- Berry Bushes -
"Just got a message from Box 205. Delta 6 says her monitoring systems just saw a spike in active plants," Janice noted unhappily. "Did anyone else know she was tracking how many of those plants existed?"
"I was under the impression that was a condition for them to be released outside of your facility?" Jane asked critically.
"It was. The thing we didn't know is that my sister had access to those programs," A-0 specified to the Champion. "As for why, we got a request from medical to try and plant some in the digimon world. Apparently a request by the Floramon that has been living in your parents' world, Janice."
"Joe's idea?" Gazimon asked with a chuckle. "Is it something we really need to worry about?"
"Artificial typed energy restoring berries suddenly appearing in larger than expected numbers in the digimon world is probably a problem," Shawn noted as Serperior brought up the specific data points for the two of them to check. "The planned controlled release was twenty one digital berry plants."
"Looks to mostly be Pecha berries in this extra group," the serpent pokemon noted. "Is there some new poison issue we haven't heard about yet?" He paused. "We are already setting up a few of those ourselves just in case you're right about us needing Basirablemon more."
"The reports have Corruption equivalent to League level pokemon appearing a lot more commonly than before," Gazimon backed up an argument he had made previously. "We can clean up after you two a lot easier than we can fight an army of corruption with you two just at your unmerged level."
"Not to mention my own new need to deal with poisoning people," Smog said as the new high poly digital Salazzle arrived alongside her team. "Our practice match just got called off because Grim assumed that as an evolved Poison type I knew how to handle my toxins."
"Didn't you point out how I could learn that stuff easily?" Serperior asked his not presently the same species sister.
"Shawn, tell our brother about the difference between going uphill from the wrong type to using something when you're the right type," the Salazzle hissed with a cloud of actually rather nice smelling fumes.
"I'm genuinely a Grass type, Smog. We've known that for sure for years now," Shawn dryly replied. "Not to mention if we go by whose body is supposed to be human that's still Serperior right now."
Their sister blinked at that statement, and then with an unhappy frown looked at herself. "He's the only Serperior shaped one in the room isn't he?" she asked with the flat tone that had been common recently when she hit some uncomfortable part of her new existence.
"I'm not sure how to take that question," Shawn noted with a sharp red glare that the room knew was mostly joking. "As for poison control between not being the type and being the type, there is a bit of a difference." He thoughtfully considered the topic and looked at their brother. "We honestly still haven't had the chance to get that down."
"That's mostly that we haven't had the chance to practice together yet," Serperior noted. "Now that the Digidestined are actively looking for training around that level we should have a lot more chances for it."
"Guys, this is at least two dozen new plants over the specified amount," Gazimon cut into the family discussion as he checked the data himself. "I think that's past the point where we need to actually intervene."
"There we go, one pokemon translation collar," Izzy said to Chansey, or rather to the Chansey currently being operated by Nurse Joy, as he awkwardly set the thing around the upper part of the pokemon's body. "We might want to switch it for a wristband."
"Now we can speak to your pokemon too," Joe dryly informed the human nurse that he had actually interviewed over the phone.
"I am not technically the professional trained nurse," said human replied. "Also, if we're doing this I need my own name. I'm not putting up with what Joys do when there is more than one of them around."
"ID numbers work fine," the Chansey grumbled with her words repeated by the new collar. "Or which shift you're on."
"How do most pokemon handle that problem?" Joe asked both of them without changing his tone.
"We use names," the current operator of the human complained. "I know we use names, she should know we use names, and even the Mew that put us into this situation had a name. He refused to tell us that name, but he definitely had one."
"If you use them that much why don't you already have one?" Izzy asked curiously.
"Because we use them when we need them. I'm Pokemon Center raised, and when you're a civilized pokemon you either get a name from your human, or you get specified by who your owner is," their current nurse answered. "Right now that means I should be 'the MRT Nurse Joy's Chansey'."
Both of the Digidestined looked at her with disbelief, while the current Chansey simply nodded as if that answer was obvious. Joe's phone ringing was a welcome distraction at that point. "Help her find a name," Joe instructed Izzy and moved out of the main room to take the call. "Hello, what's the problem?" he asked after checking the number and discovering it was DSS.
