- Imperial Response -

The raids on sea bases had been progressing steadily. It had become clear that Upload was spreading too quickly to actually clear them out of the oceans, but that also apparently meant they were willing to lose those bases just as easily as their land ones. Which had the unfortunate side effect of making it possible to hit multiple targets in a single day. So the younger Digidestined were currently between two missions in a makeshift cafeteria they had setup in their base for a quick snack to get their energy back.

"Cody's a pokemon, Davis is a blob monster, and now Kari is half digimon," Yolei listed unhappily from her seat at a table. "We're down to just me and T.K. as actual humans," she said as she tossed an apple lightly into the air. There was a flash of silver, and five slices of apple and a core clattered onto her plate. "Damn, still didn't get the angle right," she then complained and moved to use her claws to cut more of the edible fruit from the slightly over thick core.

"Yolei, I do not think Shawn is a good metric for what qualifies as 'human'," Hawkmon criticized her. The two of them were on their own for the moment while the rest of the team helped Izzy set up a vending machine they had gotten from the pokemon world. "Also you forgot that Davey is now about as human as the two of you too."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked around an apple slice.

"I just got told that liquid isn't safe to hold things up," Davis suddenly said from behind her. "What's going on?"

"Yolei says she's more human than you and your brother," Hawkmon said before his sister could explain, and while she wasn't happy with that she realized it probably was better than bringing up Kari's new issue.

"You almost tried that apple trick at school," the blob monster said and pointed at her plate. "I'm pretty sure that means you re still as human as me." The two Inoues clearly spent a moment inspecting his currently fluid form. "Alright, as human as Kari is now."

"That's not very human actually," said BlackGatomon quipped, suddenly next to the group. "And on that topic, Davis, any advice on how to keep from transforming in public?"

"Get DSS or Izzy to make you something that keeps you that way," he complained. "I've been told that practice might help, but honestly it only seems to be making it worse." His body then flowed in a fairly complicated way to shift the location of his features. "Although I might just be working on the wrong part for that." He returned to mostly normal shaped, if still a little gooey.

"Great," the cat digimon grumbled unhappily. "You know what the worst part is?" Kari asked while she simultaneously turned into human form again. "I'm not always sure which I am all the time." The girl seemed to actually not realize she had changed.

"Ugh, I hate that part," Davis agreed easily as his features shifted again slightly. "It's so easy to lose track." He slumped down over the bench. "Yeah, if you are having that problem too you really will need something to help keep you human."

"What's going on?" Cody asked, and Yolei clearly had to hold back a sigh.

"We're talking about our problems with being human," the steel clawed girl said as she attempted to slice another apple. This time her instant cuts were much closer to the core.

"Oh, congratulations!" the Sandslash said at her display of Metal Claw. "I know that you've been working hard on that one, and it really is tricky to pull off. Glad to see you're at least not having problems with your inhuman traits."

"You're having troubles?" Yolei asked focusing on her friend's possible issue instead of the unintentional criticism of her actions.

"Well, not really, but everyone else seems to be having issues with it so it is nice to see someone who isn't," Cody replied a bit uncertainly as he looked at Davis and Kari.

"Our issues with it are tied up in our families," Hawkmon told the pokemon. "Momoe has decided to keep turning into a digimon when she is home or at Davis' to 'get back at our mother' for making her stay one while she was grounded."

"It's working about as well as mom grounding her like that worked," Yolei added with a huff and shook her head. She really had not wanted the reminder of the real problem she was upset with.


Tai looked over the reports on his desk unhappily. Izzy had narrowed things down to their target, an oil rig that was the core of a rather large Upload power plant. It was yet another site that had seemed too highly protected to attack, and while that did hint that the final Digi-Egg would be in a similar location, did not help with actually dealing with that issue. "It isn't going to be entirely underwater, is that going to be a problem?" he asked Joe.

The otter monster, and it was getting tiring to see only that form of their oldest member, looked thoughtful for a moment. "Quagsire actually had them practice changing to and from their aquatic forms," Joe replied. "And they have extra Artificial Reliability on hand in case they end up without their D-Terminals. Personally I'd rather just flood where we end up, but I'm small enough to fit so that changes things enough that it hasn't really worked out so far."

"Joe, when was the last time you were in the human world?" Izzy suddenly asked as the genius arrived, and the careful non-reaction the pokemon gave to the question made Tai sigh.

"My father is excited about the improved opportunities my pokemon form gives me in these other worlds," Joe said without the slightly playful tone he tended to take in this shape. "So I went with Momoe Inoue's current plan of going overboard to drive how that's stupid in by just staying a monster in response to the suggestion. It did not work, and I'm avoiding him to not deal with it."

