Chapter Ninety-One: A Familiar Digimon

After returning home, Ruki was still gasping for breath. For a grade-school child barely into her teens, having a gun aimed at her had been far too much to bear. Such a brush with death had left her body and mind profoundly shaken.

Only then did she seem to begin recalling what had happened moments before.

“So that was... evolution?”

“Yes. Though it is strange. By all rights, neither my data volume nor my data structure should have allowed me to evolve into an ordinary demon type. And yet it seems some force pushed the process along. I was slotted straight into a prepared form and skipped the part where I choose on my own, becoming a demon type directly.”

Feng Xue also found it odd. He had not felt the slightest intention to evolve. Even when Gargomon fired at point-blank range, all he had thought was to activate an AT field, in other words, the skill called Connection Severance. And yet, under some unseen prompting, he had evolved just like that.

Was it the light of evolution, Terriermon, who had been there at the time? Or some so-called bond with Ruki? Or both?

“Choose on my own? A prepared form? An ordinary demon type?” Ruki seemed to have trouble making sense of such terms. “Do you mean you should have evolved into a subspecies like Ice Demonmon? Something like Holy Demonmon?”

“Not exactly... and not really a subspecies either...” In the end, Feng Xue still did not tell her his full thoughts. There was no point, really. Even his own understanding of the Digital World rested on guesswork alone, and only when he faced it for himself did he realize how one-sided those guesses had been.

“But... why did you only stay evolved for an instant and then turn back? If you could keep your Adult Stage, you could have beaten that guy, right?” As expected of Ruki, no sooner had she escaped with her life than her thoughts had already returned to battle.

“Just pretend my data wasn’t enough.” Feng Xue had no intention of explaining further. He did not think Ruki could understand the vast difference between a brief evolution and a permanent one. Or rather, while still clad beneath the armor of arrogance, all she would notice was battle.

“Oh, right. What do you want to eat tonight?” Seeing that Ruki still wanted to ask more, Feng Xue quickly changed the subject.

Though he had already more or less realized that he seemed to have entered the story, after nearly a thousand years Feng Xue retained almost no memory of the early part of the third arc, which was basically a monster-grinding level-up story. What he could remember was only vague images: Guilmon and Gallantmon evolving in battle, the annihilation plan summoning the Deva, and things of that sort. As for which episode had featured which Digital Monster, he had long since forgotten.

But whether he remembered or not, the Digital Monsters appearing in the real world were far more numerous than in the original story. He had certainly fought far more Tamers than the source material suggested. In just three days, Feng Xue had already wiped out seven or eight baffling Armor-level monsters. Come to think of it, in the real world the Digital Monsters seemed to be either Adult Stage or Armor Stage; the only wild Child Stage one had been that exceptionally gifted Goblimon, who evolved on the spot.

“Hey, even if it’s the weekend, do we really need to wander all over the place? If a Digital Monster appears, the Ark should give us a warning, right? We should just wait for the prey to come to us, shouldn’t we?” As a shut-in, Feng Xue plainly hated shopping. That remained true even if the one beside him was a little girl. More to the point, Ruki’s wandering had no purpose at all; she merely kept moving back and forth through sparsely populated areas, hoping to run into a descending Digital Monster. Feng Xue, however, felt that compared with finding a Digital Monster, the odds of running into a loli-con were much higher.

Yet on Sunday, after Feng Xue and Ruki finally returned to the Makino residence following a whole day of aimless wandering, and just after they had finished dinner, Feng Xue caught a familiar presence.

“It’s here!” Feng Xue’s ears twitched. “Ruki, still have enough strength to run?”

“Do I ever?” Ruki displayed endurance far beyond her years, grabbed her card case and Ark, and ran off in the direction of the thick fog nearby.

Tokyo’s nightscape was still ablaze with light. Even walking through such a night with sunglasses on, there was no need to worry about not seeing the road. From the taverns along the street came the occasional slurred voices of the drunk, fully revealing the city’s neon nightlife.

“You humans really are strange creatures,” Feng Xue muttered.

“Hmm?” Ruki, still running, did not stop. She simply answered while keeping pace.

“Nothing...” Feng Xue shook his head. He suddenly realized that he might be one of those strange creatures too.

After nearly a thousand years as a Digital Monster, he had almost forgotten that he was still human.

“Strange guy,” Ruki murmured softly, then continued toward the fog.

The school where Hirokazu and Kenta were located was actually not far from Ruki’s home, only one block away. By bus, it was probably not even a full stop. However, the whole day of “walking” had drained too much of Ruki’s stamina, and it took her a full twenty minutes of running before she finally reached the school shrouded in dense mist.

Looking at the pitted, uneven ground, Feng Xue could not help but offer silent condolences to the principal. Though, come to think of it, the one who truly deserved pity was probably the owner of the car parked in that underground lot earlier.

“No wonder it felt familiar. So it’s the Underworld Imp!” Seeing the gray Digital Monster fighting Guilmon in the distance, Feng Xue could not help but smile with a trace of nostalgia.

“You know it?” Ruki was curious about his expression, and, uncharacteristically, she did not try to rush in and steal the kill.

“I’d say I know their whole kind. Back in the Mist Mirage Zone, they were my main prey!” Feng Xue made a ferocious face and strolled slowly toward the battlefield. Yet with every step he took, his aura rose several degrees. In the blink of an eye, he was exuding a dreadful presence like that of some primordial beast.

Sensing that terrifying aura, the Underworld Imp instinctively turned its head. At once, its former swagger vanished, and it cried out in terror, “S-Sacred Bow Demon?”

“You know me? No, that’s not right. You retained your memories?” Feng Xue’s eyes narrowed. He suddenly understood the source of the unease he had felt before. This Underworld Imp was unlike the other Digital Monsters; it had not lost the ability to speak!