- Flowerful Abilities -
Ken Ichijouji had a very proud look on his face as he revealed his latest project to his 'advisors'. "I fully understand the reasons why you have not had time for this project yourselves," he informed them to their annoyance. "With your own digimon forms being so capable along with my forces it clearly was not a priority to give me my own."
"Can he really give himself a digimon form?" Mummymon asked quietly with an unimpressed tone.
"After how much I've had the Spore sabotage this little project he is so insistent on trying there isn't any way it will work," Arukenimon hissed quietly to her partner. "Without that? He was a lot farther along than I like."
The other two digimon present were far enough to not hear their words, but could clearly see the pair talking. The Digimon Emperor on the other hand was not really paying any attention to his audience. "It has taken me a bit of work to discover the means they seem to use to hijack that feature themselves," he continued his explanation unaware and uncaring that no one was listening. "By referencing both the integration of typed fabrication energy and the energies of the Digi-Egg I believe I have made my own means of not just achieving a digimon form like they have, but an Ultimate form such as your own."
Arukenimon heard that last part, and clearly smothered a laugh. "Well then, you are ready to use it, or is testing required?" she asked aloud.
"I have done enough trials on the individual parts to be sure of its functionality," Ken proudly declared and then moved to be inside of the complicated device.
"Can we really afford to risk him trying this?" Mummymon asked a bit more uncertainly as it became clear that this 'explanation' was simply the prelude to Ken using the device.
"I made sure there were enough fail safes in this thing that it should be little more than a blinking brick," the spider digimon replied. "He'll be mad, but fine. No need to worry about losing him to this little distraction."
"Now, watch as I gain true power!" the only actual human in the base said grandly.
Arukenimon and the Dark Spore had both used all their knowledge and capability to sabotage the makeshift device. However, they had overlooked the possibility that the Upload equipment taken and used in its construction would alter the device in ways they were not aware were possible. Notably, they did not have the background to understand that the Team Upload fragment they were facing had already made plans and equipment to assist in rapidly and roughly combining a human with a digital life form.
In this case there was no Hackware present for the copied fragments of support code to work with, and the human in question also didn't quite fit what it was made for, but metaphysically it contributed to the overall function of the device's intent, and Upload knew that metaphysical concerns would matter too. Reserves of typed energy, primarily Dark typed and typeless, were more than large enough to cause the physics of the digimon world to take a side role in what happened next.
Before any of the intentionally overtuned fail safes for the startup process could trigger the Upload derived code executed and found the target human, and then the Dark Spore contained within his body. Finding these two compatible enough given available resources the code proceeded to give the okay to start the merger process. The conversion and combination was organized and setup, with only alterations to the end result being needed to initiate the process.
Custom work by Ken himself took over the next step, having been left alone by the saboteurs as the device was intended to fail well before reaching that point. This then used the digivolution framework of the world around them to find a form that matched the data provided by the previous step. It was able to easily verify that there was enough energy between the device's own stores, specifically made to be consumed by the process to boost Ken's base power level, and the Dark Spore's own internal storage meant for the forces of Darkness to collect when it was harvested.
An Ultimate stage from one of the many possible lines that Ken's naturally Rookie digimon form could take was identified as compatible with the merger with the spore's plant-like nature, and the device began the process of integrating that data into the merger process. By this point it was much too late to stop, although only the Dark Spore had the data manipulation capacity to be able to detect what was happening. Minor setup changes to the Spores structure prevented it from transmitting this issue, as intended by sparse fragments of Upload code made to bypass and subvert mind control programs.
The final components of the desired transformation that needed to be verified related to the ability to change between human and digimon forms. This proved to be a simple enough change to make, as the resulting merger of Spore and stolen Hackware had plenty of data manipulation capacity to handle such a program, and the sharp distinction between the kind of human Ken was and a digimon version of himself was enough to clearly separate the two metaphysically. The capability was added to the new digimon without incident.
