- Damage Control -
The plan had backfired spectacularly. Instead of the kid kicking around some upstarts the 'Emperor' had got himself caught and nearly killed or worse. Two Ultimate level combatants led into a trap and nearly neutralized despite their enemies being distracted with each other at the same time. Admittedly they should have suspected that sort of opposition after the last attempt to take one of those damn Digi-Eggs, but this one had been in motion instead of well defended and only one of the kids hit Ultimate themselves.
"He doesn't seem as hurt as he should be," Mummymon grumbled to her as she looked over the detailed scan they had just finished of their human minion, with a brief glare at the twisting vines that had been slowly taking over the base ever since the kid became a Blossomon.
"They tried to rewrite his mind," Arukenimon said dully in response. "We're lucky they didn't succeed." If anything the attack seemed to have caused the Dark Spore to produce an improved set of protections around the boy's mind in response. It had also apparently been able to learn from the attack how to mitigate some of the errors that his idiot plan to become a digimon had produced, as the 'Emperor' was now reacting with a lot less pain to simple instructions. "We cannot risk him in the field again if we want to get back to Oikawa for new orders, and we can't leave to get them without his delusion making him think that fighting himself is a good idea."
"Are you sure we can't just split up for that? I could-" Mummymon started on an old topic she did not want to have to cover again.
"What? You could watch him, like you did in the Dark Ocean? You've been acting strange ever since then," she cut him off to explain it again anyway. "Or do you think you can manage to get around the human world on your own and actually get the right message from our boss?" The other Ultimate shut up, and only grumbled about just wanting to help. "I almost wish he had gotten another of those Digi-Eggs just so he had something to distract him for a while that wasn't combat. As long as he didn't manage to turn himself into something else again it would have been fine."
They silently went over the available data yet again. The kid's new machine drones were actually working out a lot better than her makeshift attempt to get Spire monsters mass produced. Arukenimon hated mangling her abilities just to make those terrible wastes of Control Spires that were just thrown away against an eldritch data manipulating mass of polygons. The Hackers were worse than how the Digidestined had for some reason decided that the human form was insufficient and inspired their own minion to try that idea. At least it wasn't the Digidestined that had ruined plan B in order to destroy plan A, and then killed the rest of the alphabet slowly.
"It's almost like they can tell what we're going to do before we even do it," Mummymon grumbled with annoyance as they went over the various ways that transport in and out of the digital world was cut off.
"If it looks like they know what you're doing they probably do," the voice from her memories chastised her. These were getting more frequent, and this one had some context. She had been small, and whoever had been speaking was clearly talking about someone they both knew. She had not believed him then, comfortable in a successful deception.
"What if they can?" she asked quietly as the memory tumbled through her thoughts. She didn't have enough context to be sure that another memory wouldn't prove that disbelief unjustified. "They have access to data manipulation beyond anything we can do, what if they have predictive modeling that is better too?"
"Then we need an advantage quick," her partner replied grimly.
"We might need to fight on our own then," Arukenimon simply confirmed.
"We have a few good targets remaining you can use to take out any of the higher end Control Spire constructs they have left, but long term we will run out of those if you keep producing them," the bird digimon that was part of Team Upload told him over a secure communications line.
"They don't have many at the moment, but their plan is to use the opportunity given by my robots to cut down to just making those," the Blossomon replied as he worked on a 'move' that Upload had called 'Leech Seed'. It was actually a bit terrifying in nature, creating a set of small subservient seed pods that latched onto a target, draining the foe's energy to restore the user. The Dark Spore was similar in general function, but not as easily made or as quickly implemented. According to what little information he had gotten out of Upload it was a fairly common thing for 'Grass Types' to be able to learn, just like his slow extension of plant life into the base was a common side effect of practice.
"That's not great, but we can probably work with that," she replied with some annoyance. "Do you think you can free yourself?" HackBiyomon then asked with a concerned tone. "It can be hard, and even if they die that might not be enough to entirely break it. I'm still picking bits of Datamon's control out of myself."
Ken simply processed that simple statement for a long moment. "You were controlled," he said faintly. "Upload helped you too."
"I'm completely artificial. A copy of someone else made to be a purpose built minion," she confirmed darkly. "That is my biggest reason to want to help you. So, can you free yourself, or do we need to stage another capture somehow?"
