'd learned to stop hunching because it didn't do any good.

"Hi," he said abruptly, looking from one girl to the other like he'd walked into the wrong home. "I'm supposed to bring both of you up to speed right?"

"Yep," Sayo said before Hikari could. Hikari's red eyes were narrowed so thin they looked like little scratches on her face. "Just taking tests today, so you don't have to stay long." She would rather that he didn't stay at all, so she could avoid the inevitable judgment of a well-raised intelligent person on the right path seeing the stupidity of a child soldier. Or as well-educated as DigitalCITY got.

Then again, he looked like he spent more time in blue light than actual light these days.

Sanada Arata shook his head, hair moving with him as he did. "I'm paid to help you. And I have homework to do. Might as well sit it out."

Sayo almost twitched. Almost. Instead she nodded, frown deepening into her face. "All right," she breathed. "Frisk, this could take a while. Why don't you go with Uncle Shinta? He's going actual shopping."

Frisk squinted at her, but for all she knew that was their normal expression. Besides, they wouldn't trust her after just a matter of hours. She was just a means of survival, a means to an end. At least that was how it was supposed to work, according to dad.

Sayo smiled at them, and they took that and went along their way with suspiciously narrowed eyes. "Next time we can work together," she told them as they left. Hikari just giggled.

"Little brother?" Arata asked as he rummaged in his backpack. His skin was a little slack, likely lack of hefty meals as the cause.

Sayo shook her head, shoulders hunching as quickly as they had fallen before she could really stop them. "Picked them up."

The dark eyes glittered for a moment. "Wisteria child. Gotcha."

Sayo glanced at him, eyes beginning to narrow into a glare. However, her body relaxed, or seemingly gave in to the inevitable. "Yes, they are." She paused and said, with some reluctance. "I have a little sister. She's in boarding school."

"I went to boarding school for two years and got expelled." Arata offered. "My uncle laughed about it, said that was the family way to be too good for conventional militaristic ways."

"My dad said the same to my brother," Hikari said, fiddling with her new stylus pen. They needed more of these on Earth. She felt like a bit of an old lady.

Arata turned to look at her and her eyes went wide. She stared at him right back. "Whoa," he said, proceeding to grin a bit more than she should. "Neat. No wonder they said you needed a dose of everything."

"She needs an EDEN handle and a regulated Digivice," Sayo offered, watching Tailmon's fur fluff close to her giant ears.

Hikari glanced at her D-3. Arata followed her gaze and let out a snort. "That piece of garbage?"

Hikari clutched it tighter. "This "piece of garbage" is alive," she said, working hard to keep the frost from her voice.

Arata shook his head. "Yeah the thing in it is, but the technology around it is obsolete. It needs an evolution if it hopes to compete here with the amount of Soul you actually need to use in everyday life here."

For a moment, Hikari glanced skyward. Sayo hoped it was to pray for patience. Then she looked back at him, hunched shoulders gradually lowered. "I see..."

Arata dismissed it. "Sorry. If I had a tactful bone in my body, it'd dissolve."

Sayo laughed before she could quite control it. "Sounds like me."

The strange prickling in her neck wasn't going away but it was nice so nice so she didn't want to leave it all of a sudden. Though the urge to cry could definitely disappear.

If that went away, she almost thought she could be friends with this guy. Perish that thought.

Three hours and a lot of hand cramps later, they stopped for lunch.

Sayo flicked through menus on the screen in front of her fingers and Hikari watched with fascination at the sheer ease of the motion as new windows sparked beneath them. "Whatcha like? Pizza? Burgers? Fish? It's all homegrown and tested for poison."

"… What was that last part?" She had never been poisoned during her tenure as a Chosen Child but it likely had gotten close at one point.

"We used to get food delivered so it would often have to be checked for poison because of population culling."

Hikari stared for a few moments. Then she muttered, "Fuck."

Sayo stared at her for a few moments. Then she turned away. "We just met," she said before she could stop it.

Hikari laughed out right.

Arata snickered at the two of them, only to be pulled away (metaphorically, though Hikari was pretty sure that Shinta physically could pull every person in this room barring Julia with a hand if he felt like it) by Shinta himself. Hikari watched pleasantries go back and forth until the lanky boy was set in front of a plate with eyes bigger than his stomach. "Uh… sir..." The boy's rough voice was pleasantly awkward. "I… well, there's no way I could finish all of this."

