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_Love seeketh not itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care,

But for another gives its ease

And builds a heaven in Hell's despair._

William Blake

Oliver was awoken by a loud, startled yelp coming from Jes' bed. Not wanting to disturb Jes once she finally managed to fall asleep the previous night, Oliver had sat awake in a chair placed next to the bed for as long as he could in case anything happened to her. He hadn't planned on falling asleep, but he must have fallen asleep from exhaustion sometime in the early morning. He was now quite mad at himself.

Jes looked almost terrified...her black and dark green fur was slick with sweat, and the sudden upward jolting of her body had obviously caused her pain from bending where her wound was.

"Oh," she said, falling back to her resting position. "It was just a dream."

"What? What was a dream?" Oliver tucked Jes back into the position she had slept in, which she had told him didn't hurt to lay in. She smiled weakly through the pain that she was obviously experiencing, but after he tucked her in, she still hadn't answered his question.

"What was it?" he asked again, stroking her nose and muzzle as gently and as soothingly as he could.

"Nothing...it was just a bad dream."

"...you can tell me, Jes. Unless you don't want to, of course."

"It was just a dream. Well, it was more like a memory, but worse." His new girlfriend looked away from him. Her ears and head drooped backwards, making her look even more pathetic than she already was. Whatever she was dreaming about or remembering, it didn't take another Digimon to notice that it was bothering her a great deal. He took her hand as gently as he could, gave it a light squeeze, and tried to comfort her as best as he could.

"Do you want to talk about it?" He didn't want to put any pressure on Jes, but maybe if she talked with somebody about it, it wouldn't bother her as much anymore.

"Yeah...with you," she looked up at him and smiled slightly. He smiled back and gave her hand a little bit more of a squeeze than he had before.

"It was from about six years ago...I think. I wasn't keeping track of time back then, just living day to day. It was just after I had digivolved to my Rookie stage...my first adult form." Oliver frowned at the last part of the sentence, around the same time that Jes started to trail off into an empty silence. Even though she hadn't said much, Oliver already had a pretty good idea that this was going to involve Jes being violated. The Jes that Jamie knew could be explained away mostly by something like that.

"If you don't want to talk about it, Jes, I'll understand."

"No, Oliver, I need to tell somebody. Please..."

"Alright, I'll listen...don't worry."

"Thank you. Well...this was a few days after I first got to my Rookie level. I was still kind of naïve. I mean, I knew there were Digimon who would take advantage of me, but I hadn't known anything they would want from me other than my data. Since I was a Rookie now, I thought that I'd be able to protect myself enough to go anywhere, or at least be big enough and fast enough to knock down my enemy and get as far away as I could. I could teleport then," she looked from Oliver again, "What could possibly go wrong..."

"A data-type offered me somewhere to stay when I was in a city. I can't remember what species he was, but I remember that he was like a large bird...he was very nice to me. Anyway, after a few nights of that, he got me alone at night, and he...he..." She looked away from again, repeating the word 'he' once, then pausing and repeating the cycle a few more times, then falling silent.

"It's alright, Jes, I understand...you can tell me the details later when you feel better if you want to."

"No...there's more. I want to tell you." She closed her eyes, paused again for a few moments and started over. "Once he got me alone, he started kissing me. I didn't know what it was at the time, I only knew that it made a part of me feel good...it wasn't sexual or anything at that point, it was just a good feeling. If it hadn't gone any farther, I wouldn't have said anything or objected, I kind of liked it. But he wanted more...he pushed me down onto the stack of cushions that he had given me to sleep on, and...and he tried to force his way into me. I ... I didn't mind the kissing, that had felt kind of good, but this was just painful, and in the back of my mind, I knew I didn't want it. I didn't know why, I didn't think about it, but I knew that I didn't like it."

As Jes paused, her paw clenched around Oliver's hand and he suddenly felt quite guilty for even allowing her to even begin reliving that part of her life. That guilt only got worse as Jes' pause got longer and longer. He tried to compensate by hugging her tighter and squeezing her hand harder, but it didn't really help him resolve any of it.

