Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon or any of its characters. Please support the official release.
Double Date
Alice flicked the needle of the Geiger counter in her hand, without much intent behind her actions. She knew it wouldn't help, more likely to damage the device than get it to run more efficiently, but the gesture helped her to better focus on the task right in front of her. She glanced at the hand-sized monitor she had wired to the device, the breakdowns of her scans so far not showing any new information.
A sudden tick of the needle caught her eye, leading Alice to quickly change directions as she walked across one of the craters left behind by the previous fight with Diaboromon. Unfortunately, this shift caused her to directly cross paths with Guilmon, forcing both of them to stop in their tracks.
"Sorry…" Guilmon said nervously as he lifted his nose off the ground.
"It's fine," Alice replied quickly, having lately been making the effort to not take out her frustration about how she could be easily distracted on others. Besides, not only had both she and Guilmon made an honest mistake, but he was also the most mild of the distractions in the immediate area.
Henry stood at the edge of the crater, and though he was currently quiet, Alice was getting glimpses of what was going on behind his eyes every time her eyeline wandered in his direction. She wouldn't say that he looked angry, but he was clearly concerned and possibly a little upset that he had lost their last debate. After assembling the device she was currently operating from old Hypnos equipment, Henry's expectation had been that Alice would not be joining the Tamers in the field, a notion she was quick to shoot down.
Then there was Rika, who stood off to the side while having a conversation on her cellphone. While she seemed to be making an effort to keep her voice low, she still spoke loudly enough that she could be plainly heard.
"Aren't we always?" Rika asked, a brief pause quickly following. "Don't answer that."
Another pause followed, the other end of the call clearly saying their piece, with Rika rolling her eyes at least once.
"I promise I won't start any fistfights." Rika looked down at the crater and then to the rest of the group.
Rika shook her head, though now a warm smile had found its way to her face.
"Of course you don't…"
She pinched the bridge of her nose, though she kept smiling.
"See you later, Jeri," Rika concluded as she ended the phone call.
She returned to the group shortly after, moving herself to stand in between Takato and Renamon. She seemed to spend a moment taking in the whole scene, before directing her attention forward again.
"You guys find anything yet?" Rika asked none of them in particular.
"Nope," Guilmon answered with a shake of his head.
"Potentially," Alice put forward, checking her Geiger counter one more time.
"How's that thing supposed to find a wild Digimon when we can't?" Terriermon called down from his spot on Henry's shoulder.
"Because it's not scanning for the Digimon." Alice turned back around to face the group again, each of them with an expression on their face that seemed to be asking her to elaborate. "It's scanning for everything else."
"Like what?" Takato asked with a genuine interest in his voice.
"Tally mentioned that this Diaboromon was using garbage data to hide its presence, and I'm still picking up feint traces of that." Alice paused to look through her readings again. "I'm also scanning for traces of interdimensional energy as well."
"Should we be worried about that?" Henry asked, a bit more urgently than the others.
"Well, it has been at least two weeks since our last incident, so we might be due." Alice shrugged and looked back up at him. "Readings are negative, though."
"Does that thing play MP3's too?" Rika commented snidely.
"It also doubles as an E-reader."
Another tick of the needle drew Alice's attention back in, cuing her to take a few more steps in that direction. The readings didn't increase in intensity, but they remained consistent. Calling up what leads they had actually started the night with, the readings seemed to be leading her in the direction Diaboromon had fled in.
"There's a trail," Alice summarized as she stepped out of the crater and motioned towards the treeline.
"We following or what?" Terriermon asked eagerly.
"We should be cautious-" Renamon began before cutting herself off to look intently in the direction Alice had pointed towards. "Movement."
Guilmon and Terriermon followed suit, staring off into the brush. Every one of them knew that their target was concealing its scent, so there was no way of knowing what they were dealing with until they confirmed contact. They all remained still and waiting for a few seconds.
"Hm…" Terriermon broke the silence first, raising a hand to his chin. "Give me a sec."
