Arc 4 Finale, Part 3 of 3
- Kindness Sacrifice -
Ken took a deep breath, and dug his vines a bit deeper into the consoles as he wrapped tighter around his base's power core. "Just one miracle," he grumbled, and thankfully Wormmon didn't hear him. "Wormmon, I need you to help by triggering only the Spires near the energy stores. Dark Tyranomon, guard the room, and don't let Wormmon interrupt me."
"If you look like you're dying I'm stopping you myself, Boss Man," the dinosaur defied him, and a part of Ken felt like laughing at that.
"Go when you're ready," the leader of the Digidestined said, although that kid was looking nervously at the first digimon up, presumably because they were partners.
"Starting now," Ken said, and forced the transfer to retarget to the BlackGatomon, despite the rather physical connection rerouting that required. Only a fraction of the energy involved was actually passing through his body to accomplish the redirection, but they were after overkill here in order to overcome their foe as quickly as possible. There was no guarantee that this would last very long, and they weren't sure Myotismon didn't have even more ways to improve his strength or wrestle away Ken's control over the Spires.
The Blossomon knew he had failed to avoid crying out during the short transfer process when it was over. He was receiving a concerned look from the orange scaled version of the Mega that Arukenimon and Mummymon had made, but that a WarGreymon was there at all was enough. "Let me know when the next digimon is ready," he told them all as firmly as he could, and looked to check how the other volunteer was doing. BlackGatomon looked fine, which both relieved him and was slightly annoying at the same time. They were clearly nervous about his reaction, but there was really no time to worry about it. WarGreymon quickly confirmed that it would last at least a good amount of time for him, so this would work.
For the next digimon Ken was almost aware of things other than the transfer as he managed it, and the resulting robotic wolf Mega, MetalGarurumon, also said that he was fine with going on. The third went even better, but now Wormmon was looking at the monitor with some concern.
The third result was apparently new for the group, and they were looking at the metal headed four winged phoenix monster with some concern. "I'm Hououmon," the newest Mega introduced herself, to some minor confusion from Upload and DSS.
"A Ho-Oh digimon?" the snake monster and human shaped snake asked in their odd dual tone.
"Yes?" the golden bird monster asked with confusion. "Wait, do you mean there is a pokemon one?"
"We can figure that kind of thing out later," Wormmon cut in to get them back on track, then turned to look at him worriedly. "Ken, there are vines growing at the base of the Control Spires."
"That's to be expected," he told his partner as he prepared for another attempt. "Just, let's get this done with."
During the next three he was aware enough to figure out why it was easier now, and the answer wasn't good. Palmon became Rosemon, a rather tightly dressed woman with a rose growing around her head, Tentomon turned into a massive pale yellow beetle digimon called HerculesKabuterimon, and Gomamon became a Viking-walrus monster called Vikemon. That last one also turned his collection of digimon and pokemon fish into a massive kraken shaped construct of fish that were each individually larger than a human.
"Ken?" Wormmon asked as the Digidestined preformed some final checks to make sure all of the planned digimon were alright.
Ken cut the microphone in his power room. "I've become connected to the Spires," he said now that the larger group could not hear him, unwilling to distract them with something they didn't have time for. "In order to properly manage the transfer process my Dark Spore instincts took direct control over them, and between that and the power flow..." He trailed off unsure how to explain.
"How 'connected', Boss Man? We talking 'it is a part of my body' or 'it is now one of my vital organs'?" Dark Tyranomon rather firmly asked him.
Ken took a long moment to check the exact answer to that question, and then really didn't want to answer. "The second one," he grumbled, and sighed as he realized the reason it had stopped being painful was that his body now was firmly connected and sustained by the Spires themselves. They could handle that load easily, but he'd burned out his own energy after the third attempt, and his ability to restore it himself with the fourth.
"Can you handle two more?" Izzy asked him over the communications line, unaware of their discussion. "It looks like this process will be safe enough for our last two older digimon."
"Let's get it over with," Ken said with the microphone back on again, despite Wormmon's glare and Dark Tyranomon's annoyed sigh. The second to last one was Patamon, who turned into a completely armored angelic form with eight wings that was apparently called Seraphimon. They apparently needed to double check that one for reasons Ken didn't quite make out, but it was fine in the end for them. The final digimon was the other Gatomon, presumably BlackGatomon's partner, and Ken now wondered what had happened to the darker cat digimon to let her convert so much energy without any visible discomfort.
Knowing what just trying to move some had just cost him, he wasn't sure he wanted to know what she had already lost to get that ability.
