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Sydney surveyed the destruction that the recently-emerged Digimon had left behind. This was ridiculous. Near-unlimited funding, some of the greatest physics minds in the world, and a staff of over three thousand, and yet his superiors could do nothing to prevent an individual emergence. Not that he would have wanted it to be that way, anyway...for one thing, that would basically put him out of a job. For another thing, he had never even managed to see a Digimon here in the Real World. Having transferred here from France in the hopes that he would see more activity here. There certainly was, but the human element always seemed to be lacking. Too late.

He was as much of an expert on the attacks of individual Digimon as anyone else—but that was only because he had watched the show and played the game religiously, and was one of the few people that could list that as a skill on their resume. He was even a member of a loosely network group of Digimon enthusiasts on the net who jokingly called themselves the \'Monster Finders.\' Obviously, he had never told them that he worked for the DdTC; if he did, they never would have understood his reasons anyway. It wasn\'t that he agreed with the Department\'s philosophy—quite the opposite in fact—but where else could you work that would let you write off Digimon cards as a business expense?

“Well? What\'s the verdict? What are we looking for?” His immediate superior, who had the annoying habit of following his team into the field and constantly questioning them on their pgoress, was a short, fat, and balding man who really knew nothing about what he was doing. For his own part, Sydney had absolutely no idea how he had acquired the position; he had knowledge neither of Digimon nor of managing anything. Which left him with the one thing he could do—ask everyone else what they were doing.

“Eet is too difficult to tell, wizout at least one ozer attack. An attack whose result eez described as s \'a hole in zee ground\' is simply far too vague.”

“Well...find something else, then. This is the third...bio-emergence...this month,” his superior almost seemed proud that he was able to get \'bio-emergence\' across without fumbling over the words. “And I don\'t want to not have anything to show for it.”

Sure, Sydney thought. I\'ll get right on that. Once I solve the rest of life\'s great mysteries. He moved over to the side of the gym, where the Digimon had evidently nailed the unfortunate priest to the wall. ... That was odd. He had thought from afar that those were poles—some kind of gym equipment or something. But they weren\'t. They were pikes of solid ice. Cold to the touch. That was something new. IceDevimon, perhaps? He couldn\'t picture an IceDevimon leaving someone alive, though. Unless it wasn planning on taking hostages. But to spare the life of someone in their way? That just didn\'t seem very characteristic of the race.

His eyes moved upwards towards the ceiling in thought. When he did, they caught something he hadn\'t seen before stuck into one of the metal scaffolds up there. If those ice pikes had been confounding and ambiguous, this was anything but. Diamond Storm. The signature attack of Renamon. But that didn\'t explain anything else he had seen. Renamon had no ice based attacks. Nor did Renamon have anything that would leave that big a hole in the ground without leaving something else fairly obvious behind.

“Hmmm.....” He looked at a Renamon card that was in the deck he always carried with him.

* * * * * * *

Another Renamon – the same one that had produced the Diamond Storm Sydney was looking at – was busy trying to meditate in her tamer/mate\'s house. The thing that Ezra was using to produce noise...a \'violin\', he called it....it was very sooting. Especially when Gustaf brought out another one and started doing it with him. It was an incredible sound ... she had never heard anything like it before in her life.

“Ezra?”

“Yes?” he stopped playing.

“Can you ... teach me?” she asked sheepishly, wondering if she could do that too. Everyone visibly stifled laughs and giggles. She cocked her head a little.

“You\'re serious, aren\'t you?”

“I am.”

“Um....well, alright. Here.” Ezra handed her Gustaf\'s violin, which she held gingerly by the neck. “You hold it like this...” he demonstrated, putting it against his neck and straightening his back. She tried to copy him, and eventually got herself into a similar position. When she finally did, it prompted another round of laughs from everyone.

After an hour or so of these lessons, a great deal of patience from the two humans—who seemed to find it endlessly humorous that she was interested in such things—and a few broken \'bowstrings\', she was finally able to play a few simple sequences of \'notes\', until she was rather rudely interrupted by a much harsher, much more primitive sound—the sound of Ezra\'s doorbell.

“Expecting someone?” Gustaf asked.

“No...”

“Do you want me to hide?” she asked, not moving from her violin-playing position.

“No, Luna, I\'m not going to hide you like someone would hide hide an animal in an apartment where they don\'t allow animals...” Luna, like so many times before, stared blankly at the analogy as he opened the door. On the other side of the door was a human wearing a dark suit, and had some kind of official-looking insignia hanging around his neck.