"Jes, you don't have--"

"No, Oliver...I need to tell someone. I've kept this to myself for too long." There was another momentary pause before she started speaking again. "I told him to stop, that I didn't want that, but he didn't listen. I tried to get away without hurting him, Oliver, I really did. But I couldn't. I had to attack him. That got him off of me and across the room, so I ran. I ran out of that place and teleported as far away from it as I could, again and again until I was completely exhausted and couldn't do it any longer." She looked him in the eye briefly before turning away again.

"I've never really trusted anyone since then, Oliver, not even Ned. I don't want to have to do that any longer, I want to trust you..." she trailed off, still looking in the opposite direction.

"It's alright," he did his best to be comforted, gently grabbing a hold of Jes' muzzle and turning it towards him. There were a few tears running down Jes' fox-like, canine face, and Oliver did the first thing that came into his mind to comfort her--he started scratching underneath her chin as soothingly as he could. It didn't take long for the gentle rubbing to be met with the same purring noises that she had made before. She smiled slightly through the tears, and he smiled back, reassuring Oliver that what he was doing was actually having an effect.

"That feels nice..." she said absently through her purring. He couldn't help but feel sorry for her. His first impression of her had been completely wrong; when he had first seen Jes in the armor that came with her champion form, quite angry at everything that happened around her, he had at first assumed that she was either depressed or that this was typical behavior for Digimon. He had never even dreamed that they were complex enough to have emotions beyond the simple hatred of other Digimon. Jes' purring started to intensify over time, bringing his attention back to her and the noise that she was making.

"Can you do that only when someone's doing this, or is it like a response thing...?" he asked, blushing slightly, embarrassed by asking a question that probably sounded incredibly stupid to her.

"It's a response," she purred.

Oliver smiled at that. He was absolutely in love with that sound, almost as much as he liked Jes herself. Suddenly, she hugged him tightly and the purring got even louder than before. His attention was drawn toward her ears, one of Jes' other exotic features that he was finding himself more and more attracted to. At the moment, they were pulled back as she purred happily and nuzzled his face, so he amused himself (and her, he hoped) by pushing his finger against the base of one of them and forcing it back up into an erect position. Her head immediately lowered in a reaction that he assumed was one of instinct more than anything else. Both her head and her ears returned to where they were.

"You don't have to worry about any of that any more," Oliver said, referring to their original topic of conversation. "It's all behind you and in your past now," he said, being as comforting as he could, gently stroking underneath Jes' muzzle.

"I...I know, Oliver." She answered quickly, almost not moving her mouth at all. "Thank you..."

"Don't mention it," he dropped the volume of his voice down to where Jes' had been, and was silent from then on. Apparently, Jes had said everything that she needed to, and felt the better from it. Oliver didn't know if he was any better off having heard that Jes had been raped, but he was certainly happy that she was able to get everything off of her chest that she wanted to. Now, he was content to hold her there and make sure that she stayed as happy and content as she obviously was now.

So, he remained there in silence.

* * * * * * * *

Jamie's left eye opened before his right eye did, which wasn't entirely unusual. That eye had opened up to see a Digimon sleeping. While that was a little bit more unusual, it still happened enough to not be surprising. What didn't happen very often and was abnormal was that the Digimon was not Jes...what was even more strange were the soft cooing and whistling noises that Jean was making in her sleep. They were so cute that they were beyond words, and it was all Jamie could do not get up from the chairs he was leaning on to go down there and squeeze her ina tight hug. In fact, the only thing that was keeping him from doing just that this very moment was the knowledge that such an action could very well end with his death. Jamie closed his eyes briefly to wipe the sleep away from them, and when he opened them again, he got his first glimpse of what Jean really looked like. She must have moved around slightly in her sleep, because her hood had slipped down, revealing a small sliver of a muzzle flecked with a number of white scales as well as two small, delicate nostrils, which were flaring ever so slightly with every breath that she took. Whatever she was, she was something reptilian...

