It's eight in the morning. School starts at eight-thirty, your shift down at the coffee shop starts at nine and your patience with your lazy-ass little sister had ran dry a long, long time ago. 

You're halfway through fixing breakfast -- eggs, hash-browns and bacon for two -- usually it's a two person job, but apparently your sister has better things to do with her time. like moping around in bed whilst you did all of the hard work.
"Annette, get the fuck up!" you holler, grabbing the closest thing you could find -- a plastic spatula, in this case -- and tossing it at the bedroom door. "C'mon, shake a leg, bitch, we ain't got all day!"
Behind the door, Annette, your fifteen year old sibling, groans in protest. She sounds positively miserable. Summer vacation officially ended last night, and after a solid three months of freedom, it was time to lock your little sister back in the classroom. "Jesus Anon, shut up! Just... I dunno, call up the school... Tell 'em I'm sick..." she throws a couple of fake coughs your way, as a pittance. 
"Not happening."
"But Anooooon, school suuuuucks!"  she whines, following it up with a light thumping sound which you can only imagine is her fists pounding the bed in stroppy objection. Come on! I mean, like, I think I'm feeling a little feverish, couldn't you just say I have a cold or something?"
"Annette, you could be stone-cold dead and I'd still haul your corpse onto that school bus. You're not skipping your first day back. Now come on out and eat your breakfast, you little shit. I cooked eggs and bacon."
She's silent for a moment, contemplating your ultimatum. "... And hashbrowns?"
"And hashbrowns."

The bedroom door explodes open, and Annette comes plodding out grumpily in all her punkish glory. Wearing torn jeans, a shirt sporting a bloody loveheart and jet-black boots which you're pretty sure went out of style a decade ago, your sister looked geared up in preparation for a rock concert rather than a classroom. She plops herself down in a chair, kicking her feet up onto the dinner table and crossing her arms before shooting you a glare that could make hell itself freeze over. 
"Well good morning to you too, Princess," you chide, sliding a full plate towards her. The ice in her eyes melts a little as the smell of your cooking reaches her nose, only to frost up again as soon as you open your mouth.
"Ready for school?"
"Asshole." she mutters, wrapping a strip of bacon around her fork and cramming it into her mouth.
"Yeah, love you too, bitch. Now hurry up and eat your food, I gotta get you to the bus stop in, like -" you spare a glance down at your watch "- twenty minutes." You waste no time in busying yourself with scrubbing down the pans. Behind you, in typical Annette fashion, your sister begins to complain.
"I do all my chores, I get a part time job to help pay the bills, I got you that stupid 'Slaughtersphere' movie you wanted for your birthday, and you can't even swing one sick day for me? Seriously?" she complains between mouthfuls. You pluck a comb out from one of the draws in the kitchen and offer it to her as an olive branch. She snatches it out of your hand thanklessly and begins dragging it through her tangled, raven hair. 

"That's the way it's gotta be, Annie," you say in consolation. "A kid's gotta go to school, get an education, experience the magic of learning and all that." 
"Yeah, yeah. Save me the 'learning is fun' speil," Grumbles your sister, cleaning off her plate. "You pack my lunch?" 
"Yuhuh: ham sandwiches minus the crusts, one apple, a chocolate bar and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. Diet, of course." And ten dollars to blow at the cafeteria, but you'd let her find that out come lunchtime. It was the first day back at school, and you reckoned she'd need a bit of a pick-me-up around the halfway point. Her grim countenence cracks as you drop her rucksack by her feet, ready-filled with her books, lunchbox, and that new Dio-themed pencil case you'd bought her over the weekend. 
"No chips? You holding out on me, old man?" she asks, tossing her rucksack over her back. 
"One of us has to make sure you eat healthy," you explain. "And whaddya mean 'old man?' I'm, like, twenty-two." 
Annette springs from her chair, sweeping the comb through her black locks a couple more times before carelessly tossing it onto the table. "You over eighteen?" she asks, plodding over to the front door.
"Yes."
"Then you're an old man." 
"Touche, whippersnapper. Now come on, lets get you to school. Those teachers ain't gonna antagonize themselves." you say, following up behind her and teasing her with a playful ruffling of her hair. 
"Antagonise? Puh-lease! I'm a model student, biach." she replies, swatting you away with a sleepy hand. She still hadn't woken up entirely, despite the extra half an hour or so in bed. Suffice to say, Annette wasn't a morning person. Well, she used to be. Hell, used to be that she was the one dragging YOU out of bed, not the other way around. However, ever since Mom and Dad had... Left... Well, she didn't have anywhere near the amount of energy she used to. 
"'Course you are, and model students get to school on time, so quit stalling and get a move on." you quip as Annette cracks open the front door and steps out into the sunlight. 
You follow her out, locking the door behind you. The two of you live in a small flat in that slim, neutral area between the good and the bad parts of town. Close enough to the good that you don't have to worry about gangbangers shanking you for your wallet, but nowhere near far enough from the bad for you to feel comfortable letting your little sister walk the streets on her own.

Especially not with all those weird animals running around. 

Yeah, sure, 'it was a just a rumour'. Believing in all of those out-of-focus videos and conspiracy theories was 'tinfoil hat' stuff. You'd read the official statements in the news and heard the folks who ought to know denounce the existence of those things on TV, and you called bullshit on all of it. You'd heard too many things and saw too much stuff for this whole recent 'monster's in the street' craze to be nothing but a cheap hoax. There'd been one too many sightings and far too much evidence. Some weird, next-level voodoo shit was going on, and you couldn't help but feel a little sick whenever Annette left the relative safety of your home.
Folk had taken to calling them 'digimon', and for all intents and purposes, they had become the urban bigfoot -- only you're pretty sure that bigfoot didn't have a constant hard-on for destruction. People woke up in the middle of the night to weird noises, peeked between their blinds and found out that something had levelled their garden and totalled their car whilst they weren't looking. Shop owners were leaving their stores and coming back the next day to find out that something had turned the place inside-out and raked the walls with clawmarks. Kids were having their gym classes cancelled because some elderich horror or E.T. or whatever the fuck these things were had decided wage WW3 on the school's football field.Slowly but surely, your trashy little neighbourhood was being dragged into a war between forces beyond your understanding, and here you were in the middle of it all, trying to raise your sister.
It's a wonder Annette deals with all this as well as she does.  Insofar she hadn't given the whole 'digimon' thing a second thought. In fact, she barely even acknowledges it. Whereas other people would stop and stare and cower at the grim omens of destruction left by the strange, unseen monsters who came by night, Annette would shrug it off and stroll on by, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
She was either unfathomably strong-willed or just really, really ignorant. You still hadn't figured out which. Maybe both. 

"Hey Anon, I'm staying at Hailey's for the night. You cool with that?" asks Annette.
"Hmm?" you glance at Annette. She's got her phone in her hands (at least you think its her phone. That thing looks like it could just as well be a gameboy or some shit) and is tapping at the buttons as she pounds the pavement. Must be texting her friends or something, you guess. 
"Yeah, sure." You reply. Haley was a buddy of hers, and Annette had sleepovers around her place regularly. Oddly enough their sleepovers were entirely one-sided; Annette spent nights around Haley's house, yet never the other way round. You weren't about to look a gift horse in the mouth, though. You rarely, if ever, got any time to yourself nowadays. After busting your ass from nine to five, the luxury of not having to cook dinner for two was a blessing. 

The rest of your trip to the bus stop passed in relative silence. Annette was far too preoccupied with that little phone-looking thing of her's and you were all too happy to take advantage of some peace and quiet in your otherwise hectic morning. Then Annette decided to ruin it all.
"So Anon," she asks, not taking her eyes from the small screen of her phone/gameboy/pokedex thing. "You still got that date tomorrow night?"
You cringe on the inside, barely managing to maintain your poker-face. A couple days ago you'd tried your luck with Jenny, the girl who lived on the opposite side of the neighbourhood and worked one of the checkout counters down the local supermarket. It'd taken you all week to pluck up the courage, and so far you'd kept it your most closely guarded secret. So naturally, your little sister knew.
"Yes, actually," you answer, trying not to sound too surprised. It wasn't very hard; Annette had a nose for secrets. So much so that you'd all but given up on trying to hide things from her -- your love life being one of the few exceptions, of course. "Me and that sweet piece of ass from Walmart are going to a fancy restaurant so we can chow down on fillet steak and onion rings."
"Oh?"
"Uhuh. Don't feel too left out though; I'm pretty sure there's some Uncle Ben's and canned meatballs back in the house."
"You spoil me." says Annette with an obnoxious roll of her eyes. "So... Any reason you didn't tell me about Little Miss Shelf-Stacker?"
"I like to keep my relationships on the down-low, is that such a crime?" you reply, more forcefully than you should have. "And she's a checkout girl, by the way."
Annette shrugs, feigning indifference and making a point not to take her eyes off of her little device and look at you. "Geez, no need to burst a bloodvessel. Just would've been nice to know where you were, is all..." she says, measuring just the right amount of hurt into her voice for it to sting. 

She's guilt tripping you, and you know it. Somehow, that doesn't do anything to lessen the impact. You were leaving a fifteen year old girl home alone with no idea where you are so you could go and get yourself some pussy. "Alright, alright, I'm sorry. Look, I'll sort out a chilli or something for Tuesday night, okay?" you offer in appeasement. "Just please, do me a solid and don't call my phone unless it's an emergency?"
"Leave me fifteen dollars for a pizza and we'll call it a deal."
"Done." you say just as the two of you round the last corner and arrive at a bus stop thriving with moping kids. 
"Cool. See you after school," says Annette with a dismissive wave in your general direction. She moves to join the rest of the kids, and you call to her as she slips away. 
"Hey Annie?"
"What?" she asks as you try her meagre patience.
"Sorry for not telling you earlier. No secrets between siblings, right?"
Just like that her impatient scowl falls to pieces before your very eyes. Some sad, unreadable flutter of emotion passes across her face before her expression steels itself back into a cast-iron mask of complacency. "Yeah, no secrets between siblings..." she says in a sorrowful, pensive sort of way. You consider asking her if something was wrong, but by then the bus is already pulling up to the sidewalk, and the moment has passed. Annette gives you one last look, coupled with a smile which seemed almost... Apologetic.
The two of you share  little goodbye wave before she disappears into the belly of the school bus, and the apologetic smile and sad eyes and the unshakeable feeling that somehow you'd hurt her all falls out of your head on your way to work.
---

It's somewhere between seven and eight, and you're feeling just about dead. The sunny day you'd woken up to this morning had long since withered away into another grim, muddy-skied night. Windows light up in shades of neon green and electric pink, streetlights gloss the roads with their dirty, orange glow and the alleyways that'd seemed so innocent in the morning ink over with shadow and turn ominous.Night time in the city felt dangerous enough without the whole 'digimon' craze. Now, on top of the threat of getting mugged or kidnapped or dragged into a shady corner and stabbed to death for the meagre contents of your wallet, there was also an off chance that you'd get pounced on and mauled into lasagne meat by... Whatever the fuck those 'digimon' things were supposed to be.
You pull your coat tighter around your shoulders and add a briskness to your step as you make your way back home.

Work had went as well as could be expected on a Monday, which is to say it had been mercilessly hectic. One of your colleagues had managed to land himself in hospital a couple of weeks ago after introducing his motorbike to the business-end of a car, leaving you to handle the workload of two employees. The logical thing to do would be to hire on some extra help, but as things were your superiors were notoriously tight-fisted, and ran the coffee shop with a skeleton crew. You'd complain, but god forbid you do anything that would jeopardise your pay check. 
You let a frustrated sigh seethe out from between your teeth as you tread along a crosswalk and into your neighbourhood, and the trials and tribulations of the day gradually retract their niggling claws from your mind as you remember today's single saving grace: Annette was bunking over at Haley's tonight, which meant that you had the flat all to yourself.
Initially you'd been sternly against Annette and Haley's sleepovers, but over time you've came to appreciate the brief moments of respite they allowed you. You loved your sister -- loved her more than a fat man loves cake -- but holy shit, was looking after her a pain in the ass. Clearing up the messes she made, cooking her dinner, washing her clothes, buying her tampons and suffering the cashier's judgemental gaze; parenting was downright brutal at times, and a break from it every now and then was a godsend. 
Tonight you planned on taking full advantage of your night off from Annette. You had a pepperoni pizza waiting for you in the freezer, an empty couch with your name on it and a line-up of trashy horrors and pulpy action movies just begging to be watched. And maybe you'd jerk off, too. Maybe. You were split on whether or not to wring one out tonight or save your ammo for tomorrow, just in case you got lucky with Jenny. 
Decisions, decisions.

your weary feet carry you up the steps to your front door and past the threshold, and you immediately begin to feel better. Closing the door shut behind you and sealing out the night, you walk on over to the freezer and pull out the pizza you'd been looking forwards to, safe in the knowledge that after a gruelling day's work, you well and truly deserved it.
And then you froze.
You weren't alone.