“Umm....you\'re lucky I came alone...” the man said.

“Do I know you?”

“After a fact,” The man\'s eyes bore into her like a drill. He didn\'t look very amused; then again, he didn\'t look very angry, either. “I\'m Agent Chuillac of the DDTC--” Ezra\'s eyes widened, and he began to look down at the thing around the agent\'s neck. “But you know me as Cocytus.”

“Cocytus,” Ezra repeated. “Sydney.”

“Oui.”

“...You never said you were DDTC.”

“Ja...vhatever gave you that idea?”

“I\'m not \'ere to arrest you, alzough I should...I wanted to see for myself --” his eyes started boring into Luna even further. She was starting to get uncomfortable.

“Well, there she is.”

“It...she...is yours, then?”

“And I hers,” she smiled a little and took a step forward to be next to Ezra.

“Eet is only a matter of time beore someone else makes zee onnections I have...you just an\'t keep a Digimon in your home.”

“I know.”

“And yet you persist.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I love her.”

“You ... what?”

“You heard me. I love her,” his hand grasped hers, and a warm feeling spread throughout her body.

“Leesten, I\'m not going to say anyzing,” the other man finally said, taking a step into Ezra\'s house and closing the door behind him. “If I were you, I wouldn\'t like ze prospect of sending her back to ze Digital World, eizer. But zat isn\'t what zey do...”

“They wouldn\'t be able to destroy her, if that is what you are thinking. She is far too powerful for that, when she chooses to be.”

“I\'m sure zat would help you initially. But zere are some devies zat ........eez zere something wrong with your eyes?” She sighed audiably. Did everyone have to point that out to her? It wasn\'t enough that she had to deal with it, but was it really necessary for everyone else to know about it as well?

“Yes, I\'m partially--”

“She\'s nothing you\'ve ever seen before, Sydney. She has an ice-based form that I--”

“Then it was you!” he yelled. “You attacked a priest! She attacked a priest, Ezra! A priest!”

“Hardly! Ezra shot back. “That maniac tried to kill me! She was just protecting me.”

“I...I had no wish to do what I did...” Luna tried to explain to the DDTC agent, “But I had no choice. He is not ... dead, is he?”

“No, no. \'e is quite alright...at least, as alright as one can be after being impaled by a piece of ice...wait, he tried to kill you, Ezra?”

“Yes! He was insane...he showed up while Luna was fighting the other Digimon, and killed it outright. He had these two pistols, and he shot at the Ninjamon until it just kind of exploded,

“I still haff the data on that, if--”

“We\'ll look at it later, Gustaf. Anyway, when he found out that I was with Luna, he pointed his other gun at me...and shot. Luna saved my life. Even when it became clear that he wasn\'t going to get anywhere attacking Luna, he kept at it....eventually, she had no choice.” The man just continued to stare blankly at Ezra in complete disbelief.

“...we are talking about a priest, are we not?” the man asked.

“Yes, I told you ... he was quite insane.”

“Apparently...Look, I want to believe you, Ezra. I really do. But...you have to understand my position, oui? You--”

“Ja, Sydney...here...I believe this...und this...” Gustaf picked up two of the things that he had brought with him when he followed Ezra and her into the gym. “May help you there.”

“You built a spectral scanner?” he asked.

“Ja.” Luna looked at the device with interest. Obviously, she had absolutely no idea what the function o the human invention was, but apparently, it was a pretty impressive feat for Gustaf to have built one, judging by the look on Sydney\'s face as he examined the device.

“Alright...I\'ll have a look. Sydney sat down around the stuff-cluttered table and looked intently at a computer much smaller than the one in Ezra\'s room. “But I don\'t like where this is going, not in the least.” Luna watched the screen intently, even though she had absolutely no idea what any of the numbers or graphs that were displayed there meant precisely, but she knew that they were all indicators of what had gone on back at the gym.

“Wow. You were right....unless you fabricated this, of course...but that would take a lot longer than two or three days. Whatever the data on the screen meant to Sydney, it convinced him that everyone was telling him the truth. “You were telling the truth...”

“Of course we were,” Ezra scoffed. He still didn\'t seem particularly overjoyed at the man and it was quite obvious that he couldn\'t really wait for him to either get out of his house or stop acting like an idiot.

“Alright...well, what can I do?” Sydney asked “\'eets not like I\'m going to say anyzing...but eventually, somezing is going to \'appen, and zere\'s going to be nozing I can do about it.” Luna looked at her mate. For all of the courage that he had demonstrated earlier when she was fighting that DarkLizardmon, he looked quite scared now. Pale, almost. Terrified. She got behind and put her paws around his stomach reassuringly, rubbing just a little.

