- Flameheart Champion -

Jane's Marowak panted as their foe landed heavily, while the pokemon's flaming bone ended up used as a crutch to keep her upright. With that the Champion's pokemon was out of the match, but Jane's pokemon had exhausted herself to finish off the last of the five normal pokemon her opponent had. Everyone who made it this far knew that the final pokemon every Wendrago Champion used was one of the Legendary Glacial Dragons of Flameheart.

Winning the Tournament gave you two years to complete the Elite Four's Challenge, but in practice the only time they were guaranteed to be together for you to take on was on the week of the League Tournament and the two weeks after it ended. Typically if you didn't have the power to make it in the two weeks after your own Tournament win, you only tried during the week of the next Tournament in order to not cut into the time the new winner had for their first attempts. Those three weeks were also a time when the five opponents would all use the same team every match, so you could more easily adapt to specifically deal with their lineup. With two tries at most during any given day that was still a short amount of time to pull anything off.

Jane had taken an entire week to get her nearly monotype team to the point where she could handle four top tier themed trainers and a Champ, even with the dubious advantage of getting them ready to take on specific enemies. She didn't have a large enough team that she could swap around so she wouldn't give that same benefit to the Elite Four after all. Pyroar, Arcanine, Talonflame, and Marowak were what had made up the core of her team for a while now, although they were also the group that had been the most upset about her transformation. The Stonescale had turned out to be a very strong battler, and even evolved into a stronger form that gave her team a bit of type variety.

Pyre on the other hand had stopped being used as one of her fighting pokemon early in the Tournament battles, and only barely was up for those. Currently the Charmeleon was in the small nearly bare stands where a select few were watching this match. The other char was honestly both an annoyance and a hard topic for either of them to tackle. She knew they could have been friends once from the few times they could get along, and he seemed to know it too, but in the end they simply had too much between them now that what could have been then wasn't possible anymore. Jane had made sure to quietly get him an appointment to get a trainer card for the end of this week, but she also wasn't too concerned if that was something he would actually like to get dropped into or not.

The hardest part of the Elite Four Challenge for her was getting all the way to the Champion's last pokemon with only a team of five of her own pokemon. Wendrago were the Legendary pokemon species of the region, with all the power that implied, and she was the strongest of her entire team. Jane Felsic was a Charizard that could take on any pokemon, if she was fresh and ready. Being needed for even just one fight before the final battle could ruin her chances here. Also, just fighting herself at all still made most of her team mad, so they really didn't want her to do it at all, which was why Marowak now had a glare directed at her as she prepared to return the Fire/Ghost type.

"Well, I can't say I'm entirely surprised it came down to this," Champion Evan said with good natured exasperation as he also returned his pokemon, and then sighed. "Although it kind of sets up the conversation I need to have with you about what will likely come next."

Jane frowned at the serious tone. "Before our final pokemon?" she asked, although it sort of made sense to talk about something before she personally got into the fight.

"Before mine at least," Evan said with a bit of a laugh. "After you won the Tournament all of the Wendrago and Flameheart Champions had to get together to discuss something, and in the end we decided we would need to release videos of the Elite Four Challenges now." That got a full blink out of her, as the local League had never released the videos before, and everyone knew it was because of the fact that it was to protect the Legendary pokemon. "Do you know what the difference is between those two groups?"

"Wendrago Champions can call on a Wendrago to fight for them," Jane easily replied. "You don't know if you're going to be one or not until you head to Flameheart to see if you can find your way of calling on one. If you can't then you only get to be a Flameheart Champ."

The Champion removed a thick pouch from his belt. "Yeah, that's fairly close. I'm sad to say that we do know in this case that you won't be able to be one though," he sighed, and for a moment she saw a Frozen Flame fall from the bag into his hand. His body then shifted in a harsher variant of her own change. His skin turned into grey scales and large purple armor plate covered his arms from the elbow to the hands, his legs from his knees down, and in a thick spiked coat across his torso. A long tail grew out behind him covered in sharp purple spikes that all pointed backwards, and his hair converted into a finer set of long spikes at the back of his now reptilian head. "Because only a human can become a Wendrago," the Legendary pokemon sighed. "Since you are already a Charizard first, we're quite sure that you would simply have that form altered instead if you found a compatible Frozen Flame."

Jane took in the sight of her opponent with growing anticipation, and practically threw her pendant to the side to assume her own natural Charizard form. "Well then I'll just have to make do!" she cheered at the idea of having the perfect fight to prove herself a true Champion of the region.