He propelled himself off Henry's shoulder and into the foliage. The area around them went silent again, though this silence was interrupted a bit more abruptly.
"Eep!"
"Do Diaboromon sound like that?" Alice asked, though she felt like she knew the answer.
"To be fair, I've never had a conversation with one," Renamon replied, squinting as she looked forward. "With that said, my personal biases insist that they don't."
As a group, they moved forward and emerged onto the nearest path. Once out in the open, it didn't take much analysis to deduce what they had previously heard. Terriermon stood by two high school girls, both looking like they were dressed for jogging. If Alice had to guess, the two of them had fallen backwards when Terriermon had jumped out of the bushes and scared them.
"Yep, like I figured," Terriermon commented, sounding almost disappointed.
Their nervousness and confusion came across as genuine to Alice, but she also believed in double checking her work. Holding her Geiger counter above each of their heads, she waited to make sure the needle didn't move and the screen didn't present any new data. Satisfied, she turned back to the Tamers.
"They're clean." Alice paused, hovering her device over the path and seeing the needle wiggle somewhat. "Trail leads this way."
"Cl-Clean from what?" asked the first girl, who had curly brown hair and glasses.
"Foreign garbage data used to mask digital signatures." Alice paused again, noticing the counter's needle had gotten stuck once more.
"And you needed a gizmo to tell you that?" the second girl asked, her having long black hair and sounding noticeably more confident than her friend.
"Digimon can be tricky." Alice took a couple more steps to see if it helped her readings. Against her better judgment, she shook the device in her hands to see if she could get the needle to come loose.
"Not to nag on you for being thorough, but are we done here?" Rika asked impatiently as she stepped closer.
"Nonaka?" the second girl asked, looking past Alice as she stood up.
Rika's expression sank as she turned to the girl. "Ah, crap."
Terriermon raised an eyebrow. "You know them?"
"They're in her class at school," Renamon explained as she approached her partner's side.
"You don't say…" Terriermon looked up at them, a slight smirk forming at the corner of his mouth.
"Toshiko and Kayoko, if I'm not mistaken." Renamon indicated the girl with the glasses and the one with the long hair as she spoke.
"Sh-She t-told you our names?" Toshiko asked, still nervous as she stood up and inched closer to Kayoko.
Renamon shook her head. "I just pay attention when your instructors take attendance."
"That's creepy," Kayoko stated, crossing her arms and looking the kitsune up and down.
Renamon hesitated for half a second, eyes getting slightly wider. "I prefer to think of it as being observant."
"The two ain't mutually exclusive, bushy tail."
"Why are you even out here to begin with?" Rika cut in, sounding more impatient than she had just a moment ago.
Kayoko pivoted in Rika's direction. "What, you own this park or something, Nonaka?"
"Not remotely what I meant," Rika said through her teeth as she crossed her own arms.
"Toshiko's giving me some pointers on running and breathing exercises," Kayoko elaborated, the tone of her voice lightening, almost taunting. "You wouldn't know this being the class recluse and all, but she's the school's resident Leg Queen."
"Please don't call me that in front of other people," Toshiko requested, her face turning red as she buried it in her friend's back.
"Learn to take the compliment, Toshiko." Kayoko reached around and pinched the shy girl's cheek, causing her to retract even more.
"Sorry, don't mean to interrupt…" Takato carefully stepped into the middle of the conversation. After nodding to Rika, he turned to face her classmates. "I'm Takato, by the way. What I think Rika's trying to say is that tonight's not the safest night to be out running."
Kayoko looked Takato over, much like she had Renamon. "What are you, her translator?"
"Among his many other titles," Terriermon said as he climbed onto the top of Takato's head.
"Let's not start this…" Takato said softly as he looked up at his new passenger, before facing forward again. "Didn't you guys hear the news announcement about the Digimon on the loose?"
"We in fact did…" Toshiko muttered.
"And maybe one a year is as bad as those warnings make them out to be," Kayoko said nonchalantly.
