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“Listen closely, this is our new plan. As you clearly can’t actually take down this tamer as is, I’ll have to get my hands dirty too. The three of them are currently under a network of control tendrils, which means I can work my hands into the boy’s mind, and that should do most of the work. All you need to do is pick his body up, easy enough?” The master was speaking slowly, as if Cherrymon was an idiot, but given his recent performance, he wasn’t about to argue to be taken more seriously.

“He’ll be dead?” The tree scratched at his bark, a bit confused.

“No, just unconscious. I just wanted him dead before, true, but I want him here, alive now. He’ll make good bait, and I’d like to… talk to the human for a bit. The rest doesn’t concern you, just bring his body here, intact, alive. If he’s dead, I’ll make sure you don’t die, only wish for death, am I clear?” Cherrymon swallowed hard and nodded, seeing the fire in his master’s eyes. For one who is usually so sardonic, he was shockingly serious right now. Cherrymon knew he had no room to fail here.

After taking his leave, Cherrymon produced a small dark orb, a script given to him by his master, a tracking script to be specific, set to sonically ping the Renamon, since the human’s “digital” signal was much too complex to track reliably. Terabytes of data per cell makes something a bit hard to identify from range. The ent tapped the orb with his thumb sending out a pulse, then waited, then saw a thick line return directly to the orb and stay vibrant, giving him a direct line path to his mark.

Like all of the master’s legion, Cherrymon knew this part of the Dark Zone inside and out, so his journey was short and easy. The tamer was shockingly close to the master’s lair, but he likely wouldn’t find it for several more cycles, simply because the dark forest was labyrinthine to any who weren’t familiar, and all who were either belonged to the Daemonic Legion like Cherrymon did, or worked indirectly for the master, which placed them in more or less the same camp. Despite being the most recent, and still fairly short-lived, lord of this section of the digital world, the Legion Master was by far the most stable of its leaders. The Legion Master, or simply the Master, wasn’t concerned with domination, or even corruption of the surrounding landscape like the previous owners had been. Rather, he subsisted his empire off of business, causing little to no reaction from the rest of the digital world at large. He supplied communities of virals across the digital world, as they tended to be exiled by most cities, and so he maintained a huge number of steady income streams, and an equal number of loyal customers, in part due to lack of competition. The master didn’t abuse this monopoly, surprisingly, and when his subordinates asked, he simply said that he was familiar with suffering, and only wished to diminish it, and his own gain wasn’t worth exacerbating it. That sort of kindness might seem odd coming from the master, but he tended to be very merciful behind a tough act, with his empty threats only becoming more tangible recently, and always in regards to the tamer and the Renamon.

Cherrymon would wonder why the master was after this Renamon so much, and why he would always go on about “taking back what is his”, but that information was decidedly above his paygrade, and questions on that topic tended to end in bruises, beatings, and, in some cases, severed limbs. The ent shook these thoughts from his mind as he drew up on the target location. Hiding himself, albeit poorly, he saw the tamer start to stumble out into a clearing, alone. The boy was yelling loudly, and the tree was reminded that this tamer was much less a boy than other tamers tended to be, rather more of a fully grown man. This seemed to be much, much too easy, so Cherrymon hesitation for a minute or so, waiting to see if anyone else would arrive looking for him. Seeing there was little threat to be had, Cherrymon stepped out and slowly approached the tamer, stopping dead in his tracks when he seemed to be being spoken to. Just as he was about to panic, the tamer walked right past him, and Cherrymon breathed a sigh of relief. The master had left him in good hands for this job, it seemed.

After a few more moments of borderline drunken rambling, the tamer suddenly fainted, and Cherrymon chuckled to himself. Finally tired himself out. The ent tossed the human over his shoulder, hardly minding that he’d likely painted a large bruise across the tamer’s chest. Orders were “get him here alive”, so Cherrymon took a bit of relish in the minor, permissible vengeance. Just as he turned to walk away though, a hard thump to the back of the head told Cherrymon that his job was about to get much, much harder.

=====

I woke up with a pounding headache, but that definitely wasn’t the only thing that was off about the current situation. Cold concrete walls surrounded me, and a quick look out the window of the (apparently) abandoned building I was in told me that I was back in Shinjuku, despite passing out in the Digital World. Fighting through what seemed to be my first ever migraine, I padded around the empty floors of the building, which was so unusually bare that it appeared to have been abandoned during construction, as it was quite literally just the concrete skeleton of what would become something like a school building or hospital; lots of floors and halls, and tons of small rooms. Someone had to have brought me here, that much was as clear as the sharp pain gouging through my skull, and did I mention my head _fucking hurt _?