Jane Felsic glared at the defeated Legendary dragon, entirely unimpressed with what had just happened. "You are out of practice," she growled angrily as she shook a thin coat of ice off her wing. The fight had been far less impressive than she had expected, and so easy she outright regretted not fighting earlier because she had thought this would take all her strength.

"We've spent the last year trying to put an artificial glacier back together after some madmen decided to break it to free the creatures it was made to seal," Evan complained unsteadily from the burnt crater where he was lying on the floor. "Other than a few of those that got out I haven't had the chance to keep my own skills up for anything other than ice making." He grunted and stood up, the spikes along his head and tail clinking against each other as he flinched from one of her more physical hits. "Although I think I would have done better if you weren't trying so hard to melt me, Champion Felsic."

"I'm not getting a rematch, am I?" she asked darkly while floundering to process that simple declaration of what she was now.

"Ask again when I'm not ending a short break from making literal tons of ice by being burned up by an angry Fire type," he complained with a shake of his head. "Now I'm not as sure about releasing the video."

"I agree with that, the Latios from the Tournament did better and he was still a kid," she rumbled and moved to pick her pendant back up. She doesn't bother actually turning into a human again though, as she was an angry Charizard and that actually kept her anger in check better than if she was just an angry human.

"Yeah, with this being our first conversation after your win I think you can see why we're throwing you at the big problem we need someone to handle," her fellow Champion said jokingly.

"You're what?" she questioned, and then turned to glare at Pyre as the Charmeleon broke into laughter in the stands. "What problem is going on that I already have something to do?"


A couple of days of very abbreviated instructions and introductions later Jane found herself getting ready to meet the Investigator they were sending with her to try and handle this issue. He was already directly familiar with the problem, and the others among the League felt that it would be better for someone who was working on it before to try and explain the specifics. "Investigator Ladder, it is nice to meet you," she said to the slightly nervous looking guy.

"Nice to meet you too Champion Felsic," he replied with a bit of a sigh. "I just wish we had the Investigator I had been working under with us instead. Apparently he is needed too much on his current project, so I ended up with a promotion to handle this on my own."

"I haven't been a Champ for a week yet," Jane replied good naturedly. "It should be fine. Well, depending on what exactly 'it' is here."

"Honestly, I think that's part of why they're sending just me," the Investigator said unhappily. "The issue is that a group of Chosen Ones from another world ended up getting mixed up in a fight with some criminals that got away from our world. I know the guys helping them out with that, and was part of the team that Upload escaped from." He rubbed the back of his head a bit oddly, more like a bird pokemon preening feathers than a human scratching hair. "Unfortunately that group has apparently had enough issues now that they sort of have a reputation that they turn people into pokemon."

"It's DSS isn't it?" she asked with a heavy sigh of her own. "What did you end up as?"

"It wasn't their fault, I kind of just found out it had happened in the past because of Shawn's team," Investigator Ladder said with a shake of his head, despite the fact that he had basically said the same thing that had happened to her. "My situation is also very complicated-"

"We try not to think about it too much," a Serperior suddenly cut in as she appeared out of her pokeball on the Investigator's belt. "Because one option for my trainer's situation is that he partially died to become a Decidueye Ghost."

"Fully changed into a char myself," Jane replied to the newcomer to try and settle her nerves from that bit of information, and then on a whim changed into her Charizard form.

"Shawn's Charmeleon minded Stonescale trainer," the Investigator sighed, apparently somewhat familiar with her. "How did yours work out? My old boss is doing alright with one of his own."

"It was on the team that went against the Elite Four," she proudly replied, and both the Investigator and his pokemon look very impressed with that bit of information. "So it worked out pretty well."

Investigator Ladder nodded at that, then sighed. "Well I guess we should get started on explaining what exactly we're going to be dealing with," he said, then reached down to his belt to remove something from a pouch. Or more accurately to make his human body take himself out of a pouch, which was sort of odd to see. Jane sort of regretted the long discussion she had with Marowak about identifying Ghost types and other spirits, as that probably was something he wanted to tell her instead of have her figure out herself. Once the Investigator put himself onto his face he fused together into the large bird pokemon that was probably his true form. "And I might as well understand the entire conversation. Crusher is going to be covering most of it, she has some firsthand experience with some parts I'm still a bit unclear about."

"'Crusher' huh, what kind of pokemon is she?" Jane asked as he led her to a larger area of the League built more for pokemon to be out and about.

"The same kind a Stonescale is," the Grass/Ghost replied letting out a collection of pokemon. There was a Gourgeist, a large metal-armored pokemon she didn t recognize, and the ghost of a Flygon. At least, the pokemon looked like a Flygon, and seemed to be a Ghost. "A digital monster that has gained a type."