Barely, you were able to make out the muffled sounds of talking from the bedroom. Two voices, both female. One familiar and the other... Different.
You couldn't explain it. It had the same cadence as a girl's, hit the same notes and sported a cocky sort of lilt you heard thrown around between the gossiping women who spent their work breaks down the coffee shop, but somehow, for some reason... You just couldn't picture it coming out of a human.
You quickly recognise the familiar voice as Annette's, quelling your mounting fear. It was just Annette. Annette and... Haley? Maybe. You'd never seen Haley in the flesh before, and therefore never heard her speak. Was this her? You were quick to piece together an explanation in your head: For the first time, Annette was having Haley over for a sleepover and not the other way around. You must've misheard Annette when she told you this morning. You announce your presence with a musical knock on the bedroom door. "Yo Annette, you in there?" you call. 
You can just about make out the hushed voices on the other side. "Shit! Okay, that's him. Just, uh, just act normal, okay? Just act normal."
"Annie, dear, I don't think the word 'normal' applies here." replies the other voice, playfully mocking. 
"You know what I mean! Just... I dunno, don't do any of that crazy laser shit, alright?"
"Tsk, must you take the fun out of everything?"
'Crazy laser shit'? What the hell were they talking about? "Hey, you realise I can hear you, right?" you say. "Who's your friend? Does she like pizza? Bring her out here and I'll cut her a slice." you bargain.
"No Anon, she doesn't like fucking pizza! She's..." a pause, and then, much softer: "Look, Anon, could you, ah, gimmie a minute? Just a minute. Please? I need to talk to my... Friend." 
"... Annette, who's in there with you?" you ask, sensing something wrong and trying the door handle. The door opens a crack, and you manage to catch a glimpse of something yellow before Annette threw her weight against the other side, shutting it firmly. 
"Seriously! You'll meet her in a second, but in the mean time could you just go be a spaz somewhere else for a while? We're kind of in the middle of something here."
"Well excuse me, bitch." you mutter -- under your breath, of course, lest you invite a verbal hiding from your sister. The girl had a tongue as sharp and as cruel as a switchblade, and she had a nasty habit of letting it run free when she was in a crappy mood. "Fine, be that way. Pizza's in the oven if either of you girls get hungry." you grunt, tossing the pizza into an oven rack and storming over to the sofa, Your single night of relaxation looking more and more fucked by the second. Annette and her mystery-friend were back to talking the next room over, but you made a point of ignoring what the two of them were saying, instead opting to turn on the TV and drown out their voices with the sound of sweet, sweet trash television. 
And then the bedroom door swung open.
"Anon?" says Annette, and her voice is so poignant, so heavy with sorrow that you forget all about your ruined night. Twisting in your seat to see her, you're shocked to find her standing cowed and tearful in the doorway. She was crying.

Annette never cried.
"Annie?" before you know it you're off the sofa, walking over to your sister. "Hey, what's up?" you ask gently, as if the very sound of your voice could be enough to break her. Rivers flow from the crystal blue lakes of her eyes. You reach forwards with a tentative hand to wipe them dry, but Annette swats you away before you get anywhere near, determined to wallow in her sadness. "Anon... Remember when we said "no secrets between siblings?"
"Yeah? Shit Annie, is that what this is all about?" you ask. Annette nods meekly. You put a supportive hand on either shoulder, carefully pulling her into a hug. Once again she tries to push you away, only to give up and surrender to your mothering embrace. "Look, whatever it is, you can tell me. I promise I won't be mad." 
"Y-you promise?" she sniffles, wiping her eyes with the back of her eyes. "Like, forreal?"
The door to the bedroom opens a little wider, and you get your first look at Annie's... Friend.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
"I mean, it's a pretty big secret." says Annette as your eyes roll back up into your head and you tumble to the ground, fainting.
-------
*Beep-beep-beep-beep! Beep-beep-beep-beep! Bee-*
You bring your first firmly down upon the offending alarm clock you kept by your bedside, putting a swift end to its irritating wakeup call. Fucking thing was the bane of your existence, doubly so today -- you started work early on Tuesdays. Rolling gracefully from your bed and flopping onto the floor like a majestic, beached whale, you slowly but surely clamber to your feet and trudge on over to your drawer to get dressed. You stop halfway there, when you realise that you were, in fact, already clothed. Hmmph. Must've forgotten to strip down before you went to sleep last night. You and Annette shared the same bedroom, so the two of you always retained at least some form of modesty. Usually that just meant keeping your underwear on, but perhaps you'd simply been too lazy or too exhausted to undress down to your boxers. Your boss had worked you to the bone yesterday, after all. 
At least, you're pretty sure he did. For some reason, yesterday was really, really foggy in your mind. You slaved through your shift at the coffee shop, came home, and then...
... No way. 

You spin on your heel, surveying the room. Annette's nowhere to be seen. At this hour she'd usually be sound asleep on the top bunk of your bunk-beds. One look at her tidy, made bed is enough to tell you that it'd been empty throughout the night. No way. No, no, that was just a dream. It was some crazy-ass dream. 
A dream that felt all too real.
Annette crying to herself in the doorway, wrapping your arms around her shoulders in an attempt to comfort her, the sleek, inhuman figure melting out from the shadows behind her.... It was all so vivid, so real. Only it couldn't be, because monsters are make-believe. It was a dream. A nightmare. Some crazy figment of your imagination and-
There are voices coming from the living room.
You scurry over to the bedroom door, hesitating a moment before opening it by a hair's width. from the small crack you see Annette, sitting on the sofa and nursing a cup of coffee. To say she looks exhausted is an understatement. Her entire body seemed to sag, as if she's a puppet suspended by only a couple of strings, and her eyes sport that glassy, bloodshot look of a girl who'd suffered through a sleepless night. She takes a swig of her coffee, wearily massages her temples and speaks. "I still can't believe he fainted," she sighs. "Like, actually fucking fainted."
"Try not to act too surprised," answers a voice -- THE voice -- from last night. "They don't call me a knockout beauty for just any reason."
You can feel a scream building at the back of your throat and swallow it before it has the chance to surface. It's her. It. The thing from last night. Following the angry glare of Annette, you'd say it was leaning against the wall directly in front of you, next to the door you hid behind. "Har-dee-fucking-har," grumbles Annette, groggily rubbing at her eyes. "You know, as much as I appreciate your shitty puns, they aren't doing much to un-screw this situation."
"And staying up all night pacing in circles does?" replies the voice with a deep, throaty yet unshakeably feminine giggle. "Honestly, Annie. At this rate you'll follow suit with your brother and pass out from exhaustion."
"So what, you'd rather I take a nap?"
"A girl needs her beauty sleep, doesn't she?" 
"I'm plenty fabulous already," grunts Annette, swigging back the last of her coffee. "Besides, I don't think it's a good idea for me to catch a few Z's when my doofus of a brother is liable to wake up any minute. You realise he'll probably have a heart attack if he sees you and I'm not here to talk things out with him, right? He gets up, I explain-" she makes a vague gesture towards the owner of the voice. "-THIS. And then I go to sleep."
"Well, if that's all it'll take, get on with it," says the voice as it's owner reaches out and seizes the door by the handle. "He's been listening to us talk for the last two minutes."

The door is wrenched open, and you, losing your balance, come sprawling out onto the living room floor with it. "FFFUCK!" exclaims Annette, going from 'half-dead' asleep to 'housecat-on-cocaine' awake in the space of a heartbeat. Beside you, you can hear the voice chuckling to itself in fiendish amusement. You scramble to your feet, readying yourself for a mad dash for the door before remembering that Annette was here too, and running away would mean leaving her at the mercy of whatever IT was. Instead, you run to Annette, putting yourself between her and whatever the hell this thing was before turning around and facing the creature. 
It was a fox. And a person. A fox-person. Only it wasn't. The basic form was human, but the more intricate features were canine, or perhaps feline, or maybe both. The face was sleek and sharp, with two cold, ice-blue irises looming in oceans of ink, and the ears were a pair of furry daggers jousting out from the back of its head. The body that head rested upon was that of an hunter; elegant, limber and unmistakably deadly. The fur was a creamy white from its neck down to its thighs, and everywhere else it was a yellow akin to the colour of sand. Beneath its neck, where the fur was heaped its thickest, you could just about make out the swell of a female chest. 
"Didn't anybody ever tell you it's rude to stare?" It says, pushing itself from the wall it'd been leaning on and taking a meandering step towards you.
"Suh-stay back!" you squawk, trying to sound intimidating and failing miserably -- your voice cracks and wavers like a teenager's. You take a few stumbling steps away from the beast, bumping into Annette. "Annie run! Run for the door, right now! I-I'll hold it off and you-"
"Anon, chill the fuck out!" shouts Annette, worming her way out from behind you and calmly walking up to the fox... Person... Thing. Your heart leaps into your mouth as she draws closer to the monster, and before you can reach out and yank her away to safety, she carelessly tosses an arm around its waist and squeezes it like some oversized plushie "She's cool, see?" 
You blink a few times, half-expecting to wake up in the comfort of your own bed, just as you had a moment ago. "I... I don't... What?"
"Remember Haley, that friend I have?" asks Annette carefully, as if the slightest hitch in her voice might send you flying into hysterics. Which it might. You nod listlessly. "Well, this is her! Only, Haley isn't her ACTUAL name. Plus, y'know, she's not exactly human..." 
"A-Annette?" you ask, hanging on to your sanity by what feels like the fingernails. There's a fox person in your home, and she just so happens to be your little sister's bestie. The human mind wasn't made to comprehend this amount of 'what the fuck'. Annette pinches the bridge of her nose, groaning to herself in frustration, "You know what? Fuck it! Let's start over. Anon, meet Renamon, Renamon, Anon."
The creature takes a couple more steps towards you and reaches out with a purple-sleeved, three-digited paw. Your blood freezes, your bladder threatens to empty itself and for a single dizzying second you think you're going to faint again.
And then the paw grips your hand, and shakes it.
"See? Friendly." says Annette, soothingly. "Now say 'nice to meet you...'"
"N-nuh-nice to meet you..."
"Oh believe me, the pleasure is all mine." it - no - she says with a teasing, sultry wink.
And that was the second time you fainted.
---

You stare across the table at Renamon, and Renamon stares back. 
Annette had woken you back up from your latest bout of unconsciousness not too long ago, and after dealing with the ensuing screaming fit, had sat you down at one side of the dinner table whilst her crazy-ass pet took up a seat opposite you. This was bizarre. Too bizarre. You must've tripped and fell down a rabbit hole into Wonderland. Got sucked up by a tornado on your way back from work last night and spat out in the lands of Oz. Stumbled through some kind of tear in the fabric of reality and ended up in the Twilight Zone. So far neither of you had said so much as a word to one another. Annette, on the other hand, hadn't stopped talking. 
The words were pouring from your sister so fast that it was a challenge to keep up with her. Part of you wants to think that she's just afraid you'll faint before she has a chance to finish, but deep down you know that she's just terrified of letting you speak and hearing what you have to say about all of this. She should be. As Annette babbles on, your initial shock fades to surprise. Surprise hardens into anger, anger simmers into fury, fury explodes into blind rage, and finally your rage transcends into something too ugly for words. 
All of those sleepovers. Nights out with friends. The entire fucking summer vacation "hanging out with her buddies". Lies. She'd been wandering the streets at the dead of night, fighting the same monsters that demolished houses and ruined neighbourhoods when peoples heads were turned. She and her otherworldly accomplice had been waging a war against things that could tear men limb from limb, and they'd been doing it for. A. Fucking. Year. Day after day after day, your fifteen year old sister stared death in the face and practically BEGGED it to come and take her behind your back. FOR A FUCKING YEAR. 
"Annie, stop talking." You say. The cold, tempered anger in your voice is more than enough to scare her into silence. You break away from the staring match you'd been holding with Renamon and turn your scornful eyes upon Annette. She shrinks away from your glare, as if it were so hot it scalded her. 
"R-really? I haven't even gotten to the good part yet! Eheh..." she jokes in a hopeless effort to quell your swelling temper. She makes a pitiful attempt at a smile before shamefully lowering her head and resigning herself to her fate. 
There are a thousand things you want to scream at her right now. None of them were particularly pleasant. The first thing that floats to the top of your head is "Why?"
Annette flinches, shrinking a little bit further into herself, as if the question had been a sharp slap across her cheek. "I... W-what?" she quavers, tears gradually edging their way into her voice. 
"Why? Why keep something this... This BIG to yourself? Like, did you even think about how dangerous this is? You realise that when you're out there fighting... Whatever the fuck... You could actually die, right? What's gonna happen when you square up against one of those Digimon-things your pet here can't handle?" you ask, pointing an accusing finger towards Renamon. 
The Digimon in question replies with a soft giggle. "Oh, don't worry yourself over me, big boy, I can handle plenty." she purrs, leaning forwards to plant her elbows on the table, balance her head in her hands and smile at you like some smug, foxy incarnation of the Cheshire Cat.
"Shut. The fuck. Up." you demand, punctuating each pause with a jab of your pointed finger. "Look, I don't know how things get done wherever the hell you come from, but around these parts, we don't drag kids into fucking warzones!" 