Magnadramon resulted from the final change, a massive pink furry serpentine dragon with five sets of feathered wings. The Upload base was now quite crowded by all of the colossal forms, and Ken hoped they could more than kill Myotismon with this.
"Boss Man, I'm going to be really mad at you if it turns out this plan doesn't work," Dark Tyranomon rumbled. "I'll make sure we can keep enough redundant towers around for you."
"You do realize you are just delaying the inevitable?" MaloMyotismon raged as he once again utterly failed to either hit his unmoving enemy, or find a way out of the massive crater that had resulted from attacks bending for no reason. "No matter how many of my own attacks you redirect I will outlast you."
"I'm quite afraid you have not even been faced with my greatest source of power yet," the Architect replied with an idle look at his polygonal claws. Then he raised them dramatically. "My greatest source of strength has been long cultivated for issues such as this. I have built up this grand power over many years of work, sacrificing my time, effort, and even compromising on my own goals all in pursuit of it."
"Providing aid to my companions, so they can pursue their own goals and manage their own hardships, has given me their unwavering loyalty. Pushing them to improve their skills and providing the resources to do so has ensured they can support my goals even more effectively. Even limiting my own desire has ensured that when I need the aid of those who are typically my enemies, they are more than willing to lend assistance to my forces," the Upload leader continued with a grand sinister tone. "Through the great power of friendship I have built a force that will crush you like the vermin you are."
To punctuate his statement the Architect of the Hackware vanished, and suddenly a ring of eight Mega digimon were around MaloMyotismon, two of them unpleasantly familiar and indicative of who the rest were. "So, this is your plan then? All at once?" the vastly improved vampire questioned the assembled group.
"I'd say round 2 is already looking better than the first one," WarGreymon replied, and then MaloMyotismon had to deal with all of their attacks. The sphere of destruction from that dinosaur warrior, a frosty missile barrage from the wolf, a blast of annihilating flames from the fire bird, cutting rose petals from the pretty plant, a river of electrical power from the titanic beetle, just plain being swung at by the Viking s dual maces, holy spheres of potent energy, and a massive breath of light as if it was flame.
MaloMyotismon's armor took these blows as well, some better than others. "That was pretty good, Digidestined, but now it's my turn," he declared and sent out a wave of draining energy to consume his foes outright.
Only once again it failed to reach his enemies. "Oh my," said a familiar and unwelcome voice. "You didn't really think I would stop just because my allies had arrived did you?" the Architect of the Hackware asked as the polygonal demon appeared again. "I wonder, can you withstand all of their attacks concentrated down into a single point? I suspect you will run out of defenses to that before I run out of energy to assist them in that manner."
"Do you just talk like a supervillian naturally, or did you practice all of that?" Vikemon asked tiredly.
"The former condition is the one I suffer from," the Architect answered as if a battle wasn't in the middle of happening. "My parents did send me to classes to try and fix it, but I suspect the teachers found it amusing and only made it worse. I was quite limited in job prospects as a result, which likely contributed to my becoming an actual supervillian."
The Digidestined digimon did not actually waste the time it took to make this exchange, as another barrage, this time purely ranged attacks, flew forward as soon as the impish Hackware finished. MaloMyotismon desperately fired off a pair of powerful beam attacks, but these both twisted uselessly into the ground just in front of him, while the other Megas' attacks all folded over each other oddly to focus on the center of the evil digimon's chest. MaloMyotismon let out a howl of pain as the attack bored into his chest, and then was blasted apart as the forces drawing the various strikes together ended.
There was a moment of silence on the battlefield as the remaining pieces of the dark digimon dissolved away into fragmented data, and then a moment more as they all waited for something to show that this wasn't such a simple result.
"It appears we have won," the Architect declared, and then unceremoniously fell towards the ground. Seraphimon ended up being the digimon closest to the Hackware hybrid, and managed to catch him easily before he could roughly hit the ground. "Please do not inform Absol about that," the demonic looking polygonal monster noted. "I gave my word I wouldn't overdo things in a situation like this again, and it looks quite bad to have gone back to help despite that not being an intended part of the plan."
"I'm fairly sure they're still watching us," HerculesKabuterimon said apologetically.
"That's done it!" Absol joyfully declared. "There! We're done with the worst disaster I have ever seen!"
"Just so everyone knows, when an Absol says a disaster is 'done with' they just mean that it has finally happened," Alice dryly noted. "They have a tendency to overlook the whole issue of figuring out how to clean up the mess it made."
"Even when you're exploiting the disasters?" Shawn asked with a joking tone.