"Honestly Stonescales aren't quite digimon," the armored monster, presumably Crusher, clarified. "This is a long story though, so we should probably get started on that."


Jane still could not understand why Pyre hadn't had any real interest in being able to fly. Being able to cut out the long parts of a journey across the region by taking to the air was nice enough with help from another pokemon, but being able to do it herself was something that made her glad to have stayed one. Alongside her Investigator Ladder, or Jack as he had insisted on being called, flew with a bit less skill. The other former human seemed to agree with her about it being a great way of traveling, even if he clearly wanted to be more of a human than he was right now.

The flight also gave her time to think about things. The overall situation was still a bit too unclear to her. Jack only knew what was happening from Shawn's reports and the insights of a turned member of Team Upload's pokemon-human hybrids. That mostly could be summarized as there being a bigger problem Shawn didn't want to put into a report. So it looked like she was dealing with criminals that she needed to save from something instead of save something from them.

As far as what information she had managed to get about her own job, the core concern of the Chosen Ones was the bigger problem for her to tackle. Their world apparently never had to deal with Chosen Ones before, so she was going to effectively be going to a land out of the distant past that still thought people like that weren't as important as they were. Jane really hoped that the League was able to get the assistance she'd asked for on that one, and hopefully before she had to meet any regional leaders from this other world.

"I'm still not really used to doing this," Jack said over the rushing air. "Flying myself that is. Flygon was handling this for us before, but since he ended up a Ghost he's been nervous about it."

"What is wrong with him being a Ghost?" she asked, even if that was a bit of a touchy topic in the best of times.

"From experience, I can say that staying solid enough to carry other things is a lot harder than it sounds," the Grass/Ghost bird replied tiredly. "So I understand fully why he has a problem with trying to carry someone else now. Admittedly we haven't been flying much at all for me to do it myself too often."

"It's really nice actually," Jane said as she spotted Shade Cross. "I had a much better time after I evolved with getting my last Gym Badge." Given that by that point she had ended up needing to take a re-challenge of a Gym she had not beaten before, she had found herself flying over the entire region in order to get it done in time for the League. Her actual team had been amused by it, but Pyre had only been annoyed with how they skipped traveling through places.

"I suppose," he allowed as they both moved to land outside of the DSS building. "Although there is the issue of turning back into a human afterward. For me at least that is a lot more awkward to deal with." He didn't actually bother doing that as they touched down. "It is harder to hide that the mask is part of me when I have to take it off in front of people."

"Jack? I didn't think you'd be flying back here anytime soon," Shawn said from the doorway, Serperior leaning on him heavily. "Are we getting Roberts for this one too?" The snake-like trainer nodded at her as well. "Champion Felsic. Congratulations on your League. I just wish things weren't going so badly that we already needed your help."

"Make it up to me by giving me a fight with your Legendary form," she suggested half jokingly. The two headed monster she had first seen along this road would probably be a better fight than the Wendrago, despite any type disadvantages.

Shawn didn't look too happy about the suggestion though. "Damn, we probably have to try that," the red eyed trainer complained. "We have enemies that might get stronger than that form, and you will need to be ready just in case. No confirmed living enemies of that level yet, but it is only a matter of time."

"I think Gazimon did say he'd managed to reinforce one of the digital worlds enough for us to practice that in," Serperior agreed unhappily. "First things first, though, we need to get you up to date on the situation."

"So, what the hell is Upload doing?" Jack asked a touch harshly. "Because Adrian says that the reports don't make any sense at all. Their plan was to jump two or three times before stopping."

"What if they were worried about a digimon an entire stage stronger than an Ultimate using this 'Emperor' as a pawn to revive themselves from the dead?" the two of them asked darkly. "Upload is trying to keep the enemy forces tied up thinking that we can't beat them while we work out how to deal with that problem. So far we're keeping quiet about that to most of the Digidestined, although two of the older ones are in on the full situation."

"We're in a complicated problem then," Jane sighed at that with a shake of her head and folded her wings. "You're definitely giving me that match then."


There was an entire separate world that was currently in a state of outright war, and their only ally in the conflict was pretending to be another enemy to distract from the fact that they could not get as strong as the Chosen Ones. Chosen Ones that had already dealt with the leader of the enemy faction before, but had to give up the power they used to do it in order to rebuild this separate world. Which was not the world that these 'Digidestined' were even from, as that was a world that didn't even have any monsters at all.