Wandering a bit, I found a staircase, also just bare concrete, and descended. Wandering over to a short wall and peering out, I took in a better view of my surroundings. This was definitely Shinjuku, but things felt different. Maybe it was my headache causing my vision to blur a bit, but the whole landscape felt almost ethereal, unreal even. The sight disturbed me about as much as it made me curious, so I turned away and set myself to finding a way out of this place and back to somewhere I could get some medicine for my head.

After several minutes of finding staircases and taking them down floor after floor, annoyed at the illogical fact that they were in completely random locations on each floor, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around and was relieved to see Raia was here, and things started making a bit of sense. For whatever reason, she must have brought me here, I mean what else could have conceivably happened? My headache panged harder the longer I looked at her, but I shook it off the best I could. I walked over to her, muttering under my breath about my aching head and how the pain was only getting deeper and more intense as time went on.

“Thank god that I found you, I was seriously starting to wonder what was going on arou-” Raia cut me off just as I got within arm’s reach, picking me up by the torso and slamming me into a nearby wall, knocking all of the air out of my lungs. I tried to yell at her, but of course only a wheezing gasp for breath came out. Very menacing, I know.

“Should have left you to die.” Raia said in a deadpan, level tone. “Shouldn’t have wasted all the effort to keep you alive so long.” She slammed me into the wall again, for what I can only assume was for good measure, then dropped me to the floor.

“Useless piece of shit.” She said, looking down at me with colder eyes than I’ve ever seen. “Couldn’t keep me alive, could you? Why should I have ever done the same for you?” Raia let out a snarl and took on a fierce scowl, her first show of emotion since I’d woken up, and one that frightened me to the core. I had almost gotten enough breath back to ask what the fuck she was talking about, when she started rocketing her foot into me, kicking over and over again with rib-shattering force. Things were broken already, and very, very badly broken at that.

She wants to kill me. I thought to myself, shaking heavily from more than just broken bones. She finally realized how worthless I am, and decided I need to die. My body absorbed blow after blow, until I was on the verge of passing out again from the shock, but suddenly the kicks stopped. I opened my eyes and looked up at her, thinking she’d maybe decided I deserved some mercy, but what I saw instead was her footpaw reared back for a heavy kick, much heavier than the rest, aimed directly at my head.

=====

The blow to the head was hardly the end of it for Cherrymon. Instead, his assailant rolled herself over his head and grabbed him firmly by the branches, throwing him face first into the ground once she got the footing to leverage it. A silver-furred paw was forced under him and hooked into his mouth, ripping him off the ground and over onto his back. The anger in Raia’s eyes actually caught Cherrymon off-guard, looking all-too-familiar to him.

“Information. Now.” A large ghost fire welled up in her paw as she poised it over him. “You talk or you die. I’m not fucking around, and I’m not repeating myself.”

Renamon dropped down next to the two, and although she didn’t approve of the radical nature Raia was adopting, she had to admit to herself she was tired of the run-around as well. It was time for some answers.

Cherrymon caved, obviously, spilling all the information that he could about the master, what he wanted, how to get to him, anything and everything relevant that could save his bark. Raia never broke her stare, and never lowered her arm, maintaining the constant threat until her captive ran out of things to say. Renamon recognized the incredible intensity in her posture, despite her partner being completely stock still the entire time, presumably absorbing every micro-detail that was being laid out for her. Renamon was listening as well, but still found herself distracted by Raia. She’d become so schizophrenic after entering the digital world, and while it was easy to chalk it up to stress, Renamon couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was summoning, or perhaps awakening, this fierce anger inside what used to be a slightly timid and very caring digimon.

Silence filled the air after Cherrymon stopped speaking, and Raia didn’t move an inch, still perched expectantly. Cherrymon grew more and more anxious with each passing second, quickly realizing that his captor wasn’t quite satisfied. Somewhere inside, he always knew he’d die to the master’s hand after he became so cruel, and looking into Raia’s eyes, he saw that he wasn’t too far off.