Before he knew what he was doing, he had got up and sneaked slowly over to where that small sliver of jean was visible and slowly, silently and gently lifted away the hood, pulling it off as to create as little resistance between Jean's hood and Jean herself. When the blue garment fell off her head, he finally saw Jean for what she really was: a young-looking dragoness very similar to Lex in body with the exception of being female and her color, which was absolutely fascinating. Rather than the dark red that Lex's scales sported, Jean was the most purest white that he had ever seen in his life--the bright white of the stars could hardly to compare to this. It was as if she were the pinnacle of goodness and her white skin--scales--was her badge to prove it. It must be hell, he thought, trying to keep clean with a body that color.

The image of a very naked, very shameless Jean bathing in a lake somewhere came to mind. He would be thankful for that later, since it was the something that brought him back to the reality of what he had done. It was that moment when he also realized that Jean's eyes were open and wide in an expression of pure terror.

"Jamie..." she sobbed, pulling her hood back over her head and clambering desperately as far away from him as she could get, leaning up against the headboard and drawing her legs up against her chest. "Why ..........?" He watched her with a growing guilt. Jean's chest rose and fell. She was obviously deeply offended by him seeing her face for some reason. He had thought for a few minutes that perhaps she was deformed or something somewhere and that was why she didn't want him to see any of her body, but Jamie couldn't see how a physically deformed Digimon could have made it this far in life, nor how any deformity would dare to place itself on such a beautiful creature.

"I'm sorry, Jean..." he answered in apology, the guilt over what he had done unbearable. She had trusted him and stayed in his room with him, and he had betrayed that trust just to satisfy his curiosity. She had every right to be wary of him and to try and stay away from him.

"Why?" she asked after a moment, still quite obviously weary of him, but slightly more comfortable with him after a few moments.

"I was curious," he confessed. "I wanted to see what you looked like underneath your hood. I won't do it again if you don't want me to." Jamie tried to show his pacifism by sitting down in a chair on the other side of the room where he couldn't do anything further to her.

"Why would you want to know my appearance?" she asked. He opened his mouth to tell her the truth that he found her incredibly attractive, but he thought that would be too much for her to handle at the moment, so he tried something else.

"I wanted to know whether or not you were something I should be afraid of," he grinned slightly, feigning a little bit of ignorance for her sake. "After all, I've got a Digimon to consider."

"Oh...." She seemed to believe that and lay back, setting herself against the headboard. "Don't worry about that Jamie...." She said, using his name for the first time in the past few minutes of conversation. "I don't want to hurt them. I don't want to hurt anyone anymore." Her voice lowered town to a whisper, where she probably believed that Jamie couldn't hear her. "I've done that enough." He didn't need to see her white reptilian face to know that there was something bothering her deeply, something that he didn't know anything about.

"Do you have anything you want to do today, Jean?" he asked, giggling slightly and using her name in the same way that she had used his. From what he had seen, he was guessing that this was her first trip to the Real World, and he didn't want her to get the wrong impression of what everyone was like that lived here.

"What do you mean?" she asked with a cock of her head. "I no longer have a function here, now that I have left the service of my Chapter." Her head went down briefly before going back up. "I don't know what I'm going to do now."

"Not like that...." Jamie giggled slightly. The Clerimon must have gotten completely the wrong impression of what he had said. "I wanted to know if there was anything you wanted to do in town before we left to go back home. You know, for fun."

"... ... For fun?" she looked at Jamie with what had to be question. "What do you mean by that?"

"You never did anything to enjoy yourself?"

"Not really...I rest when I am given the chance, and then return to the service of those who cannot fight for themselves." She continued talking about how actively seeking out pleasure was one of the things that was forbidden to her, but he stopped paying attention a few moments into that. He was too busy trying to think of what it must have been like for Jean, who had never known anything other than the service of this 'chapter', 'order', or whatever the hell it was called. She had obviously been blinded to the realities of life and brainwashed by it. It wasn't going to be easy to get her into what everyone else knew as life. To start with, she needed to see that there was more to life than just doing your job...

