The maned figure bats aside the few pellets that came close with a swipe of its sword. "Are you prepared," it asks, "to die?"

And there's a girl at the sidelines, maybe eight or nine, eyes wide. 

"Hey! Stop!" she calls, fists tightening.

And there's a shadow, darkness curling like fur, looming behind and around and above her, wisps revealing a face almost like a fox's skull.

The leonine feature half-turns, dropping his attack stance but remaining on guard. His poise shows signs of recent injury.

"Traveler," he says, "you have come at a dark time. Are you safe here?"

"I'm safe. I've got my Boogey. But fighting is bad! You shouldn't be saying you'll kill someone!"

"In thirty minutes the X-Program will sweep through this forest, killing any Digimon not quick enough to have boarded the train nor lucky enough to bear the X-Antibody. The nearest railway is hours' travel away and this youth bears the only Antibody I've seen in days. Do you mean to fight me for it?"

(The quivering "youth" attempts to sidle behind the lion-man.)

"Will it kill the girl?" hisses a voice from the thing behind her. The fox skeleton gains a depth it didn't have before, shadows flickering and billowing menacingly. 

" - Boogey, we need to get everyone else out, too."

To the fox shadow he says, "Humans do not weigh on the world as we do, and so the X-Program has no interest in them. But you and I would be well advised to seek protection."

(He takes a step diagonally backwards in the muddy ground, keeping his prey in sight.)

"He can hide in my head or the dream-world - but I gotta save everyone here, too! Including you two!"

"How, child, will you save two or more ’mon with a single Antibody? Can you cache more than only your partner? Can you produce additional Antibodies? Can your partner fight the tide?"

He steps within arm's reach of the cliff, cutting off that line of retreat for the purple creature.

"Stop being mean to the other mon! And I can make portals into the dream-world, 's long as people behave around the dream-doors and don't make the Sandman angry or go near the Mage. And I can imagine stuff."

"I place my fate in your hands, then, traveler. My name is Leomon. Lead and I shall follow."

He sheathes his weapon and stands at rest.

The purple creature dashes across to the forest-line, but stays there looking back, rather than flee into the woods.

And she concentrates, and the shadow surges - 

And a shimmering portal opens in the darkest shadow around that isn't the Boogeyman.

"You gotta go through that. Don't touch the dreams - they're the stuff that's not sand - and if you see a really tall star-person walk the other way until you don't see her."

"Affirmative." Leomon strides into the shimmer in the shadow of the cliff.

"Stay? Go?," asks the purple creature - the first words it's said since calling its attack.

"If you think you'll be safe here, maybe you can tell us how to find others? But if you think other people might hurt you, you can go?"

It dips its head in a nod, then strides into the woods, sniffing the air.

"Thanks!" she calls, starting to follow. To her shadow: "Can you sense anyone?"

He shakes his head. "Just you." Which might be a problem when he needs to feed; right now the girl is scared enough for him, but he dislikes scaring her if she calms down...

"...It's okay. We'll find people anyways."

They follow the creature through the woods to a meadow of soggy flowers; in the center is a humanoid sunflower, of perhaps double Leomon's adult-human proportions, flopped listlessly in the rain.

She calls out. "Hey! We're trying to evacuate people ahead of the X-thing!"