“I....” Ezra\'s hands rested on her paws, checking their motion. “Sydney....you\'re sure that nothing can be done? They won\'t believe that she\'s not wild and destructive.

“No, zey can not. \'zey can not believe what what is beyond zeir comprehension. And my supervisor\'s impression of Digimon is something that can kill an is beyond our contro. Nozing more. I don\'t picture any of ze higher ups being any different—for ze most part, zey are political appointees who didn\'t even know what Digimon were until zey were briefed on eet.”

“Well, then...” Ezra said, suddenly seeming taller than he really was, “I\'ll enlighten them.”

“You\'ll what?”

“I\'ll enlighten them. Take me in.”

“Ezra....” Luna whispered into her mate\'s ear, a tinge of fear floating on her voice. “I don\'t want to go back to the Digital World...”

“You won\'t.” He told her.

“I really don\'t believe zat would be very wise...”

“What else am I supposed to do?” Ezra fumed. “At least this way, I\'ll know whether e have to ... go elsewhere ... or not ...”

“Or a far more likely possibiity: Luna gets shot, experimented on, and killed--” Luna\'s eyes opened wider at the prospect. That she understood, but she didn\'t want that to happen at all. “--and you get sent to federal prison, sans Digimon.”

“Or I could get lucky.”

“You already have! You\'ve got a Digimon...but zat makes you a terrorist in zeir eyes, don\' you see zat?”

“I\'m not going to hide, Sydney.” Luna smiled nervously. She just knew that all of this had been too good to be true, or at least too good to last. She hugged Ezra tightly against her front, not wanting to ever let go of him.

“Ezra, even your Digimon understands! Why can\'t you see?”

Her mate twisted around within her grasp and returned her hug just as tightly. Wherever she went in the Digital World, she would never find anyone who would care about her like Ezra did, even though he was a human. She felt safe for him. She felt love for him. The need to prove to everyone that she was a capable fighter didn\'t exist between them---because of him, she was able to become more powerful than she had ever imagined. And he told her that he loved it. She just wanted to live with him and be happy, and damn everything else.

“Luna...what do you want me to do?”

“I don\'t want to lose you, Ezra....I can\'t...”

“You won\'t...” he said again. “I promise.” He kissed the side of her muzzle softly, making her smile.

“Sydney, he does haff a point...dis could set a positive precedent for us all...at the risk of sounding optimistic,” Gustaf said fro somewhere in front of her—he had movd from where he was, but she didn\'t know exactly where because her eyes were closed to enjoy Ezra\'s touch.

“Luna...will you come?”

“I\'d go anywhere with you, Ezra. Even back to the Digital World.” She licked the side of his face affectionately, just like he had kissed her.

“Alright,” he said before turning resolutely towards Sydney. “Let\'s go.”

“What, right now?”

“Yes.”

“...you\'re sure about this? I can make no guarantees.”

“I know.”

“Gustaf...I would not come if I were you...” Ezra warned his friend.

“Vhy not? I haff as much stake in this as you. I might get a digimon someday.” Sydney groaned exasperatingly

“Fine. But I\'m still not guaranteeing anyzing...whatever happens to you zaere ees not going to be my fault.” The human began walking out to his car and Ezra followed him. Luna, a little bit reluctantly, went along with him. She didn\'t know anything about where they were going other than that they were going somewhere where nobody would like her. In the Digital World, she had considered herself at least moderately intelligent. She knew the area, she knew the area of the surrounding layers, and she knew at least how she was expected to behave, even if she didn\'t adhere to it. Everything here in the Real World was new to her. Of course, she did her best to maintain a steely resolve, but it wasn\'t easy, especially around someone she knew cared her as much as Ezra did. But that didn\'t mean she didn\'t want to learn. She wanted to learn everything she could about the Real World, about music, the violin ...

“Luna?”

“Yes?”

“If anything should happen...” he put his arms around her there on the middle of the concrete sidewalk. “I just want you to know that I love you.” he hugged for a few more seconds, then gave her the most passionate kiss he had given her since they met. She closed her eyes and returned his kiss like this would be their last one This was something else that she would miss if anything happened. She held the kiss with him for what seemed like forever—when it was over, Ezra looked down at her and gave her a smile that seemed somehow both weak and confident at the same time.