He was almost immediately reminded of the arcade that they had seen while wandering around in search of a hotel. Maybe the best thing for her at the moment was to loosen up and familiarize herself with what the humans that lived here did for entertainment.

"Do you want to take a trip to the arcade with me?" he asked, getting up and shrugging off what remained of his sleep after the episode of waking Jean up.

"The what?"

"The arcade. It's where humans go to have a good time and enjoy themselves by playing games. I'd be happy to pay for you if you wanted to come with me."

"Alright..." her response came hesitantly, as if she weren't entirely sure about what she was doing--that was understandable, though, and Jamie didn't mind even if he couldn't sympathize with it. "But don't leave me alone...I don't have anywhere else to go."

"I won't," Jamie answered quickly, even though he had been surprised and taken off-guard by such a remark from Jean. He had an urge to grab the blue glove that protruded from Jean's sleeve and give it as tight a squeeze as he could manage to show her how resolute he was in his promise, but after what he had done in waking her up, she probably wouldn't have been very receptive to something like that. This time, he resisted the temptation. Instead, he waited for her to get up on her own and follow him outside, which she eventually did. He wasn't sure how other people would react to her presence--Jes didn't usually follow him into such places. Instead, she had always spent a lot of time to herself, much as his brother did (although he had a fairly good idea of what Tom was doing when he was by himself, it wasn't so much that way with Jes). But he didn't really care about any of that, and Jean probably wouldn't, either.

"Tell me more about this arcade," she said, toning the word 'arcade' as if it were a proper noun and the name of a specific, singular space.

"Well," Jamie said, again resisting a sudden impulse to hold the delicate creature's hand. "Like I said, it's a place where humans go to relax and have fun."

"Is that what you do all day? Have fun?"

"No," he giggled. "I wish; most of our time is spent at work at home, but we can do pretty much what we want the rest of the time..." judging by her body language, she seemed shocked. The idea of having hours on end to yourself seemed to amaze her entirely, as if it were a completely alien concept. "Come on," he said with a little chide, "it isn't that odd."

Sure that Jes and Oliver were still probably sleeping and that Lex and Angie were either sleeping as well or doing something else that he didn't need to know the details of, he wasn't going to bother letting them know where he was going. They were fine by themselves for at least a day. They passed the old lady wearing glasses FTW at the reception desk, then walked outside of the building. It wasn't raining outside or anything like that, but it was certainly not the best weather in the world. It reminded him of his own home, where it was hardly ever sunny.

"Just like home," he added to his thoughts.

"What?"

"Nothing," he answered. "I was just thinking that this weather is just like the weather at home in England..."

"Ing-gland?" Jamie gave himself a quick mental slap. He had to remember that even though she was more than capable of reducing him into nothing more than a pile of ash, in this world she had the knowledge of a small child completely unfamiliar with this world.

"England, yes, where I live."

"Ing-gland....ang-land..." Jamie giggled at Jean's pronunciation. "Is it near here?"

"No, its quite far away."

"Why aren't you there now? Are you on a quest?"

"Something like that," he answered with a laugh. Jes wanted to go to the Digital World for whatever reason, so I really didn't have any choice when I followed her. Jes wasn't strong enough to break the barrier herself, so we had to find another way to get home. Eventually, we finally got back after finding a portal, and when we did, we came out here. Quest isn't exactly the word that I would use, but I guess it was for Jes."

"Oh...I see." She said after a few moments, then was silent. Jamie kept looking off into the distance, trying to look in any direction other than the one that Jean was in. He wanted to break the silence that was growing longer and longer between the two of them, but he didn't know how. All he could think of was how startlingly white Jean's scales were and how much more feminine she looked than Lex. He wouldn't mind seeing that face morning after morning, with those bright blue eyes closed and concealed in a happy sleep. Somehow, though, he didn't picture Jean being very receptive to him proposing anything like that.