The Digimon Emperor still needed another moment to get a handle on that information. "I am fairly sure I can, and fairly soon as well," he informed the digimon. "Taking out the larger constructs is actually the main thing holding me back right now. We have the few kept at my main base, but it would take something big for them to actually use them." He considered that fact for a moment. "I might need to do that sooner rather than later."
"You need to be ready to take control over all of the Spires the moment you do that," she warned him, suddenly deadly serious. "If things go wrong for them we don't know what they can pull out. That is our biggest risk with helping you escape."
Ken didn't know what Arukenimon and Mummymon were really capable of, or if they were on their own, and with that context he suddenly was far less sure about how well prepared he was for breaking free. "I'll see what I can get ready on this end." He looked at the vines growing along the walls with consideration.
The new conference room in the Digidestined Base was a bit packed, but given it was a meeting to fully go over future plans that had every group represented that was to be expected. The Digidestined wouldn't all fit in this particular space, so only a core group was present. Tai as the main leader of the Digidestined, the official leader of the MRT, and the one who set up the meeting itself. Izzy and Joe were both ready to give technical presentations for their own issues. Finally Davis represented the current field team. From the MRT there was everyone but Aiko, primarily to get them up to speed and to provide insights from their own knowledgebase. Alice of Team Upload had arrived to coordinate, and the Shrine hybrid was clearly uneasy with being around the rest of them, with Shawn and Serperior in particular clearly unnerving the thieving tech. Those two were representing the pokemon world for the moment, as Jane was in her own meeting with government officials back in the human world.
"Initial scans are promising, so far it looks like there isn't much spread outside of where the Digidestined and Team Upload are currently living," Kurou explained, the MRT tech had quickly latched onto working on the potential problems in their world. "The big issue we have is calibrating the scanners properly. They weren't made to operate in a world without any natural 'type energy', so we've had to use them on their lowest settings."
"Our concern there is that we might be missing smaller deposits of typed energy below the resolution of those settings," Izzy clarified. "I've started a dialogue with some of the developers of these scanners, but they aren't entirely sure where to begin with tuning them for anything smaller. The levels we're worried about are less than what most rocks on their world contain, and they are used to much larger natural concentration fluctuations over the course of a single day than what we're currently reading in many places."
"Okay, this is a really weird conversation from my perspective," Alice said in response to this explanation. "Although Absol does have some news on that topic." She paused for effect. "Go find, or given who's here make, another Absol." Shawn and Serperior received a glare from the hybrid as she said the word 'make', and gave a pair back at the conclusion of the sentence. "None of these energy disasters will benefit him so he can't actually see them."
"I'll add them to the list of pokemon we need to get," Tai dryly informed their technical ally. "Are they easy to find?"
"Asking one to actually find disasters while being able to understand them?" Shawn and Serperior said together, and their dual tone clearly caused Alice to pale. "You would probably get an entire village worth to come running to join."
"Do you two practice that, or are you both just naturally twin like?" she asked with a shudder.
"They can fuse together into a two headed tainted forest god," Joe informed Alice darkly, which caused the Upload tech to outright jump out of her seat. "It's hard to be more of twins than that."
"Kazuo, any updates on the review process?" Tai asked quickly to stop that distraction.
"It s a lot easier to check if any of the reports might be a pokemon than for digimon," the older man sighed. The eldest of the MRT had been working with the prior leader of that group on going back over their old reports with an eye to what they now knew were real monsters. "That world for some reason calls most animals by the same names we use, and the other things at least are classified consistently. The data we have on digimon is a lot less organized."
"We haven't found any clear connections yet," Ryuuji noted, still so immersed in the old MRT files that he had apparently not noticed the Upload tech's panic. "The issue there is that pokemon and digimon both cover a whole lot of possible monsters, so we will probably need to check details to know for sure. We don't even have those details for all of these, and we need a better idea of which are worth following up on."
"The current plan is to get those scans detailed enough that we can use them to narrow down any typed energy that matches with them," Izzy noted to tie this back into his own work. "I'm trying to get something similar for digimon energies, but they don't have the same kind of scanner technology. I almost want to ask the Digimon Emperor if he has any tech that can do that."
"Please wait until after he's free," Alice groaned, and then straightened into a professional posture. "Which is a bit of a rough topic. My news on that front is that Absol has determined that as soon as the Emperor gets free the endgame starts. Once he's loose we will have a week or less to get ready to fight at least one Mega, maybe a strong one."
