Prius: The Silent Killer (Cameron)

Elliot had no idea what was coming. One moment, he was just preparing the cross the street and make his merry way back home. The next moment, he was suddenly bowled over by what felt like a 60 pound cruise missile. Elliot let out a shocked gasp as he was hit folded over the stomach, whoever hit him picking the perfect spot for the weight of his bad leg to give out. Rather than just knocking Elliot out of the way of the incoming vehicle, she had basically bowled him over and sent him tumbling down the sidewalk. Was it a very nice landing? No. Elliot would probably have at least a scrape or two from this, even just little ones. Was it preferable to being hit by a car? Uh, hell yes.

Elliot sighed, completely winded, as he looked up to see what happened. There he saw his savior; a scrawny looking girl who was currently flipping off and shouting down the driver of the passing vehicle. Judging by how the car swayed, it must have been a drunk driver. The girl quickly ran over to Elliot, leaning down to help him up. He gratefully took her hand, standing up to the best of his ability. The bad leg definitely made it a lot harder; did he drop his walking stick when he fell? For that reason, he stood very carefully and gingerly, clearly prioritizing his left leg and being gentle with his right. "Huh? Yeah, I'm okay. Better when I find my walking stick . . ." he said, still sounding a little bit dazed from the impact. "You're the one who got me out of the way of the car? I owe you o-"

Elliot stopped, instinctively leaning forward a bit when he noticed the telltale bloom of red currently trickling down the girl's shoulder. "You're bleeding," he immediately said, swinging his backpack around his shoulder to start rooting through it in search of supplies. "Hold on, there's gotta be something I can do to help," he muttered worriedly. Fresh off of a near car accident, and already he was worrying about others. No wonder Elliot kept ending up in danger.

Elliot couldn't help but notice Haley's accent. A fellow Californian was here? Even in the face of everything that had been going on, there was something a little comforting about that. "I know that accent. California?" he asked as he heeded Haley's warning. She didn't really give him a choice in the matter, considering he was braced against her shoulder due to lacking a walking stick, but at least it gave him a chance to get out of traffic.

It didn't take too long for Haley to rescue it, at least, along with a strange, small device. He would just have to brace himself until then, keeping most pressure on his good leg as he eyed the road. Somehow, hie eye kept wandering back to the device in the road. Was it a phone? No, it was a little too rounded for that. In fact, it almost looked like . . .

Aww, son of a bitch.

He gratefully accepted the walking stick when Haley returned, taking advantage of its presence so he could better rummage through his backpack. He continued to cast worried glances at Haley's shoulder as he did so, cringing a little at how dark it was starting to stain. There was no way that could be okay. Each spread of red got Elliot rummaging faster, until soon he had managed to get a hold of something that would be of use. He swallowed nervously as he looked down at it, realizing he was peering down at his good pillow.

This was pretty much the only thing that could help put him to sleep on some days, but he knew if he let someone walk home injured he wouldn't be able to sleep well either way. He quickly tore a strip of the pillowcase off, walking over to Haley and looking down at her shoulder. "I'm going to try to help. Is that okay?" he asked, looking at the remaining contents of his backpack. Currently, it was an untouched bottle of water he had left over from school. It wasn't the best first aid tool, but damnit, it'd have to do! "And my name's Elliot, by the way. Sorry we had to meet like this."

Oops. Haley had it covered already. Honestly, considering her demeanor compared to his, Elliot really should have expected that. He was probably a bit hasty, but frankly Elliot didn't regret it. After having his literal life saved, he would've preferred being a little overzealous to being ungrateful. He put the strip of pillowcase back into his bag, figuring he's sew it up later.

It didn't make him being called out on it any less embarrassing. Elliot blushed a little in surprise at the question, trying to figure out how to explain it. "Sleep problems," he admitted, deciding that would be the most concise explanation for why he brought The Good Pillow everywhere. It didn't help how demanding the Digital World could be, but Elliot didn't want to have to explain that to more people than necessary. Sure, Haley had a suspicious item she scoffed back into her bag quickly, but he didn't want to be presume and start babbling about a random pedometer.

