Digimon Adventure Tri: Echo

18) Crimson Paranoia

Miyako hadn't even started fighting off the Digimon, but it already felt as if she had been struggling for at least half an hour. 

It hadn't been easy for her to wish her parents a safe passage out of Odaiba. She wanted to stay with them but knew that there was no choice. Her wish to make sure that both of them were safe remained bright and passionate inside of her, and it only seemed to grow worse when she realized that her siblings were elsewhere in the evacuation messiness that had come to consume Odaiba as of late. They hadn't been willing to let her go, but after some hard-won fighting, she was able to convince them that splitting up would be the best option. She still felt bad about it, yes, but she knew that there was no other option. If they were going to be saved in the long term, she was going to have to push them to make the hard decision for the short term. 

Miyako and Silphymon had started running through the streets of Odaiba since then, though it was still much easier said than done for them to figure out where anyone else was. Miyako cursed the lack of warning that they had been given for such a large invasion. She knew that there was nothing that would have made this easier, but she was so frazzled that it felt like all she could do was curse the universe for not treating her with anything resembling dignity. The others were far out of her reach, and she and Silphymon would waste valuable time if they tried to track down other members of the Chosen Children team without fighting off at least a small handful of the enemy Digimon first. 

Silphymon's hand suddenly reached out towards Miyako, and the two both pressed their bodies against the side of a nearby building firmly. A Digimon whistled by them, and Miyako shoved her eyes shut so quickly that she had no idea if the shrieking of the wind had come from overhead or somewhere in front of her. She didn't think that it even mattered. There were Digimon near them at all, and that meant that she and Silphymon were going to have to get to work as soon as possible. 

Miyako was still for an extra set of precious seconds even after she was convinced that it would be safe to move. She was almost afraid of creeping out of the shadows since there was no way of saying for sure what would be waiting for them. Miyako didn't normally get frazzled this way, but everything had happened so quickly that she had barely been able to get a grip on the passage of time before her life turned upside down in favor of the invasion from the Digital World. She could be ruled by her emotions, yes, and she had been aware of this for quite some time. However, emotions or logic meant little in the face of the attack from the Digital World; nothing would be able to help her out of this aside from brute force and a dash of well-earned luck, and she didn't know if she had any time to try and gain something of that nature. 

"Let's go," Silphymon told Miyako as he took a step forward. His wings seemed to shift slightly from the call to action that the enemy Digimon had forced from him, and he looked ready to jump off the ground and into the air if he had to. He was simply waiting for Miyako's cue as a matter of formality and kindness. 

Miyako swallowed back her nerves to the best of her ability, though it still felt like her organs were about to burst free from beneath her skin in a messy display of anxiety that threatened to eat her alive. "Okay," she forced herself to say through gritted teeth against the pounding in her skull. How long had she been suffering from a headache? Was that a question that she even wanted the answer to? She assumed not. 

Silphymon took to the skies soon afterwards, jumping from building to building like some type of superhero on the lookout for crime on the streets below. Miyako took off running only a handful of seconds later, and she hated the burning in her chest just a few moments after the sensation began. This was a disaster, and she wished that there was more she could do than just wish that it ended as soon as possible. 

~~~~~

Meiko knew that something was wrong long before she saw that there was something in her way of escape.