"How long can we put off getting him free?" Shawn asked seriously. "Or is this a case of him doing it on his own without our input?"
"It is mostly him doing it himself, but we can't have him wait too long or his direct supervisors will get forces in place so he can't," the Shrine hybrid admitted. "If we can find enough sites to draw their attention we might get two months. Upload is gathering a large energy stockpile for this, hopefully we can find a way to translate that into Mega forms for you before everything goes down."
"Agumon and Gabumon are the only two we have that have gone that far before," Joe warned her, also dead serious now that the topic was more important. "The new kids haven't even had time to work on normal Champion evolution yet." Davis looked concerned about that, but didn't argue the point.
"We can't even attempt it ourselves. Our leader made the task of getting a Hackware unit just to Ultimate a difficult endeavor when he took himself to that level," Alice informed the group. "Deliberately. That sort of power is beyond rare in the pokemon world, and we didn't want just anyone who captured some of our forces to get it. We can't even get more Ultimate Hackware to help you guys out because of that." She sighed loudly. "We have one bit of possibly good news. The original Crest of Love has been located. With any luck that can at least help us get HackBiyomon's sister to Mega."
"I don't think anyone's mentioned to me that the original had been lost," Tai said with considerable confusion, which was mirrored by Joe.
"That wasn't in one of my reports on remaking them?" Izzy asked nervously.
"You still make reports that need to be rewritten before we understand them. It might have been there and not explained properly, so try now," Joe grumbled. "If that can get us a Mega we probably want it sooner rather than later."
The true Crest of Love. A source of power that the Digidestined could use to reach Ultimate any time they wanted, and the same thing that the Hackers seemed obsessed with perfecting their fake versions of. It seemed too good to be true that the region it had been found in was a recent capture by the polygonal army, but Arukenimon knew that the area wasn't really worth anything since the Dark Network's destruction.
Although how she so assuredly knew that Network had existed there before was a question that was keeping her on edge. "Mummymon, what do you know about how we were made?" she asked quietly.
"I think Oikawa might have found some digimon remains," the other human monster hybrid answered just as quietly. "I'm sure I've seen that Gazimon before."
Arukenimon couldn't be sure of that, but admittedly they only had a few moments of video of that particular digimon. The voice was clearly larger than her most of the time, but it was also clear she had been smaller in those memories. However, it was also unthinkable that some random Gazimon would be important, or that they could have been important that long ago while still being just a Gazimon. There was no way she could have reached Ultimate, or even gotten close, if the voice hadn't at least hit Champion. "Have we had any hint of where he's been hiding?" she asked.
"There have been a few attacks where we lost all data on what happened that might be his work," Mummymon complained. "They also had battle damage that matches with that snake monster they don't use much."
"Except when it fuses with its partner to reach Ultimate," she grumbled. "They have too many Ultimates now. I need more time to stockpile our own constructs to deal with this issue."
"Advisors, how many of our heavy hitters do we have?" a monitor with the Emperor's flower head on it suddenly asked. "I do not want the Hackers to lose another of these artifacts to the Digidestined, and who knows how long it will take for this information to leak."
"We have four of them," Arukenimon said unhappy with how small that number was. "I might be able to get another by the end of the week without impacting resources."
"And long term prospects?" the plant digimon grumbled with clear disappointment.
"If you can spare some production lines I can get two a week, otherwise we only have the spare resources for one at best," she explained harshly. "I doubt they will find that many new bits of tech we aren't already aware of."
"In that case I want them sent out as soon as this new one is ready, sooner if an attack occurs," the 'Emperor' demanded, and unfortunately he was right enough about the Crest's importance that she probably had to do it.
"Maybe we should go along with them just to make sure we succeed," Mummymon offered, and they could clearly see that the flower monster was unhappy with the suggestion. Arukenimon liked the idea though, as seven Ultimate digimon should be more than enough to win against their current enemies.
"If you must," the kid allowed after she sent orders to make him agree with the idea.
The Hackers had worked fast, absolutely coating the region in enough crystal-like terrain. Whatever the place looked like before was completely hidden. Mummymon took a moment to spray some rounds at a rough spire of red polygons that clearly did something, and he had to frown as an energy barrier absorbed his shots before they could reach the structure. "They aren't playing around," he complained with a huff and looked back at the five constructs with them. They had gotten resources for the last one quickly, only taking a single day, but from projections it might end up three weeks before they could build another without compromising the front lines. "When do we recall these things so we don't lose them?"