"...why do you keep looking at me like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like you are. You're just ... staring at me. I know you're not a Digimon, so you can't be trying to analyze me." Whenever she spoke to him, she turned to face him--if it could be called that, since he couldn't see any of her face at all, save for the two almost glowing points of light that were her eyes.

"I...uh..." he struggled to come up with something to say that wouldn't make him look like a complete idiot or pervert. "I just keep wondering why you would want to hid a face as pretty as yours under a hood like that," he blushed, sure that he had failed in his efforts to not appear stupid, if not both stupid and perverted.

"..."

"..."

"You think--"

"You're pretty. Yes." He blushed harder, and had another impulse to hug her.

"What?"

"You're pretty," he blushed even harder, sure that his face was beet-red by now. This was doing nothing for his self-image. "You're um, beautiful...attractive. I was just wondering why you want to hide your face from everyone."

"I...I have to. It's part of my function. While I wear this, I am..." she hesitated as if she was in deep thought, finally coming to a conclusion. "It's complicated."

"Oh, alright," Jamie conceded. It must have been some obscure standing order that she had a great deal of difficulty parting with for whatever reason. She'd eventually get over it. "I'm sorry if I've offended you."

"No, it's alright."

This time, Jamie knew better than to not resist the silence. It was probably for the better in the long run. If they had been back in England, Jamie would have shown the Clerimon all of the sights of London; unfortunately, they were in Japan, and Jamie had all he could do to remember where the hotel they were staying at was.

"Oh, look, there's the arcade..." he said suddenly, almost going by the entrance from the street to the small building they had gone by on their way here the first night. There weren't man y people there--it was, after all, a weekday during the spring. Most people were busy either with school or with their jobs. Jamie had decided to take a temporary vacation from both of those to enjoy himself before making his way up the educational ladder.

"What are they doing?" Jean stared at the arcade, her face pointed in the direction of someone playing a side-scrolling fighting game.

"They're having fun."

"Is that what we'll be doing?"

"If you want to," he smiled slightly, walking over to the change machine and getting a cash advance with his credit card. His mother probably wouldn't like him spending all of the money he had accumulated for his vacation like this, but she wasn't here at the moment, and he thought that Jean needed this.

"What are you dong?"

"I'm getting some money. I didn't expect to end up here, I kind of got stuck in the Digital World when that portal collapsed behind me." He sorted through the barrage of coins that came out of the change machine--those must have been yen.

"Oh.." Jean sounded like she was going to say something else, but she seemed to be distracted by the coins in his hand. "What are those for?"

"We need these to pay to use the games," he explained, pointing out someone who was putting their money in.

"Oh..." she said again. Jamie surveyed the room, looking for something familiar to him that he could teach to the Digimon. There many games that he didn't recognize and wouldn't have a clue how to play, but there were one or two that he recognized and could fall back on if the situation called for it.

"Ah," he said, finding a House of the Dead 2 unit. "This one's my favorite," he grinned at Jean, then put some money into the machine, picking up the guncon with both of his hands. "See, you take this..." he waited until a zombie started to cross the screen from the other side, then promptly started blasting away at it, "and you kill anything that gets in your way."

He continued playing by himself for a few more minutes before Jean finally joined him, holding the controller with both hands directly in front of her in the way that a child unfamiliar with the game. That forced him to giggle, and he would have corrected her stance b y moving her into a different one, and he was about to until he realized that could end up with him being subject to the same attacks that Lex and Jes had been earlier.

"Jamie..." she made a little giggling noice, the first time Jamie had ever heard her make any noise that remotely resembled happiness. "I think they killed me."

"That's alright," he grinned and put more money in, "as long as you have money, you don't need to die."

"Oh, that's neat..." she seemed quite fascinated by the concept, and a few pounds (according to the exchange rate) later, her score was already better than his. "What does this number mean?" she pointed the controller at the corner of the screen where the score was.

