Arc 4 Finale, Part 1 of 3

- A Dream Realized -

Yukio Oikawa glared at the empty air. It had been most of a week now, and his digimon had not checked in on the fiasco that had become his plan to reach the digimon world himself. He could feel a pressure under his skin once more to do something about that problem.

"I've been thinking about something," Gatomon said as they prepared for the worst. Absol was sure today was the day that Arukenimon and Mummymon would definitely bring back Myotismon, or another even more powerful Mega, so everyone had gathered at one of Upload's bases to get ready to respond the moment that they spotted the threat. "You taught Dokugumon?" she asked Gazimon as the Dark type worked out if the Dark Network would work for one of the several half baked ideas on how to actually get their own Mega forms.

"Yeah, my second and final class," the rabbit monster responded tightly. "That's when I figured out that it wasn't coincidence that none of them were making it to Champion."

"She was already a Champion before I became one," the cat monster noted with a frown. "I barely understood how any digimon could last as just a Rookie as long as you did before, but that means it had been a lot longer."

"He's a cripple," TyranoGazimon said bluntly and shortly. "I've been trying not to think about it, but dad's medical scans always show that his ability to naturally evolve is broken. Too many options all at once but none of them are able to actually activate. If it wasn't for those Polyhedrons he probably would never get close."

"Really? You're just going to call me 'dad' right now?" the other pokemon hybrid Gazimon grumbled.

"I've been trying to look for a cure for you," Tyra admitted with some unease. "And now you're looking at using the Dark Network for enough power to make a Mega, and I'd never even heard those existed before this latest mess started. So I'm going to call you that as long as you let me because I'm afraid you're going to do something stupid, again."

"And you haven't asked for any of the data on how we did it?" Gazimon asked with another grumble.

Everyone within earshot froze at that statement. "'Did it'?" the patchwork digimon asked a bit faintly. "You- Why?"

"It wasn't a coincidence that none of them made it to Champion," Gazimon repeated dully. "Etemon didn't just forget that I almost betrayed him to Datamon, and I didn't miss that the Champions under him rarely were anything other than slaves." He laughed humorlessly. "So I found another Gazimon that was working on manipulating evolution and asked him to break my ability to evolve."

"Let me guess," Serperior said with a sigh at what was now a common part of his teammate's past. "That digimon died too."

"After telling me that I would probably get killed if I stayed so weak, he successfully used what he learned from breaking mine to reach Champion himself," the rabbit monster said with a tone that agreed with the serpent. "Then he was cabled into the Network and spent the rest of his life as a mind controlled zombie."

"I don't suppose you have his notes on that part of evolving?" Tyra asked after the moment of silence that followed that confirmation.

"Already gave them to Izzy, although I don't like pointing out how they were used on me," Gazimon confirmed with a nod.

The young genius sighed at being called out. "He had actually not explained that one of those experiments had been on him," the Digidestined of Knowledge started. "From those and a good look at Agumon and Gabumon I think we have everything to make it so the older Digidestined digimon can reach Mega given enough energy at a fairly high rate."

"How high are we talking about here?" Alice asked. "Because we do have the stockpiles already." Izzy quickly rattled off a figure most of the group didn't really understand, but that made the tech's face fall noticeably. "We're fucked. We can't manage half that rate, and that's mostly because we don't even have storage units that can store enough in them to sustain that for a couple of seconds. If you could somehow draw from a lot of them at once they we might be able to manage that."

"The Dark Network isn't made for that kind of energy transfer," Gazimon informed the group. "It can do it with a bit of work, but nowhere near that rate. At least without outright linking the target into it, and that isn't the best idea."

On a nearby monitor the Digimon Emperor's face grew wary and thoughtful.

One of the Hacker's artificial Destiny Stones would be their best bet. A strong enough attack would temporarily weaken the barriers enough for communications and transport to function in the immediate area, and from there Arukenimon only had to contact and run her nearly complete transport system from four years ago. She knew she could get a lock on their master using that system, and bringing him to the digimon world would both complete the objective they knew he had while also letting them speak with him about their next objectives.

"So we are invading territory and destroying their things for this?" BlackWarGreymon asked dryly.

"And running as soon as we get our leader here," Arukenimon sighed. "It is our only shot, and I'm surprised we got through yesterday without any more attacks." Which actually meant she was terrified of what their enemies were doing instead of going after them.