Arukenimon could only watch with a bit of horror as device and Emperor both were enveloped by a bright white glow as it was consumed in his evolution. The Dark Spore had enough time to experience something close to panic before it was effectively consumed by its host. Mummymon moved forward to shield his partner from any possible danger, and to the side Wormmon and Dark Tyranomon realized that this was a bigger issue than they had anticipated.
The Emperor's body shifted wildly. His head and torso were converted into a single large circular body part, while his limbs multiplied greatly into a large number of thorn covered vines. As the glow faded this revealed a massive flower monster with a cluster of leaves extending out his back and a large number of vines, some of which had additional flowers with only mouths instead of a full face like the largest. The new Blossomon struggled for a moment as his mind tried to make sense of his new existence.
The larger part of his mind was clearly Ken, and even that was overstating the Dark Spore's direct impact on memories and thoughts. However, the code, knowledge, and restrictions of that dark fragment were all firmly present in the merged mind. Blossomon was fairly sure he was still Ken as he sorted through that mess, but that also meant that what he had thought was happening did not actually fit with the new knowledge he had gained from the sudden fusion with a digital construct.
He looked at the worried faces of Wormmon and Dark Tyranomon, and then the upset faces of HIS MASTER'S MINIONS. The thought that provided was clearly an unintentional complication of the parts of him that were the Dark Spore given how it then threw up an error message from trying to suppress that information from him, despite how a part of him that was required to know it unquestionably.
"Ken, is that you?" Wormmon asked softly. The Dark Spore was required to force Ken to respond to such a question firmly, and he had no idea what to make of the slightly painful requirement now that it was so clearly defined.
"Yes, and it appears that I have achieved a complete success," the new flower digimon said aloud to deal with that mental unease. He then spent a moment to try and work out the specifics of moving his body. "A brand new Ultimate form," he started and with a bit of worry that the Spore's capabilities easily allowed him to hide. His body then shrank back down into a human form, and while he was quite grateful that worked, it did nothing to change how his mind was now partially a machine dedicated to deceiving him. "To go along with my normal human one," he added although a part of him now wanted his vines back already.
"That is a wonderful development," Arukenimon lied to his face, and he could barely consider how he knew that or why he didn't want himself to know it at all. "Do you want to test that out now?" she then asked and TOLD HIM TO MAKE THE PAWN SAY NO.
"Of course not now," Ken quickly replied as he once again had the issue of one part of his mind trying to force his whole mind to think a certain way. "The process still needs a bit of time to settle," he explained although that wasn't the original plan, or at least Ken's plan after being led to sabotage things by the Spore. He quickly shook off that thought before more pain came from it and started to leave. "With that in mind I will be heading home early today."
The so called 'developers' looked fine with that argument as they also left for their rooms, while his minions both clearly did not believe him. Despite that he made no attempts to explain further and simply started walking towards the terminal to get out of the digital world as quickly as he could. "Boss man," Dark Tyranomon said as soon as they were both out of earshot of the so called 'developers', clearly following him. "Boss, hold up." He could easily hear her footsteps to tell she wasn't abandoning her pursuit. "We need to talk, Boss."
Ken did not reply, in no mood for either game characters or evil minions, regardless of which interpretation was correct in reality. As he stopped in front of the monitor and took out his Digivice he could feel her loom over him. Without a second thought he returned to the real world. He landed easily and tried to shake off the strange sensations of the game, only instead of anything really changing it felt exactly the same now as it had back in the world of digimon. He still could feel the capacity to change into a massive plant monster, the strange mechanical mind mixed into his own, and the pulse of fabrication energy that now felt thick in a world empty of it.
"What? Why the hell did I shrink?" a voice asked from behind him that should not have been in this world. "Really? BlackAgumon again?" He slowly turned to take in the far smaller dinosaur that was impossibly standing in his room. "Whatever. Boss man, we, need, to, talk," Dark Tyranomon's Rookie form said to him sharply.
"What! How are you here?" he hissed with horror at her presence.
"Just because I don't want to go to the other world doesn't mean I wouldn't if it was important enough," she explained bluntly, and his blood ran cold. "Now, what the hell just happened, Boss? I know what something going totally wrong looks like and that was definitely it."