"That shows how well you're doing. See, you're already doing better than I am," he giggled. A part of him was jealous and told the rest that it was because she wasn't human and had much better reflexes than he did. Most of him, though, didn't have much a problem losing to Jean. He just wanted to make sure that she was happy as long as she was with him, a thought which made him blush almost as soon as it completed in his mind. They played almost two and a half complete games on the two credits that Jamie had put in, and once they were done with that set of credits, Jamie noticed that Jean's gaze was starting to wander around expectantly, her head twisting from game to game as she stared briefly at each machine.

"Do you want to try another one?" he asked, assuming that she did and that was why she had lost interest in House of the Dead.

"Yes," she giggled slightly again, making Jamie endlessly happy. If the arcade gave her this much joy, he wondered if she would like the park that was only a block away from his house. That led to a daydream of the two of them running through the meadow leading up to the hill at the center of the park and the tree that topped it, then laying down after the run with exhaustion in the small bed of flowers that grew there. Jamie smiled happily at the finally voluntarily bare face of the Clerimon beside him, and for the first time that he could tell, she smiled back, the edges of her mouth curling upward nearly to her eyes: those beautiful, radiant eyes that held his very soul within them. He closed his own eyes in anticipation of a pleasure greater even than the sight of her face, and started to lean forward toward the Clerimon, who responded--

"... you're staring at me again." the flat reality of Jean's voice pulled him away from his fantastic daydream. The cooperative happy creature of his daydream that had given into his advances was in reality standing quite fully concealed holding a controller with a barely-noticable cock of the head.

"S-sorry," he quickly apologiazed and turned away. He would have added a 'I'm not used to being around beautiful women' or 'I was fantasizing about laying beside you', but he didn't want to do any more psychological damage than had already been done.

"I don't understand you...any of you. But I especially don't understand you."

"What don't you understand about me?"

"I don't understand why you're interested in me," she answered quickly while replacing the controller. "You look at me in the same way that I see males looking at their lifetime mates."

Jamie immediately blushed, having been envisioning just that relationship before Jean said anything of the nature. When he started to give the question consideration, though, he wasn't sure he was able to answer it. He couldn't say why he was attracted to Jean, the fact that he was simply existed. She was a reptilian Digimon, he was a skin-bearing human mammal. They had very little, if anything, in common with one another. IN fact, at the moment, the only thing he could have answered with truthfully was 'I don't know'. Thus--

"I don't know."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"There are lots of things you haven't tried here, Jean," Jamie tried to steer the conversation back to what they were doing, trying to get her mind off of the subject. "How about that one?" he pointed out a pad-based dancing machine. "As a Digimon, you must be good at that..." he giggled jokingly, "I haven't played it for quite a while, so I'm sure I'll be horrible."

"Why do you do it if you know you will lose? Do you earn something by buying that time?" Jamie couldn't help but grin at the military analogy that Jean was putting on everything. He couldn't blame her, of course. From what he could guess, she came from some kind of monastic military group charged with protecting a certain group of Digimon from other threats.

"Because I get enjoyment from it,"

"You get enjoyment from losing competition."

"I get enjoyment from the competition."

"Is that a common trait in humans?"

"Yep."

"That is most illogical."

"Who ever said humans were logical, Mr. Spock?" Jamie giggled.

"Mister ... Spock?"

"..." Jamie mentally slapped himself again, and was about to explain who Spock was when he realized he probably wouldn't be able to get across the idea of an actor and a TV show to a Digimon. "He was a very logical person in human history. You probably would have gotten along well with him."

After a few more minutes of trying to convince Jean that she would enjoy the game anyway, she finally stood up onto the four arrow pads that served as the controller for the game.

"Ready?" he asked, putting in money and getting up to the point where he was going to select the song that they were going to play.

"What do I do?"

"You just press down on these with your feet as they show up on the screen here," he gestured up at the screen's corner where the prompts would show up.

"Alright..." Jamie grinned--she seemed very unsure of herself somewhere she should prosper.

