Chapter Seven
Everyone said Yuugo was the brave one.
This wasn't wrong, not really. He didn't mind trying new things, or speaking up when he shouldn't. He was always the one to lead the charge when it mattered the most. That didn't mean he didn't freeze up. That didn't mean he wasn't weak.
It didn't mean that Yuuko wasn't strong.
At that moment, in the face of a monster that could have eaten them whole, she had chosen to be brave and ran into the trees, throwing rocks and sticks and everything she could reach, yelling at the strange squid. Forcing him to run, to tug a crying Nokia and an anxious Arata to the tear they had joyfully gallivanted through hours before.
She had chosen to be brave-
The last thing he'd heard was her screaming.
Yuugo had always wondered what was in his nightmares. As Matsuki Takato's outstretched hand warps into tentacles, Yuugo regrets finding out, but only for an instant.
The teen's face contorts, squelching and shifting, from a smile to pain to rage and back again and Yuugo prays and prays his sister didn't suffer like that. That it didn't hurt.
"Fireball!" shouts the red dragon at his side and spits raw, red flame.
The face contorts. "Guilmon!" he whines. "ThAT's nOT FAIR. We're FRIENDS."
"I don't know you," the dragon says. "And I want you to stay away. Fireball!"
Arata lets out an amused, rabid squeak. "I've cracked," he yelps. "I'm losing it."
"I mean, if it helps you to think that way." the eye creature says from his head. "I'm into running the fuck off if it's the same to you, buddy. Sanity's overrated if you're dead."
Another shrieking giggle escapes his friend's mouth and Yuugo can't even take the time to pity him. "Come on, come on…" He's scanning Kowloon, looking for the damn exit. "There! Arata, come on!" He points and his friend stops laughing long enough to nod, wheezing for breath. They try to run. The monster with a human voice warbles and lunges through fireball after fireball. Kowloon rumbles.
Yuugo makes the mistake of looking up towards the virtual sky. Pink and purple blurs clashed, ribbons and roses and fire slicing into buildings. Rubble explodes into binary. Juri drops from the sky, rolling to catch herself. Thank goodness it was hard to die in EDEN.
Juri picks herself up with only a wince. "Here's hoping I didn't fall out of the chair," she mutters. The orange device in her hands crackles and sparks but she doesn't let go. If Yuugo is honest, it doesn't look like she can.
"You'd automatically be logged out if you were." It was one of the fail-safes dad had built into the system. He gestures quickly towards the approaching tentacle monster. Juri follows his gaze and for the first time since they've met, turns pale. Her amber eyes shrink, and her knees quake.
"Takato-kun?" she asks. Her voice is small, reluctant to even leave her mouth.
It stares at her without it smiles, and says in a singsong voice like a child. "Ju-ri!"
her expression turns to stone and she braces herself, bringing that strange device out of her pocket again.
"No," she says, shaking with rage. "No, you're not Takato-kun at all."
His expression warps with something like hurt, but she's already swiping her card through the slot and bracing her legs. "Card Slash," she shouts, and one of the crashing monsters - because that's what they are, they're being protected by monsters- twitches at her voice. "WarGreymon's Shield!"
But as the device shines and power glows from its tiny screen, the power doesn't warp around the monster, it warps around her.
A beautiful hexagons hield floats in front of her small hands and takes the hit of each tentacle.
The human monster pouts, its cheek bulging like a hamsters, if hamsters had squid brains in their cheeks. "Ju-ri, that iSn't fAIr!"
"Isn't fair my foot," she mutters. "I can't believe you let them do this to you."
"What the hell?" Finally, Arata's brain starts working again. "What the hell are you doing? How are you doing that?"
"It's a long story," she says, the most straightforward and honest she has ever been. "Keep running, I'm right behind you."
"What about your pal up there?" Finally Yuugo can see the lion monster dancing out of the skies. He only hopes his opponent doesn't see them too, or is at least too distracted to work on anything about it.
"He's not dead but you could be! So go go! Shoo!"
"What about these guys?" He gestures to the little creatures - digimon - who had been nothing but kind to him so far.
"They'll probably go with you, now-" Another tentacle crashes into the hexagon shield. "Run!"
They run and after a long pause, Juri runs after them, dodging and leaping from tentacles disintegrating the ground itself. Arata rolls into the portal and logs out. As he vanished, the little creature vanished with him.
Guilmon barreled into him as Yuugo trips and falls and the last thing he sees is grey limbs and Juri falling in his direction.
Then he opens his eyes with a thump as he hits the floor of his bedroom. Arata groans under the weight of his head. Yuugo apologizes and rolls off. Everything hurts all of a sudden.
Juri groans from the other side. "Well," she manages to say. "That was dangerous, wasn't it?"
"Wasn't it?" Arata echoes, hysterical and then hysteria bleeding into rage. "I couldn't have guessed. We almost died three times!"
"Four," Yuugo adds because he's pretty sure he almost died the last time he was with Juri.
"that's not helping!" Arata snaps, still grinning like a maniac. "Who the fuck are you? What do you want with us? Why…" He stops and swallows. Yuugo reaches out and takes his hand. "Why were those monsters saying all of this is because of us?"
Juri stares at them for a moment. Then she lets out a heavy whoosh of breath and nods.
"My name is Katou Juri," she says. "I'm from another world and… I don't know much about that last part. I just know that my friends were eaten by squid monsters, they come from here and I'm one of the only ones who can stop them. But I can't do this alone. Let me explain everything."