"This is your brother's 'other world'?" he asked faintly. It could not be. The strange thoughts the Dark Spore had about the digital world were clearly a mistake somehow, and there was no way that her brother could have died invading the real world. If that was the case then it would mean the digital world was also a real world, and that he had actually been enslaving entire armies to fight for him. It had to just be a game, despite the fact that if it was she shouldn't have been able to leave it, and thus should not be here now.
The part of him that was the Dark Spore approved of him thinking like that, but it also did not for a moment consider it the truth. The attempt by it to make sure he followed that reasoning gave him a now quite familiar headache.
"You didn't know this was where I meant?" she asked dully, but her gaze was focused on his eyes. "Boss man, just tell me what's going on."
"Your world isn't actually a game, is it?" he asked brokenly, both from Ken's crushing realization itself and the Spore's failure to prevent himself from having it. "It's never actually been a game."
"You were being literal," she responded with quiet revelation. "You. You weren't just being an evil asshole?" she half shouted, suddenly angry. "All this time you were just some kid thinking we were a game!" He nodded, cringing as his programming tried to stop him from telling more. "How the hell did you not figure out that it wasn't if you're such a 'genius'?" she added sarcastically.
"I had something in my head actively motivating me to think that way," he said mechanically, as if he was the Spore instead of Ken. Thinking like that made it a little easier to bypass the programs to keep himself in the dark. "It was also boosting my intelligence and capabilities to a degree."
The anger drained out of the digimon rapidly. "You mean mind control," she said far more calmly than he had ever heard her speak. "'Had', 'was'?" she questioned thoughtfully, clearly thinking he meant it was broken now, but he had to shake his head.
"My 'project' merged me with it. It's going to be even harder to break that now, the control they have over it is now over me directly," he explained, still focusing on his not-Ken aspects. "I believe there might be some interference there from stolen Upload code."
"Who?" she asked with a frown as she considered the rest of the explanation, and shocked him into realizing he suddenly knew the name of the group of hackers that had invaded the digital world.
"The crystal hackers," he told her, and she easily nodded in understanding.
"You need us to find a way to get rid of that mind control," she said after a moment more of thought.
"You cannot let my so called 'advisors' know that I'm aware of it," he told her as strongly as he could manage. "They work for the one who controls it."
"Already ahead of you there, boss. Dammit, Worm was right about you," she sighed. "Send me back. We're already started on this, but he needs to know you've figured more of it out."
Ken nodded and opened the gate back to his base. He watched the dinosaur digimon vanish through it and closed it again. Then he curled up on his bed tightly as the full reality of the situation hit him.
Dark Tyranomon found herself back to normal in the base as soon as she traveled back. She took a deep stuttering breath, and then slammed her fist into the nearest wall as hard as she could.
"Dark Tyranomon?" Wormmon asked with concern as she felt a bit of blood trickle down her arm from where it was embedded in shattered metal.
"Mind control," she ground out as she removed her fist from the wall. There was a clatter as fragments of it fell, and she moved to inspect the damage she had done to herself. "Our boss man with my damn brother's eyes is being mind controlled."
"Oh," the other digimon said. He didn't sound surprised. "I didn't really think you'd care so much." He started moving the two of them towards the place they kept the healing things.
"His eyes keep looking exactly the same as whenever my brother was doing something he didn't actually like doing," she said tiredly, her anger exhausting her body. "Which means that vampire bastard was controlling my brother's mind, and I didn't even realize it." The blood had already stopped, and she was actually a bit worried how she felt like she lost energy to repair that small bit of damage automatically. "I want to bring that bastard back to life just to tear his throat out myself for that."
"He's dead?" Wormmon asked idly as he found one of the pods and tossed it up to her.
"If I have any say in it he is," she said strongly as she crushed the thing to get the energy out. "Which I probably don't," she then sighed. "Myotismon was stronger than the average Ultimate, and I was barely hanging on in that fight with the dog-turtle."
"I thought you said it wouldn't work?" Mummymon harshly questioned her as she tried to figure that little issue out. The two of them had moved to their own personal space as soon as the damn kid had left.