"Because they do their jobs," Toshiko insisted, sounding the most confident she had since they met.
"Are we ready to keep moving yet?" Henry whispered to Alice, having moved to stand to her right while everyone else was occupied with the discussion going on amongst them.
Refocusing, Alice looked back down at her counter and slapped it with the palm of her hand. "Almost…"
"So when you're not taming, are you in a band?" Kayoko asked, having put Rika back in her sights.
"Rika's our lead singer," Terriermon claimed excitedly.
Rika jabbed a finger into the Digimon's face. "I swear to whatever digital deity you believe in-"
"She really is a good singer," Guilmon added, though his expression sank the second Rika glared back at him. "Sorry…"
"Why are you asking this?" Rika asked her classmate, clearly fighting against her promise to Jeri about not starting any fights.
A sly grin came to Kayoko's face. "The boys are still wearing their school uniforms, and you've got this whole punk rock thing going on. Not that I don't like it, but it sticks out."
Alice couldn't bring herself to disagree. All of the other Tamers had shown up at Hypnos still in whatever they had been wearing that day, with the one possible exception being that Takato was wearing his usual pair of goggles. Only Rika seemed to have taken time to change, and if Alice didn't know any better, she would have claimed that Rika was wearing the exact same outfit that she had been wearing when they met fighting the D-Reaper all those years ago.
"I'm not in a band," Rika answered, holding onto what was left of her composure.
Kayoko's grin widened. "So it's a vanity thing."
"I really like this one," Terriermon chirped, unable to take his eyes off the confrontation.
Alice, on the other hand, was starting to lose interest in the whole scene. The issue was that their best method for following their one lead wasn't cooperating, likely a crossed wire or something similar due to how quickly she had made her modifications. The best she could do short of opening the device back up and attempting repairs was to stare at it and wait it out, with both options wasting time as far as she was concerned.
"Is it broken?"
Turning to her left, Alice suddenly became aware that Toshiko had walked away from her classmates' standoff. Upon realizing that she had Alice's attention, however, Toshiko quickly averted her gaze and tried to hide her face with one of her hands.
"N-Not that it's any of m-my business!" she added just as fast.
Alice hesitated for one more second, then shrugged. "No more broken than when I put it together."
"That's a sh-shame." Toshiko looked up, maintaining semi-consistent eye contact. "Guess there's no way of figuring out where this Digimon is going instead, huh?"
At first, Alice was ready to dismiss the idea, given how little they knew about this Diaboromon's motives. Then, almost like getting kicked in the back of the leg, she suddenly realized that that assertion wasn't entirely true. Shuffling some leftover pieces in the back of her mind, she began to put together the beginnings of an idea.
"Toshiko, right?" Alice asked, looking intently at the other girl.
"That's my name," Toshiko confirmed, her cheeks turning a little red again.
"Your talkative friend should listen to you more often." Alice spun around to her right, finding Henry waiting for her.
"We ready?" he asked, to which she nodded.
Henry looked to his friends in front of him, Takato being the first to take notice. The two exchange their own nods, and from there, it was clear they were back on the clock.
"We should let them get out of here," Takato suggested to Rika as he gently placed a hand on her shoulder.
"I think we should head in the opposite direction," Toshiko told her friend as she took hold of her hand, having once again snuck across the group.
"But I didn't get to challenge her to karaoke yet," Kayoko pouted.
"You'd lose," Rika insisted as the two of them walked away from her.
"I'll believe it when I live it, Nonaka," Kayoko called back before the pair committed to leaving.
Taking the cue, Alice turned right around and resumed following their initial trail, though now with a slightly different plan.
The Geiger counter managed to pull itself together just long enough to help them pick a direction. It wasn't much, but it was what they needed for the moment. Everyone seemed to be walking at attention, though the tension they had been feeling when investigating the battlegrounds had passed, at least for most of them.
"Is everything alright, Rika?" Renamon asked as they stepped into another of the park's open areas.
