Intermezzo: Soul Searching: Ruki Makino

"Stop looking at me like that!", Ruki screamed to the visions in her imagination, how Juri looked as she realized the reality: Leomon was dying.

Ruki made it back to the Desert Zone, but its heat and desolation mocked her. There would be no blessed relief from dehydration and hyperthermia. Those dangers existed only for those with bio-necessities, of which she had none. The only thing that kept her going was the animal simple drive to not die.

"It's that Outworlder", Ruki had been intercepted by a group of leomon.

"The one who was Zhuqiaomon's assassin..."

"Wh... what're you gonna do to me?", she asked.

"Delete her?", one asked, ignoring Ruki completely.

This was, above all else, what she feared most. Powerless, no partner, and discovered by those who had a score to settle with Lilithmon. Did they know?

"I have a better idea. Deletion is too easy... I know a thing or two about Outworlders". His companions, at least, were waiting to see what he had in mind.

Turning to Ruki: "Take your clothes off"

"Huh? What..."

"You heard me: take your clothes off before I do it for you"

"What are..."

"NOW!", he commanded.

Ruki saw that she had no choice, no chance of talking them out of it. She undressed, as the leader threw each item to his companions, who shredded everything. Ruki stood naked before the group.

She received a sharp slap across the face: "Don't cover yourself", he demanded. She dropped her hands at her sides.

"You!", the leader commanded, "sit there", as he pointed out a flat topped rock.

"You!", he ordered Ruki, "Lay across his lap!"

She did so.

"Hold her", he said.

The leader used Ruki's own belt to whip her bare ass. She couldn't struggle out from under the leomon's grip. She struggled, and was soon crying from the sting and the insult to her dignity. Once satisfied, he pulled her to her feet, and roughly dragged her into the open.

"Bend over", he demanded.

With a massive foot, he propelled her into the desert. She tried, but couldn't keep her feet as she sprawled onto the sand.

"Run before I change my mind!", the leomon threatened.

She ran until she was far out of sight of those leomon. She lay on the desert sand. She had finally accomplished everything she thought she wanted, everything Icedevimon promised her: all emotional entanglements broken. There was no one about whom she cared, and no one to care about her. No one who could ever break the heart that had become as cold as Icedevimon's lair.

Nothing would touch her, she would touch no one, and she would never cry. She pushed everyone who offered genuine friendship away forever: Takato, Jenyra, Renamon. Juri.

Takato, who offered genuine friendship despite her having ordered Renamon to defeat and load his partner Guilmon. Despite that, he thought enough of her to seek her advice. Even though she'd been nasty to him, and with malice aforethought, he came to her for help when Guilmon went missing. Both forgave readily and forgot easily. She thought Takato goofy for that, and Guilmon dismissed as a nit wit. Who had been the real "nit wit"?

Jenyra and his silly dog/bunny, who never gave up on her, as they tried to help her understand that it wasn't just another game. That digimon weren't simply objects she could manipulate as she pleased for her own entertainment. Jen and Terriermon offered sincere friendship to both of them: Ruki and Renamon. Jen had been the friend Renamon needed when she needed a friend, and Ruki couldn't be that friend. She thought him a fool for thinking digimon were thinking, feeling beings. She knew what the real problem was: Terriermon was his friend as well as partner. They cared for one another, left themselves open to the possibilkity of heart-break.

Renamon, the digimon who was assaulting that emotional fortress she spent so many years building around herself. Who was willing to sacrifice herself so that Ruki could live, and whom she refused to abandon. That time she finally evolved to Kyuubimon to save her from that feral spider digimon. Renamon never gave up on her, not even after the nasty things she said to her for no good reason. Renamon who tried to help her see that partnership wasn't just about evolution and getting stronger, and for that, she'd been pushed away forever. Renamon had a new partner, the one she deserved all along.

Juri, Takato's happy-go-lucky girlfriend who she thought just as goofy as Takato. Never again would she have to endure her silliness of that hand puppet with whom she had "conversations". Juri would never address her as "Ruki-chan". After watching her load Leomon's data, she would never forgive, never have another word to say to her.

Kenta and Kazu: she wouldn't have to endure their razzing her over having lost to Ryo. No longer would she have to listen to them telling horrible jokes only they thought funny.

All of them, at one time or another, had offered her friendship. She had treated them all very badly because she didn't want anyone getting close to her. For their trouble in reaching out, they had been pushed away. Their loyalty to Juri would ensure they'd stay away forever.

Rumiko: no longer would she have to endure the ordeal of shopping trips when she would rather go to the park or look for another digimon to fight. How many other "Juri's" was she responsible for? How many potential Tamers never learned what happened to their partners? No more wearing those hideous dresses she insisted on buying. How many times had she screamed at her mother that she hated dresses? Now, she could use one of those dresses, regardless of how hideous they were. She could have explained. She could have chosen a compromise: there was nothing wrong with how Juri dressed, was there? She never bothered to try.

Seiko: the one person in her life whom she genuinely cherished, and the one who understood her best, and who made an effort at a relationship. Still, how many times had she refused to open up despite her understanding?

Other faces haunted her: the look on the face of a boy whose name she never learned as he watched Harpymon disintegrating before his eyes. A young mother seeking a missing child left behind on the subway Santiramon destroyed, and the cruel indifference with which she received the news from Jen. This casual indifference to life came back as a reproach: it was never a game, and digimon weren't just data. Too late came the realization.

Everything, that's what it cost her: everything. She didn't even have a partner.

The Material World Sphere was a constant mockery and a silent reproach. There were the two people who cared about her: her mother Rumiko and her grandmother Seiko. What would become of them? They were free: Rumiko was still a young woman, she could easily marry again. Perhaps there would be half brothers and sisters she would never meet, never know. She would be free to start that modeling agency she talked about once she was no longer young enough to model herself, and that was, what, five years away at the most?

Seiko was likewise young enough to go back to her career in investment banking. She might even make VP, she was still young enough. They were free. Or were they? Would they ever be free? Five years, ten years, thirty years, would there ever come a day when they wouldn't glance over long at the front door, hoping that their Ruki would step through it? Would there ever come a day when they wouldn't give every red head they passed on the street an extra long glance, hoping that maybe... Long after Ruki's picture had faded from TV screens, posters, and her case just another forgotten cold case file, would they ever be free?

Her father might not care, he was free of the child support payments now, wasn't he? If he didn't come to see her, what was stopping her from seeing him?

Ruki, so concerned with betrayal, who was the betrayer now?

And what of her? Sure, she might get lucky, find a kindly digimon to take her in, maybe even find a new partner, perhaps even become a success here in the Digital World. Outworlder. That one word would always separate her from any deep connections. She would always be the Outworlder, never fitting in, not completely.

Catsuramon's promises had been empty ones. Power could command devotion, but love? At best, just a simulation born of fear. Even if Lilithmon had won, even if she had legions of digimon to tame, not a single one would have loved her the way Renamon had. Too little and too late for that now.

"What have I done?!", she called out into the desert.

No answer came back. It didn't have to.