Of Gear Heads and High School Students (Alicia/Kai)

Tucking her motorcycle away safely, the young mechanic took her usual measures to ensure against the vehicle being swiped by some shady thug. Secure in the knowledge that her ride was as safe as she could make it, Alicia went out to comb Tokyo via the train station. Where exactly she was thinking of going, she actually wasn't sure herself. There wasn't much she could do other then look and hope she found something to make another shot at a culinary school. Surely if she looked hard enough she'd find one that would accept her, right?

"Mm-zzt-h?"

Why did she suddenly feel the twinging stab of a headache...? Oh dear, was she starting to come down with something after all those long hours in the shop? That would put a real sour note on her day, no questions asked. Odd though, the pain only lasted for a short while.

"H-zzt-... -zzt-esti-zzt-"

Nope, there it was again. Enough to be irritating, but thankfully not so much as to be distracting. Dismissing it as nothing all that important, Alicia continued onward. She admitted, though, to being rather surprised that she'd come across a younger boy with his arm very obviously set into a cast. The fact that that same boy was decidedly lacking adult supervision or support, the mechanic started to approach him, her worries reflected in her eye. She also got the idea that the boy was some ventriloquist in training, given that she was hearing odd voices from the kid's backpack. He was really good for his age if that was the case.

"Fo-zzt-im. Fi-zzt- -zzt-ital W-zzt-!"

Seriously not the time for another micro headache... shaking her head to clear her mind. She was in ear shot of the boy now, and called out to him, "Excuse me? Are you alright young man...? Or have you gotten yourself lost?" It should be noted that while her Japanese was clear and fluent, it was also pretty strongly accented, the way a foreigner's attempt to speak the language would be. And even now it was hard to keep her Texan roots out of her Japanese, something she suspected would be the case till the day she died. That, with its certainy, she could deal with. These odd micro headaches on the other hand...

Frowning a bit, Alicia tilted her head. "Well, I admit I'm no doctor but even I have to wonder what a young boy with an arm injury so bad that a cast was used is doing near a train station. Shouldn't you be, I don't know, staying home at least?" Then again, she supposed it wasn't entirely impossible that the kid needed the train station to get to his home. Still didn't explain the lack of family or friends supporting him though.

Then she furrowed her eyebrows as another thought came to her. How did he get such a serious injury anyways? He certainly didn't look the type to play sports at first glance. Then again perhaps he was just the really fast type no one could catch up with? Given how diverse sports were, there probably was one that he could excel at. Still she was left with a few things she knew for sure: He was at a train station, he was really badly injured, and by his own answer he knew where he was trying to go.

"Oh well, do you mind if I accompany you to where you're going?" she asked, flashing a smile at him. Yes, it was effectively going out of her way to help someone else, but some kind of gut feeling said that she was going to regret leaving this kid to his own devices. It was almost like some slumbering instinct was pushing her onto this path, but that was ridiculous, right? Humans weren't the kind of people to pay heed to their instincts all that much. "I can't just ignore someone who I presume just got discharged from the hospital with injuries that bad, after all."

She neglected to mention that she was going to follow him anyways if he said no.

'Just a broken arm' he says... That was almost too easy for him, like he'd had worse before. That thought on its own was worrying to Alicia. And it certainly wouldn't be the first time she'd seen a boy try and play it off something really painful as not a big deal. While it wasn't exactly a broken bone, her brother Jeremy had received some pretty bad injuries now and again while pursuing his own dream and attempted to pass them off as nothing.

"What is it to me? Well, I've had an older brother that's done some pretty foolish things when he was hurt and it was always up to me to get him the rest he needed. I guess I just projected a bit from a silly memory..." she began, pausing a bit as she noticed the boy step back. Oh geeze... Well, admittedly she was being somewhat pushy, wasn't she? "Anyways... I guess I jumped to a wrong conclusion in my haste. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding."

'Sm-zzt- ... R-zzt- -zzt-h...'


She'd turned away just in time to hide the wince that accompanied her headache, and getting the distinct feeling that someone was embarrassed by her social failure. "Good bye then, hope you get better soon," she called softly over her shoulder as she started to leisurely walk away. Still, she couldn't help but shake the feeling that he was about to get into a dangerous situation again... Hopefully that wasn't the case.

'Well he's sure in a hurry... Maybe I'm stumbling over something a lot bigger then I first thought...' Alicia mused as she saw over her shoulder that the boy turned and was making a fairly fast pace. Almost like he was getting impatient from the delay. Or someone he knew that he was going to meet was getting impatient. Well, it worked to her advantage as she turned back to shadow him. As the crowds started to thin, she was starting to get a little worried. Not for the boy, exactly, but for herself. This was starting to get a little eerie, knowing he was heading right for what should be a shut down section of the train station.

Wait, there was power down here still? That seemed to be the case as the boy waved a device she couldn't make out from there and walked through as the turnstile unlocked. "H-!" she began, only for her eyes to widen as the boy vanished like some freaking magician. Just... poof, he was gone! What in blazes is going on here? And why was her latest headache getting worse?

"I sup-zzt this -zzt- -zzt-se enough."