"Generally it takes him a day or so to find when the disasters for us are caused by a successful mission," Bob confirmed grimly. "Which leads to the first question we have: What happens to us now?"
"Officially? Team Upload has had their overall sentence reduced and altered to three years of exile from the pokemon world," Serperior said in a very formal tone. "Specifically the pokemon/human world, not the one with the Mystery Dungeons. They don't have a problem with you but you can't use the main transport pad over there because it connects to the world you have been exiled from."
"As far as I'm concerned you guys need to still help out a lot with cleaning up the parts of this whole mess you caused," Tai darkly noted. "Since you started the part of this that got me put in charge of an entire monster response organization I kind of have to get stuff done for that too."
"Not to mention helping with the side effects of what Boss Man just did to himself," Dark Tyranomon grumbled from the still active screen to the Digimon Emperor's base. There was a loud sound of complaint from said Emperor at her statement. "Like hell I'm not going to tell them this, we know they'd been planning on busting all of the Spires."
"Who s been what now?" Absol asked with a deep frown. "Wait, when exactly did he start needing those to live? I thought he had to do that because of how he broke free." Everyone on both sides of the monitor looked at the canine darkly for that comment. "I didn't mention that before because I thought he wanted to hide the real reason he couldn't go back home," he nervously said in response.
"Another reminder about our particular Absol, he can't really tell something that is an effect of a later choice apart from an effect of an earlier one," Alice complained. "It also really sucks during the times where he warns you about one thing happening and then gets surprised when it never does."
Yukio Oikawa woke up slowly, and felt like he'd been hit by a car. Which was not the way to think about that considering the full context of his current situation, but from snout to tail tip he simply ached. He also for some reason knew a lot of things about the area around him despite still having his eyes closed.
"Yeah, Tai, we have it handled here. Yolei had to calm down a group of digimon that spotted them and wanted someone to be angry at," a young man's voice was saying from nearby. "We're waiting for this Oikawa guy to be back on his feet, um, well back up and about, before we have them move somewhere that Tyra can do some more advanced medical work." There was a short pause. "Uh, I'm not sure we have the room for him in the base, but you can ask Joe."
Yukio opened his eyes slowly, and looked over at the lizard man with some confusion. Which only grew as he noticed it was a rather odd looking blue reptile man with a flowing skin, almost as if the monster was thickly coated in barely hardened paint. Next to that gooey creature was a smaller monster that looked vaguely mole like with spikes extending from its back that was wearing a skull and holding some bone weaponry.
"Are you a Sandslash?" he asked, despite the fact that there were plenty of better questions for him to ask at the moment. The creature confirmed that it was with a simple, if slightly nervous, 'yes'. "Ah, it seems I will also need to apologize to Fumiko Hida."
"You kind of already had a lot of reasons to apologize to my mom," the Sandslash noted with a bit of anger.
"Ah, I guess that a monster becoming human is a possible thing then," he said with a groan as he realized that meant his old friend's wife had been completely correct about the nature of her grandfather.
"And you're the latest instance I've had to deal with of the opposite happening," another voice said from the other side of him, and he turned to face it with some discomfort. The first thing he spotted was Arukenimon, who seemed to have shrunk considerably. The next thing he saw was the rabbit monster with the right arm of a lizard monster and patches of scales that had actually spoken to him.
Then what she said hit him, along with an entire list of things that did not feel quite right, and he realized it might instead be the case that he had grown in size considerably. With great effort he tried to get to his feet, and utterly failed. Instead he flipped his large serpentine lower half over so the underside of his body was against the ground, and looked at his own form to confirm that he couldn't get onto his feet simply because he didn't have any. "I see," the new Megadramon rumbled unhappily.
The patchwork digimon fixed him with an unhappy stare that fit with a medical professional of some kind that was angry at an unhelpful patient. "You have your minions to thank for both the mess they got you into, and for saving your life," the rabbit-lizard said firmly. "And because I had them to work with you should also be able to take on a mostly human form. It probably isn't even going to be as good as Mummymon's, and he only barely passes in your original world, but that should still be enough to be fine in the digimon and pokemon worlds."
"'Pokemon world'?" Arukenimon asked with some concern. "There are other worlds besides the human and digital worlds?"
"Oh wow, I forgot that you guys don't really know most of what's been going on," the liquid lizard cut in with a bit of embarrassment. "Well, it all started when the snake twins, I'm pretty sure you know who I mean, showed up and said they were here chasing some thieves from another world," the apparent leader of the other monsters present noted to start a long and rather concerning view of what had really been happening over this conflict.