"Then tell me when you are ready so we can get this over with," the artificial digimon grumbled. He had mostly been asking them lots of awkward questions as she tried to patch up their Megadramon construct to keep using the lesser Spire creature as a method of transport. Mummymon had thankfully been willing to make nice with the Mega so she had time to also work on getting the breach techniques just right and attempts to contact the device despite the jamming.

"Your creator," BlackWarGreymon started to talk to her partner once more while she worked on the final preparations. "Did they create you the same way you created me?" The construct had clearly been building to this question, and neither of them had been looking forward to it.

"We can ask that when he's here," Mummymon answered a bit shortly. "Arukenimon, we are getting close to the nearest Stone. Should we hang back a bit for now?"

"We're already close enough that they'll know we're here, might as well get it over with," she grumbled and started the process to produce her end of the transport. "BlackWarGreymon, how close do we need to be for you to destroy that thing?" She clearly pointed to the barely visible shape of the artificial Stone.

"I can do that from here," he replied to her with a hint of annoyance. "Let me know when you're actually ready."

Arukenimon worked as quickly as she could, and was quite glad to manage a link to the old system despite the blocks. "Now!" she declared before she could lose contact. A massive sphere of energy formed between the Mega construct's claws, and then shot off towards their objective. The spider digimon began working before the projectile even impacted, but could still see the massive flash of light as an entire Hacker base simply vanished with a shattering sound. The Stone shattering set the entire world on edge for only a moment, but her preparations had all be oriented to one goal that only needed that long.

Despite that preparation she was still relieved to see her master stumbling a bit as he landed in the digital world. "What?" Yukio Oikawa asked harshly before freezing at the sight of the world around them. "Is, is this the digital world?"

"Yes, master. We were unable to return to your world because of the interference of those Hackers we were telling you about," Mummymon quickly explained.

"I was sure that bringing you here to go over the next objectives would be easier than trying to get back from that world after an attempt at escape," Arukenimon added, and then frowned at the look of confusion that was growing on her master's face.

"You were able to do that?" he asked with a frown. "This was your main goal, it shouldn't have been this easy-" He cut off suddenly and began to curl up in pain. The sky seemed to darken, and a deep blackness began to stream out of their leader to form a massive shape behind him.

This soon resolved into a massive white armored monster with a vague bat theme. It had deep purple ribbed wings with blood red undersides, and a large organ of some type between the two with the same coloration. Its 'hands' were circular sets of harsh red claws. For shoulders it had a pair of massive pod like structures that seemed to have faces on them. A thin segmented tail extended out behind it, while opposite that was a beaked face where its legs met. "In fact there were a number of things you were supposed to finish doing before we arrived here," an unwelcome voice said from the creature s familiar looking main head between the shoulders.

"Myotismon!" she raged. "What the hell are you doing here you bastard?" Internally she was horrified by the implication of this.

"Hmm, strange that you recognize me so quickly," the new clearly Mega form of her former leader said instead of answering. "And standing as if you want to oppose me as well. You are just full of disappointments in this new life I've given you."

"I've got Oikawa," Mummymon quickly said as he passed by to get farther from their new foe. "Any idea how to call the Digidestined for help?" She looked at their master with a small degree of horror as it became clear that Myotismon had not been easy on the human as the vampire left his body.

"The Digidestined? You seriously are going to go to them to try and save yourselves from my wrath?" the armored digimon asked her, and then had one of the large face-like shoulder panels crack open and begin to glow ominously.

The deep red beam of death that resulted from that hit the armored arm of BlackWarGreymon. "I'm afraid they are under my protection 'Myotismon'."

"MaloMyotismon is the proper name now," the Mega introduced himself. "Strange, I don't recall any dark Megas that looked like one of my killers. Where exactly did these two failures find you?"

"I doubt you actually care," the Spire construct noted. "And it does not seem like my answer is going to change your mind about attacking them."

MaloMyotismon simply frowned at that response. "So be it then," the revived Dark Master said, and then charged forward to smash the other Mega out of the way.

Arukenimon saw BlackWarGreymon quickly slam into MaloMyotismon on his own accord, and throw the other monster a bit farther from them. Another shoulder beam hit the black armored digimon, but was countered with a blast of dark energy that sent MaloMyotismon skidding. Sure that her newest construct could handle the fight for a while, she turned her attention to her stricken master.