“Now let\'s get you noticed,”

The car ride was an interesting experience for her. Like so many other things, she hadn\'t ever done that before, and she wasn\'t sure that she ever wanted to do that again. The whole time there was this unending noise that the car produced, and she couldn\'t get it out of her mind.

“I still don\'t know why I\'m doing zis, Ezra...”

“Because you have hope, at the risk of sounding corny,”

“Oui; hope that I don\'t lose my job.”

Luna looked around at the interior of the vehicle, then out at the city. Human cities were so big...they were huge. It was going to take her years to get used to the place, if she was able to stay. She had doubts about what Ezra was doing, but she trusted him with her life. And he seemed like he knew what he was doing. He was quite intelligent.

“How did you end up vith a job at the DDTC...?” Gustaf, who was sitting in seat in front of her, asked.

“Actually, I started at the Digimon Cheimont Council. But, as eet is, zey offered me a position here briefly as part of an exchange program, and I accepted. Later, I accepted a more permenant position.”

* * * * *

Ezra wasn\'t anywhere near as sure of what he was doing as he tried to appear to be, which he was doing mostly for Luna\'s benefit. In actuality, he was quite scared. But he wasn\'t going to hide from the DDTC any longer. If it was absolutely necessary, he was pretty sure that Luna would be able to escape at least with her own life. He didn\'t want to think about any other eventualities to give weight to their arguments. At least it\'d be interesting to see the local DDTC offices, even if it was under circumstances that he would have preferred been different.

“Why the Boston field offices?” he asked, trying to take his mind off the grim outlook of the situation.

“They\'re the central offices, actually. It\'s easier to conduct research here.”

“Well, naturally,” It made sense, although somehow it was difficult for him to picture any Digimon research being conducted at any of the numerous universities, colleges, and institutes in Masssachusets. He definitely would have gotten in on that if given the opportunity.

As they got farther and farther away from Ezras home, Luna\'s grip on his right hand tightened, quickly reaching the point where it was almost painful. He didn\'t mind it, though. It was nice to feel that close to her, even if it was because she was massively nervous. The thought that this was a bad idea continually tried to gain footing in his mind, but each time it did, he pushed those thoughts back wherever they had came from. If it worked, then it worked, and he\'d be set for the rest of his life. If it didn\'t, then it didn\'t, and he\'d find some other way to get by. He liked to think that he was a fairly resourceful person.

“Here we are. Last chance to turn back before someone sees your Renamon--”

“She has a name, Syndey: Luna. And we\'re not turning back.” Ezra snapped back with as much resolve in his voice as he could muster.

“Just offering. How about you, Gustaf?”

“No, Sydney. Ezra and I are of like mind here. Besides, Dis is the DDTC, Ja? This ist like...valking into enemy territory.”

He looked out the window of the black sedan at what looked like a regular office building It had the occasional air conditioner hanging out of the window, some birds standing on the windowsills, and it even had a small, rather dingy and sketchy-looking chinese take-out restaurant across from the entrance. Whenever he pictured the DDTC\'s location in his mind, he always pictured complex in Maryland somewhere with large, independent office buildings, various computing centers, and maye a cafeteria or two for the employees. A small office building in uptown Boston was not quite what he had in mind.

“Eet is mostly underground,” Sydney explained after seeing the look on Gustaf and Ezra\'s faces. “It\'s an old FBI field office that had a large underground area for storing records, housing equipment, and providing workspace for cryptographers and their mechanical computers to work during the cold war—I\'m told that it\'s construction was covered up by the construction of the underground train system.”

“Wonderful,” Ezra commented sarcastically. That was all fine and good, but he didn\'t plan on returning here any time soon. Or ever, for that matter. Syndey drove the car directly up to the front of the building, for obvious reasons. Digimon weren\'t usually a common sight in the streets of Boston, and even Ezra saw the importance of keeping the ignorant in the dark for the time being.

“Alright then, lets go...” Ezra opened the door on his side, still holding Luna\'s hand as he quickly closed the distance between themselves and the revolving door that led to the inside of the building. Luna stopped abruptly at the entrance , looking at the operation of the door. Again, at any other time, Ezra would have been amused at her ignorance of the human world, but now he was concentrating too much on what he was going to say whomever he was going to end up talking to.

He pushed himself and Luna into a space in the opaque revolving door. Sydney and Gustaf entered through the other door. If the outside of the building looked sketchy, the inside of the lobby looked quite pristine. Anyone who entered here without foreknowledge of the building\'s nature would probably be pretty confused by the split. Unfortunately, Ezra\'s analysis of the building\'s décor had to be cut short by the sound of about twelve different guns being unsafetied and cocked.