"And because his spot here is a pool I've had to put up with a roommate that is a monster," Gomamon complained. "By the way, thanks for putting more stuff in the cafeteria. It was kind of awkward to go to town in another world just to fill up the fridge we had to start."

"This is why we need more people, Tai," Izzy said, and in Tai's opinion clearly missed the more important parts of this conversation. "If we use this place more we will want somebody keeping it clean and stocked up." He rubbed at his shoulder. "Also to help install new stuff we get."

"Alright fine. I'll start looking into something," the Digidestined of Courage relented. "But I want you to start tracking down the other Digidestined kids." The genius' face took on a look of horror. "I know you've said we basically can't track them, but do you honestly want us to start with people who don't know about digimon?"

"It might be better that way," Agumon argued to join the conversation from the second desk they had just assembled in the room yesterday. "Most of those kids probably think the problem is over still, so they might not want to help. If we can find people that want to help because they want to, isn't that better than just picking them because they have digimon?"

Tai considered the logic for a moment, and then sighed. "Okay, when you put it like that it does sound bad. Taking people who don't agree to it just because they have they're in the right place is exactly the thing I don't want to repeat that the guys who grabbed us did," he admitted and them attempted to steer the conversation back to the upcoming mission.


By that time the next day Joe was simply waiting for the whole mess he was in to go wrong. Mostly because Upload had gone so far as to outright tell Sora that the little gemstones they were all but giving them could work for the matching Digidestined to reach Ultimate. "You ready to try the emergency option?" he asked his clone brother as the team prepared to hit the crystal covered oil rig from the ocean.

The Ikkakumon looked at the collection of fish, submarines, and whales they were leading. "How long do those last? Because I have a bad feeling we might need a Zudomon," the massive furry walrus quietly replied. The visible Hackware at the surface alone was easily dozens of the Champion versions, and they had spotted shifts of HackSaberdramon and the two Goliath hybrids on patrol.

"Great, now we just need a reason to figure out how to do it," the Floatzel complained about the need to keep Upload 'helping' them a secret. "How about your fish?"

"Wishiwashi seems to get a 'smaller' boost whenever I evolve, so I'm a little worried what will happen to them," Ikkakumon admitted. The mass of fish actually did look like their individual members had grown in size, and the digital fish among them might have grown spikes as well.

Quagsire's team had hopefully found a nearby location on the land to prepare for their own attack. Since they were taking that path they were going to have their own Tyranomon and Dugtrio available this time. The official plan was for them to sneak in if they could to help out, and the actual plan was for them to talk to one of the Shrine hybrids to get a good position to show up if the Emperor attacked again. Joe personally thought that an attack was likely since the Emperor had managed to just show up a lot before DSS brought their problems.

"Alright everyone," Davis called out. "We're ready for this, get in quickly, find the Egg, and get out."

Joe started to swim forward, and took just a moment to consider how fast he was like this. It was an experience he did not think was possible for a human, and he did understand the unease that the others had about how much time he was spending like this. However, being able to do this was an enjoyable way to spend his free time, he thought as he hardened the water in front of him into an attack that would possibly shatter the aquatic armored Hackware in front of him.

T.K. and his brother had been at the front doing some last minute scouting as usual, but they weren't as defensive as the others so now they hung back to get to the rear of the moving formation. Kari and her sister were once more at the front quickly, followed by the Inoues who could mostly keep up. Davis and Davey were working close with the Submarimon to approach from deeper, and the plan was for the four of them to find the lowest place to enter the base.

Joe's pressure wave overtook them and forced a good portion of the Wyrms that were also underwater to teleport out from damage. The fact that those ones couldn't take a hit as well was supposedly made up for by how mobile they were in any medium compared to the other Champion Hackware, but Joe still suspected that Upload was overcautious about how much damage to have their forces take. After a few barrages of torpedoes and additional pressure waves from his digimon allies the rest of the immediate enemies were cleared as the various armored forms took hits that sent plenty of small gemstones sinking down.

Joe grabbed one idly as they inspected the target itself. It was a little hard to be sure where the underwater part of the rig started now, but apparently one of the Tylomon's torpedoes had gotten in if the large surge of bubbles during the fight from one of the crystal-like structures was an indication. The resulting hole that just flooded the place looked like a tight fit for most of the team, but more worrying was how the Hackware at the edge of their range suddenly abandoned the battle entirely and that didn't seem related to this development.

"News from Quagsire!" Cody called out. "The Emperor's forces are attacking, it's a lot more this time from the picture she sent." The two submarine digimon had the minor advantage of being mechanical enough to somehow use email and radio messages without needing hands to manipulate things. "A couple of the Spire monsters almost look like they have normal digimon parts."