"You were helping monitor the digital berry expansion, right?" Shawn asked from the other end of the line. "We're seeing far too many new digi-Pecha plants. Has there been a problem with a mass poisoning?"
"We received a request for medical help with the fallout of a chemical spill," Joe said with some unease as he moved to the office he had on the medical floor. "It was from some of the inhabitants of the new Dark Empire. About ten berries in total, and I saw at least half of those get eaten."
"Try checking your storage areas, they might have made a real problem to cover some theft," Gazimon suggested from the phone.
Joe sighed as that suggestion reminded him of something suddenly very important. "Floramon was complaining that you didn't send as many of those as the other berries. I thought it was because you were using them for your Ultimate form," he admitted.
"We did," Serperior replied, and Joe wondered if phones were different in their world or if them all apparently using it at once was just something odd about Shawn's team. "We sent only about thirty that were not to be planted instead of the forty some we could of the others for that exact reason."
"When we checked there were only thirteen berries, along with another two on the potted plants you sent," the Digidestined of Reliability said. "I don't suppose you can track where an entire farm of pokemon fruit ended up?"
"We sent three plants of each type with three berries on each to start you off," Shawn said nervously. "How many other plants didn't have all of them on them?"
"Enough that I'm going to check who we had help us with those," Joe replied a touch shortly and then moved to see if that was in the report he had been working on for Tai.
"Scans are fairly safe so far, but we have located one mobile source," Kurou Ogawa explained as part of the latest report on typed energy in the human world. The MRT tech had agreed to give this report while Izzy was assisting their new nurses with their unusual status. "It seems that a local sparrow has been tracking down the few plants that have taken on the energy. The good news there is that the little guy is sticking to plants that are already infused, but the bad news is that doing that is making the overall level in both the bird and the trees its nesting in grow a bit faster."
"How long before the bird starts being able to talk?" Tai asked seriously as he tried to work out exactly how much energy the report said that was, and then he looked up when he didn't get a response. "My cat reached that point after just a short time of eating food from the pokemon world. You probably will need pokemon translation to check, but given why you're here without Izzy I think we have that part handled."
"We need to tune out any materials from the pokemon world just to register the readings I'm talking about," Kurou admitted. "One piece of that food is likely more than this entire bird has collected so far." The tech looked over his own report again. "Although, admittedly the growth rate is much faster once the animal began to actively move between only the energy infused plants."
"How far back do we have this data?" the still fairly new leader of the MRT questioned. "I thought narrowing down to that detail took you guys a while."
"The scanner we have actually can record data that accurately, especially in our world," the tech said, and quickly flipped to a later part of the report. "The older data is a lot rougher, but we've still managed to figure out one of the moving blobs matches with this bird."
Tai considered that statement for a long moment. "This bird is the only thing you've actually found so far."
"We've only managed to find this one bird so far," Kurou confirmed with some embarrassment.
"Tai, I'm heading to the digimon world with the DSS team," Joe suddenly said from the doorway to Tai's office. "There's been a theft with the digital berries."
"Didn't like half of the refugees take berries with them? Ones they bought from that Floramon," Tai quickly asked at that statement. "Is a few more ending up lost really that big of an issue?"
Joe looked at him very unhappily, and then groaned and put a hand over his face. "I left the report on this back in my office. These are digital creations from one of the DSS Administrators, they have a remote risk of causing corruption so we were keeping an eye on them," Joe responded.
"Get me that report before you leave," Tai sighed.
"So, if I understand this right, we have a bunch of jerk digimon that decided to steal from the experimental farm instead of from the stand that Mr. Inoue is helping me set up?" Floramon asked as they looked over the site where the digital berries had been planted. "I'm sort of used to working with Kecleon, but he didn't really explain how he got to the Digidestined's world," she added as an offhand comment on that fact.
"And now we have to ask Tai if Yolei's dad has permission to trade between three different worlds while being a pokemon," Joe sighed and twisted his tails tightly together. "That guy's another transformed human," the Floatzel explained to the Grass type digimon.
"Have I mentioned that I am not entirely happy with counting as one of those?" Serperior pointed out from where Shawn's team was going over the Dark Network monitoring system that had been put in place for this project. "No offence, Shawn, your body has been working fine, but being around other more typical transformed humans is just odd."