"I spent my adolescence in America," the dragon man replied, settling his squirming daughter into her high chair. "I don't expect you to."

He flushed (which brought some color to his face, she was starting to think this person could give Koushiro-kun a run for his money). "Oh… right."

"It should last you about until your next training session yes?"

Arata looked at the staggering plate and managed a nod. Hikari could see the bobbing of his adam's apple.

"Then we'll see you then as well." Shinta smiled and Hikari got the distinct impression that somehow she wasn't getting spared from this either.

Soon enough though, she was proven right. Arata left and was replaced by Taiki who tossed Hikari a watch without looking back. She was tempted to tell him that she had multiple portable clocks when her Digivice let out another angry buzz and forced her to drop it.

"What was that?"

"Your Digivice getting jealous." Sayo shrugged. "That's your PDA thing so you don't try to make it be a computer."

"Digivices are computers, Sayo."

"Oh. Right."

Hikari gave up, and went to pick it up again. This time, digivice and watch chirped happily and her device slept on. She was so confused. Was this what her friends had felt like every time she and her brother breathed funny?

Sayo, by the time dusk fell, was finally left alone. Not by their choice mind you, but because you had to do your Tamer Union leave appointments alone, without outside influence in the room. It didn't matter if you were underage or overage or disabled or anything. It was something you had to do yourself, just like how you started. The choice being right or wrong didn't matter. And it was knowing that that made the decision so difficult for many.

Today, for Sayo, however, the choice was easy. She had plenty of Digimon left, and her family would be more than happy to watch over the few that didn't stay behind at her farm, but there were only two left that she had deliberately kept combat ready and that was only after they'd both begged and wheedled and whined for it. They would both claim they hadn't of course, but they had and she loved them too much to make them go out and fight for someone else after all of that.

They would love looking after Darja when she wasn't around. If she went out at all, and if Frisk stuck around.

A part of her hoped the child would and wouldn't flee from their house and the free food source, though honestly Sayo couldn't blame them if they tried. Kid wouldn't get far, but still.

She stared quietly at the front door of the building for another three minutes. She could always have the wrong building. Or the wrong time. Or not be allowed to resign.

And you won't know until you get inside, dumbass, her mind reminded her without sympathy.

Sayo squared her shoulders and walked inside. The automatic doors slid shut behind her like the door to a prison cell.

Almost an hour later, Sayo exited outside those same doors with the same lack of expression on her face. She took slow steps towards the train station three blocks away, legs dragging like bags of bricks on the ground.

"Are you all right?" someone asked as the clouds above her head started to churn into grey.

"Does it look like it?" she asked, stuffing her hands in her pockets at the wind. "I just quit my job. The only thing I know how to do in my life."

"I'm sure you know how to do more than be a meat shield," said the voice, steady and warm and maybe even amused. "You're seventeen. There's got to be more you can learn."

She let out a weary snort. "How would you know?"

"It's just a well-educated guess."

"More well-educated than me."

The person hummed and Sayo whirled to see their face, to punch the smug look out of their eyes-

There was nobody there, just some train card terminals with sparking blue screens begging for repairs and the wind making someone's bird feeder shift and drop seeds to the ground with little taps.

Sayo couldn't help it. She laughed. "I'm insane," she decided. "The demon lords knocked out what was left of my god damn brain. I'm god damn hearing things. Annie's gonna lock me up next to my mom."

What a shitty way to spend the rest of her life.

She made her way up to the train and almost went right back down the stairs at the sight of the empty tracks. She was definitely not safe for a lot of passengers. But it was that or teleportation.

She'd take the potential health hazard. That thought in mind, she settled on the bench and waited for the seven-ten to arrive.

Unnoticed, someone was there. A small, knowing smile sat on their face, grey eyes watching through glitches of blue from beside the ticket terminals. They tapped their fingers on the screen and watched her fiddle with her now near-useless digivice until the train rolled by. They watched until she was gone. Then the smile faded and they looked towards the rain starting to fall.

"You really do always think the worst of yourself," they said, before they too, disappeared from the station.

A/N: This fic is so rude. It just doesn't want to be done I swear. But we're back again, and we have Arata! Next chapter is probably going into a certain rabbit-dog and the chat room! Let's rock!