"With the way these will take damage? Not worth the effort," his partner grumbled. "If they get cracked then it is almost as expensive to repair them as it is to build a new one. Maybe a Mega could heal itself, but Ultimates still don't seem to have the complexity." Arukenimon sounded disappointed with that development. She had seemed rather interested in experimenting with her abilities, but had been angry with using that skill roughly to meet the number requirements to make an army.
They had a collection of dramon shaped constructs, mostly flyers. Four cyborg winged serpents equipped with arm cannons, two Megadramon and two Gigadramon, were the constructs that Arukenimon had made before the discovery of the Crest, while the newly made unit was an impressive looking Groundramon. The four legged dragon had a pair of clawed arms instead of wings, and a large spiked club at the end of its tail. All five of the units were actually really well made, and looked almost identical to the actual digimon, with only the slightly stiff movements and small shiny black patches giving away their true nature.
They were trying to move quickly to the target, although the slow pace of the Groundramon almost made him wish they had not waited to get that one. The delay meant they were still far enough that Arukenimon was searching for the exact location of the Crest, and Mummymon could already see the first enemy forces arriving. The red polygonal monsters were streaming in rapidly, and with a motion his partner ordered their flyers to bombard the approaching enemies.
Mummymon cringed as red barriers set off the attacks in mid air, well above the mass of enemies that responded with a barrage of their own attacks. "I'm starting to get tired of how prepared these creatures are to fight digimon that should be pounding them into the ground," Arukenimon grumbled. "If they can do this then why the hell have the Digidestined been winning against them?"
"We're holding them back, maybe they're just bad at dealing with small raids?" Mummymon offered without conviction as he sprayed rounds into the advancing line. "Or they just are good at stopping bombardment," he complained as a second barrage uselessly hit the barrier.
"Get down here and actually help!" his partner called up at the four Ultimate constructs that weren't actually doing much. "This is already taking too long, those kids are definitely going to spot this before we get there."
Arukenimon discovered she was right a few minutes later, when a colossal red beetle flew onto the scene to crash its massive horn into her more damaged Gigadramon construct. The only good news on that front was that this Ultimate was a new one for her, and that hopefully meant it was out of practice. The bad news was that both the flower sprite and the shelled sea god had also arrived, and the second of those brought along that massive fish not-digimon. Those two definitely knew what they were doing, and the spider monster could only hope that the other two sides would for once focus more on each other instead of their shared enemy.
It didn't happen quickly enough to save two of her flyers, both of the Gigadramon apparently too close to where the kids arrived. They had just barely managed to find the human shaped Hackers by that point, and those seemed to be the ones making the strongest barriers. With this development what had been the best attempt to stop those barriers now was just a rain of fragments of black stone. It almost looked as if her own Ultimate support had made the two sides decide to buddy up.
"The best way to keep being friends with someone secret is to absolutely hate them," the voice had said sadly long ago.
"Do you have any advice that actually applies to our job, or is it all schemes to you?" Arukenimon's past self asked harshly before that idea could be explained further. In this memory she had barely paid attention, but this time she could feel the faint presence of another memory. A time when she had seen this before firsthand and also been reminded of those words.
"He's my brother," a more familiar voice had said, yet in this other memory Arukenimon had been at the same level as Dark Tyranomon. "Of course I'm on his side."
"It's a trap," Arukenimon said aloud as she realized that the Groundramon construct was being led deeper into the Hacker's formation, while Mummymon was instinctively herding the two of them to the edge of the battle. "It's a trap to lure out our Ultimate constructs and destroy them."
"Well it's working," her partner called out as the larger floating crystals started to try and box them in. "Are you sure we shouldn't just teleport everything out now?"
It was an excellent idea, and she wished she had it before they lost the Gigadramon. "Now, now, none of that," a sinister voice suddenly said from everywhere around them. "I think you should stay a bit."
"Emperor, we need to get out of here now!" she demanded as her own attempt failed for no apparent reason, and the polygonal nightmares closed in further. She was only answered with static. "Dammit, Mummymon get us clear. Megadramon, get the hell out of-" The Digidestined cut her off with another barrage to destroy the last of her air forces.