* * * * * * * *

Jean stared forward at the screen that supposedly would tell her what to do. The human that had been playing before her seemed to have been quite skilled, and she wasn't sure she understood what she was supposed to be doing. After what she had seen that human do, she knew she was quite clearly inferior, and she didn't really see why she should try to top that when any such effort would be futile.

"Here we go," Jamie said, grinning and starting up the 'game', promptly starting to move his feet in patterns just as the human before him had done. After watching him for quite an extended period of time, she eventually picked up on the method involved and experimentally pressed on the upper arrow as the arrow pointing upwards on the screen flashed. Something on the screen indicated that what she had done was correct, so she did it again and again, until there were no more flashes on the screen for her to follow.

"Is it over...?"

"Yes," Jamie grinned at her, then turned his head back to the screen, where an array of numbers had flashed into being with labels such as 'accuracy', 'voltage', and 'combo'. His head turned from his side of the screen to hers, making it quite obvious what he was doing--he was analyzing the difference between the two sets of readouts.

"You win," he grinned. "You did better than I did. I haven't played one of these quite a while, though, so I don't know if it really counts--"

"I have never done this before in my life."

"I guess you have a point there...do you see anything else that you want to do, or do you want me to pick one out?"

"I think it's your turn," she answered.

"Okay..." Jean watched the human look around over and over again until he saw something that interested him. The thing that perked his interest was a room with a large number of humans seated at computer terminals.

"Want to go online?" he asked.

"This is our world, Jamie, not mine..." Despite herself, she smiled ever so slightly underneath her hood, which she was thankful to have because of that. She wondered if maybe he was looking for a mate...she supposed that now that she was no longer in the service of the Order that she could join with another if she wanted to, although she wouldn't have the first idea how to go about soliciting for one or what she would do once she found one. This Jamie, however, was human; he wasn't a Digimon.

He gestured her into the room with all of the computers and sat himself down at one before depositing some 'money' into a metal box next to it.

"Anywhere you want to go?" he asked. She cocked her head slightly to the side, confused by question.

"But we just came in here," she pointed out. Why would they want to go anywhere else when they had just started what they were doing?

"No, not there...I meant is there anywhere you want to go online."

"Oh," she almost laughed at that, but regained her composure before she could.

"Not really..."

"That's right, you live there, don't you?" The use of present tense bothered her, sharply reminding her again that she was no longer in the service of her Order. "This must all be old stuff to you."

"Not really," she answered. "I don't have the ability to decode it and view it in the same way that you do. To me, it is all raw data to be stored, used, or manipulated."

"Oh...I had never thought of that. Ever since I met Jes, I stopped thinking about Digimon as computer programs."

"Why? That is what we are." She stared at Jamie. To stop thinking of someone as what they were didn't make any sense. That was akin to saying that ever since she had met the humans Oliver and Jamie, she had stopped thinking about them as creatures of flesh and blood residing in the real world; it was extremely illogical.

"No you're not." He answered almost as quickly as she had questioned him. "Not while you're here. Jes says the same thing that you do, but she's wrong. When you're here, you're just as real as we are." He suddenly grabbed the sides of her stomach, making her shudder. He squeezed a little bit and flinched reflexively, trying to get away. She was quickly released, but that didn't stop him from continuing his sentence unabated. "You have flesh--scales, whatever--blood, eyes...you're just as real as humans are."

She was surprised by the reaction that he had to that, but she didn't have to understand it to know that he had given the matter thought before.

"Alright..." she said, somewhat meekly. She turned away from Jamie to one of the other people seated a computer. This one was watching videos on their computer and giggling with delight near the conclusion of every one of them. They all featured humans engaged in self-destructive activities. The girl who was watching them was finding them amusing for whatever reason. After watching them for a few minutes over her shoulder and gradually getting over the fact that she was taking enjoyment in the misery of other members of her own race, she began to find them interesting herself, if only as a quaint generality of the strangeness of humans.

"Do you want to see more of that?" Jamie's voice asked.

