angry_friendship_wolf | The Seal Man, and Other Tales, with Barry and Cisco

"He is much too feisty," Jyou says, shaking his head.

Zudomon turns his head, angling it up so that one huge blue eye is staring at Cisco. "Only a little frizzy. Barely at all, really!"

"He's drawing energy from me to fuel his attacks, so he can keep it up as long as I can," Jyou says. "Which is a long time. I might not be Taichi or Yamato, but I'm still a Crestbearer, I've got energy to spare."

MadLeomon pauses when he sees his attack hit nothing. Looks left. Looks right. Looks left again. Behind him?

He gives a slow rumble in the back of his throat, then jabs his thumb at his chest. "Victory."

Because that's got to be what Barry vanishing means, right? Right? He's sure it's something like that.

"Kind of hard not to love him for it," Cisco notes, then adds, "Of course, I'm not the guy who has to patch him up when that feistiness gets out of hand."

Cisco fusses with his hair a bit more, nodding as he listens.

Raising his voice to shout at their attackers, Cisco yells, "You hear that, losers? We can do this all day!"

Oh, it's something all right.

This is going to be tricky. Odaiba is more cramped than Central City and Barry isn't exactly familiar with its streets. Not to mention all the throngs of people currently running around trying to evacuate. This means Barry is going to have to improvise.

Streaking down the road, he runs it as far as he can, and when the straightaway street ends in a building, Barry runs straight up the building's side; coming to a stop at the top.

Looking out across the city, Barry can see the broadcast building but he's too far away and there's too much in the way now for him to be able to see MadLeomon on the ground. Barry takes a moment to check out his leg, which still hurts, but the acid burns are starting to heal. It's slowing him up, but Barry knows he's just going to have to make this work.

Steeling himself, Barry takes a few deep breaths and then he runs.

A racing streak of lightning, Barry races down the side of the building and takes off like a shot when he hits the ground. Windows burst and cars on the street rock in his wake as Barry pushes the boundary between sub and supersonic. It finally bursts with a boom just as Barry arrives back at the square around the broadcast building.

MadLeomon is still standing in the street as Barry runs up on him and swings at the side of the Digimon's face, throwing a right hook backed by every ounce of momentum Barry has just built up.

Barry sure hopes this works, and that he's not about to break his hand again.

"... I'll allow that it's cute when he gets all fight-ed out and goes to sleep after a battle," Jyou allows. "Usually on the battlefield."

There's a rather insistent beeping from his digivice, and he opens up a holographic map, squinting at a trail of energy signatures moving through the streets of Odaiba. Across the Bay, up in the sky, there's a twinkle of red light as another digivice starts reacting.

"-- I'm going to guess that's the Fastman," Jyou says. "Because that's a lot of kinetic energy."

MadLeomon barely even realises Barry's coming. His eyes start to widen, a split-second before that punch lands, as if he's suddenly clocked the lightning and the blur and the way the air's being disturbed, but that realisation doesn't help.

His head snaps to one side, and a moment later he goes flying backwards, his entire body flickering like a computer glitch, before it vanishes and a glass sphere, blue with a tiny spark of blue light buzzing about it, drops to the ground. It stays there for a moment, humming, before MadLeomon's body rematerialises around it, breathing but unconscious.

A few seconds pass. He doesn't seem to be waking up any time soon.

There's a brief pause, before a hologram starts to appear next to Barry. Not Yamato this time, but Koushiro. "I'm picking up some -- ..." He doesn't get to say anything more, as the hologram turns staticky and vanishes.

But there is someone applauding now. A slow, almost sardonic clap, as they approach, stepping over MadLeomon.

"Well, that's something to see." It's Yamato's voice, but not Yamato's inflections, and by the looks of the speaker, it's Yamato's face and body -- albeit lacking any of the bruises or blood he had when he called Barry earlier -- but with a sunny smile that's distinctly unlike him.

The not-Yamato speaker makes a show of holding up his hands in mock-surrender, slowing to a stop. "Don't worry, aniki, I'm not here to fight. My interests are purely scientific."

"You absolutely have to get me a picture of that sometime," Cisco says with glee, "For the 'Gram."

Looking at the map and following the trail, Cisco nods.

"That's him alright. Looks like he's delivering the supersonic punch smackdown on somebody." Which is awesome, but also worrisome.

Cisco's brows knit and he looks towards the city.

"I wonder who he's tangling with."

For a heart stopping moment Barry worries he went too far. When the sphere re-materializes into MadLeomon Barry breathes out a sigh of relief, then finally realizes his hand is screaming at him and his shoes are on fire.

