Chapter Five
Splat. Splat splat.
Ryo wipes sweat from his brow. Cyberdramon's bulk heaves next to him, claws dripping with grey viscera and mouth lolling. It's the most wild he's gone in a long time, and for once, it's not an enjoyable romp of destruction for him. There's too much to be cautious. If the suckers get you, they get you and there aren't enough tamers now to keep that from being a problem.
He can still hear Dukemon and Takato screaming when he shuts his eyes at night. He's lucky that he's not Shaochun.
She still hears Jenrya when she closes her eyes. He's not sure how well she's sleeping.
"All good, Cyberdramon?" he asks as he pats one side of his partner's flank, careful to avoid the viscera painting multiple parts of his armor. He picks up a towel and wipes it before it stops peppering holes he can't heal.
Cyberdramon grunts. "Tenacious ones. I can handle them."
"Still," Ryo says, instead of disagreeing. This is the longest Millenniummon and Monodramon have agreed about what a target was, and what to do with them. The eaters … what would it take to stop them? What would it cost?
Taomon gently touched down beside them, Ruki and Shaochun shielded by her. The twins were … somewhere with Hirokazu. Kenta…
No one has seen Kenta in days.
Ruki grimaced, twisting her gaze to the portal. "Not enough."
"Sadly." Ryo, of all of them, was the most attuned to the amount of Digital energy in the air without Juri. Years of living in the digital world alone would do that to a person. "Right here and a little further maybe but not enough that we could turn ourselves back when it was over."
Like Takato.
"Yamaki says the city area is fully evacuated now, except for us. They're waiting for us, if need be." Ruki doesn't spare him a glance, looking at the rip in the sky that sometimes pulses like a heart.
"Anything on Kato?" Ryo asks kindly. He braces for annoyance or a huff of something. All Ruki manages is a weak shrug. "Alice said it would be difficult to communicate across worlds. She's also stubborn. She's definitely okay."
"I know that." Not even Taomon's gentle paw on her shoulder softens the bite of that sentence. Ruki's fingers dig into the sleeves of her jacket. "I know that. It's not her I'm worried about."
Bullshit. Ryo clicks his tongue but doesn't argue. Arguing with Ruki is a fools' sport. She wins even when she loses.
Anyway, it's not like he can help. They put all their hopes on someone just because they couldn't be eaten, theoretically.
Ryo trusted that theory about as much as he could throw it.
Ruki continues to stare at the pulsing portal. Then she sighs. "Let's head back before it gets-"
The portal pulses.
All of them tense up as one. Shaochun's face pales and she shrinks into Ruki's side. She puts an arm around her.
It pulses, hacks and spits, bulging like a pustule. Then a teenage girl in a black dress rolls out, hitting the ground with a thud.
They all stare, the digimon's weapons raised. The girl slowly picks herself up from the ground, groaning in pain. She looks at her hands with wonder for a moment, dark eyes well with tears. She croaks out a surprised sound for a moment. Then she buries her face in her hands and sobs.
Ryo pats Cyberdramon's flank once more and he growls low, a soothing noise instead of a hostile one.
The girl jumps, wide eyes fastening onto them. Relief passes over her face. Then she squares her -shaking, she hasn't stopped shaking since she landed- shoulders and she meets Ruki's gaze first.
"Hello," she says. "My name is Kamishiro Yuuko. Matsuda Takato-kun sent me." She swallows. "I… I was the core of the Eaters when a prototype ate me, but I got free with Takato-kun's help. I need your help to save him, Tamers."
Juri trails after Yuugo. The other boy's expression is tight with concentration, following his friend's instructions. Hacking techniques are like more complicated modify cards, it seems. There aren't any cards in this world, so she keeps Takato's deck and hers (built carefully with Ruki) hidden. Digivices were totally different too. Yuugo's was his jacket. Couldn't it get wet and break?
His dad was the one whose company made these digivices, so the likelihood of him not knowing the situation with digivices or even Digimon, was pretty slim.
"Yuugo-kun?"
"Ah, yes?" He looks at her without flinching. He never flinches. She appreciates that. THe others don't flinch either, but there's pity and she just doesn't have time for that. Not now. Not when she's so close to being done, to stopping evil.
"Why is your father involved in this?"
A more privileged, loved child would have been defensive, upset and angry, would have been furious in how much they loved their parent. Up until recently, Juri had been the same for her mother (she's not worse now, but her mother was a person she loved, not a goddess who could never disappear.) Yuugo looks back at the holographic screen, brows loosened.
"I don't know," he says. "I bet it was by accident, if I'm honest. If it's intentional, I don't know how. These creatures, digimon, they'd have had to interact with humans in the first place or we'd have to smack into them. The worlds weren't b orn of each other in the same way."
"Where i come from, people made the blueprint of the digital world." Juri keeps her voice cheerful and neutral at the thought of playing god again, but not of extermination. "And it grew from there."
"I don't think that's what happened." Yuugo's voice turns rough. he touches his head, wincing in pain. "no, it wasn't… definitely. The worlds… they were different, we were… we came there."
"We?" she parrots with a smile.
Arata grips Yuugo's shoulder a little too hard as Yuugo stares at her with dark grey eyes. "Yes. I remember now. There was a crack. and it came with us. And it was so hungry."
"Ah, finally, you know the truth," croons a sweet voice. They look up into the monster's sightless face and something lunges for their face.