Important Notes:

First and foremost...
DISCLAIMER:

The characters and all related material herein are the property of their creators and/or copyright holders, who may be too numerous to name here. Team Hydro and all affiliated parties do not claim ownership of said characters and/or material. Team Hydro does not seek to infringe upon any trademarks, copyright, or any other existing legal document that may be connected to any of the above.

There, now that's out of the way...

This is a preview chapter of a larger project myself and my writing team are working on. Perpetually in-progress; title subject to change, more chapters may/may not be added later.

The timeframe for this piece is roughly six years post-series finale. Our Tamers storyline is crazily complex, a lot happens between the end of the series and our story here, which is the beginning of the story arc. Basically, it goes like this:

Two years after the end of the series, Ryo is abducted to the Digital World by a digital field. He spends the next four real-world years rounding up the Tamers' Digimon and looking for a way home. Lots of stuff happens in the Real World in the meantime, which won't be covered here.

Now, Ryo's back and Rika's mother has thrown a party to celebrate the return of the Digimon, during which Rika challenges Ryo to a friendly rematch, which doesn't go even remotely how she planned…

If you want more info on the backstory (and I suspect some will), message me and I'll see if we can't negotiate some loophole… Well, I can't give everything away, now can I?

Appropriate warnings:

This has an insanely complicated back-story. And it gets steadily more lemony toward the end. If you've read my profile, you'll already expect that; if not, go read my profile.

If lemons aren't your thing, or not what you came looking for, you might want to consider turning away now. Otherwise, welcome to the world of Team Hydro.

Team Hydro Preview - Tamers #1

The Rematch

Slowly and methodically Rika shuffled her game deck and laid out her cards, face-down, placing them carefully in the field structure that might as well have been etched into the lines on the back of her hand, into her very blood, she knew it so well. In the rock-paper-scissors style toss-up that started the game, she beat Ryo's Vaccine-Type card with her Data-Type card, and had learned in her last, disastrous face-off with him that he would now use mostly Virus-Type cards against her.

Virus-Types could mean trouble for her; having decided to play with her Nature Spirits deck, she now realised it was mostly made up of Data-Type cards like Renamon and her Digivolutions, though thankfully she'd had the sense to throw in a good mix of Vaccine-Types too. She had an uncanny knack for getting the toss-up right, but now she wasn't sure if making the first move was going to help her.

"Digimon Queen", that was the name she'd made for herself in the DigiBattle Card Game community; she had a reputation for being ruthless in turning her opponents' game strategies against them and then using that to her advantage; she was well-known for sacrificing cards that were useless to her, in order to lure her opponents into a false sense of security, before crushing them and sweeping them aside.

It was a reputation she'd well-deserved, and fought hard to maintain for three consecutive tournaments; she'd found genuine thrill in seeing her opponents trembling as they stepped up to the table, knowing full-well that she was going to slaughter them and think nothing of the fact. And then Ryo had come along, and smashed her hopes of defending the title - her title. Not to mention that he'd humiliated her in public; what in the world had made him think it would be a good idea to flirt with her, in front of all those people, in the middle of a damn title match?! Long had she felt reluctant to just forget about that, and justifiably so.

But she'd certainly thought about it – hell, she'd thought of little else since the day he'd broken down into a cloud of data, enveloped suddenly by a Digital Field, and vanished before the Tamers' very eyes, uploaded against his will to the Digital World, to be trapped there for four whole years, with only Cyberdramon and the other Digimon for company.

The flirting was just Ryo, she now knew; it was his nature to be as flirtatious as he could without risk of getting himself hurt, even to the point of obnoxiousness, as often as humanly possible. It was also in his nature to desire the spotlight - he had to be the centre of attention, or more pointedly, her attention. If she wasn't paying him attention, even if that only extended to chiding him for doing something ridiculous or shouting him down for saying something stupid, he was pouting like a child. There were occasions where she could have confidently sworn, on a stack of Bibles, that she hated his guts and always would.

To her annoyance, however, she'd thought of him every day during his absence, in some shape or form, and had often considered swallowing her pride and forgiving him for publicly humiliating her all those years ago; to her great displeasure she'd found that her thoughts of him had slowly become more and more affectionate, like some pathetic little kid with a crush, though she didn't ever dare to admit it even to herself. She'd even caught him slipping into her fantasies once or twice – she had plenty of those - and he'd appeared in her dreams more times than she cared to remember.