"KYA!" The shocked scream came unbidden as she heard something talk to her as if through a broken radio. But no, there was nothing around to even hint at what the other person had spoken through. Who was it? And what'd they want with her!? She didn't dare voice that aloud though, that almost always lead to trouble.

Unfortunately the trouble seem to come to her anyways, in the form of a thick white mist appearing around her and obscuring her sight. She screamed again, but her voice was drowned out, leaving the woman to flail helplessly. She never noticed that her hand was suddenly gripping a strange device in her panic, nor could she see that she was near the turnstile.

Her hand guided by an outside force, her hand waved the device over scanner and she fell back through the turnstile. The boy she had met would be in for quite a surprise as she shrieked on appearance within the Trailmon Terminal, falling flat on her back and yelping. Given her eyes were closed tight from fear and pain, she wasn't quite aware of where she was at the moment, but even a cursory glance would make out the gray, black, and gold D-Scanner that had found its way into her hand.

Alicia groaned softly and cracked one eye open as she heard the boy she was shadowing come up to her. "Ugh... This is not what I was expecting from today... First this fr-" Whatever she was about to say was promptly interrupted by the adorable white fluffy thing landing on her chest "Oof!" Blinking in surprise, she stared at the Digimon that had used her as a makeshift landing pad and then asked her what she presumed was a rhetorical question. "... Okay, I guess the world decided to just stop making sense for the foreseeable future. Talking cat-like critters are actually the least strangest thing to occur today..."

Then she smiled and sat up abruptly, hugging the Digimon as she did. "But you're so adorable! Everything is better now!" With that out of her system she seemed to regain her composure, setting the cat-like mon down on the floor and hopping up to her feet with a nervous chuckle. "Uh... sorry about all this..." she muttered sheepishly to the boy, at least having the decency to seem fairly embarrassed. It was only then that she noticed her fingers were still rather tightly wrapped around a device she'd never seen before. "W-Wait what? The heck is this...?" she asked, staring at the strange device.

Sighing to herself, she grumbled. "Stupid voice from no where... stupid weird fog-mist thing..." Shaking her head she took one last glance at the Tamer. "Okay... First, Explaining why I was apologizing and what I'm grumbling about. I admit I was still worried so I followed you. That lead to me seeing you wave some strange thing over what I thought was a powerless ticket scanner for a broken down turnstile. I saw you just up and disappear. Then after that I hear this weird static-y voice followed by creepy mist surrounding and blocking my sight. I flail around, trying to get out and wind up falling in here. Apparently somewhere in there someone left me this thing-" she paused for a moment to toss the D-Scanner up a few times, catching it easily enough every time. "-and that's pretty much it. Am I the only one who finds this series of events extremely unlikely and extremely convoluted!?"

Another sigh followed the mini rant, as Alicia hung her head. "So, for the sake of something relatively normal occurring in what will be a very strange day, shall we start over on the sorta-right foot? My name's Alicia Westfield. ... Err, Sorry, I still sometimes forget that the Japanese give family name first so that would be Westfield Alicia... I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you have some experience with whatever this is so I suppose I'll be in your care if we go together."

Alicia couldn't help but chuckle nervously at the slow way Kai covered his eyes and the rather dead pan question that followed. "Um... sorry? I'm afraid I'm very serious here..." Well at least he seemed to believe her. She felt kinda bad heaping what seemed to be another instance of a recurring problem onto his metaphorical plate. She was about to speak up again, but the tamer mentioned he was about to get to explaining things so she stayed quiet and just listened in.

Frankly, she found the whole thing quite intriguing. The appearance of the other Digimon startled her a bit, Kuro getting her close attention for a short moment before she settled and nodded. Thankfully for Kai, Alicia was fairly well aware of when chiming in with random questions was a fairly bad call. Even before he mentioned that she should hold off, she made no move to even imply she was going to ask.

Admittedly, her eyes went wide at what was easily the most fantasy-like of the tamers words. The device in her hand would let her turn into one of these Digimon? She could only scarcely believe it. Honestly, had she not seen Kuro and Shiro, she might have dismissed the idea out of hand completely for that matter. As it was, she had to take his words at face value.

At last, his recounting of what he knew of their situations was done, and Alicia leaned back. "Heh... Hehehehe..." The young woman started chuckling softly to herself as she let everything sink in. "Sheesh... Morgan would completely flip out if he were to ever find out all this was going on here in Shibuya... This kind of thing is like straight out of one of those little short stories he sometimes does for fun on the side." Smiling a bit, she focused back on Kai. "But let me guess, bad things will go down if I let anything slip about what's going on to anyone not already involved, right?" She paused a moment herself, but regardless of his response, she continued on, moving to the metaphorical elephant in the room.

"So... no joke, this... 'D-Scanner' will let me transform into a Digimon." The finality with which she said it made it obvious she was merely repeating what he said, not asking him to confirm it one last time. "And here all I came to Japan for was to learn how to cook really good food... Now I've got myself wrapped up in some crazy alternate world shenanigans like a freaking comic book hero. Oh don't worry though, I'm not under the silly belief that I'll be invincible with this new power."

She smiled grimly, running a thumb over the scar on her face. "I've already experienced how easily life can be ended once..."