- Rush of Friendship -

HackBiyomon was starting to get worried. The Digidestined had not hit any of the sites where they had the Digi-Eggs, despite the fact that her sisters had admitted that they knew Upload had them.

"You're worrying too much, they are definitely getting stronger without this thing," Bob told her lightly as he finished getting the HackStegomon and HackRinkmon ready for deployment. These were the first uses of Artificial Friendship for the group, and their stability was surprisingly solid, even compared to the variants that had more complete data to build off.

"Well, I guess so, I'm just worried that things aren't going as I planned," the bird digimon complained.

"We're the bad guys, I think there is a rule that our plans don't work out," the Goliath hybrid joked.

HackBiyomon sighed and flapped over to the analysis rig. "I don't think 'the good guys still haven't recovered their powerup' is the kind of thing that the bad guys usually have to worry about," she grumbled and checked again to see if there was any way to make it more obvious without being blatant about it. "Think we can fake a malfunction to get their attention?"

"We started having those a week ago," Bob replied with a strained smile. "So I kind of hope the attack is coming soon. Otherwise we might need to actually pack all these things up."


"Alright everyone, here is our biggest mission yet," Davis said as he tried to tap the map with his metallic claw. This resulted in a tiny squish instead of a tap, and he held back a sigh at how he could not keep his body solid without help anymore. The worst part of being a natural at Acid Armor was that you didn't notice when you used it. Apparently natural users of the ability tended to also be blob monsters of some kind, at least some of the time. Worse, it turned out he was so good at it that Alpha 45 had actually apologized because he definitely wouldn't be able to un-learn the move and go back to staying solid.

He looked over at Yolei with a bit of annoyance at how easy it seemed for her to hide her new claws. Her thick gloves had even been approved by the school, although that was also a mess he didn't want to think about too much. "Izzy has found the Digi-Egg of Friendship here." He squished on the map again. "Where Upload has been using it to make the Artificial Crests."

"I take it a priority here is to capture that equipment?" Jane asked with a tone that said she understood the situation was serious. "So that we can work out more about how those work and make our own?"

"It's a lot harder to capture Upload gear than the Emperor's stuff," T.K. warned her. "Their stuff tends to self destruct when we clear them out."

"The scans show they have a large force here," Davis cut off that discussion. "Bigger than any we've tried to hit before."

"Davis, we've had to run away before," Yolei complained, and then blinked as the full situation caught up with her. "We aren't taking this area, are we?"

"Izzy and Gazimon both say that we should be able to use these to trigger the Armor Evolution even if we can't lift it," he informed the team holding up one of the small bands that he had been given for the mission. "The plan is to hit them fast, grab the Digi-Egg, and get out safely. I was hoping that your Flybeemon form can grab it quickly and lift it out, because we don't know how fast you'd be if you have to use it. The rest of us are slower, and my plan was to be a big, dangerous distraction."

"I think I can handle being a big distraction," Cody offered. "Although... I kind of want to try and be my pokemon form for this."

"Have you figured out Sandstorm yet?" Davis asked to see if that powerful ability could be used for this fight.

"Ah have," Armadillomon replied. "An Cody can take it over from me."

"My team can swirl up a pretty nice firestorm too," Jane gleefully noted. "Although we can't really replace the foliage afterward too easily, so hopefully the target isn't in a forest or town."

"I am consistently worried about how calmly people from your world talk about breaking the landscape," T.K. grumbled.

"So, these are train tracks?" Kari asked looking at the picture map that Gazimon had made for them. "Can we use them to move quickly?"

"Not anymore," Davis sighed. "The Hackware stuff is blocking most of the tracks, and the only places they go are other areas that Upload controls. We'll have to go in here." He tried to tap a sector next to the target, and squished again. "And then have to move quickly to get there."


HackBiyomon's smug look was short lived as the Digidestined rushed into view from the development site. Besides the fact that one of the Flamedramon currently looked like he was getting lessons in how to not be solid from snake eyes' Serperior, and a dragon leading a whole pack of fire pokemon, there was also a pokemon that had disproportionately haunted her since her one and only trip to the pokemon world. "There's a slasher villain version of Sandslash?" She asked without the serious tone she had wanted to use for her role as the villain herself.

