Under the Rain [Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS]

S2-46✩ Crash the Party! My Nemesis, His Name Is...!

Two days later, Yusaku fulfilled his promise to Mirai and Takeru by finishing the program that he and Kusanagi were working on with the Knights of Hanoi and Ghost Girl. Running that program would allow them to perform a deep scan in LINK VRAINS and ultimately reveal their enemies' headquarters, wherever it was hidden.

It was a little past dusk when Yusaku logged in alongside Takeru and found out they were the last to arrive at their rendezvous place. Blue Maiden, Spectre, and Revolver were throwing them sharp glares upon their arrival, and Soulburner immediately had goosebumps running along his skin when he felt the heavy atmosphere around them. Meanwhile, Playmaker didn't seem to be bothered by it at all, instead acting as nonchalant as usual and simply telling them, "Sorry for the wait, everyone."

"Finally! What took you guys so long?" came a scolding from Blue Maiden as she walked to Playmaker and demanded an explanation from him. He stayed calm when he answered, "We were eating the food that our moral support unit made for us."

She made a face. "Huh? What moral support unit? ...No, wait--you were eating?!"

"Yup! We can't fight on an empty stomach, can we?" Ai replied cheerfully and Playmaker nodded along as if it was obvious, earning a chuckle from Aqua and causing Blue Maiden to facepalm. With a sigh, she said, "I understand that you're the Playmaker, but to think you'd be carefree enough to enjoy a meal... you know, I skipped lunch today because I lost my appetite stressing about our raid."

"Honestly, that's all the more reason not to skip lunch," Playmaker noted, "I'm sorry to hear that, though. Anyway, where's Ghost Girl? Won't she join us?"

Blue Maiden shook her head. "No, she'll be monitoring LINK VRAINS while we go there, so if something were to happen, she can deal with it and contact my brother."

"I see."

Meanwhile, Soulburner managed to avoid Blue Maiden's sight and went straight to Revolver to get Flame back. When Flame saw him approaching, he waved at him and received a smile that quickly got replaced by a serious look. Soulburner stopped before Revolver, who merely glanced at him alongside Spectre, and glowered. "Revolver, I came just like I promised. Now return Flame to me!"

Revolver briefly smirked upon seeing his fierce glare. "Of course you'd come. Go ahead, take this 'partner' of yours back. I have enough with having an AI dwell in my duel disk."

As Revolver spoke, he tapped a certain button on his duel disk, activating the data transfer function and soon, Flame emerged from Soulburner's duel disk. The boy's eyes lit up in joy as a sheepish and awkward smile quickly adorned his lips. "Welcome back, Flame... I'm really sorry for what happened."

Flame closed his eyes and shrugged in response. "Don't worry about it, I've never hold a grudge against you for that. And I hate to admit this, but those Knights of Hanoi people weren't so bad... when they didn't actively plot to erase you, that is."

"Really?" Soulburner was surprised, but also curious. "What did they make you do?"

"You know," Flame sneaked a glance at Revolver. He had left them to warn two desperate journalists with a frog and a pigeon avatar that wanted to tag along and broadcast their raid to the real world. Flame could see Revolver's wide smirk when he threatened to end their careers right there by erasing their accounts right at this moment, eventually forcing them to log out. Flame closed his eyes as Soulburner patiently waited for him to continue speaking. "Programming and stuff. You still won't get it even if I simplified it for you."

"Cuz unlike them, I'm no programmer, yeah?" Soulburner rolled his eyes. "I'm very sorry I lived in a rural area where the technology wasn't as advanced as Den City!"