"It should not have worked," Arukenimon raged slamming the other disguised digimon into a wall. "I triple checked that pile of nonsense and glowing lights. It should have at best given the damn kid a migraine for a few days if it hit the second stage of his stupid process. I don't know how he got through the entire thing, because there just wasn't a way to make a human into a digimon left after all the stuff I took out of it."
"Well he did!" Mummymon said as she pressed him into the metal. "He turned into another Ultimate digimon and had that strange power he put into the dinosaur."
She dropped him suddenly. "The strange power?" she asked with a hint of horror. "No, he wouldn't use that stuff at the same time." She could see the idiot kid doing just that. He was fascinated with the unusual power that the Hackers used to make their impossible constructs, and she realized that he had mentioned using it somehow in his speech before they started. "That would explain it though. If the devices that used that were intending to infuse him with it at the same time that might have thrown some things off."
"What do we do about it? He wasn't supposed to be able to get as strong as us," her partner noted unhappily.
"The Spore seems to still be working," she noted with a bit of confidence. "It responded well to my command, even if the reporting functions apparently aren't quite made to be in a digimon instead of a human. As long as we have that he should be another asset." She considered that idea for a moment. "Actually, this might be a benefit. He was a weak link, and if our foes had managed to corner him before we might have lost our ticket in and out of this world."
"He has had it fairly easy just staying here," Mummymon agreed with a cruel smile.
Wormmon was unhappy to find Ken in the base the next morning. His partner was once more a massive plant digimon, and he really wished that Ken had not started trying it out so quickly. "Emperor, I thought you had things to do in the morning," Wormmon said aloud.
The mass of vines flinched at his tone. "Wormmon," Ken started, and then quickly checked a monitor next to him for something. "I've taken the day off from school," the Blossomon admitted, and Wormmon was sure he just felt his heart stop at that mention of Ken's normal life. "I told my parents that I needed to help the 'developers' with a big problem." The flower monster was not looking at him. "I need the time to deal with this." Ken's body rippled in a way that sent a shiver down the smaller digimon's spine.
"What's wrong?" Wormmon asked far more nicely than his earlier statement, still in a bit of disbelief that his partner was talking like this.
"It worked too well. Dark Tyranomon already told you the important part, right?" Ken asked, finally turning to look at him. Wormmon nodded nervously, and remembered her rage at that bit of information. His own was colder now, and the small insect hated how he understood her declaration to kill her brother's controller. "The control part is part of me, and I think that made me more digimon than human. I feel... not uncomfortable... less comfortable when I'm not like this."
"That's what they're like," Wormmon told him seriously. "They only stay human to hide from you."
"Of course it is the same thing," Ken complained. "Upload, the Hackers, did something odd with their stuff." Wormmon wasn't sure how to take this sudden change of topic. "I think the human looking ones might have done the same thing I just did, and that they might have been worried about mind control too." Ken's entire demeanor then shifted back into being the Digimon Emperor, and Wormmon had to take a step back at the sudden and apparent change. "Their capacity to work around such marvelous restrictions, and to better hide those workarounds is quite wonderful," the Ultimate digimon said grandly, before shifting back to a kinder Ken. "It hurts to not be like that," Ken whispered and Wormmon was sure he wasn't supposed to hear that part.
"Don't stress yourself," the insect digimon insisted, and he hated the idea of that evil version of Ken being back far less than he hated the terrible things he had done himself since the Hackers had shown up. Ken's eyes widened at the statement. "I can handle you being mean. I've always known that the real you was under there."
"Even if I don't look anything like myself?" the Blossomon asked with vines spread widely to emphasize the inhuman nature of the form.
"You still look like Ken to me," Wormmon said easily, and the flower monster collapsed for a moment before resuming the more evil looking stance.
"Get to work then," the Emperor said strongly. "Find out what Upload knows about this kind of transformation, and their data on how it affects the mind. Use any means you need to do so, repurpose factories, build forces, hire mercenaries, anything."
"Of course, Emperor," Wormmon gladly agreed.