"I second that question!" Bob shouted with a look that said he didn't have a clue about this new pokemon. Thankfully he then used Hackware communication to get their forces going to make this fight look good.

"Why is DSS so much better at looking like bad guys?" the bird digimon complained to the sky, completely unable to keep the act up in the face of this new bit of weirdness.

"Hey, I'm a Digidestined!" said spiky monster shot back.

"That only makes it worse!" she insisted, just before the familiar drill covered bug monster next to the Sandslash set off a Sandstorm. "Goliaths, take down that mole!" They would be immune to the storm's effects, and hopefully would handle the spike covered pokemon before things got too bad.

"Hey, don't ignore me now," the fire dragon said, and HackBiyomon took a chance to scan the pokemon with her Pokedex. The rough result, which was the most basic data that could be transmitted to her instead of needing to be read from the screen, was that this was a 'Charizard', and due to pokemon weirdness was not actually a Dragon. "Not every day a Champion gets to actually fight an army."

"Shit," Bob said at that over the communications. "Champions are expected to take on entire armies and Legendary pokemon. We need to bring in reinforcements this time-" He cut off to look at the sandstorm. "We're getting environmental damage reports from the Goliaths," he said aloud.

"Slasher Sandslash has steel scraping sandstorms?" she squawked, the cringed at how that came out.

"Not paying attention," the Charizard singsonged as her team suddenly decided to get in a competition with the Ground type horror movie monster by lighting her section of the battlefield on fire. Lots of really hot fire that was probably worse for their forces than the sand had been.

"Why did we think this was a good idea again?" HackBiyomon asked over Hackware comms.


Yolei kept an eye on the others as she looked over the terrain for her run to get the Digi-Egg. Davis was currently impersonating a living splatter of napalm, which showed off how his Flamedramon form had a tendency to get hotter as it melted further, and the Hackware close to him were now seriously avoiding getting splashed to avoid that threat. The veteran Digidestined had all moved to cover them from the air. Most importantly Cody and Jane had both taken out big areas, and Upload was actually bringing in more forces this time to fight them off.

Notably there were two new Hackware Armor forms present. So far Worm and Stone units had rarely used the Armor evolutions, but they had seen almost all of the combinations from the current Digi-Eggs that they possessed already so it was clear these were new Artificial Friendship forms. The more common of the new red crystal-like foes were human shaped with lots of spikes extending back from their head, lightning shaped ones jutting back from their elbows, and blades along their feet. The less common but clearly more heavily armored ones were big stegosaur shaped dinosaurs with far too many blade/plates along their backs. She wondered vaguely if either of those would be her form, and really hoped it wasn't the slow looking dinosaur. The fact that the more common ones were also making use of extremely fast speed to keep ahead of their forces was not helping that worry at all.

The various other Hackware Armor variants were each different issues, although the current mix she could see was still mostly the common Crab versions. She unfortunately spotted some HackSearchmon and HackAurumon, unusual versions that didn't match any of their forms, but turned Stones into even more effective sensors. Generally Worms tended to be creatures that moved fast, and only a couple of HackAllomon were present, which probably meant that the new speedy forms were more of them.

She would have to avoid the sensors and the fast ones while she used the tracker eyepiece that Izzy had given them at the last moment to go directly for the Digi-egg. The thin screen was currently awkwardly slid under her Flybeemon form's helmet, and apparently would burn itself out by the time they were done. The thing was the first piece of gear that they had made themselves without help from DSS, so she had to admit that it was good for what it was since it gave her a clear target marker pointed at the center of a bunch of either partially assembled, or possibly disassembled, pieces of equipment.

"Guys, I think they might have been getting ready to move out of here," she whispered to Halsemon and Davey as the two of them prepared to cover her run. "Do you think we can grab anything else?"