Yukio Oikawa was dying, she was easily able to tell that Myotismon had been inside of him longer than she had been revived. For a desperate moment she looked around the clearing they were in for some possible way to save him, before her eyes landed on the Megadramon construct. The Ultimate equivalent was still badly cracked, and she seriously doubted its ability to get them away from an angry Mega should MaloMyotismon start winning, so the best thing she could think of right now was a final desperate plan to try and at least save the person she had thought she was working for. "Mummymon, help me get him closer to the Megadramon," she said quietly.

She was halfway between trying to stabilize Oikawa enough to attempt anything and a quick and dirty analysis of if her mad plan would even work when MaloMyotismon spoke again. "Well, I think that's enough of that," he loudly proclaimed, both of the Megas looking a bit worse for wear. "I still have some energy to collect." The air grew heavy and the darker. Arukenimon could sense their foe using an override on the Control Spires, and was thankful that the modifications made while turning them into constructs was enough to keep her creations from being taken by this development.

She was far less happy to sense energy now flowing into MaloMyotismon from the network of Spires.

Ken had already been inside the core of his base, right next to his power source. The Dark device he had built his facility around while deep under the Dark Spore's influence was the core of his domination over the Control Spires, and he had spent days now barely leaving the room just in case what had just started happened.

"Dark Tyranomon, warn the Digidestined that the Spires have been set off!" he shouted before desperately moving to take back his creations. He had gone through the Spore's knowledge on the truth of the Control Spire's workings, and after consulting with Gazimon determined that they were more likely derived from the work of a group known as the Machine Empire instead of something Myotismon made himself. That gave Ken an angle to use to ensure that the Spires were his and his alone, but he had been forced to wait until this moment to actually apply that leverage.

Myotismon had started the energy drain process, and also set it to transfer the stored energy that resulted into a specific digimon, presumably Myotismon himself. The former had already been cut off, or rather repurposed quite a while ago as part of his efforts to deal with the weaker Upload forces. He was easily able to set that to the minimum drain, which was no drain at all despite the system being active. The power transfer on the other hand was a new function Ken had not worked with, and far more important given the sheer quantity of energy stored in the Spires.

The Blossomon quickly moved to outright wrap himself around the Dark core of his base, extending out his vines to manipulate multiple systems at once, and got to work on cutting out the real enemy's access to the Spires.

He was able to fairly easily slow the transfer as well, although that clearly alerted Myotismon to his attempts. However, it was also clear that the real enemy was distracted by something, since he was fairly easily able to cut off a few secondary systems that allowed him to take complete control of where the transfer was directed.

"Ken, are you alright?" Wormmon suddenly asked, and Ken discovered that he had outright embedded his vines in a number of the devices around the room.

"Get a communications terminal in here," the Digimon Emperor said swiftly. "We need to coordinate what the hell we're doing about this. Myotismon just grabbed enough energy for ten Megas."

"Hmph, it seems you have been letting your own minion get away with some unacceptable behavior too," MaloMyotismon grumbled after the moment he had spent building power suddenly stopped. "But this is still more than enough to deal with all of you."

BlackWarGreymon quickly moved to block any attacks aimed at his small team, and then braced as both of MaloMyotismon's shoulder pods opened and began to glow ominously. The massive beam of energy that struck out carved the ground deeply, but when it cleared they all realized that MaloMyotismon's targets were perfectly unharmed. The ground in front of them had a harsh split where it was like the beam was cut by something just in time to miss the group.

"You digimon dark lords all disappoint me so with your casual disregard for your minions," a new voice said from the air in between the two sides, just above the split point. A red polygonal demonic creature hovered there with his hands crossed behind his back between two unmoving wing structures made of sharp claws. "It causes such great issues with operating against you to have to rescue them from your service."

"Oh? A new player thinks he can save these worthless runts?" the white and purple Mega taunted.

"Oh saving them from you is a trivial matter," The Architect of the Hackware declared, moving a hand in front of himself. Then he snapped his claws and the square of ground behind him containing the group was suddenly replaced by the dusty terrain of a mountain. "After all, I have ensured that control over the structure of this entire world is mine."