Renamon's sly jester's smile dampens ever so slightly, and the ice in her pale, blue eyes seems to get just that little bit colder. It doesn't take a genius to know that you just touched a nerve. There's a little warning voice in your ear telling you to leave her be -- that your little rebuke towards her was enough and that you were playing with fire -- but you were seeing red. Rage had your reins wrapped in its balled, trembling fists, and it had no intention of letting go any time soon.
Thankfully, Annette diverts your anger before you do anything you might regret, reaching out and laying a calming hand on your arm. "It wasn't her idea," she blurts, rivulets of tears rolling down her cheeks. "It was mine. I-I met Renamon a while ago, and when she told me about those Digimon running around, breaking stuff and... And hurting people... I figured, y'know, why not do something about it?" 
"Do something about it? Jesus Christ, Annie, you're fifteen years old! If you wanna do something about it then call the police!"
"And tell them what? That the streets are full of walking, talking computer viruses who like to blow stuff up and throw down for power and glory? Come on! You really think they'd buy that? Would you?" she drags a sleeve across her face, drying her eyes and locking them with yours. There's a stubborn determination to her look, one that you had come to recognise over your meagre time as a parental figure as being synonymous with pain, suffering and the mother of all migraines. It's the look that signifies that special kind of hard-headedness exclusive to teens. The kind of look that said: 'I don't care if I'm wrong, I'm going to scream and shout until it makes me right.' 
"I know how dangerous it is, Anon, I'm not a moron. But if me and Renamon didn't go out and fight those things, then nobody else would. People would die, Anon, and they'd die because I sat on my ass and did nothing!" 
"YOU could die!" you exclaim, gripping Annette by the shoulders and shaking her, as if the act of doing so might shake some sense into her head. No luck, her expression remained as stubborn as ever. "You think I want to wake up one day and find out my sister's been splattered across the fucking pavement? DO YOU REALISE WHAT THAT WOULD DO TO ME?"
There's a scrape of chair legs against the floor as Renamon stands upright and shoots a look across the table at you that's eerily similar to Annette's. "That's not going to happen." she says so firmly that it's enough to shock you out of your anger for a moment. The teasing cadence to her voice is gone, substituted for iron, and the wry smile and cold, mystic eyes had been replaced with a stony frown and two flecks of granite. Once again you touched a nerve, only this time you realise that the nerve is Annette, and you did a lot more than just 'touch' it.
"Easy Renamon, just lemmie do the talking," placates Annette before returning her attention to you. Something softens in her face as she shrugs your hands from her shoulders and takes them in hers. "I know it's a shitty deal, and I know that you'd rather have me doing pretty much anything else with my free time, but you've got to understand: I HAVE to do this. I can't just sit here and... And watch people die. Not when I have the power to stop it. " 

She's right, although you're desperately searching for a way in which she could be wrong. People had indeed been hurt and, on rare occasion, killed by Digimon epidemic. It wasn't common, but every now and then there'd be the tattered remains of a body left amidst the destruction that the monsters had wrought in the night. Could you really hate your sister for trying to put an end to it? Annette was exactly the sort of person who'd throw themselves into danger for the sake of others. As nihilistic and uncaring as she was on the surface, deep down she was very much her mother's daughter: courageous, tender and more than willing to lay her life on the line for complete strangers.
It's that same attitude that got Mom killed. If you were to let Annette walk down that same road, what kind of brother would you be? Shit, what kind of man would you be if you stopped her? How many innocent lives would you be flushing down the drain by denying them their would-be hero? 
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Annette was right: it's a shitty deal. 
"Anon please," begs Annette. "You want me to be safe, I get it. But if I don't do this, if I have to see one more home wrecked or life destroyed or... Or person murdered when I know I could've stopped it, it'd kill me inside." 
"Annette..."
She squeezes her eyes shut, and fresh tears roll down her face. "Every day I take the bus to school and every day something along the way's been fucking ruined. Some guy's car's been totalled, a shopkeeper's livelihood's been levelled, somebody's home's been flattened... There was a girl in my class who wouldn't stop crying today. You want to know why? Because a couple nights ago something put her dad n the emergency room with a missing arm." 
You can feel her hands trembling around yours, feel the raw emotion flowing from her as she opens up the floodgates to her heart. "And all day, all I could think of was 'what if that was you?'"
"Jesus Annette-"
"You're coming home late from work all the time, and every night I'm terrified that you're not going to reach the front door alive. You asked me if I realised what me dying would do to you. Can you even imagine what losing you would do to me?" She tightens her grip around your hands and sobs. "I can't let that happen. Not to you and not to anybody else. I know it's dangerous and I know that I could die and I don't give a shit. Somebody's gotta put a stop to it, and me and Renamon here are the only ones who can." 
"But..." you choke, searching desperately for a leg to stand on. Call the police, call the fucking army, sell the house and move to the Himalayas, do anything that kept Annette out of the lion's den. None of it worked out. The police and the army were too busy doing jack shit about the monsters tearing up the streets, and Annette would never forgive you for dragging her away from this.
All you can do is sit back, let your Annie play hero and pray to God that she doesn't get killed.
"I don't want to lose you..." You croak. 
"Anon... You won't. I promise, you won't." swears Annette, throwing herself into your chest and letting you sweep her up in your arms. It's a lofty promise to make-
But looking past Annette's shoulder towards Renamon you see, just for a moment, her features hardening with determination, and somehow you just know that she'd do anything and everything in her power to make Annette keep that promise.
You hope she would.
You hope to God she would.
---
Your sister's terms had been simple: she gets to keep doing her Digimon thing on the condition that she avoided fighting anything 'out of her league', so to speak. Renamon had been less than happy with the wording, snidely remarking that she'd yet to meet another Digimon who could handle her one-on-one. Annette had replied with a baiting mention of a certain 'Metal-Grey-Mon', whatever the fuck that was, and with a roll of her eyes and a begrudging grumble beneath her breath, Renamon withdrew herself from any more conversation until you had Annette tucked safe and sound into her bed on the top bunk. She's asleep as soon as she gets the covers over her. Dropping bombshells left and right and turning your brother's world view on its head must be hard work, you suppose. You plant a small, goodnight kiss on her forehead before going to confront the inter-dimensional monster lounging in your living room. 

She's leant against the sofa, legs crossed and vulpine head cocked to the side. She regards you with a mocking smile, the cold, black-on-blue frost of her eyes warming with an audacious sort of amusement.
It's crazy. it's MORE than crazy. There's a fox-lady-dog-thing in your living room. It's a big, fat shit on everything you thought you knew about how the universe worked. It's like you're face-to-face with a glitch in the fabric of reality. And she knew it. Perhaps it was the evil twist to her smile or her playfully twitching ears which tipped you off; she knew just how mind-bendingly weird this was for you. Knew it and relished in it. 
You knees go weak just looking at her, and you steady yourself by clutching at the edge of a nearby chair, clinging to it as if it were your one and only float in this vast ocean of batshit-insanity. "You aren't going to go and faint again, are you?" she teases, slinking towards you. She moves with all the lazy grace of a housecat, elegant and fluid without even trying. "Tsk, if you keep this up, how are we ever going to get to know one another?"
"I-I'm okay," you stutter uneasily, tensing up as she draws closer. She's so... Different. Alien. And yet she acts so human... It's uncanny valley taken to a whole other level. It's like watching a cartoon character come to life. 
"Hmmh, so you are," replies Renamon, sauntering up to you. Her eyes meander along your body, the devilish merriment within them growing ever stronger the more of you she took in. "You know, for all Annie built you up, I expected you to be taller."
"Yeah? Well, 'Haley', I expected you to be HUMAN, so I guess we're both a little let down." you snap back anxiously, wrestling with the urge to backpedal away from her. 

For a moment Renamon seems taken aback, smile faltering and eyes going wide. Then she tilts her head back and out pours her thick, throaty giggle. "Well, at least she wasn't lying about your sense of humour." she laughs, rolling her head to the side and smirking. 
"Yeah, I'm a real fucking comedian," you quip humourlessly, all the while freaking out on the inside. You can't get over it. There's a thing from another world in your living room and you're holding a conversation with it. What the fuck happened to your lazy afternoon? 
"Mmmmhmhmhm, well then it's a good thing I like funny men," she purrs, gradually circling around you, eyes dancing across whatever part of you they could find, sizing you up. Judging you. It does a whole lot of nothing to ease your discomfort. "Oh yes, very different from how I imagined."
"Yeah? Well huh-how did you imagine me?" you manage, the hairs on the back of your neck standing on edge as she steps to the left, out of view. You turn your head to follow her, only to find that she's gone.
"A little less jumpy, for starters." she mutters into your opposite ear, almost giving you a heart attack in the process. You reel away from her, nearly tripping over the chair you were clinging to, much to Renamon's mischievous delight. "Honestly, there's no need to be so afraid," she says, closing the distance between the two of you as quickly as you had tried to widen it. "I won't bite." 
"Right, okay. Sorry. This is all just so-"
"Surprising?" she finishes. You nod meekly. 
Her smile takes on a smug edge, as if you admitting your surprise was some sort of compliment to her. "The first thing you should know about me is that I'm full of surprises," she says with a proud flick of her tail. "The second is that I'm all for getting to the point, so: are you going to let me stay here?"
"What?" you ask, blinking owlishly. 
"Are you going to let me stay here?" she repeats, slower. "You see, I've always tried to make a habit of keeping a close eye on my trainer," she nods towards the bedroom, where Annette slept. "But that's not always easy when I have to keep my distance for the sake of secrecy. Well, now you know I exist, and I don't have to bother about hiding myself anymore. So: Can. I. Stay here?"
"I uh..." you gawp at her, still reeling from the sheer absurdity of it all. 
"Come on, you wouldn't turn a poor little thing like me out onto the streets, now, would you?" she asks, melodramatically pouting her lip. 
"I... Fuck, sure. Yeah, yeah, okay." you mumble, pinching the bridge of your nose and suddenly feeling exhausted beyond words. 
The existence of Digimon, the truth behind all of that destruction on the streets and your sister's hand in it, the fox-thing in front of you with the constant bedroom eyes and the voice permanently dialled somewhere between teasing and jovial... It was too much for one day. Right now you wanted more than anything to just bury yourself in bedsheets, block out the world and surrender to a pleasant dream where things still made sense.

"Well that's a weight off my shoulders. Thanks, Tiger." she says smoothly. "So, you got any idea where I'll be sleeping, or do I get to choose? There's a king sized bed in there that looks just the right amount fancy for a high-class girl like myself." she jabs a thumb towards Mom and Dad's bedroom.
"No. That... That's off-limits," you reply, and despite how shell-shocked you are from the ceaseless barrage of insanity that'd been hammering you throughout the afternoon, you still manage to muster enough firmness into your voice to dissuade Renamon from asking twice. "You, uh, you can sleep on the couch or now... Just, uhh, just lemmie get you a pillow." Rummaging through the airing cupboard you retrieve a spare pillow and extra bedsheets before dumping them gracelessly atop of Renamon's 'bed'. Her eyes dart back and forth beneath a cocked brow, flitting between you and the bedding heaped upon the couch and looking all kinds of unimpressed. 
For a moment you're afraid that she's going to complain, but instead she merely shrugs her shoulders. "Well, it's better than what I'm used to, I suppose." You scurry back towards your and Annette's bedroom, eager to put some distance between you and your sister's 'pet'. You're stopped in your tracks as Renamon clears her throat. "Excuse me, aren't you forgetting something?" 
You turn on your heel to face her -- she's wrapped herself up in the blankets and sprawled herself across the couch, staring after you like a kid eagerly awaiting a bedtime story. 
"Yuh-yeah?"
Her smile splits into a prankster's grin. "Where's my goodnight kiss?" 
You feel the heat rise up to your cheeks, and Renamon broils up in dark, syrupy laughter as you retreat into the bedroom and burrow yourself beneath the covers, praying that somehow things would start to make sense in the morning. 
That night, you dreamt of foxes.
---
The sun's been up for over an hour, you've had a full night's rest, and yet you feel like you could sleep like the dead. You're bone tired. Running on fumes. Fucking exhausted. You're so goddamned tired that the mere act of thinking requires genuine effort on your part. You can hear Annette scuttling about somewhere in the kitchen, making what you hope is breakfast in bed. You briefly wonder why she's up so early, until you check your alarm clock and realise that she's not; it's almost afternoon.
"Fuuuuuck..." you sigh to yourself, rubbing the sleep out of your eyes and forcing yourself to get up. You'd panic about being late for work, but honestly? Right now you had much bigger things on your plate. Like, you know, the actual, real life DIGIMON sleeping on your couch. A small piece of you was still holding out for the moment where you open up the bedroom door, find out that the couch is empty and that the whole thing was just a stupid dream. Sadly, the much larger, logical part of your brain knew for a solemn fact that you weren't that lucky. 
throwing on some pants and a shirt, you stumble out into the living room. "Mmph, morning, Annie..." you mumble with a groggy yawn.
"Good morning, handsome..."
That's not Annie.
Over in the kitchen, Renamon is casually scouring the contents of your fridge with a mild disinterest. Bent over and rummaging through your groceries on the bottom shelf, her dipstick tail is all you can see of her, poking out from behind the open door of the fridge and drifting back and forth in a lethargic wag. It's the suddenness that gets to you the most. One moment you're dragging your ass out of bed just like any other day and then boom, cyber-fox. It's just so... So jarring. It's like finding a Duplo block in a box full of Lego, or a Starburst in a Haribo's bag. Only worse. Much worse.

You try to speak, only to find that your tongue doesn't want to work. You give your head a rough shake, hurdling the initial shock and finding your voice. "W-what're you doing?" you ask.
"Getting breakfast," she answers with a swish of her tail. "You want some? I'm thinking 'omelette'."
"I uh... Yeah. Omelette sounds good." you manage, seating yourself at the dinner table and willing your hands to stop shaking. Relax. Chill. Everything is perfectly normal, now calm down and let the talking computer-dog fix you a nice breakfast. 
"Great, because that's all I know how to make. Now, are you gonna stand there fidgeting with your hands or are you going to help me?" she asks coolly, without looking up from the fridge. 
"Huh? Oh, Right! Umm, n-no problem..." 
You waste no time in getting back up and burying your head into the kitchen cupboards in search of a frying pan, suddenly desperate for something to take your mind off of the fucking anomaly poking through your fridge. There's a long, uncomfortable silence as you ready the stove and heat up the pan, broken by the soft 'pit-pat' of Renamon's quiet footsteps padding up behind you. Your heart comes leaping into your mouth as a furry, gloved arm reaches past you and places a tray of eggs beside you. 
"On second thought, how's about you do the kitchen work? Annie tells me you're a natural chef, and it's so rare that I get to have someone cook for little old me." she suggests. Her voice is a purring murmur, right next to your ear.
All you can manage is a nod.
"Thanks, big boy. Do me a favour and go easy on the cheese, would you? I like to look after my figure." she says, swaggering her way over to the table and taking a seat. And with that, the uncomfortable silence is back with a vengeance. You could feel her eyes gnawing at your back as you worked on breakfast (well, technically lunch), capturing your every move and --you couldn't help but feel -- eagerly waiting for you to make a slip-up. Drop an egg, spill some water, burn your hand, anything that'd give her an opportunity to sneak in a snide comment.
It reminded you of Annette a whole lot more than you'd like. Speaking of which...