“Chuillac, what the hell is that?”

“...what does eet look like, Lieutenant?” Ezra stepped in front of Luna protectively, for all the good it would do if they started shooting.

“And who in the hell are they?”

“It\'s complicated, and not really your department.”

“Security is my department, agent. This is a threat to security if I\'ve ever seen one.”

“Lieutenant, eef she wanted to kill you, you would already be dead.”

“... why is it here and not going through containment?”

“That ees not your concern, Lieutenant. Now put that down before you do somezing you\'ll regret.”

“..fine..” The tall, assault-rifle wielding man with a crew cut lowered his weapon and pressed a button on a console in front of him. “But don\'t think that this is going to go unrecorded. I don\'t want Digimon coming through the front entrance of my building regardless of the circumstances.”

“Fine. Lodge a complaint, then. See how far eet gets you.” An electrical hum that Ezra hadn\'t noticed before suddenly ceased, and the lieutenant waved them onward to a set of four elevators at the far end of the room. Sydney led the three of them into the elevator on the far right and pressed his thumb against one of the 9 unmarked buttons on the elevator\'s panel. The elevator car quickly started going up where he expected it to be going down.

“Somehow, I know zat I\'m going to be regretting zis later.” Ezra would have said something reassuring, but he couldn\'t think of anything to say. The music that played while they waited in the were in the elevator probably didn\'t do anything to ease the tension of the moment, either. It was the kind of music that would eventually drive someone to stab themselves in the ear with the nearest writing instrument if they listened to it long enough.

“At least let me try to explain who you are before you give zee man a lecture,” Sydney said.

“If you think it will help. Who are you taking us to, anyway?”

“Zee Director, naturally...unless you\'d rather talk to some minor functionary who couldn\'t do anything for you.”

“No, I was just wondering.”

Before Sydney had a chance to answer, the elevator with a ding, displaying what looked like a fairly typical office workroom: small cubicles, piles of cardboard file boxes, people toting boxes around busily, and people trying to look busy by carrying around single, important-looking documents. Ezra wasn\'t very impressed.

“Zis way,” Sydney started leading them through the complicated maze of cubicles. Obviously an unfamiliar sight to the workers there, the three got some very strange looks as they walked by—Especially to Luna, who had somehow managed to seem even more nervous than she was before.

His best guess at where they were going was the far corner of the room, and he turned out to be right. He was distinctly reminded of the offices on old TV police shows that he used to watch when he was younger, in between episodes of Digimon. Sydney opened the door, completely ignoring the secretary at the entrance. She began to protest, but when she saw Luna, she quickly silenced herself.

Sitting behind a rich mahogany desk, wearing a dark black suit and a red tie, was a rather aged man. The nameplate sitting on his desk next to he green lamp that lit it read “Richard Weir”. It also indicated that he was the director. The director of the DDTC. He was standing a few feet away from the director of the DDTC.

“Mr. Director?”

“Yes? ...” he said without looking up from the computer. “I\'m very busy...make an appointment if you need something.”

“Someone to see you, sir.” Ezra almost had a smirk on his face by the time he finally looked up, trying to imagine what his reaction would be.

“I\'m extremely busy, why didn\'t you--” he looked up in mid-sentence, stopped typing abruptly, and stared at Luna, much in the same way that Ezra himself had when he first saw her. “...what is that?”

“Eet is exactly what eet looks like, sir. Eet ees a Digimon. Of ze data variety.”

“Isn\'t it dangerous?”

“No, sir, not at all. Zis one is ... tame.”

“...?”

“So, it\'s--”

“Safe, yes.”

“And who are they?”

“Zat is slightly more complicated.”

Sydney started telling the Director everything that was known about partners and their Digimon. At first, he didn\'t seem particularly receptive to the information at first, but as time went along, he began to look like he was actually seriously considering at least giving the matter some thought.

“So...” the director said, voicing his thoughts. “You are her...tamer?” he spoke to Ezra.”

“I\'m her partner,” he corrected. “And ... her mate.” He made a small display for the man, but kissing Luna didn\'t disturb the man anywhere near as much as he thought it would. He didn\'t respond for a few minutes, but once he did, it was with almost the same tone of voice that he had used before.

“I see.” Ezra doubted that, but he wasn\'t going to say anything that would hurt his position. “So, you\'ve come here to try to convince me that your possession of this creature somehow makes it different than if it were walking around \'in the wild\', as you so eloquently put it?”