She looked over at her newest creation, now separated from the two of them and barely holding back the red crystal forces, so slow it had kept them far from their actual target. Then she turned to grab her undead partner and run as fast as she could manage, hoping that its delay had kept them close enough to the edge of the Hacker's territory, and that its destruction would buy them the time to get away.
Arukenimon was still half stumbling as the two of them reached the current location of the Emperor's base. Her Groundramon construct had turned out stronger than she expected, holding off the Digidestined more than long enough to get them out of that trap. She glared at the now vine covered black stone structure. "We made it," she grumbled. "Now just to warn everyone."
Mummymon nodded and followed along as she quickly moved past what had to be new rapidly growing plants. "What is he even doing with all of these?" her partner grumbled as they pushed past a few that had fallen into a doorway.
"Emperor!" she called out as soon as she spotted him, with an order sent to his Dark Spore to have him take this seriously. "Our enemies are working together, we need to head back to the real world now to inform the main office!" She pushed another order with much the same content.
The plant digimon very slowly turned to look at the two of them, his insect and dinosaur minions looking at her with contempt. There was no obedience in his eyes, and she could swear the plants behind them were closing around the doorway. "Oh? We have to inform your superiors then?" the Blossomon said coldly, while the three smaller flowers on his vines had wide tooth filled smiles. "That's too bad. I was hoping for some more time to secure the Control Spires before you caught on to that extent."
The spider digimon did not understand for a moment what was happening. The Dark Spore should have massive amounts of control over the kid, and if he had somehow overcome it then he shouldn't have been anywhere near this evil. Without that evil plant he should have gone right back to being just another Digidestined dedicated to peace and such. She then realized that she knew the Dark Spore was a plant, like the shape the boy had become. "You're the Spore," she said aloud with a calm rage at being deceived by that damn thing.
"Partially, I'm kind of both Ken and the Spore," the Blossomon sneered. "I'm also not really fond of being controlled like that, so I of course had to arrange for a way to fix it."
"He's stalling us," Mummymon suddenly declared, turning his weapon on the doorway behind them. "Look at the walls!" The plants were moving to trap them, there were two Ultimate level combatants in front of them, and they were still exhausted. A quick burst of machine gun rounds revealed a pair of the kid's mechanical creations.
Machines that belonged entirely to the Emperor, which meant she had basically given up all control of the army save her personal constructs, and the best of those had just been sent into a trap because of a 'discovery' by the Emperor.
"Run," she told her partner. They didn't have time to consider the long term implications of this betrayal right now. She attempted to send out orders to her remaining constructs for some help, but there were already reports of the machines turning on them.
"Stop them!" the Emperor called out as they rushed out the doorway, crushing the drones on their way out. They only sped up as they cut down suddenly animate vines and robots alike, and only the tight turns along their path kept Dark Tyranomon from catching up.
A tremor was the first hint that the Blossomon had decided to have the base take off into the sky to try and stop their exit. A small half shattered group of constructs met them near the edge, and Arukenimon barely had time to order them to hold off any pursuit before she was leaping off the structure alongside Mummymon.
Tai looked over another replay of the latest battle on the monitor equipment. The team had just gotten back from a fight where they had ended up taking out five Ultimate equivalent constructs, along with their first engagement with the Emperor's current masters. Upload had managed to get their enemies split up so they could take them out bit by bit, but it had still taken a lot out of the team.
"Digidestined, are you reading me?" a voice asked from one of the monitors suddenly, and the leader of the Digidestined discovered that it belonged to a large flower digimon.
"Uh, how did you contact us?" Tai had to ask, wondering just what was happening.
"Our fault," HackBiyomon said, and another screen suddenly showed her face too. "This is the Digimon Emperor. Apparently something has gone wrong, and he wanted to inform both of us about it."
Tai cringed at that, but focused fully on the situation. "Alright, what's the problem? I'm guessing this is pretty bad if you're calling so soon after an attack," he said as he inspected the 'Emperor'. The plant digimon didn't look much like the kid they dealt with before, but that didn't mean much anymore given Tai's experience with transformations.
"Unfortunately they figured out that your groups were working together," the plant monster explained. "And they wanted to report on that to their own bosses in our world." The digimon glared at the memory. "They made that an order, I wasn't able to say 'no' without giving my own freedom away."