“T-that’s all I have! I can’t tell you anything else, there’s nothing left to say!” Raia grunted in response, then drove the fire into the champion with devastating force, deleting a chunk through his head, which slowly burned out across the rest of him, burning him down to data. Raia pushed the leftover data into a little mound, then dropped a ghost fire on it, letting it burn away completely. After it was gone, she stood silently and walked over to Luke, while Renamon looked on in shock.

“Where did that cruelty come from? Did you really need to torture him just for him to die?” Renamon’s disbelief grew as her partner refused to even look in her direction, clearly singularly focused on their tamer. Raia snorted in derision, but almost not even directed at Renamon, as if she were half speaking to herself.

“I’m fucking sick of him, and his ilk. That whole “dark army” can fucking die as far as I’m concerned, and if we have to be the ones to manifest that, so be it. I’m sure Luke will agree.”

Renamon shook her head in a mix of wonderment and disgust. Completely ruthless… I thought we were beyond that. However, the much scarier thing to her right now was Raia’s insane power that had just manifested. Cherrymon may have been weak and needed tricks to fight, but he was still very much an Ultimate. Realistically, it shouldn’t have even been a fight for him, Ultimate to Rookie, but we’re much stronger from training and being around Luke. Still though, for Raia to kill him so easily, when he wasn’t even visibly injured… What the hell is going on around here anymore?

=====

When I woke up again, I didn’t even have to open my eyes to know that I was in the digital world again, I could feel the dampness in the air. Fuck, I’m getting sick of waking up here. Once I did open my eyes, I saw Raia, and I suddenly remembered my ribs, which had a phantom pain, but appeared to not be broken. Still, I pressed myself away from her and began to fearfully check myself over.

“Renamon?” I nervously called past Raia, seeing vibrant yellow moving around behind her. “Renamon! Get over here! ” Renamon shot off the ground and landed right between Raia and I.

“What? Are you afraid of me or something?” Raia sighed and her face mixed into a blend of concern and the slightest hint of frustration. When I nodded in response, she sighed deeper and turned away from us. Looking around some more, and seeing scorch marks on the ground, I realized I must have been unconscious, and pressed back into my memory, trying to suss out what might have caused that.

“How long have I been out?” I asked, still tracing the events back in my head. “Last thing I remember is Raia getting mad at me for that stupid joke, and me wandering off.” Renamon stroked my cheek carefully, in a dual gesture of caring concern and also checking my head for injuries. After a moment, she started simply rubbing my cheek, so I must have checked out fine.

“You didn’t miss much then, Cherrymon found you wandering in a daze, and Raia… well, Cherrymon is gone now. Completely.” I perked an eyebrow.

“Completely?” I heard a bit of a snarl from Raia’s direction.

“I annihilated the piece of shit. I’m tired of these dark zone fuckwits messing with us, and I’m certainly very sick of this master of theirs.” Raia’s tone was even and unsettlingly flat, given what she was saying. My mind drifted back to her beating me down, which must have just been a dream. Still, with all the madness going on, I wasn’t going to let a detail like that slip through, so I decided to mention it.

“I had a dream while I was out. I’m not sure how much you two know about humans, but that doesn’t really happen, at least not if you’ve been knocked unconscious.” Raia turned back to face us, her interest clearly piqued.

“What… what was the dream?” Raia asked, sounding a bit scared herself. I sighed, knowing she wouldn’t like to hear it. I shook my head, thinking better of telling her. “Please Luke? With all that’s been going on it could be important, even if it’s bad.”

“You were angry at me, I was in some sort of abandoned parking garage and I found you. You said that you should have left me to die, how I was worthless, how I…” I shuttered and collected myself, trying to not relive the traumas, any of them. “You said that I couldn’t keep you alive, so you had to reason to keep me alive. Then you started to beat me, kick my ribs in, and a blow to the head to knock me out at the end. I thought I was going to die.”

Raia, surprisingly, didn’t cry. Instead, something worse happened. All the expression left her face and she kind of just quietly crumpled over into a ball. I summoned my courage up, telling myself it had to just be a dream, though I knew there had to be something deeper, and scooted myself closer to her, wrapping her in a hug. She didn’t fight me, so I grabbed Renamon by the paw and pulled her over into the hug as well, wrapping myself tightly around both of them. Thinking a bit quickly, I tried to think of as many warm and comforting images as I could and pushed them down the mental link to Raia, hoping she wasn’t completely shutting down on us.