“Essentially, yes.” Ezra answered. “I\'m a programmer at MIT, director, I know quite well the damage that they are capable of inflicting on the digital world. Gustaf here is an engineer who can attest quite well to their abilities to inflict damage here in our world. Dangerous they may be,” Ezra said, leaning forward and resting his hands on the top of the man\'s desk. “But they are sentient, living things capable of independent thought, and they deserve to be treated as such.”

“Hm.” The director looked at him thoughtfully. He looked swayed, but he didn\'t look anywhere near being convinced. Ezra took a different approach.

“What you\'ve seen and know of their actions are only a small sliver. What you\'ve done is see only the extreme, when they were pushed to the edge by circumstances beyond their control. That tunnel vision is no different than examining a country only by it\'s actions during war.”

“So, what? You expect me to abandon a year and a half of operational philosophy based on the fact that you\'ve found one Digimon that doesn\'t seem to have a penchant for destruction?”

“Ja, actually.” Gustaf answered much more boldly than Ezra would have. “You haff never had anything beyond zer most basic of debriefings on der matter.”

“Then you three must be here to enlighten me.”

“Ja. After a fashion.”

“Right.” he typed a few lines of something into his laptop, looked at the result, then looked back up at the group of people. “So, as a passive, pacifist Digimon as you have described her, I\'m sure that she had nothing to do with any of the recent incidents around town.” The laptop was turned around opposite the director, giving Ezra a full view of the case files on both battles she had participated in.

“I was defending myself, I had no choice.” Luna remarked, her eyes fied on the photograph of the location where she had first slide-digivolved to IceRenamon.

“Really...”

“Yes.”

“...this is ridiculous.” the man put his head down on his desk behind his computer. “I\'m letting myself be lectured by a bunch of people I don\'t even know.”

“Vith all due respect, herr direktor...dis ist something you should be giving credence to.”

“Because you don\'t understand. Luna has done nothing to the wrath that you would give her if you got a hold of her.”

“Oh,” a look of bemused revelation crossed the director\'s face. “I see.” he scowled. “You don\'t want anything to happen to her as an individual.

“No, of course I don\'t. But that\'s not the point--”

“As disturbing as it is for me to tell this to you, Mr...”

“Harlow.”

“As disturbing as it is for me to tell you this, Mr, Halow, you may just be in luck. If you would kindly remain outside of my office for a few minutes, I have to make a few phone calls. Agent ... Chuillac, is it?--I need you to stay.” He didn\'t look at all very enthusiastic about the prospect, but Ezra guessed he didn\'t have much of a choice in the matter. It was, after all, his job.

“Oh...of course,” he answered after a few moments of silence. He couldn\'t believe what he was hearing, and he didn\'t want to jeopardize it, so h e obediently bowed out of the office, pulling Luna along with him. The secretary outside gave Ezra a very dirty look as he passed by out of the main office. hen she saw Luna again and quickly turned her eyes back to her computer terminal. Ezra gave the smallest of grins, then seated himself in a small row of padded folding chairs hat someone had put there.

“Ezra?” Luna sat down in the seat next to him, her knees touching each other with her hands on top of them.

“Yes?”

“Thank you. For everything.” she smiled.

“I haven\'t given you everything,” he grinned back at her jokingly.

“Yes, you have.” She announced simply, obviously not getting the joke.

“It\'s an expression,” he grinned, picking up the fox\'s paw and cosing both of his hands around it in a display of affection. She seemed much less nervous now than she had earlier; maybe she understood more of what was going on than Ezra thought she did. His impression of her was continually changing, and he still didn\'t really feel that he knew her yet. When he had first met her, he saw her, as, well, a Digimon, albeit one that had saved his life. And an attractive one, but still a Digimon. Later, when she opened up more to him, his impression changed to one more of a person—one that he quickly found himself growing more and more attached to. When that humanity was challenged by Gustaf, he realized more than ever that he had loved her. Now, having known for a little longer than that, his impression was changing to one of innocent naiveté, far removed from the original strong, silent image that he had crafted of her when they first met.

Those thoughts continued to occupy his mind as he sat there holding the hand of his ... mate. After forever, the secretary finally buzzed Sydney back into the director\'s office. Despite what he had said, the feeling that Ezra was a self-professed heretic walking into the proceedings of the Spainish Inquisition had lessened only by the slightest degree. The look that was on Sydney\'s face didn\'t do anything to lessen that feeling, either.