"Hey, where's-"
"School. She left earlier this morning. I would've followed her, but that'd mean missing out on your charming company." replies Renamon, greasing the word 'charming' with just the right amount of sarcasm to put it somewhere between the realms of 'joking' and 'genuinely offending'. "Looks like we have all day to get familiar with each other." she says with a mockingly suggestive chuckle. 
"I have work." you blurt in a knee-jerk reaction, like a drowning man grasping for a lifeline. 
"DID have work. Annie phoned you in sick before she left." she says with another chuckle. "Tsk, you humans and your obligations! School, work, parenting... It's a wonder how you ever make any time for yourselves!" 
Shit. This must be how the hangman feels when the noose starts tightening around his neck. Thanks Annie, you little bitch. Being in the same room as her new pet was enough to get your palms sweaty as it was, and now she expected you to spend an entire day with it? She was stone, cold dead when she got back this afternoon.
Renamon leans forwards and rests her head in her paws, a smug victor's grin on her lips. She knew you were trying to wiggle your way out of this, and she seemed to be having the time of her life telling you that you weren't going to. "Sorry hun, but you and I are stuck together. Terrible, isn't it?" 
Somehow it takes you this long to realise that by trying to bail on her, you might be inadvertently offending her. You bumble out an apology, if only to stop her from melting your face off with her 'crazy lazer shit', as Annette had so eloquently put it. "I didn't mean it like that! I-I-I just wanted to-"
>She cuts you off with another fiendish giggle, not unlike that of a scheming schoolgirl passing around disparaging rumours. "You know if you keep stuttering like that I'm going to have to keep cutting you off. I'm impatient like that," she snarks. "Speaking of which, is breakfast ready?" 
"W-what? I mean, uh..." you glance back to the stove and take the pan off of the heat before you turn the omelette to ash. "Yeah, it's uh, It's pretty done. And look, I didn't mean to like, insult you or anything. It's just..." you look at her over your shoulder, sitting there with her legs crossed and her fingers drumming on the table, so human and yet so alien. "It's a lot to take in. YOU'RE a lot to take in."
Her chest swells with pride and her tail flicks out a happy little flourish. "Compliments will get you everywhere, Tiger," She purrs, leaning back in her chair and folding her paws behind her head. "Don't worry, I understand; it's only natural for you to be a little overwhelmed. I tend to have that effect on people."
You can't imagine why.

Walking over to the table and splitting the omelette between two plates, you sit down opposite Renamon, pull your plate towards you, and wait for something to say to pop into your head so you can stop staring at your food like a tard. "So... How'd you sleep?" you ask, if only to stop the conversation from grinding to a halt. 
"Like a Viximon," she says between mouthfuls. "The bedding was sub-par, but after sleeping on the streets, well, I'm not complaining." 
The fuck is a Viximon? 
Wait.
"You slept on the street?" you ask.
"No, actually I booked a room at a five-star hotel and napped my nights away wrapped up in silk sheets and Egyptian cotton." she replies with a roll of her eyes and a dark chuckle. "Of course I slept in the streets. Where else is a lady like myself going to go? The local inn?"
A fleeting wisp of pity tugs ever so lightly at your heartstrings. "Sorry I couldn't give you anything better than a sofa. Me and Annie don't really have... Guests." 
She brushes you off with a dismissive wave. "Trust me, if you sleep in an alley for as long as I have, you'll have no problems getting comfortable on a sofa." 
She skewers a piece of omelette on her fork and turns it around beneath her black, sharply tapered nose, savouring the scent. "A bed would've been better, though." she adds pointedly before popping the omelette into her mouth.
"Yeah, It would've been." you reply whimsically with a glance towards your parents' empty bedroom. Renamon narrows her eyes ever so slightly, silently pushing you to elaborate. You don't, and with a small shrug of her shoulders, she decides to drop the subject. 
"So, you know nothing about me, I know nothing about you and we've got the entire day to fix that. How'd you like to play a game, Anon?" she asks with freshly renewed vigour. 
"A game?" 
"Mmhmm. The rules are simple: I ask you a question, and you ask me a question. Think truth or dare, only without the daring." explains Renamon, finishing the last of her omelette. "Sound good?"

Well, if she was going to be living with you from now on you'd have to get familiar with her sooner or later. Might as well get it over and done with. Who knows? You might even manage to have a little fun; a talking fox-monster who comes from the land of binary and code is bound to have one or two interesting stories to tell. 
"Alright, sure." 
"Wonderful! First question: are you going to eat that?" asks Renamon, pointing towards your untouched omelette.
You can't help but sigh as you slide your plate across the table and into her waiting paws. She really DID remind you of Annette. "Thanks, Hun." she says before setting upon your most breakfast. At least she appreciated your cooking. So much for 'looking after her figure.' You patiently wait for Renamon to finish demolishing your most important meal of the day before throwing out a question in return. "Okay, my turn," you say, fortifying your voice with all the solemnity that you could muster. "What do you want from my sister?" 
"Power." Answers Renamon nonchalantly, cleaning up the last few scraps of her meal before resting her paws on belly with a contented sigh. 
"... What?"
"Power," she repeats, this time continuing at the behest of your blank, clueless look. "I partnered myself with your sister because she's a troublemaker who likes to get into fights. The more fights I get into the more fights I win, the more fights I win the stronger I get, and the stronger I get the happier I'll be!" she explains, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.
"... I don't get it." 
She pinches the bridge of her nose and shakes her head, a soft drawl of laughter bubbling beneath her breath. "Of course, I forgot who I'm talking to. Here, let me elaborate: Digimon aren't flesh and blood in the same way you are. We're -- mmph, how do I say this in a way you'd understand -- we're ones and zeroes made physical. We're data, and when we die, that data becomes..." she taps a finger against her pursed lips, searching for the right word. "... Well, lets say it becomes 'downloadable.'"

Downloadable? 
"Hold on a second, are trying to tell me that you EAT other Digimon?!" you exclaim with a dawning horror.
"Pfft, eat them? Please, don't be so dramatic," she scoffs. "It's more along the lines of drinking their blood." 
"Right, Less 'Wolfman', more 'Dracula', because that's SO much better!" you exclaim, edging your chair away from the table and preparing to dash for the door as another question enters your mind. "So, you don't... You don't do that to people, do you?"
Her face darkens, and an evil smile monopolizes her lips. "Only when I'm REALLY thirsty." her eyes sharpen themselves into daggers as she hungrily draws her tongue across her lips, flash-freezing your blood and slamming your heart into sixth gear. 
You're just about to burst into a run before she broils up with a mischievous, throaty giggle. "Kidding! I'm kidding. Honestly, Annette told me you were a natural joker. Where's your sense of humour?"
"Harr-dee-fucking-har," you exhale, easing back into your seat. Then you freeze. "So you kill other Digimon? You're a killer?"
Another roll of her eyes. "Well how else do you think I put a stop to them? Intelligent debate and asking nicely?"
"No, I just thought..." What HAD you thought? That your sister would ask Renamon to give the bad guys the ol' one-two and they'd run off wailing that they'd get her next time like some cliché Saturday morning cartoon villain? Shit, that's EXACTLY what you'd thought. Not once had it occurred to you that by taking the fight to the monsters, Annette was committing accessory to murder. 
Your shock must be written all over your face, because Renamon picks up on it in an instant. "If it's any consolation, I only kill the bad ones -- well, the ones Annette TELLS me are bad -- to be honest I'm kind of hazy on the concept of morals; it's more of a human thing, you see."
Great. So not only was your sister's bestie an anthropomorphic computer virus with a knack for getting under your skin, but she's also a monster slayer who's hooked on snorting the blood of felled enemies and has little to no concept of right and wrong. Did you mention that their relationship involved your sister being the judge and jury to the executioner? Fresh. Wicked. Neato burrito. Cool fucking beans. 
Somehow things just keep getting more and more fucked.

"Alright big boy, my turn." says Renamon, humming to herself thoughtfully and propping a fist under her chin like some outlandish canine interpretation of The Thinker. Of course she's overplaying it on purpose. Teasing you. Again. Finally, she settles on a question. "Why do you care so much about your sister?" 
It's so out of left field that you actually think she's joking for a moment. Only she's not. She's completely serious. "That supposed to be a trick question or something? She's my sister." you ask incredulously. "I mean, isn't it obvious?"
Renamon furrows her brow with a mildly interested hum "So it's a duty... Or a requirement?" she smiles to herself, so certain that she's found the answer. "That's it, isn't it? A-hnhnhnhnhn, you humans, so many rules! How do you even-"
"It's not a requirement." you reply, a bit too surprised to be offended. How doesn't she understand the concept of siblings? Was she an only child or something? "I keep her around and I look after her because she's my sister, and I love her."
"That's not a valid reason." she smirks, the last dregs of her laughter still burbling in the background of her voice. 
"It's valid enough for me." you shrug. 
Renamon's chuckle fizzles out into silence, and she stares at you, her brow furrowed and her mouth half open, as if she'd been poised to insult you, only to have something stay her tongue at the last moment. Holy shit, she's actually confused. "Alright, look: I might not act like it all the time, but I DO love my sister. She's a good person, I like having her around and, well, she's family. That means I've got an obligation to look after her. She needs a parent, and if I don't step up to the plate, nobody else will." 
"And so you devote yourself to her? Just like that?"
"Just like that."
You can practically hear the gears churning away inside her head. Her eyes widen, and for just a moment, her smug persona peels back and you catch a glimpse of the surprise which lay beneath. "Well there's a thing..." she mumbles to herself, a sparkle of fascination lending itself to the crystal blue of her eyes. The chink in her self-assured exterior is gone as quickly as it appeared, locked up behind her trademark flirty smile. Only something's different. She seems more attentive, sort of like a predator after catching it's first whiff of freshly-spilt blood. 

Just like that, the miniscule amount of confidence you'd managed to built up with Renamon since last night's introduction crumbles into dust in an instant. If she's the predator, they you were most definitely the prey. 
"You know, out of all the things Annie told me about you, she never mentioned that you were so... Dedicated. A man who looks after his little sister and works one of those menial little 'job' things you humans all insist on having mustn't have much downtime. "Whaddya do for fun around here, tiger?"
"I-isn't it my turn to ask a question?"
"Your questions are boring," she says with a dismissive wave of her paw. "Now come on, spit it out. Tell me all there is to know about 'Anon'."
You consider calling her out on her sudden change in attitude, but decide to leave well enough alone. At least she seems interested now. Who knows? Maybe that meant you were making progress. 
"Well, there's not much to tell," you admit, with no small amount of embarrassment. Life as a single guardian had pretty much crushed any possibility for leisure activities, let alone friends. Being a parent was a heavy burden, and if you weren't ready for the responsibility -- which you sure as hell hadn't been -- that burden could snap the back of your social life like a twig. Keeping Annette by your side had forced you to make sacrifices, and even though you knew in your heart that she was worth it, that didn't mean that you sometimes longed for the sweet luxuries of a bachelor's life from time to time. "Annie and my job, they're sort of my life. I mean, I'll sit on my ass and watch a movie when I get the time, but other than that..." you shrug.
"Sounds to me like you could use a friend," she says, gracefully gliding a paw down to the table, next to where your hand rested. One of her thick, bulky digits nudges against your finger on its way down, and you can't help but feel as if it was intentional. "Lucky for you, I can be a VERY friendly girl." She caps off her sentence with a wink, and for some reason the butterflies in your stomach decide that now would be a good time to wake up. You clear your throat, taking a moment to beat your nerves back into submission and berate yourself for letting an overgrown chihuahua get the better of you. 

"I'm not lonely, if that's what you're insinuating." you blurt, lying through your teeth. Renamon tilts her head forwards and fixes you with a sceptical stare. Shit, you're a terrible liar...
"I'm not!" you reaffirm, not even bothering to try and sound convincing anymore. Truth was you hadn't had an actual friend since you'd left high school. It wasn't as if you hadn't tried, but like you said: Parenthood was a bitch and your job was a bastard. Friends were a luxury that you simply didn't have the time for. "I mean, I have Annette..." 
"And nobody else." finishes Renamon with a solemn sigh. Her fingers drum the table a couple of times before she inches her paw to the right and drapes it across your hand. "There's no need to be embarrassed. Why, I'm in the same boat as you! Annette's a good trainer for sure, but between her schooling and my... Less than socially acceptable appearance... We hardly get any time together." 
>Despite the sarcasm her words came knitted with, there's a rare dash of sincerity in there, too. It's enough to wring some sympathy from you -- Not much, but enough to keep you from pulling your hand out from under her paw. 
"So, is that the reason you decided to stop hiding and show yourself to me? You just wanted somebody else to talk to?"
"Now now, don't give yourself too much credit, Anon. You're nice company, but not THAT nice. No, that was all your sister's idea. Although I admit, having somebody else to antagonise IS a pleasant outcome." she says, giving your hand a light squeeze.
You know she's baiting you for a reaction, but there's only so much teasing you can take. Taking your hand from the table you shove it safe and secure into your pocket, away from Renamon's scheming paws, and with a smug chortle she claims another victory over you. "What's wrong? Don't tell me you're one of those people who get all funny about physical contact, because I'm warning you now-" 
Beneath the table, the velveteen slipper of her foot grinds up the length of your calf.
"-I'm awfully touchy-feely when it comes to boys I like."
You bounce out of your chair with a shocked yelp, like a jackrabbit with a car battery clamped to its balls, and Renamon bursts into a full-on belly laugh. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up..." you growl, nursing your wounded pride. All of a sudden you're ten years old again and suffering through the pinches and pokes of the school bully, only this time round the classroom is your kitchen and the bully is an alien from the planet Microsoft. 
"Oh I will," chuffs Renamon, wiping a tear from her eye. "Nnnhnhnhn... if I knew you'd be this fun I would've introduced myself to you sooner..." 