"That sounds like those custom ones Gazimon has been worried about," Davis said seriously. "Kari, Yolei, go in there and see if you can find the Digi-Egg. Everyone else to the surface to see what we're up against."

"We'll keep them out of the ocean for the rest of you," Ikkakumon rumbled loudly. "Joe, any idea how to pull off getting me to Zudomon?" he then asked more quietly.

"Give me a moment," Joe grumbled as the plan finally fell to pieces.


Dark Tyranomon smirked at the response she had attracted. With any luck this would be enough that the Emperor's little army of teleporter bots would have plenty of time to find and escape with the damn Digi-Egg. Those specific creepy little robots were supposedly based on the worm-shaped crystal monsters to some extent, so they should be able to hide until they found the target.

"Hello crystal bastards," she roared at her enemies while her two Mammothmon shaped constructs moved forward to be big and dangerous. The large mammoth shaped digimon would normally be Ultimates, but even with direct help from Arukenimon they still fell well short of that, she was stronger than they were after all. It was unnerving though to see the patches of skin and armor that actually looked like a normal digimon's for once.

The damn crystal bird was already on the battlefield, and already using her powers to evolve entire armies of smaller monsters. A good number of their human shaped elites were there too, so she needed to make this last a while. Her attempt to swat down the bird with a fireball seemed like a good idea, but apparently the ground itself disagreed as it started shaking wildly to throw her aim off.

"Ah, the young feral," a half familiar voice said, and she turned to find one of Etemon's slaves was looking at her. There was basically no way she'd recognize which of the monkey's many Tyranomon this was, and given how stiff the clearly older digimon was moving she had no illusions that he was a direct threat. "That explains the rage," the other digimon continued in a sympathetic tone that made her want to tear out his throat herself.

"No antagonizing things you can't fight on your own," a blue salamander monster said, and then proceeded to somehow flood the area with a wave of water that barely effected Dark Tyranomon or her Ultimate constructs, but did push the rest of their forces towards the ocean. Then the small creature somehow made the other Tyranomon vanish in a flash of red light. "Team, she's too strong, just distract the dino!" A number of other not-digimon around her then scattered so she could not hit them all at once, and clearly moved to pepper her forces from range.

"Great, the Digidestined already had this plan," she grumbled, and the sudden appearance of a good number of ocean digimon from the water, all marked with the cross symbol of this Digi-Egg, only further confirmed that. After all, she could clearly see a couple of their members were missing. "Missing... probably BlackGatomon, and I don't know who else," Dark Tyranomon noted as she could not spot the Dark member of that team. She hoped that the mole monster wasn't there, as his storm was almost as bad as the dragon not-digimon's fire monsters.

This hope was quickly dashed as one of the submarines ran aground and turned into the spiky not-digimon, and she frowned at the presence of one of the older Digidestined's Champions. "You, deal with the crystals, and you deal with the not-digimon," she instructed her two actually useful throwaway minions. "I'll deal with the Digidestined myself." She didn't even spare a glance at the smaller constructs still recovering from the surge of water.


Kari now had a better point of comparison for her new state. It felt different to change in or out of her armor evolutions than to change between them, and even that was something she actually felt happening instead of what going between human and digimon was like. It was probably a good thing that Delta 2 had said her human form had become basically as strong as her digimon one, although at times it was hard to say that they were actually different at all. So it took a moment to shift back into her natural form once they found somewhere with air inside of the base instead of just an instant that everyone said she took between human and digimon. Beside her Yolei took on her Flybeemon form, and they quickly cut down the Stones and Worms guarding the floor.

"We really need to fix the breaking problem with these scanner things," Yolei noted as she tapped the one she was wearing. "Mine's busted from the water." Kari frowned and checked her own, which thankfully did show where they were going.

She then tried to figure out how to get there from the room they were in now. "It would be nice if they could give a map too," she complained lightly before they set off in the polygon coated facility.

The good news was that it took them going up a level, so they didn't have to worry about the water they let in reaching it just yet. The bad news was they started to find fallen Artificial Crests instead of active armor Hackware when they actually got close. A cluster of black metal creatures instead was not entirely a surprise at that point, but the fact that the Emperor had the same idea as them was bad enough on its own.

Between her own and Yolei's claws they made quick work of the first couple, but clearly the Emperor had retooled an entire factory for these things as there were enough around that they might end up wasting a lot of time just getting rid of them. "Kari, how far are we?" her insect ally asked as she slashed through another.

"Too far for this mess, but too close to risk Wizardmon," the cat digimon complained and took out another of her own. They had learned the hard way that he still did not have enough control over his spells to work in the tight spaces that made up these underwater bases. "Unless Davis wants to fish it out of underwater wreckage."