And then as totally out of the blue as he'd vanished, he'd come back and turned her world on its head. Part of her had jumped for joy, much to the horror of the part that didn't, when Henry had called to tell her that his algorithm had worked, that they'd finally found a stable connection to the Digital World, and that they were that much closer to Ryo coming home.

She found herself realising that, deep down, she'd always hoped he'd find a way back, that Henry's dad and the rest of the Monster-Makers might find a way to rescue him and bring him home, though ultimately to no avail. Because in the end Ryo had essentially rescued himself, and had brought the Digimon back into their lives again; he and Cyberdramon and, more importantly, Renamon were back where they belonged. Ryo had slipped back into her life like he'd never left, and she felt oddly contented now that he was back in the Real World.

"Rika… Rika, Digivolution Phase…"

Ryo's voice jolted Rika out of her daydream. "Huh? Oh, yeah…" She'd been zoned-out in her own little world, and had momentarily forgotten about the whole damned thing. "Sorry… got sidetracked there…" She laughed awkwardly, blushed, and glared at her hand of cards like it was their fault. She realised he was looking at her, and as she briefly met his eyes a shiver ran down her spine; a thought that scared her for a split second, as she passed on Digivolving and jumped to the Battle Phase, suddenly popped into her head:

Does he like what he sees?

And absurd as it seemed, Rika was absolutely terrified of learning the answer to that innocent little question, whatever it might prove to be. She shook her head to loosen the cobwebs, and focused on her cards again. Time to get your game on, girl… gonna hand his ass to him this time, she thought to herself and smiled again as they both passed on playing Power Cards, and she manoeuvred to launch her first assault. "Vaccine beats Virus. Your move…" she muttered, completing her turn, and watched with the eyes of a hawk as he made what moves he could.

Rika noticed that Ryo was a little rusty, as she watched him over several turns – totally to be expected, given that he probably hadn't had all that much opportunity to play or even to practice for the four years he'd been away – something told her Cyberdramon wouldn't have the patience. But something wasn't right here; a little nagging feeling in her gut that told her Ryo was up to something...something about this game, the cards he was playing and the way he was playing them... something seemed off.

A few turns later, it clicked: he was making mistakes, too many mistakes and amateurones at that; he was leaving himself open too often and blatantly giving her opportunities to exploit the weak areas of his abstract, plain-as-day strategy. The Ryo she remembered, to whom only she was considered at least equal in skill, he was better than this; he was widely thought-of as the best damn player in the world – the Ryo she remembered wasn't known as "Digimon King" for nothing. The Ryo sat across the kotatsu from her, annoyingly trying his damndest to tickle the soles of her feet with his toes, was about as kingly as a court jester - he was a joke. A bad joke.

He was breaking every rule-of-thumb she could think of; he'd discarded perfectly-usable cards and even some of his better ones, cards that could have ripped her defences to shreds, without so much as a thought, like they were junk. He was holding his hands so low that she could even see some of his cards, and they weren't exactly brilliant cards either.

It was almost like… like he was trying to…

No… she thought quietly, though she really already knew the answer. No, he wouldn't… He wouldn't be so pathetic…would he? Anger rose up inside her, she knew what was coming next; in the next couple of turns, maybe even the nextturn, he'd either try to provoke her so she could wipe the floor with him on her counter-attack, or he'd call time on the game. She could see it coming, and it was so damned obvious that it was making her sick to her stomach: Ryo "the Legendary Tamer" Akiyama was letting her win.

Damn it, I can't believe this! She thought, silently beginning to seethe. He's practically handing me the whole game on a silver platter!Utterly stunned, Rika stared in furious disbelief at her game field, realising she'd been playing on autopilot for most of the game, and saw that she had him covered for everything his pathetic line-up could throw at her; any attack he could launch wouldn't even get past her defences, and anything she threw at him would burn through his like they weren't even there.

And then she heard it: that feeble, pitiful sigh of defeat that felt to her like a slap in the face. "Too many bad hands…Looks like it's not my night tonight … I'm screwed. You win, Pumpkin." He sighed again and shook his head in mock wonder, scratching his head like he was trying to figure out exactly how he'd managed to screw it all up so badly, before crossing his arms over his chest with all the seriousness in the world, and what Rika could have sworn was a glimmer of triumph in his eye.

He might have lost, but he'd also won; he'd gotten what he'd wanted. He'd humiliated her again! First he'd done it in public, and now he was doing it in private. But worst of all, he'd cheated her - in her own damn house! Rika swore under her breath, then swore aloud, and the well-greased floodgates of her anger dam fell away with oft-practiced ease.

"That's bullshit, you…you…!"

