Digimon Adventure Tri: Echo

44) Prism of the Past

It didn't take long for Atsuo to arrive at the office once he had heard of what happened. Hiraku wound up sending him a message to explain what was going on. Hiraku didn't think that Atsuo would be awake so late, but as it turned out, Atsuo had just gotten back from a band practice that ran much later than he anticipated. As such, he was still up and ready to roll when he heard that something had gone wrong with the Chosen Children in the Digital World. He threw everything together that he would need to stay overnight at the office before he made his way over there. 

Hiraku had just gone to sleep when Atsuo arrived with Daigo taking care of looking over the computer for any updates on what was going on with the Chosen Children. Daigo was starting to regret taking the middle shift since it meant that he was interrupting his own sleep schedule willingly to stay up and watch the computer. Of course, it was better that he took the middle shift rather than Maki as far as he was concerned. She wasn't in any condition to look after any potential updates given how awful her migraine appeared to be, and Daigo was glad that she didn't have to put any extra stress on herself from a physical or mental perspective by waking up any sooner than she had to. Still, that didn't at all take away the frustration from being on the middle shift, Daigo learned. He was going to have to grin and bear it though, and so, he sat behind the screen with his head being held up by his palm. 

A knock came at the door gently, and Daigo glanced up with careful eyes. He was fifteen minutes into his shift, but he could still guess that this was Atsuo. Hiraku had told Atsuo about what was going on, and he had passed that information on to Daigo just before he crashed for the night. "Come in," Daigo said sleepily, his words slurring together into something that was almost impossible to distinguish. 

The door pushed open slowly, and Atsuo entered view soon afterwards. "Morning, Daigo," Atsuo greeted. He had a lot more energy than Daigo thought was right for anyone to have at this time of the night, but then again, he supposed that Atsuo hadn't been doing anything too overwhelming or exhausting to drain his energy. Band practice had to be less tiring than sitting in front of a screen waiting for information to come out about the attack that had nearly killed the Chosen Children. Daigo couldn't help but bitterly think that he never wanted to be on an emotional rollercoaster like this one again. At least he would be able to talk with Atsuo as a way of passing the time though. 

"Morning," Daigo replied. He forced himself to rise to his full height as he watched Atsuo move over in his direction. Atsuo pulled a chair up to sit next to Daigo behind the screen, and the dark-haired man let out a heavy sigh. "I guess that you'll be wanting to hear about everything that's going on right now, huh?"

"Hiraku told me a bit about it, but I don't think that extra details would hurt," Atsuo responded. Daigo was already thankful for the fact that he could at least talk to Atsuo throughout part of his nighttime shift. It would certainly be better than having to sit in the dark and the quiet all by himself, that was for sure. 

Daigo nodded. "Well, the Chosen Children have defeated Daemon. They should have been on their way back here by now, but instead, they were attacked by the ruler of the Dark Ocean. We've also learned that his name is apparently Dagomon. He separated them all, and they're trying to come back together. We can't just open separate gates for them since they've only got one laptop, and Koushiro is the one who has it. If we open gates from this side, we risk damaging the barrier even more than we have to since our portal to the Dark Ocean is unstable. Nobody wants to do that, and so, here we are. Look at the lovely little conundrum we've found ourselves in." He let out a hollow chuckle as he finished speaking, halfway wishing that he could simply slam his face into the table and let all of this be over and done with by the time he picked his head up again. 

"And almost everyone is accounted for right now, right?" Atsuo questioned. Daigo responded with a nod. "Hiraku told me that while I was on my way here. He said that only Meiko hasn't said that she's alright, and that's pretty concerning since she's the only member of the team who's alone."