At least Haley seemed okay. Battered and sore, but she was walking it off. That kind of pain tolerance was pretty damn impressive. "You've got that right," he agreed, not wanting to let on the fact that it was maybe the third most dangerous first meeting he had with someone at best. "Can't say I expected it, honestly. I mean, usually there's way too much crowding for cars to just shoot out like that. But, hey, still on me for not looking first.

So, is your phone okay?" There was the slightest bit of suspicion to the question, as if Elliot knew damn well what it was but didn't want to risk just talking about it so openly.

Elliot huffed slightly at Haley's word choice there. "This dump's kinda where I live," he said. Japan had nicer housing districts, but it wasn't like a single mother learning a new job in a new country could really get Elliot into one of those. The whole family had to cut back in order to pull the move off in the first place, and going to Shiubya's actual residential area would've sent them way past square one. "But I know what you mean. Hard not to get distracted looking at all the nicer places out there sometimes." Not only did Elliot mean the proper living areas in Shibuya, but he also meant the various cities of the Digital World. Whitewater was pretty much a paradise of beachfront property, for crying out loud!

Haley herself seemed a little suspect of Elliot's word choice, namely his "sleep problems." If only she knew how right she was about him slumming it. "I like to go out a lot," he said. "The park's really nice, and the forest's really peaceful. And sometimes you just want to lay down in the sun and doze off, right? So the pillow really comes in handy for that." It was also great for having something comforting to hold onto when the Digital World was especially stressful, but that didn't really need to be said.

That is, of course, until Haley showed off her "phone." Elliot's sigh of relief was audible. "Oh, thank goodness. I was getting really worried I'd have to keep dancing around that," he said, fumbling around in his backpack before pulling out his own Digivice. His was different in size and shape from hers; at the very least, Elliot knew she wasn't a spirit user. "How long ago did you get picked for it?"

The Housing District really was pretty breathtaking, wasn't it? Elliot had passed through there to visit friends sometimes, and he always ended up lingering just a little longer than he intended. It wasn't that he didn't like where he lived! He just . . . didn't like where he lived as much as he could have. Haley's words may have been pretty harsh, but they were unfortunately quite true. "Oakland's not the best place either, though, although my family and I had a nice little corner of it picked out. So it's kind of a sideways trade, you know?"

The park was busy, true, but Elliot really wasn't sure how bad of a thing that was. "I don't really mind that," he admitted. "Sometimes it can be a nice way of meeting people. Not as busy as school, or distracting as the shopping center. And you'd never expect who bumps into you half the time. If you're ever stressed out, you should try it sometime."

It sounds like Haley had a rather rude awakening into the Digital World, although part of it sounded familiar. Big, sweet, scaredy cat centipede? "Oh! That's Rinji," Elliot chirped. "Or, at least, I think it is. There are a lot of different Digimon of the same kind, but he's the only bug I met that was such a big softy. Not gonna lie, you lucked out. There are some really scary Digimon that could have set up the welcome wagon for you.

Better than how my bro and I ended up there. But that's a long story."

Rinji thought that Haley had tried to steal the Digivice? With the cute little arthropod having never shown an angry bone in his body so far, it was hard for Elliot to even imagine that! Then again, Haley could've easily started the interaction on a bit of a brash foot, so who knows what happened over there. "Yeah, Digimon can get kind of nervous around eggs," Elliot said. "There was that one time my brother and I found a Bakemon trying to steal an egg. That got really dangerous really fast, so I can see why Rinji was a bit nervous. Hopefully you were able to smooth things over."

This, on the other hand? This would be way harder to smooth over. Elliot looked towards Haley's mother nervously as she approached. At best she'd be worried. At worst she'd be both worried and furious. And Elliot was standing right there in the path of destruction. He considered what he could even possibly say to try and help, wondering if it might just be better to keep his mouth shut and let Haley handle it herself.

That said, with the worry settling over the group, Elliot didn't want to leave poor Haley hanging. Especialyl when all of this was kind of his fault in the first place. "Please, don't be mad at your daughter," he said. "I was crossing the road, and with it being so dark didn't even notice a drunk driver coming up. If it wasn't for her pulling me out of the way, I could've been in a real world of hurt there.

She's a hero, really! And, uh, I'm sorry that I got her dragged into this." By the end there he got kind of nervous. He hoped Haley's mom would absolve her of the blame, but also not hate him for his role in her getting scraped.