"Good to know you're enjoying yourself," you say with a dismissive wave of your hand before storming off towards your bedroom, finally deciding that you've had enough. "Now if you don't mind, I'm going to go pick out some clothes. YOU might not have anything better to do than make me look like a douche, but I have a date tonight." 
"*Snrrk* Oh come on, loosen up a little, Big Boy! It's not as if-" her laughter cuts out in an instant, and the silence which fills the void is so complete that it stops you dead in your tracks. You turn to look at her from the bedroom doorway. She's staring after you, eyes as wide as a deer's in headlights. You turned just in time to see the last embers of her smile fading as her mouth hardens into a frown "-Wait, did you just say you had a date?"
"Not that it's any of your business, but yes, I have a date." you say, trying not to take too much offense by how surprised she sounds. Like yeah, you get it, you aren't a Casanova or anything, but was it really THAT much of a shocker?
"Oh." she says, eyes narrowing as she did so. The humour in her voice is gone, crushed beneath a staggering amount of apprehension that'd seemingly came out of nowhere. She cocks a brow, unimpressed. "Lucky you." 
"Uhuh, 'lucky me'." A little less than willing to stick around and endure any more of Renamon's teasing, you duck into your bedroom and begin sieving through your drawers for something a bit more presentable to wear. In truth you had all the time in the world to prepare. You were just looking for an excuse to wiggle your way out of Renamon's crosshairs, especially now since you've just gone and handed her a fresh mag. 
"Look, I'm gonna to take a shower and... I dunno, go buy some flowers or some shit. There's a laptop right here if you get bored, and there's leftover chilli in the fridge if you get hungry -- just stick it in the microwave for a few minutes and it should be fine." You peek around the corner of the doorframe -- Renamon glares back at you, something nasty brewing behind her eyes. "You do know how to use a microwave, don't you?"
She doesn't seem to like the taste of her own medicine, folding her arms across her thick chest of fur and leaning back into her chair with a fuming huff. "Very funny," she spits. "So who's your date?"
"You wouldn't know her." you reply, bundling your chosen attire under your arm and making a beeline for the bathroom. 
"Well then humour me, funny man. Is she pretty? Charming? Nice?" she pauses. "Or do you prefer your girls naughty?"
You're more or less on your final straw with her at this point. Last night you had come home to the biggest redpill you'd ever swallowed in your life delivered by none other than your very own sister as well as a face-to-face encounter with a fucking MONSTER. Was it too much to ask for a little understanding on Renamon's part? Could she at least keep her nose out of your love life?

"Her name is Jenny, and yes, she's very pretty." you say. 
You're expecting a witty comeback. A sharp jest. A flirtatious tease. 
Instead, Renamon merely tosses her head to the side with a stroppy *hmmph*. "Well, I'm sure you two will have lots of fun. Go ahead, go... Mingle. I'll just stay here. Alone." she says grudgingly.
"Uhuh, you do that." you say before closing the bathroom door on her and consigning yourself to the shower. You wash the residue of last night's fevered and panicked sweats from your body and dress yourself in record time, eager to get out of the house and forget about how fucked up your life was going to be from here on in.
Walking past the brooding Renamon on your way outside was like striding into a cobweb of guilt. She'd moved to the sofa and had dug the TV remote out from between the pillows, and was currently scrolling through the channels with an expression of intense boredom. 
Her casual musings about her own loneliness come back to bite you right in the conscience, and it stings a whole lot more than you thought it would. 
"Hey, look... School ends at three, okay? Annette's probably gonna be home in, what? Two hours? We've got some good movies on the DVD shelf. Why don't you just take the time to, I dunno, educate yourself on a classic?" you say, darting over to the shelf and pulling out one of your all-time favourites. You toss it into her lap before making your way outside, your wounded conscience somewhat healed.
Behind you Renamon curiously turns the DVD case over in her paws, and she bids you farewell with one last snide comment as you shut the door behind you.
"Who the hell calls a movie 'Slaughtersphere?'"
---
It takes Renamon all of thirty seconds to get bored with the television. How humans managed to sit around and actually watch this trash was beyond her. Turning off the TV and getting up from the sofa, she surveys the house in eager search for something a little more engaging to do than stare at an idiot box. 
"Hmmm," she hums to herself, thoughtfully tapping a finger against her lips. What to do, what to do... Her eyes settle on the laptop tucked away atop a table in the corner of the room. Perfect. Gliding over to laptop she picks it up, saunters into the empty bedroom and makes herself comfortable on the king-sized bed Anon had so rudely denied her. Mmph, much better. Honestly, why did she have to make do with a crummy sofa when there was perfectly fine bedding readily available? Sure, Anon had specifically told her that it was off limits -- but then again, what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. What was so special about this room anyways? Apart from the bed and the odd piece of furniture here and there, it was more or less empty. Sterile, even. Almost as if nobody had set foot in it for years...
Whatever.
Cracking open the laptop Renamon put the room out of her mind and instead got to doing what she did best: snooping around in other people's business. Thankfully, being a Digimon helped her along in that respect. Being made up of ones and zeroes had it's fair share of advantages, one of which being that she was capable of surfing the internet in a much more... fluid way than the average human. Whereas humans insisted on interacting with the web with a keyboard and mouse, Renamon preferred a much more intimate approach. Beneath her palm she could feel the raw data of the laptop's software busy at work. Roads connected to roads connected to roads, all bustling with traffic.
Her being a Digimon meant that she was able to stroll along the sidewalks, so to speak. Passwords were blockades one could simply walk around, security software became barriers which could be skipped over, firewalls could be knocked down with the liberal application of force... 
... And private social media accounts could be entered with relatively few problems. Behind the lids of her closed eyes she wanders digital halls and electronic highways, stopping at whatever might peak her interest. A half-written document somebody had never gotten around to finishing, an old game save file, a URL to a frequented porn site...

She would've been all over that last one, had the website not been crawling with viruses. Being living, breathing software meant that Digimon were susceptible to malware, and as tempting as finding out what Anon beat his meat to was, she didn't think it was quite worth taking the risk over. Then again...
Wait, no, never mind. The URL was under Annette's account, and she was already well aware of what Annie was into after that unfortunate incident a while back. It'd been late, she'd slipped into Annie's bedroom via the window to grab her for their routine sweep of the streets and wouldn't you know it, she'd forgotten to knock before entering. Heh, she'd teased Annette for weeks over that. In fact she still called her 'mistress' from time to time...
You know what? She was getting off-track. Where was all the good stuff? Accounts. Emails. Private pictures. Dirt, dirt, dirt -- On Anon, in particular. He was still something of an enigma to her, and she did ever so much enjoy sinking her teeth into a compelling mystery... She wastes no time breaking into his Facebook account and wringing it of all it had to offer. A meagre helping of photographs, a small pool of friends, the rare post -- Ahah! Private messages. 
Now, lets see here... Co-workers asking him out for a drink... Him brushing them off because he was 'too busy'... A call-out to Annette asking where she was because she was a whole ten minutes later than usual coming home from school -- yeesh, this guy had some issues.
His dedication to Annette in particular still confused her somewhat. Apparently her being 'family' meant a lot to him, as if being squeezed out of the same vagina was supposed to mean something. She couldn't understand it herself; she'd hatched with a pair of sisters, and by the end of the day she'd killed them both in self-defence. Hmph, who knows? Had it not been for their murderous intents, then perhaps she would have learned to love her siblings much like Anon loved Annette... Then again, she probably would've died before she had the chance. The data she'd obtained from killing her sisters had given her the vital strength needed to survive through the hardships of infancy. Had it not been for the edge in battle it had allowed her, she never would have lived to digivolve into the woman she was now. Ugh, childhood memories. She doubled down on her searching, if only to give herself something else think about. 
What's this? Apparently his most recent message was from one 'Jenny Davis', that 'very pretty' girl Anon had been blabbing about before he ran for the hills and left her all on her lonesome. Pfft, 'very pretty'. As if. Judging by her profile pictures she was a six out of ten at best. Really, he bailed on her to chase after THIS?
That offended her more than it should have. Here she was, right there for the taking, and he goes and snubs her for the mangle-faced freakshow reject who works a cash register for a living. Renamon ground her teeth together, red coals of resentment beginning to smoulder in the kiln of her heart. Reading through her and Anon's conversation, she only felt that resentment get hotter. God, she was so... Nice... Too nice. Nobody was THAT nice. Oh, she had some skeletons in her closet for sure. 

And you know what? she was going to find out what they were. Yeah, fuck it. Why not? She hated these 'high and mighty' types, anyways. Yeah, she bet she thought she was so high-class, didn't she? Real cream of the crop. 
Bitch.
She pounced on Jenny's profile and tore it open, shredding her way through lines of code with reckless abandon. Alright dream-girl, where was it? Where the fuck was your Achilles heel? Average home, average job, average life... C'mon, goddammit, give her something she could use. THERE! Some propositional messages and more than a few... revealing pictures... shared between her and a co-worker. Oooohohohoh, so Little Miss Perfect was too good to settle for just one man, was she? Oh, this was just PERFECT! 
Alright, she'd leave the laptop open on a table or something, incriminating evidence plastered all over the screen, and when Anon came home... Mmhmhmhmm, his reaction would be priceless! Jenny would be out of the picture, Anon would get the punishment he so rightfully deserved for walking out on her this morning, and the best part? It'd leave a hole in his heart which , if she were so inclined, she could stroll right on into after he was done moping.
She'd been considering adding Anon to her long list of conquests for a little while now. The idea had been bouncing around in her head before she'd even met him, in fact. It'd been the taboo which had attracted her at first: a Digimon fucking her trainer's brother behind her back. Mmph, wasn't that just the most delectably scandalous thing? 
Then she met him, witnessed his unwarranted yet admirable dedication towards his sister and for some reason it just made something inside of her click. She thought back to last night... Her opening the bedroom door and having Anon spill out onto the floor at her feet, expecting him to scramble for the nearest exit, screaming... 
Then he threw himself between her and Annie, and told the latter to run.He came face-to-face with a being from another world who could have very well been planning to peel the meat from his bones, and his first and only thought was to protect his sister. Completely selfless. You didn't see that in the Digital World, what with the only law of the land being 'survival of the fittest' and all that. You didn't see it much in this one, either. And yet, there was Anon, shielding Annette, the girl for whom he slaved away at a job he hated and would probably be far better off without, willing to die so that she may live.

It'd been at that point that Renamon decided that she wanted him. Something about that reckless disregard for his own safety, about the staggering amount of pure and simple affection he had for his sister, appealed to her more than the usual qualities a Digimon sought for in a mate (skill in combat, a high echelon of digivolution and physical prowess) ever could. She wanted him, and she the kind of girl who ALWAYS got what she wanted.
She was about to place the laptop back where she found it with the cold, hard evidence of Jenny's infidelity laid bare for the world to see when an opposing thought crossed her mind. Human's didn't like it when you invaded their privacy, did they? Hmm. As much of a bombshell Anon seeing this would be, she didn't want to get caught up in the blast radius. Granted, it'd sink whatever relationship there might've been between Anon and Miss I-can't-keep-my-legs-closed, but it would also mean admitting to snooping around his personal information.
Drat. Well, no worries, there was always plan B. She logged out of the laptop, laid it back on its small table and tidied up the bed, removing any proof of her being there before heading for the nearest window. She'd picked up on where Jenny lived whilst nosing about her profile. It was a couple of blocks down from here, not far from where she worked. Not much of a journey by any means, but far enough away to let Renamon stretch her legs a little...
She slides the window open and slips out into the back yard, casually hiding herself behind a fence before the neighbours in the garden opposite got the chance to see her. Humans were pitifully easy to hide from, even without all the tricks she had up her sleeves. With bad eyesight, worse hearing and a nose that was more or less just for show, avoiding them was hardly a challenge. In fact, her innate abilities made it downright child's-play.
Taking a moment to savour the revitalising taste of cool, autumn air she focuses her powers. Gradually her form begins to fade, like a shadow melting beneath the light. She might not have needed those tricks up her sleeves, but they were nice to have, nonetheless. Invisibility was one of her favourites, and why wouldn't it be? I was just so versatile! Maybe she wanted to sneak up on an unsuspecting foe and deliver a world of hurt upon them, maybe she wanted to walk the streets in broad daylight without anybody freaking out and calling the national guard...

Or maybe she wanted to break into some uppity cunt's home and tell her to stay the fuck out of her territory. Either way, invisibility was nice to have. 

With an energetic leap she mounts the roof of one of the neighbour's homes before bounding to another, and then another, and then another. The cold wind lapping at her face, the blue sky so fresh and bright overhead, streets bustling with activity beneath her feet... Aah, freedom!
With feline grace she flies from one foothold to another, as elegant as a ribbon in the breeze. From the roof of a house she jumps to a streetlamp, and from the peak of the streetlamp she soars to the top of a utility pole and tightropes along the power lines. 
How wonderful it felt to be outside again! Being stuck with a ceiling over her head often left her thirsty for a taste of the great outdoors, and after an entire morning spent boxed away in a house, it tasted ever so sweet. Now, where was that address? Her eyes scan across street signs as she zips past them. Eeine, meanie, miney... There it is. She couldn't be far away now. She hitches a ride atop of a passing bus, only to jump off not a minute later, catching hold of a nearby billboard overlooking the neighbourhood and perching herself on one of its corners. Found you. She spies Jenny's house at the end of the street, the girl in question visible through one of the windows. Ugh, THAT'S what she looks like without any makeup? Oh Anon, where were your standards? 