“We’re safe for a while,” I thought to them. “Let’s take some time to recover, relax for a while. Really relax, no stupid pranks, no drama, just trying to settle ourselves down.” Renamon nodded in response, and Raia just coiled her arms around us, squeezing very tight.

We found our way back to where I crunched up all the leaves and pulled them over to the remains of the fire they’d slept by, hobbling together a makeshift bed. Renamon sparked a fire and Raia helped me set up a small roof in case it started to rain, telling me about all the information she’d picked up from Cherrymon before…well, before he died. After we finished, we all curled up with each other on the pile of leaves and breathed a collective sigh of relief. I laid down first, Renamon took up residence on my stomach, and Raia more or less wrapped herself around my arm. Raia was upset for a huge variety of reasons and while I knew Renamon wouldn’t object to me giving her some extra attention, I still made sure that I was giving my yellow vixen some ear rubs too, if only to keep the jealousy at bay. Raia seemed to take full advantage of my offer, pressing her muzzle firmly into the side of my face and doing her best to pretend she was glued to my body.

“It’s scaring me, Luke.” She whispered in my ear. I tried to hide my concern, but a small shift of my eyes showed me that Raia wasn’t looking anyways, her eyes were shut as tight as she could make them. If anything, “scared” was underselling it.

“What’s scaring you?” My voice was soft, and I began to rub my cheek back and forth against her muzzle, hoping it brought her at least a little comfort. “That fucker coming after you? You know I won’t let him hurt you, ever.” She nodded for a second, then stopped and shook her head and scrunched up her face, trying to hide tears, and failing.

“That, for sure, yeah, but… I’m scared of these changes. Things are changing inside me. I’m getting stronger, but it feels like I’m too strong, and angrier, but I don’t feel in control anymore when I get angry. I… I feel like I’m losing myself.” She started to shake, and her voice began quavering wildly as her crying got worse and worse. I found myself without much to say, because I had no idea what would help. I squeezed her tight and tried to slow her shivering, but it didn’t seem to help much.

“I can promise you this.” I said, falling back on the only thing I knew to. Her eyes remained closed, but her ears perked. “I’m not going to leave, not going to abandon you. Either of you. I would say I’d walk through fire for both of you, but I’m pretty sure all three of us have already done that at some point. I will say that I’ll stand with you until I physically can’t stand anymore, and I won’t stop a moment sooner. You two are my partners, it’s my job to be protective of you and keep you safe, but I’d be lying if I said that’s the only reason I do it. You’re also the best things that have ever come into my life. Ever. And I’ll do anything to protect that.” My body started getting compressed from all sides, as Raia was full-blown crying now and Renamon wasn’t far behind her, having heard all of what I said. Due to their strength, it honestly kind of hurt, but I would never have asked them to stop, because it was the best kind of pain I’d ever experienced.

I reached down and pried Renamon off of my stomach, sliding her up to rest her head on my chest, and then I did the same with Raia. I scooped a ton of leaves over us in a vain attempt to make a blanket, but I mostly just made a lot of noise. The girls seemed to appreciate the gesture, even if it didn’t accomplish much at all. I looked down at how they were laying and saw an opportunity to participate in some grade-A romantic cheesiness, and when have I ever been the type to miss out on that?

“You both know where the human heart is, right?” They both nodded and Renamon patted the left side of my chest, where Raia had laid her head. “Yeah, left side of the chest. It’s a bit fitting that you both always lay on me like this. Symbolic, I guess.” They both looked up at me and I almost felt my soul leave my body just from how beautiful both sets of eyes were, just staring right into me. I collected myself, hearing them giggle, as they doubtlessly noticed, then continued.

“Raia’s on the left side, because she’s my heart, has been since we met. Renamon is on the right because when my heart was taken from me, she was there to fill the void, like my soul coalescing into something to keep me alive. And now that both of you are here, my heart is back on my left, and my soul is still here, on my right. Not many guys out there who could say that, are there?” They both started to blush and Raia shook her head, then rested it back down on my chest.

“We should sleep soon, need to get a move on now that we know where to go.” Renamon said, ever the pragmatic one.

“Yeah, I suppose we should. Hopefully we can finally get a night of peace now that the plans against us have hit such a hitch.” I pulled both of the Renamon tighter against me and closed my eyes, falling into a long-awaited calm sleep.