"It is still going to be a couple of days before I can get representatives here from the League," Jane grimly informed the group. "I asked for an ambassador for the League overall and someone to represent the international police, but it almost sounds like I'm going to need to get an entire diplomatic team to handle this mess."

"I'm not the biggest fan of keeping things quiet from their government myself," Janice agreed as they looked over the two world maps inside of the Troubleshooter Lab. "But until we have the people to handle that properly our focus is on the enemy forces in the digimon world."

"The digimon world doesn't really have leaders to talk to as far as I know. Unless they managed to find some before the Emperor decided to try and be one," Gazimon added with a huff. "So without anyone else to handle that it looks like the Digidestined might have to set a government up."

"I don't need that world to have a full government, just something like the League that steps in when big problems happen is enough," the new League Champion clarified. "Especially with how this apparently isn't the first time they've had a bunch of kids recruited out of nowhere." She shifted around a bit, and considered that it probably was about time to be human for a while again. "Were they really under League age?"

The DSS team looked uneasy about that topic. "If what we've worked out is right then all of the humans of their world actually take longer to grow up than we do," Grant admitted quietly from the edge of the room, earning a glare from his amphibian trainer. "The new kids are still only barely at the age to enter the League now, and they're from a world where humans don't mature as fast as someone from our world."

"You're kidding," she said bluntly. They did not respond by saying that they were. "Right, we're pretending that isn't true, even if it is. That is the kind of mess that would totally wreck our ability to actually support them."

"It hopefully isn't as bad as it sounds," Shawn noted without much uncertainty. "So far at least the Digidestined have been able to handle what we've tried to help them work on, and their families are helping actively."

"I think that the bigger problem is that I can't really tell who we need to be talking to about this in that world," Jack contributed, in his human form with his mask body back in the pouch he apparently kept himself in. "I mean, are we really going to have to talk to the entire government of this 'Japan' set of islands? That is a massive place, I can't imagine all of those regions trying to talk to us at once."

"That is probably something we need to ask the locals about," Janice complained. "I haven't managed to figure that out yet, it is just this thing that has been around so long for them that they get confused when we try asking about it." The Team Leader sighed. "We actually have run into a lot of problems with that kind of thing."

Jane rubbed her head between her horns with annoyance. "Alright, I want to talk with one of the two that knows the whole situation for a while before starting any work on this, is that going to be an option?" she asked in an attempt to focus on what she could deal with instead of complaining about what she couldn't.

"One of those, Joe Kido, is now working for Delta 2 in Box 201," Gazimon said a touch bluntly. "Actually he is there right now, and probably a human."

"Yeah, that specification there is why you got me instead of a fully qualified Investigator," Jack grumbled. "What kind of monster has he been spending time as?"

"Delta 2 has just finished working on trinkets to transform people into digimon, so naturally he's spent most of today as a Floatzel," Serperior glibly noted. "His partner has been complaining about it," the snake pokemon continued a bit more seriously. "So Gomamon would probably appreciate interrupting that."

"I think I'll let the guy have a bit more of a break then," Jane sighed. "So, how about that match instead?"


"Jane, what in the hell made you think this was a good idea?" her Pyroar asked after the two Poison augmented Serperiors fused into a building sized two headed monster.

"Threat level, Ultimate, identified," her Stonescale Soldier said dully. "Retreat advised."

"Okay, Jane, the robot just said to run," Marowak said with atypical unease. "I think that might mean we're in over our heads."

"Guys, this is a practice match to specifically tell if that kind of threat is over our heads," Jane complained about her team's unhappy response. They had moved to a rather bare looking digital world, which was little more than a massive box of a concrete like material. Said material was cracking and shifting easily around the massive root like form of Basirablemon, who like before was threaded into the ground instead of resting on top of it. "Besides, we're a Champion team now, which means working together to deal with problems normal pokemon can't."

All five of her teammates, even her Stonescale, looked at her with unhappy disbelief.

"Alright," the two headed serpent said in a dual voice. "We are going to be holding back, mostly because you were actually there the last time we got a chance to try this, and we do not know how to properly control our attacks yet."

"Are they one person or two right now?" Arcanine asked attempting to be quiet.

"We're two people right now," the red eyed head rumbled with annoyance. "And I've barely done anything as this compared to Serp, so that actually does matter. Be sure to stay safe when dealing with my attacks."

"Although we are ready when you are!" the other head said happily.

Jane looked over her team to judge how ready they were. The five of them were nervous, but she could see that they would go on her order. "Let's go," she said as she flapped into the air, with her team scattering immediately in anticipation of the blob of toxic goo that slammed into the ground where they had been. "Ha! Like we wouldn't expect that!"