Rika hissed at him as she leaned across the table and slammed her fist down on her game field, "Damn it Ryo! You letme win, you bastard!" She pounced on him suddenly and threw herself over the kotatsu, scattering cards everywhere and grabbed at his throat with one hand as she punched at him with the other. Ryo suddenly burst into a fit of laughter as he leaned back, ducking cleanly out of Rika's grasp and slipping out from under the heated table. Rika snarled as he skittered and slithered yet another few inches away from her - he was half-way up her futon now - and finally lost her somewhat-short temper.

"I can't believe you just did that to me, you dirty sonovabitch! This was supposed to be fair, damn it!!" She blared.

Rika was suddenly glad that her room was on the opposite side of the house, away from the party; at least she could beat him to a pulp in peace without ruining the party for everyone else - and without her mother diving in to stop her. Fuming she threw herself after him and punched at him again, and skimmed his nose by less than a centimetre. Ryo kept on laughing, much to his own peril; he didn't know just how short Rika's temper had become in his absence – or how dangerous she became when she lost it.

"C-come on Rika," he chuckled, and ducked another volley, "It was just a game!"

Blinded by her rage, Rika silently failed to notice that her last lance toward him had left her straddling his waist, precariously-balanced mere inches over his crotch. She silently realised, before finding her self wondering how the hell she'd gotten into such an exposing position. Mortified, she thought of the way they'd look if someone walked in…

With an angry roar Rika threw her arms over her head, and brought them smashing down on her futon to either side of his head in warning. Seething, she glared at him, grinning nervously between the pile-drivers that were her fists; if he kept avoiding her like this, she'd mangle him if she managed to land a blow, or rather, when. Ryo saw that she was genuinely pissed, and with great difficulty swallowed his urge to laugh at her outrage, which would only serve to rile her further.

Finally Rika grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, wrenched him up, and dangled him mid-punch over her pillow.

She discovered too late that Ryo was too heavy for her to hold with just one hand for very long. Four years alone in the Digital World must have been like one never-ending workout. Her own wavering sense of balance and questionable body weight were against her, and if she wasn't careful, she'd overbalance and come crashing down on top of him – one more humiliation in a seemingly unending string. She quietly wondered if he could feel her shaking, struggling to hold him up, before pulling him yet closer and hissing in his face.

"Half of me is screaming to punch your face onto the other side of your skull, you cheating little prick," she spat harshly, and finally landed a solid blow across his face, splitting his lip.

"Why'd you do that to me, Ryo?" she demanded, "Why play with me like that, you sly bastard?"

Ryo only smiled at her, hanging limply in her grasp and softly muttered,

"So if one half is looking to kill me," he asked, grinning that stupid grin that had ingrained itself on her memories of him, "What's the other half going to do?"

Ryo stared defiantly into her eyes as she moved to punch him a second time; for some reason, that ridiculous grin of his made Rika hesitate. Ryo managed to smile at her again without laughing, and muttered,

"I missed you, Rika… I don't know why, but I missed you like hell."

Rika's eye widened in surprise at the confession as Ryo straightened himself up and, finally taking the strain of his weight away, he pressed into her body's embrace, and planted his lips on hers as her face hovered unsurely above him.

The kiss was the last thing Rika expected to happen; it had been little more than a peck on the lips, but it had triggered something inside her, something that demanded she respond.

Her reaction was instinctive, automatic, almost robotic; her arms coiled around his neck, she slid deeper into his lap as her thighs slid down across her futon and then tightened in their grip of his hips, and before she could truly realise what her body was doing without her consent, Rika eagerly plunged herself into returning the kiss tenfold. Ryo's hands deftly climbed from the futon to rest on her ribs; the sensation tickled her suddenly, and she squeaked in surprise.

Caught unawares, Rika abruptly tumbled from whatever high-off place their kiss had taken her, and plummeted back into her senses with a muffled bang; an eye fluttered half-open and conveyed to her the sight of Ryo's lips on hers, and her pride screamed in disgust at what the rest of her was doing, yet her own lips refused to stop so long as Ryo wouldn't, and he showed no signs of pausing for thought.

Slowly, sluggishly, Rika tried to regain her self-control, as a single hand tentatively placed itself on Ryo's chest and began to push him away with little real effort; her fingertips dug in, grazed his flesh through his shirt, her body refusing to stop what it had started.

Four years' worth of boiling lust made her unwilling to let go of him, to relinquish what the kiss between them had wrought in her; her wounded pride bellowed its objection again, but her heart promptly told it, in no uncertain terms, to find a bridge and jump off it.