"Just what were the chances of running into them here?" Rika grumbled, hands stuffed in her pockets and eyes on the ground in front of her.
Alice couldn't keep herself from attempting to do the math. Factoring the number of people who lived in the city and how many of them frequented this park on a daily basis, the encounter did feel like a stretch. Granted, there were plenty of other factors that they couldn't account for, but the numbers weren't quite adding up when left simply to random probability.
"Chances are pretty high if the encounter was by design," Alice said as her train of thought concluded itself.
Rika looked up and arched an eyebrow. "Don't tell me you believe in destiny and garbage like that."
"Not specifically." Alice paused briefly, not quite having any theories to offer instead. "That said, coincidence and I don't see eye to eye either."
"Cryptic much?"
"When it suits me."
"I think what she's saying makes sense," Takato said with notable hints of optimism in his voice. "As much as I believe we choose our own destiny, it does kinda feel like things get dropped in front of us sometimes."
"Free will and destiny are two different things," Rika argued. "They can't exist in the same space."
Renamon turned to her partner. "Unless we assume the universe operates under the principle that certain points are fixed and it's up to each of us to choose a direction when we reach them."
"Like picking what you want to eat for breakfast," Guilmon suggested enthusiastically.
Renamon shrugged. "Honestly, I'm struggling to come up with a better analogy."
"But then what are the fixed points in this theory?" Henry asked, his tone a bit more thoughtful and serious than his friends'.
"Our sample size of alternate realities isn't that large in the grand scheme of things," Alice pointed out, having put a significant amount of thought into the topic in her own time. "We'd have to fall into quite a few more of them to begin to piece together that list."
"You're not suggesting that we start poking holes in reality again, are you?" Henry's eyes lit up with any concern that wasn't in his voice.
"Not actively." Alice maintained direct eye-contact with him, hoping it would ease his worries. "Though if and when the next opportunity presents itself, I'd like to collect more data."
"Well, I'll pass on that field trip if it's all the same to you guys," Rika put forward, a bit more aloof than she had been at the top of the conversation.
"Yeah, maybe it's for the best," Takato added sentimentally. "Besides, I like the way things are in our reality."
"And there he goes…" Rika rolled her eyes, though the tone of her voice stayed soft. "Guess you can't end the night without one corny line, right?"
Takato hesitated, then smiled. "You don't seem that bothered by my lines."
"Says who?"
"Your face, right there." Takato reached out, pointing a finger at the corner of her mouth.
"No it doesn't." She quickly batted his hand away, though with a minimal amount of force.
"Sure it does." Takato brazenly lifted his hand back up. "You're smiling, right in the corner of your mouth."
To his credit, a small but indisputable smile had appeared on Rika's face. In response, she grabbed hold of his hand and moved it back downwards, though didn't let go this time.
"So you're an expert on my face now?" Rika teased, any pretense that she was annoyed now completely dropped.
Takato nervously scratched the back of his head with his free hand. "Potentially…"
"Henry…" Terriermon whined as he poked at his partner. "Takato and Rika are being gross again. Tell them to stop."
"Sure, I'll reprimand them in a minute," Henry replied with no commitment in his voice.
"You joke, but you don't know what they might get up to once they get started." Terriermon crossed his arms and glanced towards the Tamers in question. "Guilmon says their scents have been all over each other. Like, more than usual."
"G-Guilmon!" Takato shouted, his and Rika's faces both turning red.
"Oh, you know he can't keep a secret!" Terriermon scolded.
"I try my best but sometimes my mouth does things without my brain's permission," Guilmon added sheepishly, now seemingly unable to face any of them.
"Seriously, how do you think we found out it was Suzie who wrecked the shed? He let slip to Impmon who told everyone else."
"Sorry…" Guilmon repeated for what felt like the hundredth time that night.
Alice quickly withdrew her attention from the exchange going on around her as they made it to the edge of Shinjuku Park. Stepping onto the sidewalk, Alice looked out into the city in front of them. While not devoid of life and traffic, it still managed to seem quieter than usual.