The two headed snake simply laughed at that, and suddenly the entire world was made of threats. A mixture of clouds of leaves, swinging vines, and splashes of poison were hazards that she had to somehow help her teammates avoid while striking back. Jane started off by strafing the blue eyed head with a blast of flames that seemed to only slightly bother the Legendary. She saw her Talonflame mirror this with the red eyed one, and grimaced at how little effect that had as they should have a good type advantage.

"This is an entire forest against us, Jane, not a pokemon," Pyroar complained just before attempting to wrap flame covered teeth around part of their opponent's main body. This didn't work very well, as between the massive size of Basirablemon and the dripping pools of toxin the flames did not cover very much space for very long at all.

"You know, he was kind of a jerk, but for something like this Magmar might have helped," Marowak said as the Fire/Ghost type used a fairly complicated dodge that the team had worked on. Her club remaining solid for her to hang onto as the Bone Keeper rendered her technically Ghostly body intangible to fall through the floor and out of the way of a barrage of cutting leaves before swinging back up above the ground. "Although, admittedly he didn't do too well for the other guy during the League," the pokemon admitted as she emerged again to try throwing her flaming bone at some of the large leaves along their foe's body.


"So, what do you think?" Janice asked Joe as they all watched the match from the safety of the Troubleshooter Lab, with Gazimon providing a number of camera angles on the arena on the six monitors.

"I think you guys still have a bit of a different standard for fighting than we do," the Digidestined of Reliability sighed as the circuitry covered lizard monster collapsed the ground under Shawn's head to distract the Ultimate. "We'd have been toast if any of the Ultimate digimon fought like those two are. Even the Megas preferred to take things a little bit slower than that."

"Downside there is that is all small stuff," Gazimon noted. "Probably more than enough to wear out Champions quick, but I'm not sure how well they'd do against another Ultimate." The rabbit monster shook his head. "So a good backup for us to have against our current problems, but maybe not a solution to any new ones we run into."

"Yeah, right sure. They definitely don't have any real big attacks that can handle some other Ultimate," Gomamon sarcastically remarked. Then the seal digimon flinched at the strong coordinated fire blast that Jane's team quickly and wordlessly pulled off while still avoiding almost everything that was coming at them. "I kind of get why you guys were waiting for one of your human 'Champions' now though, because they're surviving something that would have gotten all of us trashed."

"It isn't as bad as that mess with those weather changing monsters, but this is more focused," Joe admitted, and then cringed at Pyroar taking a good hit from a vine larger than she was. Thanks to Arcanine quickly moving her away the cat pokemon was out of the path of the follow-up blob of poison before it could hit her, but it was still the worst hit on the fiery team yet. "I think I can see why they haven't used this in the digimon world yet, that would probably attract a lot more attention than we could handle."


"Jane, do we have a real plan for this?" Pyroar complained while the Stonescale set off a fairly massive storm of lightning strikes. The move had seemed overly flashy and widespread before, but against Basirablemon it was honestly a bit too small for once.

"Keep them distracted while we coordinate hits, and hope that works before they figure out how we're doing that," the Charizard replied harshly, and then sent a razor sharp gust of wind at the red eyed head to keep it down. "Also be thankful that they're holding back the big attacks and work out how to dodge those in a real fight against something like this."

That actually did hold out for three more attempts, which had finally been enough to make the massive root snake start looking tired. Unfortunately by that point Jane's team had each taken at least one good hit themselves, and it was clear which side could outlast the other.

"Alright," the blue eyed head of Basirablemon said soon after that final blow, while Jane was busy extracting Marowak from a sticky glob that the Fire/Ghost type had barely failed to dodge. "That's as far as we can go."

"Any more than this and we're probably going to start hitting too hard," the red eyed head agreed with a flinch as the large scorched area along his neck had a few burned up pieces crack off and clatter to the floor. "Not to mention that we still need some strength to try and clean this place up."

"Don't worry about that, Shawn," Gazimon's voice cut in. "I was planning on doing some analysis of the after effects of you two fighting in there." There was a pause as the two sides started to calm down and get themselves organized. "Mostly to check and make sure there won't be any long term issues with using that form in the digimon world."

"Glad to know that could be a problem," Basirablemon said in the dual tone of both its heads saying the same thing. Then the massive serpent vanished, replaced with two rather thorny looking Serperiors. "Oh, right, stuck like this now," the twin snakes still said together despite being separated.

"That was much better than my Champion match," Jane declared strongly, resulting in a deep sigh from the rest of her team.