"He'd make us try and help," Yolei agreed jokingly. "Warn them that we might have a problem."


Dark Tyranomon's first hint that things were going to go badly was when the already strange sight of a floating mass of fish using beams of water turned into a giant shark with scales made out of fish. Her second hint was the fact that instead of a Champion she now had a genuine Ultimate on the field.

The spike shelled dog-turtle had a big hammer, and felt sort of like the sea, but not enough to make her think he really had 'type' energies too. Which was cold comfort to her given the beam of energy he had already sent her way. The only good news was she had apparently brought enough small constructs that it was the only attack coming for her right at that moment.

She dodged as quickly as she could, but still had the attack clip her shoulder, and to her surprise skip off her actively hardened scales far more lightly than she anticipated. The Dark 'type' energy had reacted to her little boost technique far better than she had expected, and while she was happy that this meant it hadn't taken her down she still wasn't in a good position after the hit.

"Nice try big guy, but not enough," she blustered as she tried to get back into the right posture. Of course her opponent didn't wait for that, and apparently decided to hit her with his giant hammer directly instead. That was probably an easier thing for her to deal with. It wasn't actually better to get hit by the hammer, but the Ultimate did cringe at her own darkness laced claw attack.

"Here I thought you were only a Champion," the digimon rumbled as he kneed her in the chest. She could handle a good brawl alright, but it was never fun to have an opponent that could actually give one.

"And I thought you Digidestined didn't practice," she replied with a short ranged wave of black fire. This was not entirely effective, but even that was still more than she had expected against an Ultimate's shell.

"Hmph, well Wishiwashi and Joe wouldn't want me to be left out," he joked with a smirk, and suddenly a floating shark with fish-scales slammed into her back. Apparently it wasn't as distracted as she had hoped, and now the fight didn't look possible again.

A ping on her Dark Ring almost distracted her from a punch, and she couldn't help but laugh at what it meant. "Well too bad we're done here," she rumbled with a laugh, and took a blast of water despite the pain because the teleport afterwards made the look on the Ultimate's face well worth it.


The black flash was all Kari needed to see to know they'd failed. The follow-ups that rescued the rest of the Emperor's new units were expected, but the shattering of the Upload structures wasn't given the size of this base. So the two of them didn't bother with finding a normal way out and just smashed walls until they hit water.

The surface was just a quick swim up, and revealed the source of the problem. Two truly massive Control Spire constructs were simply trying to destroy anything that was around them, and somehow Zudomon was there fighting them.

"What the heck happened?" Yolei questioned harshly as they both emerged from the water with a leap that gave just enough airtime to take on forms with wings.

"Enemies bad enough that they apparently couldn't spare enough people to deal with the real problem," Kari complained, feeling terrible about their failure to save the Digi-Egg.

A massive rumble then interrupted the pair of overpowered artificial digimon from their attempts to get around Zudomon to crush the others. A massive tree root erupted from the ground next to one of the elephant constructs, and opened icy blue eyes and a fanged mouth. A second red eyed root-snake then emerged on the other side of the construct, followed by a massive coil of wood that wrapped its pitted bulk around the enemy. Sinister black goo oozed out of the pits along its body and began to melt the construct even as the coil crushed it.

Zudomon did not seem surprised by the newcomer and took advantage of the opportunity to smash the pointed end of his hammer into the other elephant monster, shattering it. The bound one soon followed as Kari and Yolei approached close enough to see the rest of the team clearing out a number of smaller constructs.

"So, it looks like you needed some help?" the plant Ultimate asked with a familiar joking dual voiced tone. Shawn and Serperior apparently could merge together, which honestly made far too much sense given how the pair acted. Kari actually now had to wonder if this was their normal form.

"I can't tell if I want to say we could have handled that with a bit more time, or if I want to complain that you two took so long to get here," Quagsire called out a bit tiredly from where her team had apparently been fighting the construct the snake had crushed.

"It's the second one," Kari called out. "The Emperor had another group that stole the Digi-Egg." The group collected around the colossal root monster did not react well to that news.

"A big one, we had to have taken out at least a third of them," Yolei added grimly. "Can we figure out where they took it?"

"Not from here," Davis said as he carefully checked everyone on the team for injuries. "But I don't think we're up for going after it right now."

To demonstrate his point Zudomon reverted back into Gomamon, and the team could hear a shattering sound from Joe's position. "Well, looks like these work as normal Crests too," the Floatzel said as he shook shards of purple crystal out of his paw. "Well, just once."

"That's almost good news," T.K. grumbled.