Her bruised ego's demand, that she heal the wound he'd inflicted to her reputation eight long years ago, had always overpowered anything else she'd felt toward Ryo, her nemesis-turned-friendly-rival, right up until they'd rescued Calumon together in the Digital World, and fought together as Sakuyamon and Justimon during the D-Reaper battle in Shinjuku.

Since then and more so since his disappearance four years ago, the image of him that Rika had held in her mind had become blurrier and blurrier; her vision of Ryo Akiyama as her DigiBattle and Digimon Grand Prix nemesis had darkened and slowly blacked out, and in her heart had lit up again in the shape of a rather hungry something else.

Since he'd strolled unthinkingly and unconcernedly up to her door a few days ago, after four whole years of bleak, heart-rending absence from her life, she'd thought of no-one else but him; almost overnight, she'd become obsessed with him, driven to the point of distraction, her mind consumed by thoughts of nothing else.

Without him she'd been colder and emptier inside than however much she might have feigned or pretended before, but now he was back and something inside her felt whole again; almost literally, she'd warmed to his resumed presence. Apparently he'd missed her, and now he was even daring to show it with a kiss. But for Rika, after those four cold and lonely years without him near her, a simple kiss was not enough.

This sudden, all-changing kiss between them was not enough, she wanted more than that from him, and even in her darkest, most lusting dreams she had never dared to admit it to herself even in her sleep. She wanted him, ached to have him and make him her own, and she'd known it and suppressed it and denied it for as long as she could remember.

From the moment he'd first traipsed into her fantasies and made her scream herself awake in shocking ecstasy, those dreams and the thought of having him between her legs in her bed had haunted her at night, and now she was admitting it… suddenly she'd never felt better about telling herself a truth she'd always known deep down, but had never dared to admit; her fantasies had done that for her.

I want him, she thought to herself darkly, excitedly as a certain delicious tingle shot down her spine and set her dripping between her legs; I want him and if it takes me all night, I am getting what I want!

Rika broke the kiss suddenly and inhaled deeply as the breath in her lungs ran out, before shoving Ryo down roughly by the scruff of his scrawny neck, and held him there for her eyes to take in; helpless and at whatever mercy she deigned to grant him, just the way she'd always wanted him – below her, beneath her, and utterly at her disposal.

"Care to explain exactly what the fuck you think you're doing?"

She snapped at him breathless and starting to sweat, scowled at him with thunderheads in her face and forked lightning in her eyes, and raised her fist ready to punch that sly smirk of his straight to the inside of his head. The smirk came as expected, that same charming smirk he broke out whenever he greeted her or made some snide wisecrack at her expense, called her those stupid nicknames he liked to call her…

…whatever you say, Pumpkin… …calm down, wildcat…

The fist fell like a sledgehammer, only to slam harmlessly into the pillow as she bent her head and sprawled herself atop him, to repay his kiss again.

Rika's lips fell ravenously on Ryo's as his hands crept up the length of her sides, searching, prying into her most sensitive spots where he might lay them to rest, before crisscrossing them carefully over the sky blue ocean that was the back of that torn-at-the-elbows long sleeved tee shirt to hold her the way he'd longed to hold her for the last few days.

She wanted him, and he knew it; Ryo could smell that deep, choking musk that could only be coming from one place, that little niche that lay centrepiece below those curvaceous hips, and the jolt of pleasure he felt as he caught himself envisioning what delights might wait there was accompanied by the shock of her pulling at his split, still bleeding bottom lip with those sharp, perfect little teeth.

He saw a glint of mischief in her eye, and that playful little grin that he would soon come to adore gave him no warning when she decided to sharply suck his tongue so far into her mouth that she almost swallowed it. The unusual and somewhat unsettling sensation made him moan into the kiss with a surprised pleasure, and in reply Rika sucked his tongue harder.

Ryo quietly wondered if she might be trying to suck it out altogether; it would certainly bring an end to his sarcastic remarks and playful banter, and he pondered what other tricks she could do with that sharp and slippery mouth of hers.

His playfulness welling up, Ryo tried in vain to reclaim his tongue from her mouth, proving no match when she refused. Sharply Rika rose up and pulled him with her, only releasing his tongue when they were both upright and she had wrapped her arms solidly around his neck to hold him there against her.

Ryo wanted to ask her where she had learned to do that amusing and almost disturbing little trick, but was abruptly cut short when Rika encircled his waist with her strong and powerful legs and pulled herself closer to him, bringing her rapidly-dampening crotch to rest against his.