She stealths her way over to the home, ghosting up to an open window and letting herself in. Her feet meet with the warm carpet of the living room, and her form fades back into vision. It was at about this time, just as Renamon was shrugging off her shroud of invisibility, that Jenny decided to walk in. Her ginger hair is knotted into a neat ponytail, and in her hands she carries a mug of coffee which promptly falls from between her fingers and shatters around her feet the moment she lays her eyes on Renamon.
"H-holy..." she wheezes, stumbling backwards and gaping at the Digimon with the same dumbfounded look Renamon had seen on Anon's face last night, just before he collapsed in a heap and fainted. Hopefully Jenny would be a bit less dramatic than that. She wanted to have a word with her, after all, and it was awfully hard to hold a conversation without a conscious partner.
Tripping over her heels, Jenny nearly falls before steadying herself on a nearby shelf, eyes threatening to pop out of their sockets. "Wuh-what're... I-I don't-"
"Yes, yes, shock and surprise," Says Renamon with a disarming smile. "You're Jenny, right?"
Jenny replies with a weak nod, her expression still unable to decide on whether to be shocked, horrified or just plain confused. Still smiling, Renamon takes a step forwards, and Jenny takes one back, only to trip over her heels and land hard on her ass. Renamon's smile took on a dark, spiteful edge, and the cool crystal of her eyes shone with impish fire as she closed in on her trapped prey.
"Well, Jenny, you and I are going to have a talk about a little thing called 'boundaries...'
----

It's late, you're drunk and the world feels just that little bit nastier than usual.
Trudging down the sidewalk, not bothering to try and walk in a straight line, you make your way home through the sparsely populated streets, drawing the ire of what few passers-by around you with either your obnoxious swaying or the smell of cheap whiskey which permeated you -- you didn't stop any of them to ask which.
The date had been... Well.
You and Jenny went out, you ate, you drank, and then she told you that she never wanted to see you again and that you should do your shopping somewhere else. You'd been dreading that she might blow you off ever since you picked her up this afternoon -- she'd been treating you as if you were radioactive all night. She kept a distance of at least three feet between the two of you at all times, said a grand total of about five words throughout the entire date and avoided eye contact like you were a fucking basilisk or some shit. And yet, you'd persisted and worked your ass off to show her the best time you could. Cracked your best jokes, told your best stories, wore your best clothes, you'd emptied your heart into making this the best night out she could've wished for, and it just hadn't been enough.
Know that feeling when you give something your all but shit just falls apart around you regardless? It's not the regular sinking feeling in your stomach or the heavy heart which comes from regular failure. No, it's more gradual than that. More methodical. It takes the time to get familiar with you, finds out where you're softest so it can hurt you all the more. 
You're reminded of the first month after you lost Mom and Dad. You're working yourself to death just trying to make ends meet, Annette won't stop locking herself in the bathroom and crying, the bills and the funeral costs just won't stop coming, depression is eating all the light from the world and it just feels as if you're trying to patch up the Titanic with a box of band-aids and superglue. You sigh, steady yourself against a traffic light and wipe away your smarting tears. You know you're being melodramatic. A total cry baby. It was just a stupid date with some nobody checkout girl you had a thing for, and here you were treating it as if it was the end of the world.
But dammit, you were lonely. 
It'd been ages since you had someone you could call a friend, little own a lover. Not to play the 'haha I want to kill myself' card, but if it wasn't for Annette, you probably would've considered doing something... Rash... By now. A little while ago you went to a bad place, and if not for her, you would've stayed there. And yet, you'd never completely left it, either. It felt as if there was a fraction of your soul still confined to that black chasm -- that it had withered and died there, and you weren't ever going to get it back, and the best you could do was fill the hole it'd left in your heart.
Not that you were having much luck with that. 

It's a short walk back home, but you take the time to sober up before heading through the door. Depressed or not, you weren't about to let Annette see you in this state. You buy a bag of peanuts and a bottle of water from a nearby cornerstone, get yourself to a point where you can walk twelve steps without tripping over your own feet and head inside. The lights are off, and you stub your toes a couple of times hunting for the light switch, much to the amusement of the disembodied voice chuckling from the darkness. You notice Renamon, draped across the sofa exactly where you'd left her, faintly illuminated by the electric blue light of the television.
Oh right, you've got a space-fox in your living room. How silly of you to forget.
"Well good afternoon, Romeo. How'd the date go?"
I don't wanna talk about it." you grunt, shrugging your coat off of your shoulders onto the floor. To be perfectly honest the last thing you want to do right now is give more ammo to the snarky monster who'd recently made a hobby of taking pot-shots at your pride. 
"That well, huh? Oh, leave the lights off, would you? The dark really sets the ambiance, if you know what I mean." she says with a lazy stretch, crossing her legs and resting her head on her paws. She seemed smug. Well, more smug than usual, anyways, as if basking in the afterglow of a recent accomplishment. God knows why, you'd hardly call lounging in front of a TV all day an achievement. After pawing fruitlessly at the wall a couple more times you give up on your hunt for the light switch and grant Renamon her wish, choosing instead to navigate by the dim light of the TV. The bedroom was only across the room, anyways, you're pretty sure you can make it THAT far without fall-

Your foot catches on the leg of a table, and you go sprawling towards the floor. Your breath hitches in a shocked gasp, your stomach lurches and you squeeze your eyes shut in dreaded anticipation of pain...
Any second now...
You open your eyes, only to find the carpet a mere inch away from your nose. Something had snagged you by the collar, saving you from a face full of dust-bunnies. Twisting your head around, you realise that your saviour is none other than Renamon herself.
She'd reached around the back of the sofa and caught the back of your shirt in a nimble paw. She smirks down at you from her vantage point. "Easy there, Tiger. Wouldn't wanna cap off your big night with a broken nose now, would we?" 
How the fuck did she... She'd been practically laying down not a second ago, lazing in front of the television like an otherworldly couch potato. To catch you she had to twist her entire body around, reach out and grab your shirt in a timeframe no longer than a second. Shit, you'd been walking behind her, she shouldn't have even seen you trip! Noticing your surprise, Renamon throws you a casual explanation. "I've got VERY quick reflexes. If you think this is impressive, you should see me play whack-a-mole."  
Without so much as a grunt of exertion, she hauls you back to your feet, hoisting your entire weight with a single paw so effortlessly that you may as well have weighed less than a feather. "I'm not too shabby in an arm wrestle, either." she follows up with a wink.
"Uh, thanks." your murmur, reeling from the resulting dizziness. You steady yourself on the head of the sofa and wait for the world to stop spinning. Renamon accepts your thanks with an upturned nose and a know-it-all hum of amusement before relaxing back into her seat and returning her focus to the TV. 

"So, I take it Little Miss Perfect wasn't everything you imagined?" she asks.
"No, she wasn't."
"Well, isn't that a shame." 
"Yeah..." 
You glance over at the TV. There's some old-timey slapstick cartoon on-screen, with a cat and a dog chasing one another around a house, tossing furniture back and forth to the tune of some ragtimey soundtrack. 
She actually likes this stuff?
The dog catches a frying pan to the face, and Renamon bursts out in maniacal laughter. 
Apparently so. 

She pats the empty seat beside her, beckoning you over without taking her eyes off of the screen. "Come sit with me. Take a load off, watch cartoons -- you look like you need it." she adds that last part with a tone vaguely reminiscent of concern, and it saddens you to think that it's the closest you've come all night to hearing someone speak as if they gave a damn about you. Her tail lazily sways across the empty space next to her, as if dusting it off in preparation for your arrival. Honestly there's nothing more you'd like in the world right now than to sit in front of the TV and microwave the sour memories of tonight from your brain with some stupid kids cartoons. On the other hand, there's nothing more you'd hate than having to sit there and endure Renamon's snide comments on your miserable attempts at romance. 
As if reading your mind, Renamon rolls her eyes and offers you an ultimatum. "I won't trash-talk you about your date. Digimon's honour. Now would you sit down and watch cartoons with me? It's no good for a social butterly like myself to be left all alone." 
Well, you do like your cartoons... Fuck it, why not? You didn't trust Renamon for a second not to slide in three or four teasing quips concerning you and Jenny here and there, Digimon's honour be damned, but it was hardly going to make you feel any worse than you felt now. 
You collapse onto the sofa beside her, nearly comatose. The barrage of heartbreak, alcohol and the constant underlying stress that your recent... Discoveries about your sister's hobbies had laid upon your shoulders has left you on the brink of exhaustion. Christ, it felt good to sit down...
>On-screen the dog drops an iron on the cat's tail, who makes a strained mewl of pain before punting it right back at the dog's head. Renamon cackles madly, going as far as to applaud the cartoonish violence with a giddy wiggle of her legs before wiping away tear of laughter on one of her purple bridal gloves. "Never took you for a fan of slapstick." You admit, settling into the sofa with a lofty huff of relaxation. Crazy, otherworldly creature or not, there was something inherently soothing about hearing her laugh. There was a kind of childish, pure note to it that her usual demeaning chuckles and scheming giggles lacked. Dare you say it, it actually sounds kind of... Cute.
"Neither did I! I always thought this TV stuff was a load of trash, but this is just hilarious!" she broils up in another cackle when the dog trips over its own feet and slams headfirst into the dishwasher, only to have the door pop open and a bunch of crockery tumble out and bury him beneath a pile of broken china. "It's so much funnier when there's somebody getting hurt!" 

So much for 'cute'.

"Anyways, what happened with your dream girl?" asks renamon, still coming down from her laughing-high.
"I thought we weren't gonna talk about that."
"I said I wasn't going to trash-talk you about your date. I never said anything about regular-talk." she explains, capping off her explanation with a smarmy smile. 
"Trash-talk IS your regular-talk."
"Tsk, now you're just being judgemental. We've known each other or two days -- you can't just go around making assumptions like that," she gives you a playful slap on the arm. "Naughty boy."
You roll your eyes. As strange as Renamon was in... Certain aspects... You'd seen her personality type before, copied and pasted across a hundred different bitchy women. "Hmmph, I can when every other word out of your mouth is either a boast, brag or a weird, unnerving 'flirt'." 
"THAT'S what gets you flustered? Hmmph, you should take it as a compliment." she chuckles, leaning closer and cupping a paw to your ear so that you cold hear her whisper over the cartoon's zany soundtrack. "I only tease the guys I'm hot for."
Her tongue darts out of her mouth and skirts across the corner of your ear, and a cold, wet towel of surprise slaps you across the face. You scramble back from her with a shocked yelp, throwing yourself against the opposite armrest. "Renamon, what the f-"
Renamon cuts you off with a mischievous cackle, goading you with a sultry wink and a serpentine waggle of her tongue. She wasn't just going to let you sit here and watch stupid cartoons in peace, was she? Figures as much; you weren't that lucky.
"How long has my sister been putting up with you again?" you ask pointedly, shuffling your ass away from renamon as far as the sofa would allow. "If you're like this twenty-four-seven then it's a miracle she's still sane."
"Like I said, I only tease the guys I'm hot for, and your sister isn't really my type," replies Renamon, smiling. "So, you were going to tell me about your date?" 
Actually, you're pretty sure you weren't. Then again... Well, not to come off as bitchy, but you'd been looking for someone to unload all of your frustrations on. Usually that someone was Annette. However, with her dealing with a fresh semester of school by day and fighting otherworldly monstrosities by night, you reckoned the last thing she needed now was for her one and only rock in this world to start moaning about his fucked up love life. 
Renamon, on the other hand, was all too eager to listen. Sure, she wanted to listen for all the wrong reasons, but why should that stop you? If you tell her about your crappy luck with women the worse she could do was tease you about it, and  seeing as she already teased you around the clock, who gives a fuck?

"Alright, fine. You really want to know how things went? I took her out for a great meal, wore all these nice clothes, said all the right things, and she told me to go fuck myself at the last minute." 
"Oh?"
"Yeah. And I don't mean the whole 'Sorry, I just didn't feel it', letting-me-down-softly kind of 'Go fuck yourself', either.  I mean she looked me in the eye and told me she never wanted to see me again, like she's putting down a stalker or some shit!"
"Oh my."
"Uhuh, and like, you wouldn't believe just how fucking blunt she was with it. Like, I put all that work in and she isn't even willing to throw a 'sorry' my way when she blows me off? Jesus! You know how much I spent on fancy clothes and restaurant reservations?"
"How much?"
"A lot. The LEAST she could've done was thank me for a night out, but nope! Fuck me, I guess."
"Mmhmm."
"Yeah."
Indeed."

…

There's a lull of silence broken only by the sound of the cartoon's end credits as your brief yet furious rant burns itself out. You sink a little deeper into the sofa, frustration gushing out of you in a long-winded sigh. "Better?" asks Renamon with a tilt of her head and a faux-innocent flutter of her eyelids.
"Very." you reply, with an appreciative smile. As immature as it might sound, for you there were few better ways of taking a load off of your shoulders than dumping that shit straight onto someone else's. Sometimes, you just needed a talking-post who'd 'uhum' and 'aah' and pretend to listen whilst you bleated all of the crap out of your system. 
"Good." says Renamon, chipper, and then, offhandedly "You two never really matched up, anyways."
The hell is that supposed to mean?
"Hey, Jenny and I got on real well together... Y'know, up until tonight, anyways. Besides, what do you know? You've never even met her." 
Renamon chuffs softly to herself in a knowing sort of laugh, its mocking cadence mated with an impish delight. "No, but if it was really meant to be, you wouldn't be sitting where you are now, would you, Big Boy?" 
... Dammit, she's got a point there. "Whatever. Which ever way you cut it I'm back to square one, anyways." you grumble, still feeling a little disheartened by the whole ordeal. You weren't a particularly optimistic person, but for some crazy, inexplicable reason you'd imagined this night to be the moment where your life finally took a turn for the better. Why you'd thought that, you couldn't say. Maybe you'd never completely let go of that 'love conquers all' bullshit they hammer into you when you're young, or maybe you were just that desperate for a knight-ette (knightess?) in shining armour to come along and aid you in the insurmountable task of raising an orphaned sister on pocket change and brotherly love. 
Or y'know, maybe you're just really, really lonely. 
"It's not easy being all alone in the big bad world, is it?" says renamon with a chiding kind of sympathy which nonetheless bore an iota of understanding. "Believe me, I've been there. The Digital World was a hard place to grow up, and the only way I kept myself alive was being stronger than whoever wanted me dead that day." There's a moment of silence, and Renamon's cold, blue eyes seem to reach past you for a moment, searching for something in the far-off distance. "Sure would have been nice to have a friend..." There's something different about the way she said that, and it takes you a moment to realise that that something was her tone: completely serious. No laughs, no jokes, no diminutive little jests on the side. This is one of those rare moments where Renamon decided to be absolutely straight with you.