She checked the needle of her Geiger counter one more time, finding the readings acceptable for their current purposes. Switching the device off, she turned back around to face the group.
"Alright, the best I can tell, Diaboromon exited the park here and headed straight that way," Alice explained as she pointed directly behind herself.
"Maybe he wanted to go shopping downtown," Terriermon commented.
"How do we know he didn't change directions?" Rika asked evenly.
"Kazu and Kenta's accounts," Alice answered in kind. "They each describe a Digimon with a goal but not one who seemed all that discreet. While we still don't know what their goal is, I'm willing to bet they headed straight for it."
"So our best course of action would be to follow their supposed trajectory," Renamon summarized.
Alice nodded. "We can alert Hypnos to focus their scans for anomalies and narrow our search."
Terriermon sighed. "So we still have a bunch of walking to do?"
"Like you were planning on doing any walking period," Rika pointed out.
"Snacks would help," Guilmon said confidently, prompting a nonverbal conversation to break out amongst the group.
Takato took half a step forward. "Well, if you guys aren't against a quick detour, I can remedy that."
Alice didn't see any benefit in disagreeing. Once messaged, Hypnos would need a brief window to adjust their search parameters, which gave them a quick moment to spare. Plus, she didn't remember seeing any of them eat dinner before they left for the park. Even regardless of any of that, until the wild Digimon made a move, they were playing a waiting game anyway.
Leaning against a wall in the alley outside the Matsuki bakery, Alice took the moment of quiet to look over her Geiger counter, to see if there were any quick repairs or adjustments she could make in their current environment. Nothing was standing out, which annoyed her despite telling herself that it was out of her hands. Alice also conceded she had the option of focusing her attention elsewhere while half of their party parsed through the bakery's leftovers.
Henry and Renamon remained outside as well, the former standing at Alice's side while the latter stood by the opposite wall. Renamon didn't seem to be paying them much mind, and even if she secretly was, Alice didn't worry about the fox Digimon having Guilmon's trouble with keeping other people's confidence. Henry, on the other hand, kept glancing her way as though he had something to say to her.
In Henry's defense, Alice wasn't much better off in this exact scenario. Not all that long ago, she wouldn't have hesitated to be blunt about what was on her mind, but things between them felt different now. Alice often found herself not only feeling obligated to consider Henry's feelings, but actively wanting to as well. She had trouble putting a label on what their current relationship was, and not out of some naive misunderstanding of romantic relationships.
If anything, Alice's confusion was down to a misunderstanding about herself. Watching Takato and Rika flirt with each other, and then their reactions to Terriermon's accusations of physical intimacy between them, Alice felt a familiar wall that she had always been vaguely aware of between her and her peers. The truth was that she often didn't see the appeal of said physical intimacy, and couldn't even say that she wanted it to appeal to her. To Henry's credit though, and perhaps adding to why she had become so attached to him, he didn't seem much more interested in that aspect of a relationship than she was.
Still, putting labels and conventions aside, Alice knew her feelings for Henry were different from what she had felt towards other peers in the past. Whatever they ended up calling their relationship, she wanted to explore it and see what it developed into, and she knew that involved communication.
"Is it what I said about exploring alternate realities?" Alice asked, lowering the Geiger counter to her side so she could focus.
Henry hesitated, avoiding her gaze just long enough to tell her that her assertion had been correct. She waited for him to choose his words, and he eventually faced her again.
"Have you ever thought about following through on that?" Henry responded, confident but also gentle in his tone, telling her it was a genuine question and not him looking for a specific answer.
"Once or twice," Alice confessed. "Chances are there are realities where Dobermon is still alive, and maybe even one where he is and I'm not. Part of me thought it'd be worth it to be with my friend again."
"I can't say I'd feel much different in your shoes," Henry replied with clear sincerity.
