Chapter Four

Yuugo logs out of EDEN to the servant calling after his father. Turning on the news, his blood runs cold. There'd been another case of EDEN Syndrome. Aiba Ami. he'd seen her yesterday, going home from school. He'd spoken to Takumi after seeing her. Now they're... they're together.

A part of him burns green.

It's not the first time this has happened. He used to be scared about it, but no one does anything anymore. Yuugo, watching it and eating leftover soba, doesn't even feel hurt about it. Though the profiles on screen make his head hurt, there's very little he can do about it, all things considered. There's extra guilt in him, but he has to live with it.

All he can focus on is his little sister's voice from the tentacle monster from his memories.

She hadn't changed at all. He doesn't know why that scares him more.

Katou hadn't noticed. Of course she hadn't. She was deep in research and running through EDEN. Yuugo had considered following after. However, Rie-san would notice. She might tell his father. Not that he thinks Father would care. EDEN was more important to him now.

EDEN was more important than everything to everyone now.

"Hey."

Yuugo blinks in the face of Arata's waving hand. "Oh. Hey. Sorry. Just thinking."

"You should stop that." His best friend tried to look cool with a raised eyebrow but his messy hair makes him look like an oily mop. "I have the high IQ here."

Yuugo rolls his eyes as obviously as he can. "Yes sir, mister genius sir."

"Don't sir me," Arata says. But his face is flushed and he looks pleased with himself. Which, of course he does. "So, what were you thinking about?"

He should probably lie, or at least not talk about the tentacle monster. "Aiba was in our class. Remember?"

"Yeah. Kinda. She didn't talk much." Arata bites his lip. "It's, you saw her last or something?"

He hears Yuuko, ten years old and screaming for help and also smiling in his face and telling him to run-

His head throbs at the image, tentacles and confusion, all alone-

"I think so," he says, voice strained. Yuugo looks at his bento, made with the finest ingredients but no love. "Think I've lost my appetite."

"Don't throw up," Arata says, but follows him anyway. It's not ideal but he's not complaining. He can hear the mother's voice in his ears, sobbing at this world that made her the only one able to protect her kids and she couldn't even do that.

At least she wanted to.

"I think I know her," Arata says as they head out to the hallway. The breeze is hot and sticky on his face and fluffs his hair awfully. "Aiba. From outside our school, I mean."

Yuugo flattens his hair down. "You too?"

"Yeah." He tugs at their annoying school uniform pants, clearly missing the denim jeans with 'artistic rips' and tears he'd done with his uncle's kitchen scissors. "I dunno why, but she had a brother, right?"

"Yeah. Her brother had EDEN syndrome too." His hands shake against the railing. "Do you think … what if it has to do with Yuuko?"

Arata frowns harder than usual, narrow eyes always intent, always thinking and focused. "Your sister got EDEN syndrome. What would they have to do with it?"

"I don't know." Yuugo admits. He rubs his eyes. "But I want to find out. What do I have to lose at this point? It's not like she's waking up."

It hurts to think about.

Juri digs deeper into floor after floor of Kowloon. It used to scare her, being alone in any digital space without a partner. She used to feel more fear. She used to feel … something. Everything used to hurt more. But for now, she has enough hope to burn herself through, and then she does, even if it melts everything she is.

"Juri…" Takato whispers in the air. "Just a bit longer. I'm coming."

"I know, Takato-kun," she says. "I know."

If Leomon were here things would probably be different, but they aren't. So she keeps climbing, following the beeps and boops of her D-Arc. As she does, it suddenly lets out a strange staticky screech. Not the same as when those tentacles showed up. It's a brief warping twist, and her heart plunges with it.

Juri pauses, turning and darting behind a gap of broken pieces of land. It makes her think of the Digital World, but somehow worse than the near endless sandstorms. As she settles to watch, the digivice still beeping and whining. The world carves open and a lion knight walks out. He looks around slowly, not seeing Juri with her heart in her mouth and her legs trembling.

Duftmon walks slowly. She knows him. Takato has mentioned him in passing, a stray here and there about his code of violence and feral honor.

If he'd known this, he'd have told her.

Guilmon would have smelled him.

So looking at him means this isn't that Duftmon. This is a different Royal Knight.

This was her Leomon.

Her Digivice beeps and reforms beneath her fingers, right as his head whips around. He floats towards her. It's ominous, Ultimates radiate power far beyond most normal Digimon understanding.

But Juri is as much of a monster as anyone now, she doesn't feel fear. Her heart swells with warmth and grief again.

"Leomon," she says, before he can speak. He falters. He doesn't understand, not even as her D-Arc stitches itself back together fully and turns from sunset orange to a familiar, burning gold. "you don't remember me do you?"

He raises his rapier and points it at her with a shaking arm. Juri refuses to fall to fear again. "Who are you, human?"

"I'm Katou Juri!" she says with a warm, lively smile. "And you died for the right thing once. I don't want you to again."

Or maybe he died for destiny and her childhood dreams are full of shit. But she doesn't believe it. None of them do.

The rapier steadies, moving closer. "I would not die for a human."

"You didn't," she promises. "You never did. You died for honor and duty and for a friend. Not for me. With me."

He stops, lands on the ground, weapon down. "Who are you?"

Juri holds up her D-Arc, cracked and empty like a long broken egg. "Your destiny," she says, and tells her story.

At least he listens and doesn't skewer her outright. She doesn't want to deal with that again.