You make the split decision to capitalise on it and perhaps pry your way behind that devil-may-care persona of hers a little. "Sounds like you've had it a lot worse than me..." you say, surprising yourself with the amount of sympathy in your voice. 
She shakes her head, seemingly surprised at herself for her momentary space-out.  "Yes, well, don't go feeling too sorry for me. Getting along in the Digital World is a lot easier when you can shoot lasers out of your paws." she says, jokingly wiggling her fingers at you. Tiny sprites of light dance from her fingertips like a sprinkling of fairy-powder. You blink hard and rub the sleep from your eyes, then look again. Sure enough, the glowing dust is still there, lingering in the air like powdered sunlight before dissipating into nothingness. 
For a second you completely forget that you're trying to peel back the layers of Renamon's personality and simply stare. "That's uhh..." you shrug. What was there to say? The digital fox-girl from the next dimension over also happened to be magic. You should probably feel surprised, but at this point it was like pouring water into a cup that'd long since been filled. "... Cool."
Renamon observes your bewilderment with a haughty smirk, nonchalantly snapping her fingers and conjuring up what you could only describe as an incandescent marble of energy in her palm. "Mmhmm, Digimon can do all sorts of funny things. Toss bolts of lightning, start fires with their minds, generate tornadoes... I could explain the science behind it-"
She closes her fingers around the small orb of light, crushing it in her paw. 
"-But that would mean letting you in on the secret, and you look so cute when you're confused!" she giggles, reaching out with one of her thick digits and booping you on the nose.
A couple of residual specks of that bright ball of energy she'd crushed must have gotten underneath her claws or something, because when she poked your nose, a couple of embers, like shining mites of dust, fell from her finger and found their way up your nostrils. What followed was a solid minute of sneezing, punctuated by Renamon's childish, vaguely feminine guffaws.
"Uhuh, very funny," you grumble, wiping your nose on a sleeve. "Ach, dammit, feels like I just snorted brimstone..."
"Oh, lighten up, it was an accident!" chuckles Renamon in a way that makes you pretty damned sure that it wasn't. 
"Yeah, yeah, sure it was..." you say, rolling your eyes and taking the abuse in your stride. As much as her harsh flavour of humour annoyed you, having her as company was far better than the alternative of sitting alone and stewing in a pot of your own self-pity. You take a little while to collect yourself, before making another attempt to delve a bit further into her psyche. 

"So... Back in the Digital World, you were lonely?"
"I suppose you could say that," she admits with a pensive sigh, slender ears wilting and flattening themselves against her skull. "Trust doesn't come easy in a world where everybody is out to get everybody. Don't get me wrong, I had my fair share of acquaintances. I was just careful not to get too involved with any of them -- it's a dangerous thing, you know, getting tangled up in somebody else's life. Usually it means taking on a share of their troubles, and trust me: where I come from, more troubles are the last thing you need."
"So, what? You just decided to be a hermit? Like, you never tried to make friends?" you ask with a little more incredulity than you'd intended. Not to sound like an asshole, but from the way she told it, it sounded as if her loneliness was wholly self-inflicted. There's a wicked flash in the black corners of her eyes, and you get the sinking feeling that you've offended her.
"Once. Way back, when I was still young and stupid. A group of holier-than-thou idealists told me they'd watch my back if I watched theirs." she says bluntly with a casual, half-lidded look your way which somehow managed to carry all the intensity and ire of a furious stare. "They tried to murder me in my sleep two nights later."
She idly inspects her nails, mercifully unpinning you from the cold, blue dagger points of her eyes. "Jesus," you breathe. "I wasn't expecting... Shit, I'm sorry."
She offers up a mumbling chuckle in way of acceptance of your apology. "That's what they said," she giggles, returning to her usual, smugly jovial demeanour, only to once more purposely let slip that hard and darkly serious side of herself before packing it away for good, like a swordsman letting his fingers slip warningly across the pommel of his blade: 
"Right before I killed them."

…

As much as you hate to use the cliché, the silence which followed was deafening as fuck. Finally, Renamon lets it break with an easy giggle, and the relief of tension is so great that you have to stop yourself from sighing. "Anyways, after that I've avoided putting my faith in anyone other than myself. Sure, it's lonely, but nobody's tried cutting my head off while I'm napping since, so I suppose it works, doesn't it?"
It's a sad train of logic, and the fact that it makes so much sense doesn't seem to make it any happier. Despite her dragging your sister along on what were essentially monster hunts, throwing a dozen or so monkey wrenches into the gears of your life and being kind of rude all around, your heart fills with sympathy for her nonetheless. Dammit, you've always been a sucker for sob stories. With an awkward clearing of your throat, you place a hand on her shoulder and pat her in what you hope is a comforting fashion. 
"Look... I'm not going to pretend I know what you've been through, and I'm certainly not going to pretend that you don't still freak me out a little -- a lot, in fact," you admit, prompting a dark smirk from her. She readies a witty comment, but you beat her to the punch.
"But Annie, she seems to really like you, and I've known my sister long enough to know that she's a fantastic judge of character." She cocks a brow, goading you to continue, her faked disinterest betraying some curiosity as to where you were taking this. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that if Annie say's you're okay, then I  think you're okay, and if you're as close to Annette as I think you are, then this house is your home as well as ours, and we'll do what we can to keep you safe."
It's a borderline worthless offer, and you both know it. If the things she fought on a day-to-day basis were strong enough to cause the levels of destruction you'd seen showcased around town, then you doubt some douchebag coffee shop attendant like you could offer her much in the way of security. And yet, it seems to mean the world to her. She gapes at you in a sort of doe-eyed, surprised look, much like the one you wore yourself when you met her for the first time. All of the same ingredients were there: shock, confusion,  plain lack of understanding... 
Over a few simple words of kindness. 
It takes a minute for you to realise just how depressing that is.

"Well, thank you," she replies, ridding herself of that tragically pathetic face with a shake of her head and a rough clearing of her throat. "But I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself." She bites down on her lip with a steely glower, as if resisting the urge to curse under her breath.
For a second you're afraid you've managed to piss her off again, before you notice that her anger is directed at herself, rather than you. What she'd be angry at herself for, you hadn't the slightest fucking idea, but if there was ever a cue to drop a subject, you're pretty sure that this was it.
"Alright, whatever." you say with a purposeful ignorance, deeming it the safer option to pretend you didn't notice... Whatever that was. She seizes the opportunity you've allowed her in an instant, turning the subject of the conversation around onto you, something she was much more comfortable talking about. She hammered you with questions about your job, hobbies, and ambitions, occasionally treating herself to the odd query about the more personal areas of your life. 
You felt as if she went easy on you in that regard -- easier than she could have been, anyways -- perhaps she was grateful that you'd had enough tact not to push her on a subject she obviously didn't want to talk about...

"So, how's your sex life?"
... Or maybe she'd just been lulling you into a false sense of security. "Still very much my business, thank you very much." you say tartly. Honestly, you should've seen it coming. It was obvious by now that Renamon intended to make a hobby out of fucking with you.
"Tsk, don't tell me this is ANOTHER one of those things humans get all worked up about. How do you people manage to talk about anything with all these taboos?"
"It's not taboo! It's just... not something you bring up out of the blue in casual conversation."
"So, taboo?" 
"... Kind of, I guess." You admit. To be honest, it was just one of those things you didn't want to talk about. It wasn't that your sex life was boring or anything, no, it was more the case that it'd been flat-out fucking non-existent for ages now. Needless to say it's one of those things you'd prefer to keep to yourself.
"Oh come on, we're friends, aren't we? It's not like I have anybody else to tell your secrets to - except Annette, of course - but something tells me she wouldn't be too interested in how many holes her brother's stuck his-"
"Okay, okay! Fuck. Are all Digimon this interested in other people's business or is it just you?"
"Curiosity is a virtue. Now come on, out with it! How's my Tamer's big, handsome brother faring with the ladies?" she asks, hamming it up in such a way that told you she already knew the answer. 
"Didn't we already talk about this?" you complain in a hopeless bid to change the subject. As fucking weird as your situation had gotten over the last day or so, you still retained enough common sense to know that telling someone like Renamon how much sex you WEREN'T getting was a bad idea. "I mean, I've already told you I was lonely. Put two and two together, y'know?"
"Just because you're lonely doesn't mean you have to be celibate. I've had plenty of sexual partners, and I've only known about three of them by name." she boasts, puffing out her chest.
"I'm... not sure that's something to be proud of." you say, honestly a little surprised. Granted Renamon was flirty, but you hadn't taken her for THAT kind of girl... Then again, what the hell do you know about Digimon mating habits? Taking miles of dick from strangers could've just been the norm for her kind. Christ, she wasn't telling Annette about any of that stuff, was she? Her mind was dirty enough as it was, and you didn't need her pet of all people to be giving her a crash course in sex-ed. 
"If I haven't made it clear enough already, folks are a little less committed to their relationships where I come from," she explains. "We tend not to bother with the 'get-to-know-you' thing."
"So what, you just get it from wherever you can?" you ask, failing to completely mask your disapproval. you've never been one to judge, but just going around, porking whoever without so much as asking for a name sounds kind of... Empty. 
"Of course not!" she exclaims, lightly swatting you with a paw. "A lady has to have SOME standards, you know."
"And those standards are... ?" you ask, not entirely convinced. 
"Why do you ask, think you might have a chance?" smirks Renamon with a suggestive perk of her brow.

Her answer didn't surprise you in the slightest -- by now you understood that you'd be getting shit like that from her twenty-four-seven. Still, you give her a little show of being embarrassed, if only to keep her happy. "Sorry to disappoint, but you're not my  type; too much body hair."
"Oh? And what's wrong with being soft and cuddly?" she asks, running a paw through the fur on her chest. You notice her fingers rounding around something beneath the glossy white forest of her coat. Something supple, yet firm... You turn away, embarrassed for real this time. 
"And To answer your question, I like my men..." she pauses, thoughtfully scratching at her chin just long enough for her to fool you into thinking you might get a serious answer. "Considerate, kind," she oils a paw across your thigh. "Human... Oh! And I have a REAL soft spot for parental figures."
"I get it, it's me. Could you drop the whole flirty-flirty act for like, five minutes?" you say. Your eyes begin to wander back down to the creamy mound of fur encompassing her chest, only for you to force them back to her face. "And maybe start wearing a shirt?"
She leans back into the sofa satisfied, as if your outburst had been the very thing she'd been working towards from the beginning. "No need to get snappy. I thought you'd be desperate for a little bit of romance, considering how your date turned out." 
"I'd hardly call it romantic..."
"Well then maybe your idea of 'romantic' differs from mine."
wait, what? You stare blankly at Renamon, waiting for her to expand on that. She wasn't... When she came onto you, she wasn't being serious, was she? Like, it was a joke. Ironic flirting. She's trying to get a reaction out of you and you're giving it to her in spades because you're an idiot who can't play it cool. She's the equivalent of that one girl you knew back in school who'd hit on all the boys because she was hot and making guys all flustered made her feel empowered. She didn't ACTUALLY like you like that.

Right?

Her paw's still on your thigh, squeezing just lightly enough to remind you that it's there -- it's there and you haven't even tried to remove it. All of a sudden you're nervous. Nervous? Shit, you've got the jitters times a thousand and it's came out of bumblefuck nowhere. It's like you've only now remembered that there's a naked girl sat huddled up to your side, feeling up your leg and monologuing about how badly she wants to fuck you. Except she doesn't. At least, you think she doesn't. Hope she doesn't? 
"You uh, whaddya mean by that?" you ask in a messy mumble, just having found your voice again and fumbling with it like a dude with parkinsons trying his hand at clockwork. Christ, pull it together, dude. Be cool. Calm down. Take a fucking chill pill. 
"What do I mean?" she asks, again mulling it over for far longer than she has to, heaping suspense onto your lap and relishing in how you struggled beneath its weight. She adjusts her paw around your thigh, moving it an inch or so further upwards. Your heart tumbles in your chest, a throbbing feather dancing on a stormy breeze. 
Her eyes half-lid themselves, and she looks you over with the cool, calculating desire of a huntress. "Do you want me to spell it out for you?"
In a bold move she plants her other paw against your hammering chest and pushes your back up against the arm of the sofa. You don't offer up any resistance; you're  still waiting for her to hit  you with a "Ha ha, made you blush!" or something along those lines, only it didn't come. She crawls on top of you, shoulders rolling like a prowling jaguar's as she stalks her way up your body. Holy shit, she's not screwing with you, is she? This is for real. This is for fucking real. Somewhere, beneath all of the surprise and confusion, there's a voice inside your head warning you to push her off, go to bed and forget any of this ever happened. Whatever Renamon's playing at here, it's dangerous. It's complicating a situation that's far too complicated already. It's adding a match to a room chock-full of dynamite and you know for a fact that if you let this go any further it'll all blow up in your face somewhere down the line.