"Endgame?" Tai questioned faintly as he turned to look at the Upload hybrid. This sounded like one of the situations that led to everything going wrong to him, and they were nowhere near ready yet.
"Absol just started shouting, so I think so," HackBiyomon confirmed clearly listening to a bit of a racket off-screen. "You said you've definitely lost them?" she asked the 'Emperor'.
"Jumped off the base and vanished under the cover of what Control Spire constructs they had left here," was the tight response she received from the other monitor. "I've already started the drones on a search, but even if Arukenimon cannot control them she still knows how to disrupt their operations. Naturally the two of them don't show up on any scanners they didn't have the ability to destroy during their escape."
"We've only just got the Crest of Love back here. Izzy hasn't even had time to look at it let alone get started on using it to get Biyomon to Mega," Tai told the two of them exhausted by the terror he was feeling. "Please tell me we have more time before they do manage to get back to Myotismon."
The Emperor froze in the display, and a loud roar echoed behind the plant monster. "They're working for him?" the Emperor asked far too quietly. "He's still in the human world?"
"His ghost or something like it probably took over someone," Tai confirmed grimly. "We think that the plan was to find a way to get him back to the digimon world, while also setting up a way to conquer that world and power him up using the energy the Control Spires could harvest."
The plant digimon looked a bit lost and horrified for a moment. "I can stop that," the Digimon Emperor finally said while Tai was busy trying to figure out what they could do next. "The Dark Spore has enough control codes, and the plant fabrication energy has allowed better direct options. I can force the Control Spires to obey me and me alone." Tai didn't think that was news that required the sad face the flower possessed. "But I have not had time to even get them entirely out of Arukenimon's control. I. I can do it, but I don't know if we have the time."
"You do," Absol cut in from the Upload screen. "We all do. They aren't going to set it off just yet, and there is even the remote chance we catch them and only have to worry about when Myotismon finds out his minions are gone."
"I take it there is bad news too?" the canine's avian teammate grumbled.
"If we don't catch them we need a Mega, preferably a few of them, before the end of the week, and that's with the part the Emperor doesn't want to say," Absol confirmed unhappily.
"I can't leave the digital world," the Emperor simply stated after being called out on not saying something. "To take complete control I can't spare any time outside of my base or even most of my forces. Digidestined, could you possibly send a message to my parents? I'm not quite sure what you could give them for a reason."
For the first time Tai really caught onto the fact that the Emperor was just another kid like them. One that got mind controlled somehow into leading an entire army, and Tai knew exactly what suddenly finding yourself in charge of actual people was like. "That should be easy enough. You contacted us about the people you were working with being behind a monster related problem, and volunteered to help with the issue since you already had been working with them on it before you realized what was going on," the Digidestined of Courage said seriously, and hoped very sincerely that someone else could find better words to explain that to people that didn't know monsters were real.
"I would rather not lie to my parents anymore," the Emperor responded sadly.
"I don't think any of that is a lie, you told us as soon as you could, and you re helping us. Not to mention you even technically went to the right authorities for this one." Tai rubbed the back of his head nervously. "We kind of took over the government organization that takes care of monster related problems," Tai admitted.
"He doesn't mean that literally, they just are getting the normal people up to speed," HackBiyomon mistakenly informed the plant digimon.
"Uh, actually the government really sent paperwork for me to take over. I'm in charge of monster response in Japan," Tai clarified nervously. Then he sighed as he remembered the real topic of this conversation. "I'll pass along the message, just keep us informed if you find the two of them."
Davis looked over his team. They all had needed to fight pretty hard to keep up the illusion of conflict between the Digidestined and Upload, but even then they had basically been just a distraction as far as the Ultimate fight was concerned. T.K. and Kari could both help their partners hit that stage, but the rest of his team was not even at the point where they could reach Champion yet. Admittedly they fought quite a bit in areas with Control Spires, where they couldn't really make any attempts to use that kind of evolution, but he still had to worry a bit about that.
"Izzy, how safe would it be for any of us new kids to even try and reach Mega?" he asked the team's genius quietly.
"T.K. and Patamon can't use any of our current possibilities safely," the Digidestined of Knowledge replied. "As for the three of you I'm not as sure, but we would rather not risk it." That confirmed what the field team leader had suspected. "I don't know what the plan is for you guys if things go that badly."