Her brother notably looked over at the cloud of sand full of polygonal bricks trying to hit Cody, then over at the ball of fire that now contained both Jane's team and Davis. "No, Yolei, I do not think that we will have time to grab anything that isn't going into the D-Terminals," he told her dryly.

"Well that sucks," she sighed ignoring his annoyance. "Cover me," she added seriously just before taking off directly for the Digi-Egg. She shot across the open polygon covered terrain quickly, and carefully swung close to the region's World Stone in order to try and keep the Hackware from targeting her with ranged attacks as she moved past their lines.

She saw the two digimon she left behind quickly target the closest Hackware to make it look like they were trying to go for the World Stone. It was unlikely that Upload hadn't figured out their real target, but the distraction would hopefully buy her a bit of time, and luckily enough there was a HackGargoylemon in her path she could make look like her actual target. Those strong flyers were good targets to take out, and her new Metal Claw attack knocked the Artificial Light out of it with just a single slash.

The Crab teleported out just as she reached the small platform of material that the oddly shaped black Digi-Egg rested on, almost looking like it had fallen on its side compared to the previous ones if not for the details. There was a lightning bolt shaped spike at one end, with a teeth pattern under that, and a white section along the lower side of the other end. She recognized the Crest of Friendship in blue along the top as she didn't bother to stop as she tried to grab it, and then was quite firmly stopped anyway by the thing not lifting off the ground at all.

"I already know I'm not that great a friend!" she complained at the Digi-Egg. "I do not need the reminder!" She moved the bracelet closer to it unhappily. The hijacker was a bad option in her mind, because it tried to get around the protections on these things that she should have been working with, but Gazimon's device was the only way she could get the Digi-Egg out of this mess of a battle on her own. The small band beeped, then shattered, and suddenly Yolei started to evolve. The sensation was different than what she was used to, and she could easily tell that this time she was hijacking the evolution from the harsher change.

Her body actually changed quite a bit, although it was going back towards human from being a giant bug as she took on what quickly become apparent as the form of the faster new Hackware evolutions. Rinkmon turned out to be some sort of super fast ice skater digimon, one of the cases of a human in a costume for the look. Her body seemed to have basically returned to normal, maybe a bit older than she actually was, with a bright blue and white costume over it. The helmet was comically oversized in her opinion, with too many long spikes going too far out the back, and the fact it had a cape made Yolei greatly wish she could risk going back to Flybeemon already instead of using this awkward looking form. Notably her new metallic claws seemed to have also appeared on the form, with that feature clearly not on the HackRinkmon around her.

The HackRinkmon that were now moving at normal speed despite everything else seeming to crawl along slowly. Yolei could only gape at how fast the Hackware had actually been moving, which clearly was quite a bit faster than she could even tell before. Which actually made how little damage these versions were doing rather pitiful, and she could not help but cringe at the lack of results they were getting. Shaking her head she started to move back to the others, with a bit of trouble figuring out how to move on her new skates leading to her nearly crashing into the World Stone after her first attempt to rush quickly.

Luckily she missed it by a good distance, as a black colored fireball radiating the same energy Gazimon used for his attacks slammed into the Stone just a moment later.


"Well now, looks like the party started without us," Dark Tyranomon rumbled after firing off an attack, with an entire force of the Emperor's constructs behind her. This caused a brief pause in the battle for the Digidestined and Upload to both realize that the remaining faction had just teleported their own force in. "Now, how about you just hand over that Egg, and we can have a nice little time smashing crystals together?" she asked Yolei, and made it apparent that the timing here was not a coincidence.

It was clear the Emperor's henchmon didn't expect a positive answer, as she immediately sent a slash made out of energy in the direction of the new Rinkmon. "Okay, I thought you guys said digimon didn't normally have types?" Jane called out as the Fire type Champion began to shift her team to counter the new threat.

"They don't," HackBiyomon noted. "Which means that somebody has been playing around with our stuff." She then evolved into her Champion form. "Hackware, get the gear out of here."