"Sure..." she answered, giving up the oath she had ken to not seek pleasure, one of the few remaining dictates of the Chapter that had remained unbroken. The screen displayed videos designed to amuse humans, and speakers next to it began to emit the sounds that went with it.

"Why is this one funny?" she asked of one of the videos that consisted of one large white furry bear-like creature mulling about in the snow next to a white-capped mountain. Jean didn't find it amusing in the least, but after about three minutes of watching it, Jamie was nearly doubled over with laughter.

"I don't know..." he answered, putting a hand on his chest and steadying himself. "It's just so pointless that it's funny.

"That is extremely illogical," she pointed out again.

"I told you, I never said the human race was logical."

"..."

"Oh, come on. You don't find that amusing at least a little bit?"

"No, I don't," she answered flatly. "The only thing it does is remind me of a Digimon that I fought once a few years ago."

"Oh? Is it a good story?"

"It is recorded in the scriptorium, as are all of my other battles and quests."

"Well, I don't know where that is, or whether I could get in."

"You could, but you would have to go to the Digital World again, and it doesn't sound as if you have any wish to be returning again anytime in the near future."

"Not for a while...why don't you just tell me what happened?

"I was sent to investigate the cause of the disappearance of four Digimon from one of the smaller cities under the protection of the Citadel that lack their own Chapterhouse or Monastery to defend them effectively. This one was even without a chamber militant...I tracked their trails up into some nearby mountains where they stopped abruptly. I was about to leave and return to the Citadel to report my findings, but just before I left, I sensed a virus somewhere nearby...I went p to the mountain in that direction until I came to this cave. When I got there, I saw two..."

Her eyes quickly widened as she realized what the significance of the fact that there were two of them was.

"They were mates....like Lex and Angie..." she had never thought to think back on any of the things that she had done and compare them to her present situation. "Once of them...the male...tried to protect the other one. I had to kill that one before I could even get an attack inon the other one."

"Jean, what do you mean?"

"They...they were mates. I killed them." She couldn't stand being around herself any longer; she especially couldn't stand being around both herself and Jamie at the same time. It was too much. She pulled out a small string of beads made of stone and twisted them between her fingers, putting the focus of her mind into the room that she and Jamie had shared the previous night. A portal rimmed with yellow energy and a relatively accurate depiction of that room appeared in front of her. She quickly stepped through it and ended up where she had slept, right on the bed, attempting to quickly close the portal before Jamie could follow her through; she wanted the time to herself.

"Jean, wait!" Jamie's voice emerged from the portal behind her fractions of a second just before it had closed, muffled by the pillow. That had been an incredibly stupid thing to do, as it easily could have meant his death, but she was in no state to try to explain such things to a human. She ignored the voce and pretended that she hadn't heard it, trying to keep to herself. "Don't cry..." his hands touched her shoulder, but she no longer had the energy to protest by the violent twitches she otherwise would have used.

"Jamie...you don't understand. You're a kind person to have taken me in as you have, but it is something you shouldn't do. I've done horrible things...I've stood by and done nothing while others did things even worse than I, if you can fathom such a thing"

"I don't care about that. Unless you want to back, that's all over now--"

"I've killed children!" she cried harder. "I've destroyed eggs....I...I...what if one of them had grown up to be something other than what I've hunted my entire life? What if one of them had grown up to be like the Angewomon's mate? Or your Digimon..."

"I don't think Jes is exactly a model of a good person..."

"But...she loves...that isn't something viruses are supposed to be able to do."

"How did you think they reproduced?"

"Unmitigated carnal lust." she sniffled.

"Anybody can love, Jean..." Jamie's hands, undetected by any of her distracted senses, found their way onto its shoulders and started rubbing gently. Not sure how to react to that, she briefly considered attacking him for daring to come into physical contact without her permission, but she didn't know how much of an attack would be appropriate, and she had no wish to bring death to the benevolent creature that had taken her in despite her attack on all of his friends and his Digimon.