"When," Davis strongly told the older kid. "Upload is sure it is going to happen, and they have been getting a lot more serious now. We're already using the pokemon energy a lot to keep up there. That was seven Ultimates, and I'm a bit worried that Upload was doing a bit too much to keep them split up so we could actually win that one."
"Attention Digidestined and MRT members," Tai's voice suddenly cut in over the intercom system. "We have a situation. The Digimon Emperor has informed us that he has been forced to break free of control earlier than any of us had hoped. Apparently his masters had worked out we were on the same side as Upload during this last fight." Davis cringed at the timing of this information. "Upload's information on the future indicates that this puts us into a bind. We have a week at the most before we have to confront at least one Mega digimon, and we can't assume they are mistaken."
"Shit," T.K. said simply, and Davis felt that about summed up the news.
"The situation is serious enough that we are focusing on this problem entirely until it is resolved," Tai continued. "So we are taking those of you who were going to school out for the time being, including non-Digidestined. We need the support staff and we just ran out of time to hire more."
"Was the rest of my band even going to school anymore?" Matt grumbled thoughtfully just loud enough for Davis to hear.
"As far as what we are going to be doing I have general instructions ready. Davis, have your team work with our Ultimates and keep ready just in case we track down these guys. Us older kids are still out of practice compared to the five of you, so I want you to help get us fighting a bit better," Tai continued, and Davis let out a breath with some relief at having an actual goal that he could focus his teammates on. "Joe, I want our medical facility ready for anything. The Nurse Joy you were going to interview is going to be here tomorrow." Davis wasn't the only one who looked confused by the use of 'the' to describe someone with a fairly normal sounding name. "Izzy, keep on the Mega issue. I want Ryuuji and Kazuo to go over those files Gazimon had from Gennai's group to see if they can find anything there. I know you've been mostly working with getting Kurou up to speed, but I need somebody to keep an eye on the human world while we focus on the digimon one."
Davis had not actually learned the Monster Response Team's names yet, so he wasn't sure which of those people was which. It looked like that was the MRT leader, the older guy, and the tech. Presumably that meant that Kurou was the tech's name, since that was who Izzy had been working with.
"Ono, I know you've just learned about all this yourself, but we need to be ready just in case this spills over into the human world again. So I want you to get a plan ready to explain things to the public in the worst case scenario. You can get people from the TV studio to help, but if you do start with Matt's dad," Tai finished off. "If anyone has any questions I'm going to be in my office figuring out what we can get for help."
"Alright everyone, you heard him," Davis said aloud to the group. "Who's up first for some training?" Joe then ruined it a bit by laughing darkly at his suggestion, which seemed to worry some of the older Digidestined.
Gazimon frowned at his latest attempt to do something with the data he had stolen on how to make Digidestined. He might have ended up with better insight into how to actually make stuff from becoming part Porygon but that didn't mean he was great at it, and the amount of him that was Porygon now was a bit odd to think about now that they could finally compare him to a normal Gazimon. "You'd think being half Administrator would make it easier to figure out reports," he grumbled and closed the documents to return to monitoring the digital worlds.
"I'm sorry," A-0 suddenly cut in. "I did not realize just how little we protected you from that transformation."
"Don't make me regret bringing it up," the rabbit monster said. "I only said something because we might have to do some tricky stuff with the Dark Network. I've been seeing some activity from the Control Spires that definitely look like someone who s used that system before." Which was still understating what he had actually seen. He didn't just recognize what they were doing, he had a pretty good idea who they were, or at least who taught them to do it. "Besides, I think we probably should be more worried about those other digimon that ended up pokemon and got 'separated' from their tour groups for a couple of days."
"I found them eventually!" Light-326 shouted from across the room.
"It has better ears than I thought," Gazimon grumbled with a touch of embarrassment. "Now I'm going to have to apologize."
"I can still hear you. We were made for system protection, I can hear stuff happening from a long ways off," the HardWare-Light added.
"That, honestly that sounds like a problem more than anything," the digimon/pokemon hybrid said. "I can think of a lot of ways that can get you in trouble." The fact that everyone in the room stopped to look at him with some concern told him that he was too lost in memories. "I think I know who the Emperor's masters might be, or at least who trained them. I've seen these manipulations before when I was working to train younger digimon on how to use the Dark Network."
"How many digimon like that are there?" Janice asked cautiously, while Shawn and Serperior now were giving him their full attention, although A-0 seemed to be the only one to actually catch on to his mood.
