Okay, This is Awkward(OPEN)

Iona sighed in defeat.

"Because they're probably going to send me to juvie," she said, "Juvenile detention. Prison."

Iona's expression softened.

"Probably not for long," she reassured them, "I'll be good, and I'll get out a couple of months. No big deal."

Iona sounded almost as if she were bargaining with someone, probably herself. She was convinced if she could just play by the rules, she'd get out sooner rather than later. But that meant she had to do everything she could to appear normal.

Her tone firmed.

"But Ocellimon can't come with me," she said, "People at the detention center will be watching me. I have friends who have been there. They'll be looking for any reason to single me out. Not just the adults. The other kids, too. Even if Ocellimon stays hidden...if I look suspicious it'll put a bigger target on my back than I'll already have."

Iona gave a small smile.

"Maybe," she mumbled "It'll all depend on my good behavior--probably. I've read the Japanese are somewhat reticent to imprison minors. At least, they're less likely to do it than in Scotland--which makes this all even more ironic since I managed to avoid getting taken to juvenile detention while I was living there."

The chuckle Iona gave at this wanted for mirth. There wasn't anything funny about it. In fact, she couldn't help but feel she was being targeted. Japanese women are allowed to carry mace--or "pepper spray"--if the situation is deemed appropriate, i.e.: if a judge decides there was enough of a potential threat to warrant carrying it as a precaution. The implication then, however slight, was that Iona wasn't the right kind of person to be allowed to carry it for her self-defense.

And that was truly what she feared about all this. The tabloids all but confirmed that narrative in what had been written about the case for their filler articles. Though the story wasn't salacious enough to make the front page of any of them, people still got to read about the nyuuhaafu with a false identification falsely stating her sex (the fact that it was meant to conceal her age hardly came up in any of them) and carrying a weapon intended for a woman's protection on the streets. The problem wasn't so much that Iona was going to go to prison, but what kind of prison and under what circumstances. And what people she didn't even know now believed about her.

She stood up and took a step forward, seeming to intend to leave. But she stopped and addressed the two Digimon again in a breathy, shaky voice:

"Lothar. Mandrake. I really appreciate you two," she said, eyes downcast, "Helping us out that night. Helping me out now."

She once again turned her head to make eye contact with Lothar, and then Mandrake.

"If you want to fully understand," she said, "Just check any of the local tabloid newspapers. You know, the ones everyone reads but won't admit to doing so? I'll be somewhere in there. You'll be able to figure it out even if they don't use my name. Just please remember you knew me before you see what they say."

She shook her head. She hadn't known them long, but she hated being cagey with them. She thought for a minute that, if things had been different--if they'd met under different circumstances...The two of them just had this paternal vibe to them in the way they dealt with her. That wasn't something she ever had growing up, and God knows Arita Michi wasn't living up to that now as her long-lost birth father. She had the feeling that if they could protect her from this, they would. But they couldn't. Still, she wanted them to understand.

"I'm sorry I don't feel like speaking plainly about it," she said, "Just...remember that humans have particular hangups about things that digimon don't--at least, it seems to me that they don't. What's worse, even if they don't have any laws against something, that doesn't mean that those things they have hangups about won't influence the way they treat others. That's just the way humans are. I don't know if we can help it, sometimes."

Iona nodded.

"I see," she said, "I'm sorry I don't know too much about Digimon, but I guess maybe you already understand more than I could've thought. I'm glad to have known the two of you, however briefly."

In Iona's quiet, pensive moment, she noticed, as if for the first time, the sounds and smells of her surroundings. Her nod transitioned into a bow, which she held a moment before rising and looking up at the sky. She took a deep breath, noting that the air was layered with the smells of springtime and street vendor food. She noted the feeling of the sun on her skin--normally an unwelcome sensation. She used to walk through this area nearly every day, but she took for granted all the things that were pleasant about it. That very sun was the reason she wore sunscreen of the highest potency money could buy, but under these circumstances, she would miss it. There was no doubt in her mind that the sun would bear down on her far more harshly where she was going.

"See you on the other side, I guess," she said, smiling. She bowed again to bid them both farewell.

Passing through the alley on her way home, Iona thought she caught a glimpse of something peering at her from behind the dumpster. Normally, her mind would have dismissed this, but these days she knew better.

"I'll see you soon as well," she said, seemingly to no one but the empty, dirty alleyway itself, "Just stay out of trouble until then, okay? Be good."

Iona didn't see Ocellimon holding herself low on the rooftop of a building adjacent to the alley, but she didn't need to. She was sure the feline digimon was present and listening.

Ocellimon's green eyes narrowed as her human "partner" passed. She did not make her presence known, but knew that Iona had sensed it nonetheless. Troublesome, but expected.

Unnoticed by the crowd, Ociellimon prowled the rooftop, close to the edge that overlooked the sidewalk. She peered down at a newsstand just below her. There, she saw a stack of papers with ridiculous and sensational headlines like "Baby's Bad Breath Kills His Wife" and "Alien Bible Found." Yet, hidden amongst these absurd statements were smaller texts indicating stories that were less sensational, but still just as scandalous. One of these read:



Ocellimon's eyes narrowed into thin slivers of vicious green.

Ocellimon had seen Mandrake and Lothar from the rooftops. She looked from them to the stack of offending tabloid newspapers at the newsstand. A human male with cropped hair was managing the stand, passing out the papers to customers who exchanged their own bits of paper. Ocellimon wasn't entirely sure what it meant, but she could read the words and knew somehow this had upset Iona. And the other humans were pursuing the papers that contained those words.

Ocellimon rose to her full height, then lowered herself into a crouch. Her muscles rippled with tension as she primed herself. When the tension in her muscles had reached its peak, Ocellimon propelled herself off the rooftop, down the entire height of the two-story building from which she had lept, pouncing directly onto the stack of papers on the newsstand. The impact kicked up a furious blizzard of tabloid papers, flying out in all directions and frightening every human nearby. The poor newsstand clerk had fallen on his behind, looking dumbfounded.

Though Ocellimon had to drop stealth in order to make her assault on the offending papers, she had moved so fast that all any human could have seen was the shadow of something large and vaguely-feline crashing down upon the stand before skittering off and out of sight.

On her way back into the secluded alley, Ocellimon passed deliberately into Mandrake and Lothar's view. She glanced at them. Her emerald eyes narrowed, but then her head lowered as if she were nodding. Having acknowledged the friends of her tamer, Occelimon again lept out of sight and back into the deep shadows of a nearby alleyway.