"You're going to take her away from me?"
Not now, not when they're finally doing right, not when he has stopped caring that she scares him and they're getting along, this jerk can't take Nat-chan away now. He doesn't want that.
The man scoffs again. "She is not yours to be taken. She is my little girl, and you humans do not deserve her. Humans never have deserved Digimon and never will."
"That's xenophobia," he blurts before he can stop himself. He doesn't even understand what the man means. What are Digimon? What is he going on about? Does it even matter?
"It is reality," Nat's father counters in this prim, mocking voice. "Now where is she?"
Akihiro opens his mouth to say the truth, to admit that he has no idea and wouldn't tell him if he did, but then he sees her, standing only meters away.
She is smiling one of those heartbreak smiles.
Then the man has a golden… scale, of all things, the scale of a lizard (dragon, his traumatized mind tells him, that is a dragon scale), sticking out of his ribcage.
The man doesn't fall. He merely turns.
"Daughter,' he says. "Rhythm." So much love in that voice, it's much more than his. That's her name, and he loves saying it.
Nat-chan shakes her head, so tired. "No," she says. "You don't get to call me that." Her small fists clench and she crouches, jumping to land in front of Akihiro with her fists up. "You didn't make me to love me; you don't get to call me that."
"That doesn't change that I love you." He almost seems to be pleading now.
"Loving me doesn't make you right."
The man chuckles sadly. He pulls the scale away, tosses it aside. The blood trickles down in a thin line. "And you think that boy is right for you."
Nat tenses in front of him, and Akihiro looks at her with concern. She turns to smile at him-
And the man lunges. He has -gently, Akihiro thinks bitterly years later, gentler than probably necessary- pushes the girl aside, and picks him up with one hand coiled around his throat. Akihiro kicks out reflexively and his lungs scream. As he's lifted higher, the man changes, skin turning purple, vines and armor sprouting from nowhere. The smile on the man's face is rage-filled and chilly.
"Look at how he squirms," the monster-man says, sneering outright through the visor over his eyes. "Pathetic, isn't it?"
Nat leaps and her bronze fingers spark gold and force the man to drop his target. "Algomon," she snaps and the word is loud in the silent, empty street.
Akihiro can hear windows opening through the loud rattles in his chest.