Shaking out the sting of his (thankfully not broken) hand and stomping his feet to put out the smoldering rubber, Barry turns his head to look at the flickering hologram.

"Koushiro?"

Barry is about to pull out his phone to fiddle with it and try and get Koushiro back when he hears the clapping. Barry starts to smile, a little smirky and embarrassed in one, and then he realizes something is... off.

"You're not Yamato," Barry says, warily.

Jyou and Zudomon both turn enough to watch Cisco out of the corner of their eyes, before Jyou flicks the map off.

"Any Digimon can be a tough opponent, but if he can streak around the city like that, he's probably doing okay," Jyou says, in an attempt to be reassuring.

"I'm not," Not-Yamato confirms, and for a moment there's a flicker of static, as he switches between forms: Sora first, then Taichi, then Jyou, and then settling on Yamato's form again. "Just an old friend of his, eager to meet his new friends."

He touches a hand to his collarbone, bowing low for just a few moments before straightening up again.

"Yeah, no, totally, he's totally fine," Cisco replies, nodding his head and agreeing, not so convinced but trying to be.

"It's weird not being in front of a bunch of monitors telling me everything that's going on with him."

Barry sizes the man up as he shifts from one person to another, eying him when he bows.

"Gennai," Barry says, realization settling in.

"This all you again?" Barry asks, making a gesture to indicate everything going on in the city.

"I know the feeling. Sort of. It's usually Koushiro on computers, and Gabumon and Yamato can scan an entire battlefield and track everyone -- but a lot of time Zudomon and I have to take up the rear and can't see what's going on in the thick of the battle," Jyou says, grimacing. "It's not always enjoyable."

"I can't take credit. I only opened the Gate," Gennai says lightly, ambling past Barry and hopping up onto a car to get a better look at the roads leading off from the Broadcast Centre. "The actual forces were contributed by new allies of mine. I, alas, knew from the start that it would be a failure."

Cisco nods and says, "Well, props to you for having everyone's back. And you fix them up when it's all over."

Being rear-guard or the guy in the chair isn't always the best, but they're still part of the team and contributing.

Barry moves to keep distance between them and to continue facing Gennai.

"So why come here and make trouble at all?" Barry asks, shaking his head at Gennai. "What do you want?"

"When they'll let me. Like I said, none of them are good patients," Jyou says. "Half of them would rather bleed out than sit still for a few minutes, and you have to trick them into staying and getting treatment."

Gennai flashes a quick grin. "You've nothing to worry about, you know. My creators never saw fit to grant me abilities with which to fight. One of many things they denied me," he says.

"I came here to collect data. To siphon off the extraneous data of Digimon as they battle. My plans have been set back slightly, but they remain the same," he continues. "The end of all things. Once everything is dead, the task I was programmed with will be fulfilled. And ..."

He cocks his head at Barry. "I did briefly think I could scan you and make a copy, the better to send after Yamato. He would hate that," he says. "But whatever it is that gives you your speed, I'm not able to reconstruct it. I can't even get a clear scan of it. So I suppose that plan's a bust."

"Geez, no wonder you resort to stabbing them with sedatives," Cisco says.

"Yeah well, I've learned not to underestimate people," Barry replies, hardly about to believe that Gennai isn't dangerous.

"Yamato told me about your plans," Barry says with a frown. "How you're going to destroy everything to bring about peace and I gotta say, I don't think you understand peace."

Barry's frown sets in deeper when he hears Gennai was attempting to make a copy of him to torment Yamato with.

"He doesn't want to be your enemy, you know," Barry says, shaking his head at Gennai. "He wants to help you, if he can. I think all of his team does."

"It's not like I can just cuff them to a wall or something, after all. If I looked away, Yamato would be half way through gnawing off his arm by the time I looked back," Jyou says.

Gennai's smile fades, just a little. "It's the only peace any of us will ever get," he says. "They gave me an impossible task -- they knew I could never succeed. And then they died in front of me, and I waited for twenty-five thousand years for them to come back, to make the world perfect at last. When they did, they'd forgotten me, forgotten the promises they'd made, and all they were interested in was -- protecting the world as it was."

He gives a derisive snort, shaking his head. "I'm sure he never even imagined that I'd be his enemy. I'll always just be a little kid to him," he says.

"That is pretty tricky," Cisco says, mulling it over. "I guess for us, if worse came to worst we could chuck Barry into a pipeline cell. He wouldn't be able to run away, and gnawing off limbs wouldn't get him out of there."