The meeting touch was unexpected, the shock of pleasure almost electric in nature. Rika felt the bulge of his arousal pressing against her most sensitive, most intimate place and grinned with a devilish defiance, and said,

"Looks like somebody's gotten a little bit excited… So much for a 'quiet rematch'…"

"That was before you beat on me and tried to swallow my tongue."

Ryo remarked sarcastically; Rika giggled a hiccuping laugh at the snide remark and abruptly toppled backwards, arms still clasped tightly around his neck, and dragged him on top of her. She tightened her hold, still giggling and forced his head to rest on her shoulder, and whispered into his ear,

"I want you, Ryo…hehe… give me what I want."

"Yeah, I'd kinda gathered that much, Rika,"

"So quit stalling and give me what I want!"

He chortled when she licked leisurely at his neck, her rough, wet tongue dragging slowly across the stubble of his first real shave, and softly sank her teeth into his earlobe, before whispering back to her, "Convince me nicely, and just maybe I will--" His words caught in his throat when he felt her hand take hold of the seat of his pants and squeeze playfully.

"You know me, Ryo," she hissed suggestively, lustfully, all dizziness and schoolgirl laughter gone.

"I've never done 'nicely'. I'm not a 'nicely' kind-of girl…"

Rika saw the stunned mix of mild pain and frustrated pleasure erupting onto his face, and giggled suggestively. Her mother was always begging her to show more of her feminine side; sleeping with Ryo was about as feminine she was ever going to let herself get.

That and seducing her long-time rival into bed was the ultimate rebellion against Makino's constant torrent of fussing and bitching. Maybe the idea of a boyfriend on her scene, or at the very least, a lover, would get her ever-encroaching mother to at last take the hint and get the hell off her case. "Give me what I want Ryo," she whispered, squeezing just a little tighter, "or I'm going to take it from you."

Rika smiled as she slid a hand down between them and heard him gasp, as he felt her finding and pulling down the zipper on his pants. Did he want her as badly as she wanted him? Did he want her at all?Or was he just playing with her again? Rika wasn't savvy enough about the whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing to be able to tell.

She knew plenty about sex, more than enough to know what she was doing and what she was going to do, but she was sorely lacklustre when it came to figuring out how her opposite number's mind worked. Her still-objecting pride didn't want to know if Ryo liked her and wanted her, it was sickened by the very notion that he might feel something for her, but the rest of her burned to know how his naked skin would feel against her own.

She kissed him again, in hopes of keeping the fire within at bay for just a little longer, until she could bend him and break him, until he wanted this as much as she did but it only served to further stoke the flames of her desire.

Her arousal grew stronger as she felt him finally responding to her, the gentle return of his hips pushing back against her own, trapping her hand against him as it slithered in through the opening it had just made. Ryo gasped again as her hand encircled him through his underwear, a let out a moan that rumbled through Rika as she lay below him.

It enthralled her to think that she could excite him, and she knew she could take things that much further, under her own steam, should she dare. Did he think she would? Ryo didn't know half the things her mother's fussing had made her dare to do in his absence.

Maybe she would tell him… later, when their desires were sated and the fires burning low, their bodies spent and buzzing with pleasure, when they had nothing to do with themselves but talk. Talking was for later; right now, Rika had far more interesting things to contemplate, Ryo's arousal had grown considerably judging by the size of the thing she grasped so tightly in her hand. Gently she squeezed it to hear him moan again, and she smiled, building the anticipation for what they both knew was coming.

Deftly Rika slipped her bare foot up the length of his thigh and dipped her big toe over the edge of the zipper that grated and chafed against her wrist and, releasing him momentarily so she could undo the button at the top with both hands, she softly pushed the offending attire to loiter around his ankles and then flicked them off entirely.

Eager to keep an even status quo of undress between them, Ryo somewhat unceremoniously grasped the hem of Rika's tee shirt and, with a hand quickly and carefully placed in the small of her back, lifted the garment over her head to reveal what lay beneath.

Afterword:

I know cliffhangers suck, but this is all I can post right now. I ask that you deal with it, because I have to; much as I would like to continue and post more, circumstances and team rules conspire against me. You're not alone, I don't like it either.

Again, if anyone wants to get clued in as to what's gone on before events as transpired above, visit my profile and feel free to drop me a line. Can't tell you what we have in store for these two (among others), but I can certainly tell you want's gone on before-hand, in great and sometimes worrying detail - I should know, I had a hand in most of it...

Reviews would be greatly appreciated, if anyone would be so kind as to spare the time.

Thanks for reading.