"Great, that plan's backfiring," Bob mumbled, unheard by the Digidestined. "Guess we do need to stop our stuff from being captured now." He quickly started to move to the packed up research gear as the digital dinosaur began making her own way towards the valuable gear they had planned on the Digidestined capturing.

"Right," HackSaberdramon said also unheard by any but Hackware. "We are taking my sisters on a tour of the other sites after this to see if they can figure out how to get this stuff to them."

"Sounds like a better plan than this one," the Goliath hybrid complained as he shook his head at how the HackRinkmon were failing to have much impact. "This whole project is looking like a bust at this point."

"The HackStegomon are doing alright," his avian teammate commented as she avoided another Dark typed fireball. "Well, not any worse than the others." Her counterattack of Black Dos did little in their attempt to slash at Dark Tyranomon, but did shatter a couple of the already damaged constructs.

Davis apparently saw an advantage with that. "Yolei, grab as much as you can! Don't worry about the fight!" he called out as he flowed between her and the new enemies. "We can hold them off. Gazi, punch us a hole!"

"After someone smashed a World Stone? Are you nuts?" T.K. asked quickly pointing to the shattered device.

"We need to know what they were doing with this stuff, and we can't let them destroy it first," the leader argued as he splashed against a couple of HackOryxmon and flung a trio of fireballs at a nearby HackAllomon. "If Gazimon can't open it then we need to know now."

"Do we really want a portal in the middle of a fight?" Yolei asked disbelievingly while she dodged back towards the research site. "Look, I'll just move it over to the sandstorm, and we'll see what survives us getting out of here."

"Not a great plan," Cody cautioned, still not visible from within the swirling sand. "I'm not sure I'm able to keep the storm from hurting you guys, so I know that stuff isn't going to make it."

"Ah can say ya aren't up for keep'n others safe from it," his brother grumbled from the edge of the storm, where the Digmon was taking out any enemies that didn't just teleport away from inside the storm to escape. "My shell was hit more by that storm than by the Hackware."


"I don't think we re getting anything intact from this place, Boss Man," Dark Tyranomon mumbled over the communication system set in her Dark Ring. She had to uncertainly glance at the cloud of sand that outright shredded the few constructs that tried to go into it, and they had not even bothered with the firestorm that was now moving towards her.

"They are calling your new power 'Dark Typed'," her unfortunately distracted leader mumbled back thoughtfully even though he didn't have to keep quiet. "And there are mentions of other 'Types' as well. Perhaps there are specific natures to their fabrication energy." There was a pause as she slid her bulk away from the massive purple fireball that the unknown dragon monster sent her way. "The Digi-Egg is now a secondary concern. These Hackers appear to be related to some other world with these 'Types' of fabrication energy, and that appears to be the source of their unusual power. Destroy their equipment and break off the attack."

"Too bad the Digidestined are busy grabbing it," she complained with a quick glance to how many constructs she now did not have. Which was quite a bit more than half the force of Champion grade she had started with, meaning that a three way fight went through those even faster than going against just the Hackers. From the looks of things she was sure that they would be gone before she could get past the fire monsters that did not look to be digimon. "I think the Hackers are more concerned with stopping us from getting them than the kids making off with em."

"To be expected, the Digidestined have far less presence. Very well, fall back with as many of my forces as you can," the Digimon Emperor allowed, and the Dark dinosaur sighed at the idea of getting away with any of the constructs.

"Hey now, would you all mind just letting me run away now? No? Worth a shot," she yelled at her enemies before making a break for it.


Sora looked at the blasted battlefield a bit uncertainly. "So, do you think you might be able to smuggle a bit more of the stuff we wanted you guys to take back with you?" HackBiyomon asked her nervously from atop a half melted rock formation.

"We are definitely checking out what we actually got too well for that," she replied to her little sister tiredly. "This is a bit more damage than I expect from a fight."

"How about somehow 'stumbling' across one of the locations for the other sites fairly soon?" the bird digimon questioned. "Because it took you guys forever to find this one, and then everything went wrong."