Barry looks Gennai over again. It's unnerving to be speaking to Yamato knowing it's not really him behind the face, but Barry still meets the man's gaze.

"I can't speak to the ones you're talking about, but Yamato and his friends didn't do any of that to you. They didn't forget you or the promises made to you on purpose."

Barry's expression and voice soften with sympathy for Gennai's long plight, and Barry says, "The world will never be perfect. But that doesn't make it not worth fighting for, or protecting."

"You have anti-superpower cells? That's pretty cool," Jyou remarks. "I guess you need something like that if you're taking down supervillains, though, otherwise you're just throwing them into regular, non-super-proofed prisons."

"How charmingly optimistic, aniki," Gennai says, wryly and a little scornfully, hopping down from the car. "I wonder if ..."

He trails off, looking to one side, then the other, furrowing his brow as if for a moment he's honestly confused about where he is and how he got there. As he skims his gaze over the fires and wreckage, he looks entirely bewildered, even alarmed. His veneer flickers for a moment, shifting to Sora, then Koushiro.

Then he seems to rally, snapping his attention back to Barry, and he shifts back into Yamato again: "I wonder how many times you've been betrayed. Or how many times you'll be the betrayer -- vaunted ideas of defending the masses so often lead to betraying one's principles. That's where they led me, more than once."

"Working on that. Right now they're just very secure. As in powered by an 8.3 Tesla superconducting electromagnet secure," Cisco replies.

"I've been working with some tech from a Galaxy Far, Far Away though, and I think I'll have it figured out soon."

Barry doesn't react to the scorn, but when he sees the shift he grows concerned and steps forward, ready to offer a hand out.

"Gennai?"

The shift back is so sudden it leaves Barry worried. He listens to Gennai speak and replies, "I just want to help. I run out to save lives and to protect people, and maybe give them a second chance by being there. I've learned that I can't save everyone, but I can try to do as much good as I can with the gifts that I have."

Studying Gennai Barry goes on to say, "I think that was once your goal, too. To help and to do good. Let us try and help you now. Whatever is trying to take you over, you don't have to fight it alone."

"I have no idea what an 8.3 Tesla superconducting electromagnet is," Jyou admits. "Not -- not my field, you'd need Koushiro or Yamato if you want a Chosen who can understand what that means."

For the first time, Gennai actually scowls, pupils narrowing until they're almost dots, peeling back his lips to bare Yamato's fangs at Barry.

"I don't need -- ..."

Then he stops, because suddenly it's night, and the full moon is behind him. He vanishes in a flicker, reappearing next to MadLeomon, just as Yamato lands where he was in a flash of blue fire.

"You took your time," Gennai mutters.

Yamato ignores him, walking over to Barry as the sky buzzes momentarily staticky and then returns to day again.

"You okay?" The question's accompanied by a headbutt to his shoulder that's probably meant to be affectionate, but delivered with somewhat too much force.

"Pretty much it's a super powerful magnet that has 100,000 times the strength of Earth's magnetic field," Cisco explains. "It's also what we used to zing atomic particles around and how we sort of accidentally gave Barry superpowers."

Barry starts to tense, ready if Gennai decides to lash out. The sky changes and Barry looks up as Yamato arrives.

Seeing Yamato is a relief and Barry gives the guy a smile, although there's concern there because Yamato is definitely roughed up and bleeding.

"Ow," Barry says, rocking with the headbutt. The action does at least tell Barry that this is for sure Yamato this time.

Barry gives a nod, and then his eyes dart over to Gennai.

"Yeah, I'm alright," Barry answers Yamato.

"I'm not sure magnets can give people superpowers in this world," Jyou says thoughtfully. "I just -- feel like that's not a thing here."

Distantly, the blimp Digimon finally falls, hitting the water with a significant splash and floating there in the Bay, dazed and seemingly on fire in several places.

For all that he's certainly roughed up -- there's even a chunk of one of the ears of his hybrid form that he's missing -- Yamato seems to still be wired with adrenaline, eyes bright and perhaps a little more inhuman looking than usual.

He gives a slightly gentler headbutt to the side of Barry's face, then turns his attention on Gennai.

"We'll be opening the Gate back up momentarily, and sending everyone back," he says. "So it's time you took your leave, Gennai."

Gennai narrows his eyes for a moment, then snaps his fingers, a rip in space -- black and rimmed with reddish pink at the edges -- opening next to him. "Until next time, Flash," he calls over his shoulder as he steps inside, his form flickering briefly into a dark-haired, blue-eyed man in black robes before the distortion shuts behind him.

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