You lay there, and you don't do a damned thing to stop Renamon from thrusting her lips to yours in a hungry kiss.
Oh, fuck.
The shock hits you so hard it's dizzying. You make a small whimper of astonishment into her mouth, and she devours it with a lusty purr. You can't believe it. You know you said you were past the point of disbelief, but this? This was something else entirely. She drags her paws down the length of your body, letting her thick, powerful fingers squeeze at whatever they please. They feel out your form, mapping out your body grasping hard at the supple parts, claiming them as her own. Gradually she conquers her way downwards, towards your crotch.
'This is wrong,' gasps that little voice in your mind, struggling to keep its head above the rising water as confusion, surprise and... Something else flood your brain. Pleasure? No. No, no, you weren't actually getting off on this, were you? Her fingers finally find their way between your legs, and you can feel Renamon chuckle in pleasant surprise when they bump against something stiff.
Holy shit, you were.
You turn your head away, breaking the seal between your lips. "Renamon what the fuck!?" you gasp loudly. Too loudly. Renamon's body snaps into action with the speed of a cracking whip. The paw that'd been achingly close to fondling your more tender areas a moment earlier clamps down hard across your mouth, demanding silence. She shoots up straight, ears swiveling, eyes wide and her sharp, black nose twitching, as if it were grasping for the scent of a distant prey. After a near minute of quiet, heavy with a nervous anticipation for you don't even know what, Renamon relaxes, rolling her eyes and sighing with relief. Her paw eases off of your mouth, but when you try to speak again, she returns a single, cautioning finger to your lips. 
"Sshh, try to remember that Annie's in the next room over, champ. You wouldn't want us getting caught in the act, now, would you?"
Annette! If she saw you two like this she'd... she'd... ah fuck, man, You don't know what she'd do! How in the hell does a moody fifteen year old with dead parents react to a sentient Word Document giving a load of bump 'n' grind to her older brother? Getting yourself out from underneath Renamon becomes imperative. You struggle against her, trying to worm your way out from between her thighs, and she holds you in place just long enough to let you know that if she wanted, she could've kept you there.
You go rolling from the sofa onto the floor, eating a faceful of dusty carpet before lurching to your feet and retreating to one of the far corners of the room, glaring at Renamon. She sits there with her legs crossed and her paws innocently resting in her lap, as if she'd been watching the TV this entire time instead of giving you mouth-to-mouth. Jesus, you could still taste her...
"WHAT THE-" you stop yourself short of shouting. Inside voice, Anon. Remember Annie. "What the hell was that?"
"Mmph, don't tell me you've been out of the game so long you've forgotten what a kiss feels like." she purrs, lips curling ito a devilish smile. They still looked wet... And soft...

Daaah, focus! 
"I KNOW what a kiss feels like. What I wanna know is why YOU'RE giving one to me!"
"I thought THAT part was obvious," says Renamon, getting up from the sofa and prowling towards you, hips rolling with each step. "You see, I like you Anon. You're nice, you're handsome, you're reliable -- you're everything a girl like myself needs in a man-" she pauses for a second before adding "-well, ALMOST everything. A bit more muscle would go a long way, but two out of three isn't bad. In fact, I'd say you're one of the finest catches I've ever laid eyes on, Lover Boy." You would've called bullshit, had she not shared that little anecdote about every Digimon being out for themselves. In a world like hers you'd be considered a prime candidate for marriage for simple virtue of not trying to cut your partner's throat come the honeymoon.
You take a few cautionary steps backwards as she closes in, only for your back to meet the wall. Cornered. She's slow moving in for the kill, each soft step of her padded feet against the carpet a hard exclamation mark between the hyperactive thrashing of your heart and the shrieking rabble of the thoughts and questions tearing across your mind.
The way she walks up to you. Man, the fucking way she walks up to you... Like every slow, graceful step worked towards a hotly anticipated climax where only pleasure awaited. It's surreal how anyone can put so much sensual emphasis into a simple footstep, but she did, and the urge to push yourself off of the wall and into her arms grew stronger by the moment. But why, though? Why? Why? WHY?
She reaches out and lays her three fingertips on your chest. They sat there no heavier than flower petals, yet you felt pinned by them all the same. There's an unmistakable dominance to her feather-light touch, something which said 'This is where I want you, and  this is where you'll stay' in a way that left no room for ifs or buts. She brings her sleek muzzle closer to your face, and the tingling heat of her breath against your cheek excites you in a way you wish it didn't. Her eyes dominate your vision, the black mystery of her liquid pupils frilled with the stark blue frost of her irises demanding every last iota of your attention. You could lose yourself in those eyes, simply surrender yourself into that cool, dark aether lit only by the perpetual twinkle of mischief which danced around their corners, whispering to you: 'let's be naughty'.
"Don't you like me?" she asks, rubbing circles around your chest with those three fingers, just hard enough to get you thinking of all the things she could do to you with them, if you only said 'yes'.
"I, uhh-" Shit, come on man, say something! 'No', 'Yes, but not like that', 'Hey, you're really nice and all but I'm not really looking for a relationship right now. Plus you're an interdimensional alien and my sister's FFFFUCKING HOUSEPET!' 
"-Yeah, I-I mean, you're pretty cool, I guess." 
Oh, you autistic mother fucker...

"Well then what's the problem? I like you, you like me, let's be together." she says, her syrupy voice slathered in raunchy suggestion, leaving just the right amount of ambiguity as to what she meant by 'together'. She brings herself closer, close enough for you to feel the heat of her body. She manuevers her muzzle up beside your head, and the wet brush of her lips against the corner of your cheek gives you a cold rush of excitement, followed by a giddy tingling sensation, like stardust sprinkled across the surface of your skin. "I can do things to you no other girl can... things that'll make you love me forever... Just tell me you want it. Tell me and I'll take you to paradise." she purrs with an almost etheral kind of charm, closing the gap between your bodies. Her muscled belly grinds against yours, her powerful thigh thrusts its way up between your legs and nestles itself against your tented crotch, and her firm breasts come crushing into your chest. 
You want it. You want it bad, even though you know you shouldn't. This... Whatever this is, it breaks rules. You don't know exactly what those rules are or who wrote them, but you can feel it in your bones that something about this just isn't right. It feels dirty, and YOU feel dirty for enjoying it so much. She slides a paw around your waist and kneads her fingers up your back. Whatever reservations you have left threaten to turn to putty beneath her tender, smooth paw pads. Her ample thigh, all steely thews of hot muscle, grinds against your painfully stiff member. It twitches in your pants, desperate for all those shady delights Renamon shamelessly dangled in front of your nose. Lust grovelled and pawed at you like a hungry beggar, pleading for you to heed its desperate cries.
Her paw slides up your back, dexterous fingers dancing along your spine. Their delicate touch puts lightning in your veins. Oh, the things she could do to you with those fingers... But...
"But Annette..." you say in a broken and wavering voice left ravaged by the sudden throes of arousal and surprise. "She's my... And you're her..."
"Sssh, don't go ruining the mood now, stud," she says, silencing you with a finger on your lips. "Annie doesn't need to know. This-" she rubs her thigh hard into your crotch, wedging your pulsing manhood between your belly and the supple, grinding weight of her leg. Your breath hitches in a needful gasp, and your body shivers in heated preperation for an encroaching climax. "-can be our little secret."
The paw sleeking its way across your back finally reaches the precipice of your neck and guides your face into the warm fur of her shoulder. Her unique scent; fragrant, complex, and yet altogether womanly, fills your nose. It's enough to make you light headed. She redoubles her efforts with her thigh, driving it against your crotch in slow, hard and purposeful movements. "Come on, just tell me you want it. Tell me and I'll make you mine, tell me and you'll never want another woman." Your cock tries to spasm in your pants, only for Renamon's thrusting leg to pin in against your stomach and restrict its movement. Oh god, she's so limber. Too limber. Her body has the echoes of a human woman's, but there are a thousand little differences which set it apart. A longer torso, sleeker knees, a faster heartbeat... 
The voice of reason calls to you in terrified desperation, screaming its throat hoarse to push its voice through the dense fog clouding your brain. 'Stop. Push her off. End this. You don't know where this is going to lead but you know where it's going to end. You're the only person in Annie's life who she can trust. Don't betray that trust. Don't betray-'

You lift your mouth to Renamon's, and lose yourself in a kiss.
Shame. Liberation. Relief. Each emotion attempts to overpower the other as Renamon accepts the kiss with a hearty giggle. You're lost in a storm of excitement, and you cling to her as if she were the only thing stopping you from being blown away. It'd been so long since you'd held someone like this, so long since you'd felt the loving touch of another's lips on yours. Oh God, you've been so lonely. So very, very, lonely...
Renamon breaks the kiss, and you say the words before your mouths are even fully parted. "I want it! I-I want it... I-"
"Shhh, that's all I needed to hear." she says, locking her arms around your back and crushing you into a sensual embrace. Her lips power down into yours, and whatever reservations you had left flake away and turn to dust in the wind. She moulds her thigh into your crotch once more, carrying on until your struggling bulge meets her pelvis. Oh God, I-it's happening. You can't hold on any longer, you can't-
You can barely feel the wet lips of her pussy against your manhood through the fabric of your pants, but the mere ghost of the sensation is enough to push you over the edge. "Mmmmf!" you moan into the hot cavern on her mouth, and she swallows your desperate cries of ecstasy with a rumbling laughter. You lock up as an explosive orgasm crashes through your nerves, Mmmhmhmmf!"  
Feeling the spasms of your arousal, Renamon breaks the kiss and cackles. "Did you just-? Ahah! D'aww, you poor thing, did I play too rough with you?" she coos, belittling you even as she mashes the hot mouth of her womanhood harder still into the pitched, twitching tent of your spurting cock. Your orgasm spills through your senses and out your mouth in a sloppy mess of lewd moans and desperate whimpers, much to Renamon's delight. "Mmhmhmhm, well don't stop now, Loverboy. Let me see you cum for me. Let me hear you WHINE for me." 
"Jesus..." you wheeze, sliding down the wall and into a crumpled, twitching heap as the last few tremors of your orgasm wracked their way up your back. Your head slumps onto a shoulder, your legs sprawl themselves across the carpet, useless and spent, and your manhood empties the last of its load into your ruined pants, trembling through the last few gouts of cum. Renamon looms over you wearing a grin steeped in dark pride and exuding a crushing air of victory, as if you were a battlefield, and she your conqueror. 
"Having fun down there?" she asks, nudging at your exhausted form with her foot. You want to say something -- voice objections, make demands, ask her if she'd just up and lost her fucking mind -- but the smouldering heat of your afterglow's already fried your brain way past the point of words, and all you can manage is a groggy "Guuh..."
"Thought so. Tsk, look at that, such a mess..." She coos, prodding foot moving on your sodden crotch. "You should've told me you'd saved up so much. We could've pulled down your pants and had us a fireworks show." 
You fight your way out of the drowsy mire of post-orgasm bliss to fend off her probing toe with the back of your hand. You try to speak, choke on the words, swallow them down and spit them back out in a growl that'd put all the hounds of Hell to shame. "What. The FUCK. Was that?"
"Hmm? Oh! Well, most people call it 'cumming', but personally I've always preferred 'blowing your load'; has more personality-"
"Shut up. You know what I meant. No more jokes."

She stares at you for a very long time, either contemplating an answer or leaving you to stew in the juices of your shame. You can't tell which. "I wanted you, so I took you. Honestly, you're looking into this WAY too much, Lover Boy."
"Don't call me that." you spit through gritted teeth. "Don't- Just, Jesus, fuck! What the hell were you thinking? Do you even realise how badly this fucks things up?" Shit, you don't even know what to say anymore. You clasp your head as a migraine threatens to split it wide open. This was too much. Christ, it doesn't feel real. You wish it wasn't real. 
"What was 'I' thinking? Hmph! Don't go acting as if you're the victim here, LOVER BOY, a minute ago you couldn't keep your hands off me." she says, the harsh condescension in her voice cutting all the deeper since you knew she was right. Oh God, why'd you do it? You could've pushed her off, you could've said no and told her to keep her freaky animal paws to herself, but you didn't, did you? No, instead you let your sister's pet get you off like the filthy piece of degenerate shit you were. Jackass. Sicko. Scum. Fuck, what would Annie say if she found out? All the trust she'd placed in you, betrayed. And for what? Some minute-long grinding session with a fox person? Dammit, what the fuck have you done? 

Your fragile rage shatters under the weight of the remorse, and the guilt sets its claws into the most tender area of your heart. Annette. You can't even begin to comprehend how she'd react if she found out. You don't want to. Her life was enough of a mess as it was. 
Sensing your growing despair Renamon decides to lay off with any further guilt tripping and instead placates you with some ineffective consolations. "Tsk, there, there. Don't beat yourself up too hard, Tiger. They call me 'irresistible' for a reason." she chuckles, running her furry paws across her feminine curves. The sight alone is enough to arouse you, and in your arousal you find fresh shame. You sink your head further into your hands, emptying a wordless grumble of frustration into your palms. What the hell's matter with you? She's not even human, you dirty fucking fetishist. Do you get turned on by dogs now?   
You shake your head helplessly as the shame you've been stewing in reaches boiling temperature. You can't think of a way to break this to Annette. You were supposed to be her goddamned role model, not some pervert who tried to stick his dick in her fucking pet. She couldn't find out. She just couldn't. 
"Annie... Annie doesn't hear about this." you mumble. "Ever."
"Afraid I'm going to blab about our relationship, are we?"
"We don't have a relationship," you seethe through clenched teeth. Just hearing her use those words made you sick to your stomach. "We don't have anything. This was just... Just a mistake."
Renamon tosses her head back and burbles a malicious laughter. Suddenly you felt trapped beneath her shadow, crushed under the weight of her dominance. Her laugh drills a pit into your stomach and pours dread into your heart. Her eyes settle back on yours, their crystal hue ablaze with terrible delight. "Sorry, Sweet Thing, but from where I'm standing, you don't have much of a say in the matter."

Like hell you don't. You move to stand up, but the sole of Renamon's foot plants itself on your chest and pins you firmly back onto the floor. "What the f-? Get off of me, you crazy bitch!" you snap, swatting ineffectually at her leg. All you managed to hurt was your fist; her leg was thewed with muscles of iron. She crushes her heel into your ribs just hard enough for it to hurt, making a point to yawn and idly inspect her claws as you vainly bat at her ankle. "Tsk, name-calling? And here I was thinking you were a gentleman."
"I said get off!" 
"I mean, just what would Annie think?"
"Fucking let me up you-" you freeze as the implications of what she just said sink in, and the pit in  your stomach gets a whole lot bigger.