"That survived the fact that Etemon definitely remembered I knew how Datamon went down? One," Gazimon grumbled. "She was the smart kind of idiot, and my worst student. If it isn't her then it is someone she taught. She had this particular flair for how to do things, and the kind of mood that if she had to teach anyone then they definitely would do things exactly like her."
"I've seen you try and explain the Dark Network now," A-0 said dubiously. "What were you actually teaching them back then?"
"Ha! If you think I'm bad now you should have seen back then," the rabbit monster replied with a bit better mood. "I could barely explain what I knew how to do, let alone the stuff the kids could pull off on their own without my help. I just tried to tell them everything else while I had them there." The good mood from the question didn't last long. "I was mostly trying to make sure some of 'em would outlast me. Never liked how it didn't seem to work."
"Well it matters now," Shawn said darkly. "We just got news from the Digidestined that the Emperor has cut himself loose and lost track of his managers. I don't suppose you could use that Dark Network stuff to track them? Upload apparently thinks we might be able to stop things from going horrible if we catch them."
"I've been tracking them," Gazimon said and quickly rushed to recheck the data he'd been working on earlier in the day. "If they don't know I'm going from that angle-" There was a trail of brief access points along a path leading from out of what was probably the Emperor's main base. "Got em."
Arukenimon glared at the cracked and lower power constructs they had managed to gather together. "I think we managed to lose those robots," Mummymon sighed. "But we're closer to one of the Hacker's areas than I'd like if everyone was against us this whole time."
"We need to reach some of the Control Spire production facilities," Arukenimon informed him tiredly. "A few of them should still have stockpiles for replacing front line losses. I might be able to salvage those into some stronger constructs."
"You were nicer before," Mummymon noted, clearly a bit out of it from how tired they were. "In those weird memories you actually liked me."
"You were right, Oikawa must have also found some old digimon data somewhere," she said dismissively. "We probably didn't even know each other before." It was more of a lie than she really liked, but she also couldn't understand the fragments she recalled that matched what he was saying. It was almost like there was something she had before that was just gone now.
"We at least knew each other," he argued with a sigh. "Can we rest a bit?"
She didn't answer him directly, but the two of them were able to just sit and recover for a long while. Idly she actually did attempt to repair some of the constructs. That went a bit better than she had thought it would, as she actually managed to patch a large crack in one of them partially. It was only a Champion, and there wasn't anyone they would be fighting who wouldn't just smash the thing outright when the fighting started.
"Can we use any of those other ways to get back to the human world?" her partner asked a good time after she started her attempts. "I know we didn't get too far with any of them, but something has to work right?"
"If I can make a strong enough construct we can brute force one transport, but only one," Arukenimon told him sadly. "So we need to figure out how to make that work for us, or somehow find another way without the support of the Emperor's bases."
"Well, the closest Spire factory is that way, we might be able to reach it before nightfall," Mummymon offered pointing back towards the Emperor's holdings.
"Then let's move out now," she said firmly, and tested her legs to see if she was actually up for traveling yet again. "That won't have the best amount of Spires we could find, but it probably will make an Ultimate or two. That should at least let us get away from anyone who finds us."
The base in question wasn't too far away, and luckily they only encountered a few guards as they broke in, but unfortunately it was clear that they had only seen a few machines due to the rest of them being actively hunting for them. There was no way that they hadn't been spotted, and despite both of them noticing that the slaves were strangely absent they said nothing as Arukenimon quickly worked to turn stored Control Spires into what turned out to be only two Ultimate grade constructs.
The results were another Megadramon, which wasn't great given the poor performance earlier in the day, and another that barely had enough resources to form, resulting in little more than a smooth black golem. She probably would have tried to fix that, if she didn't get a warning from what remained of her control over the Emperor's technology that someone was approaching.
"Looks like we found them a bit late," a red eyed figure said as the new arrivals spotted them and their constructs, and if the kid in front of her was human then so was she. He had a cold look in his clearly inhuman eyes, and the snake on his shoulder had a matching set of frosty blue ones.
"Yeah. I see the two of you finally hit Ultimate," the voice said, only this time it wasn't from her fragmented memory, but instead from a Gazimon that she instantly recognized. One that had to be far too old to not have evolved by now she realized as her past flooded into her mind.