"Janice told me she wasn't too happy with how I'm already back to humanity from using your body's natural shape. Although I think 'go on your missions like that' was a bit harsh of a request," the Poison/Grass Serperior next to him agreed. "Anyway, Mr. Inoue definitely has not cleared that with DSS, so I'm rather curious how exactly he's getting back and forth."
"They do have some sort of transport capacity for their small storage world," Gazimon said thoughtfully. "And Yolei's older brother has been leading a group of our warehouse life forms. Did they get one of the Shippers?"
"That's what we went with for the transport access," Serperior confirmed. "One of them should technically be able to reach Janice's homeworld from the Digidestined world, but I'm not sure how they got the targeting data."
"We should probably check on that when we're done with this," Gomamon noted. "Do you have any information on who was helping us set this up?" the seal digimon asked Floramon.
"An Agumon with an orange stripe down her back, a redder orange than they usually are, skipped out almost as soon as you guys got finished," the plant digimon noted. "I don't know if she had any help with getting that many berries out of here though. Quite a few digimon made the item shop merchant very happy by overpaying for some good sized storage bags back home." Floramon froze as her own words caught up with her. "Ah, I mean the world of Mystery Dungeons. Which, I guess really is home for me now," she sighed.
"We're practically living in the Digidestined base now, and it s only been a couple of months," Gomamon tried to comfort the other digimon awkwardly. "So, any idea where she went when she left?"
"Um, well, I don't really want to contribute to stereotypes about digimon who do bad things," Floramon said apologetically to Gazimon.
"Honestly, I'm still surprised that something like half of the Gazimon still around haven't gone straight to the Dark Empire," the Dark typed digimon of that species said casually. "I'm waiting for the first scandal where a bunch of them turn out to still be jerks."
"At least we have someone reasonable taking charge of them this time," Floramon uncomfortably agreed. "Admittedly he's another plant digimon, so I might have some bias there, but what I've heard has been fairly good so far."
"So how out of the ordinary is this for you guys?" Joe asked Shawn as they started to pack up what few things they had opened or moved during their search.
The two snake pokemon then looked at each other and sighed. "Charlie 3 has been banned from having any of these digital berries after she decided that easy access to Cheri berries meant her inhabitants didn't need to be careful about paralyzing each other anymore," the pair said together.
"You mean this kind of issue is what we're looking at for the rest of our lives?" Gomamon grumbled with a clear glance between his own flippers and Joe's paws as he struggled to close a crate that in retrospect had been broken into before reaching the site.
"At least this involves being outside," Joe countered his brother. "Not to mention that most of you monster types aren't used to having to open up bodies."
"I hope you don't think the cyborg parts only come from evolution," Gazimon cautioned the Water type. "Tyra could tell you more about that side of things, and probably should all things considered. It at least was fairly common among the higher tech places in the digimon world."
"Oh right, you're studying to be a doctor aren't you?" Floramon asked the Floatzel. "There are a few plant based things that some digimon try too. They are a lot rarer, but, well there are some plants that in theory give a big benefit to someone if they were added to their bodies."
Joe and Gomamon both simply glared at that bit of news.
Joe was surprised by how easy it turned out to be to find both the orange striped Agumon and the missing digital berries, or rather the plants they had been too rapidly grown into. The Emperor apparently was on the lookout for just this kind of issue, and had sent them almost immediately to where some of his forces were already taking custody of the people and plants involved. So on one hand they had the good fortune to get some help on this situation, but on the other actually working with the pale pink Biyomon wearing one of the larger Dark Rings as a badge of office leading a number of robotic drones just made the whole thing rather surreal.
"I'm glad to have some experts here on these things," the avian digimon said in a deep clearly male voice when they arrived at the small farm plot near the edge of the Empire's relatively small reduced size. "This didn't sound like something to have the Emperor handle himself, but we don't really have technical staff fully sorted yet."
"There isn't any problem here," the voice of the orange striped Agumon countered from where she was currently sat. "What does it matter if the plants look a bit blocky?"
Shawn, Serperior, and Floramon were all currently spread through the good sized plot of plants with extremely unhappy looks on their faces. "It matters because these things are still experimental, and you used some sort of super-fertilizer on them that definitely has negative side effects," Serperior raged at the dinosaur digimon. "Congratulations on making Pecha berries that slowly turn anyone who eats too many of them into Poison types. Best case scenario it just makes them a bit pointier and toxic, worst case it melts them into caustic sludge."