Sora simply stared at her newest sibling for a moment to try and figure out how best to tell her that it was still a bad plan overall. "I have not been helping Izzy with that so far, so he'd probably notice if I suddenly knew right where the next one was. Maybe if the kids didn't have the Digi-Egg of Love I could try for that one, or if Mimi was back from exploring the pokemon world," she sighed.

"Mimi is exploring an entire world full of monsters on her own?" HackBiyomon asked with confusion. "How did she get convinced to do that?"

"She found some new friends in that world that share her interests in fashion," Sora told the digimon and shook her head. "And from her last message back she somehow ended up being a 'trainer' to a blob monster."

"You mean a Grimer or a Muk?" the team Upload leader her sister was working with asked. "Huh, that isn't normally the kind of pokemon someone who follows fashion would have, although if you mean trainers that show off their pokemon to make their moves look fancy it would make more sense."

"That actually sounds like it, she apparently got third place in some contest with 'Grimer'," the Digidestined of Love admitted, still a bit uncomfortable with interacting with the villains. "There were pictures of her with it, and I'm not sure what to think about it."

"What about Joe? We have Reliability too," HackBiyomon suggested thoughtfully. "Could he possibly be passed some info?"

Sora knew she looked embarrassed after hearing that question. "DSS told him about you sort of being on our side, so he at least already knows," she admitted. "And he has been staying at our base a lot to use the pool he had us put in."

"Joe's taken up swimming to relax?" her sister asked jokingly, and Sora flinched a bit at the reminder of how Upload wasn't seeing all of how odd things had gotten.

"He's taken to being a pokemon to relax, and Floatzels like swimming," she explained, earning disbelieving looks from both the Hackware hybrids.

"Every time we talk about your team I regret turning them into digimon a bit more," HackBiyomon dryly replied.


Davis was so tired he barely managed to be a large puddle on the floor that his teammates had to avoid, and it was mostly the fact that he was a fairly thick liquid that kept him from just coating the entire floor. "I messed up," he burbled aloud.

"You took a good chunk out of both armies, came up with a plan that handled the fact the Emperor hit at the same time, and got out with at least some of their equipment," Tai said as the leader of the Digidestined looked their exhausted group over. Cody still had the unneeded remains of the mass of bones that had sustained him while he held up the sandstorm. Kari and T.K. had spent the battle in a rush to deal with any smaller problems, and now took advantage of the available chairs to rest. Everyone's partners were all currently in digimon form to use the smaller size to fit on the collection of pet beds that they had gotten from the pokemon world early on.

"I had Gazimon try and open a portal in the middle of that, and made Yolei run back into that mess," he grumbled, although it was probably harder to tell his mood since he didn't really have any features on his liquid form right now.

"It wasn't that bad an idea," Yolei countered unhappily. "That form just goes a bit too fast for me. I think I know a bit of what Davey meant about your Knowledge form. Although in my case it was everything else going too slowly." She sat as far from the Digi-Egg of Friendship as she could get. Matt had actually been able to lift it when they got it back, but Izzy had said that something seemed a bit off about it from the way they took it. "I just hope we don't need to do that with a Digi-Egg again."

"I say we should try not to fight both of our foes at once again," her brother complained with ruffled feathers. "Dark Tyranomon was stronger too."

"She had the Dark type," Jane commented, and it was not fair that her team still looked fine compared to the rest of them when they had gone toe to toe with that massive dinosaur and most of Upload's army. "From what Shawn and DSS said that is something that has to be done to digimon. Which makes me worry about what this 'Emperor' is going to do to his minions."

"I'll check with Joe about that problem," Tai told her. "He's the guy who knows the most about that topic of our team." The Digidestined of Courage looked at Davis. "So, can you pull yourself together, or do I need to get your wristband?"

"Please just let me stay for a bit," Davis had to argue. "This is actually a nice way to relax." It was a literally boneless experience, and with how exhausted he was that was a worthwhile thing to help recover.

"We're going to need a tub or something for you to do this in now aren't we, like we got Joe a pool?" their leader mumbled a bit too loudly.