"The rest of the time it's just a hobby though," Alice added quickly, hoping her own sincerity came across. "Hypnos isn't devoting a lot of resources into studying this multiverse phenomenon, so it is a bit novel feeling like I have my own field of study."
"So no plans on leaving then?"
Alice sighed. "I suppose this is the part when you say you'd miss me."
Henry smirked. "As a matter of fact, I would."
"Good," Alice replied with a nod. "Then I promise to stay in our reality."
Alice glanced up at the night's sky, taking a deep breath before letting her instincts kick in. For a reason she couldn't quite articulate, she bumped the back of her free hand into Henry's. It took a split second for him to respond, but their fingers started clumsily latching onto one another until they were interlinked.
"So…" Henry began awkwardly. "Enjoying the field work so far?"
"It's been enlightening." Alice turned to face him again, narrowing her vision. "Where's this going?"
"It's just…" Henry paused and looked away for a couple seconds, causing a number of suspicions to flare up in her brain. "You usually decline when I ask if you want to spend time with the others."
"Sometimes I'm busy." Alice paused as well, tempted but not wanting to break their streak of open communication. "Just because I don't physically attend school doesn't mean I don't have my own studies to keep up with."
While her words were truthful, she knew they weren't the complete truth. The pair of them had had a couple brief discussions about Alice's attempts at readjusting to her old life after she played her part in defeating the D-Reaper, but Henry didn't often push the subject. While she liked to think of herself as past it, Alice also admitted that letting her guard down was still a bit difficult.
Henry gestured into the bakery. "Okay, but when you're less busy, the others seem to like you."
"Takato seems like he's innately friendly to most people." Alice's thought process paused, to put a similar label on Jeri as well. She quickly shook her and returned her attention to Henry. "Rika seems less taken by me."
"Relatively speaking, the two of you are actually getting along pretty well." Henry looked across the alleyway. "Renamon?"
"By my estimation, yes," the kitsune confirmed.
Once again being honest with herself, Alice admitted that she had not hated the night so far. Even through the moments where her attention wandered, she hadn't felt like she was on the outside of this particular group, more just not used to the patterns the six of them clearly fell into. Also, her being a regular member of the team was clearly important to Henry.
"Okay…" Alice conceded. "I'll check my calendar."
Before Henry could reply, Alice leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder. Doing so was an experiment on two fronts, to see if she could end their current discussion, and to determine if she found the position comfortable. The first objective was a success, and she was confident the second would be so as well with some minor adjustments.
The door to the bakery suddenly unlatched, quickly followed by Henry's cellphone starting to ring. Pushing themselves off the wall, Alice stepped over to the others to let Henry take the call. Unsurprisingly, they were mid-conversation.
"Just imagine it for a second, Takato," Terriermon said confidently, a roll in his hands as he sat on Guilmon's head. "Terriermon Bread! It basically sells itself."
"Yeah, I'll bring it up at the next staff meeting," Takato replied with hints of sarcasm, pausing to look over to Henry. "What's up?"
"Not sure yet," Alice answered. Henry's body language said he was more confused than worried.
Takato looked on for another second before presenting Alice with the brown bag in his hand. "Want something? You have your pick."
"As long as what you pick is bread," Terriermon added without skipping a beat.
"Lack of choice doesn't seem to be bothering you," Rika commented just as quickly.
Alice tuned out the bickering for the moment, peering into the bag before picking a roll that was a respectable likeness of Guilmon's head. No sooner had she gotten a look of approval from the Digimon in question did Henry make his way back over to them, at which point she refocused on the present.
"That was Riley," Henry explained without being asked. "They don't have a reading just yet, but they want us back to following our lead as soon as possible."
"Was that it?" Alice asked, something not quite sitting right with her.
Henry crossed his arms. "She didn't say anything else, but she sounded a bit more urgent than when we left."
"Better get back to it then," Takato concluded, looking to Alice again.
Understanding the request to find them a heading, she turned to face the street in front of the bakery. Without another moment's hesitation, she led her friends forward.