"It wouldn't be bad enough to make them into Grimer," Shawn pointed out carefully picking one of the sickly yellow-green fruit. "I think I can tell how bad it is a bit better due to being that type right now. Digimon and humans from the Digidestined world will need to worry about it being permanent, but it would technically wear off for people from our world. Part of me hates the thought of destroying all of these." The other Grass types nodded in partial agreement. "But most of me thinks that this is just too big a hazard to let it stay like this."
"Tasted fine to me," the Agumon grumbled, and Joe had to groan at that admission. "What?" she harshly asked him.
"Now I need to take you to the DSS medical facility for a full checkup," he explained to her tiredly and started to get his own portable scanner ready to get some field data on that. "Please tell me nobody else has had any yet." The initial readings were not too bad, but the dino digimon did have a noticeable amount of the Poison type.
"If what we've traced is accurate there shouldn't be," the Biyomon grumbled. "She's been working on this project alone." The bird digimon seemed more upset about that than anything else so far. "The Emperor himself gave the order to contain the spread of this typed energy. I would like to ensure he gets at least one of these plants for investigation."
The pair of DSS snakes did not look happy with that statement, but they also looked thoughtful. "We can probably allow a joint project to analyze a few of these," the serpents said together, and the two local digimon both tensed at the dual tone. "However, it will be highly controlled. This sort of thing is not safe to play with unsupervised, and your Emperor has already suffered for attempting that before." Shawn had locked eyes on the Biyomon, but Serperior had instead focused on the Agumon, and Joe was fairly worried despite not being the target of either glare.
"A joint project would be preferable to the independent work my subject has attempted," said Emperor's voice cut in from the Dark Ring. "Although my first instinct is to have the Agumon responsible assist in that project to both supervise her side effects and make clear to her what exactly she has done wrong."
"The limit we have there is people to actually handle a joint effort," Gazimon grumbled. "Unless of course Joe wants to add it to his plate?"
"Joe's got enough stuff to deal with," his brother grumbled. "I, on the other hand, am looking for something to take up my time so I don't end up stuck with more medical training." Gomamon looked at the rest of them rather sternly. "So I'll do it. Given we have someone, and I'm more than willing to help a new digimon with a type out, that should handle the issue." The two of them weren't entirely shedding the Water type when they turned back anymore, if they had been in the first place. "So, what exactly do we do with the plants we aren't keeping so that they aren't a problem?"
"This is Delta 6," Gazimon introduced the angry flower shaped Administrator to the criminal Agumon, the Biyomon minion, and Gomamon. "She is the original creator of the specific plants you stole, and that you want to help your boss analyze."
"I am going to start with the complete list of possible side effects of these sort of experiments. Then, we're going to go into detail on the process I used to make them in the first place," the Porygon-2 said with clearly fake cheer. Then the area behind her changed to be a patch of plants in an instant. "Let's move over to the fields so I have some examples on hand."
"I thought this sort of thing was the Hacker's ultimate weapon?" the Biyomon fearfully whispered about that casual reshaping of the digital world they were in.
"Where do you think they learned it from?" Gomamon asked, although he couldn't keep his own unease out of his tone. Delta 2 tended to be a lot less blatant about how much control she had over her Box. "This is why these things are dangerous, she literally made them herself. Out of just code and energy."
"And if you three really wanted to learn how I did it you're lucky enough to be getting the full education," Delta 6 cut in despite how quietly they had tried to converse. "You are digital monsters aren't you? I don't really see why you shouldn't be able to get something out of these lessons." She didn't entirely sound like she believed that, but she also sounded mad enough to not care. "Also, for future reference, Administrators are the world they control. There is nowhere in my world you can say something I can't hear." That was said mostly to the Biyomon, who cringed a lot. "Including direct data transmissions. There is a joke that we Administrators are digital gods, and we hate it when we get tested on how true that is."
"You don't measure up?" Agumon sarcastically asked.
"No, we keep having the people that tested us insist we passed," the sunflower pokemon sighed as if it really was a problem instead of a joke.