- Unfinished Business -
Charlie 11 blinked awake, a strange sensation. She looked over her icy shell in confusion, the form of her body having grown or been coated with ice. The last thing she could remember was fighting the corruption that had invaded her Box, one that had suddenly grown again after reaching what had seemed to be the limits of such creatures.
Which immediately took her focus off the strange sensations from her body. That was a new threat, one that likely was responsible for these changes, and she knew in the very core of her existence that she needed to defeat that monster. She looked around at, at what appeared to be a number of floating polygonal fragments of landscape scattered in a great void, gravity apparently not even consistent between all of them.
The formerly Snorunt shaped pokemon frowned heavily at this. There was no way her Ice type Box could ever be made into this eldritch place, even with an overly powerful corruption involved. "Where am I?" she asked, finally taking a moment to look herself over. She looked exactly like a Froslass, her body smooth and well formed in a way she had only ever seen on her inhabitants before.
"Digital Storage Solutions Box 113," a deep voice said, a great serpent creature materializing in front of her. "And I'd really like to know how you got here, because despite appearances and technicalities this is not in fact an afterlife."
"What?" she asked with total disbelief. It was impossible for her to be in her brother's Box. "Charlie 13?" she questioned with that same tone, taking in the polygonal shape of the creature.
"Yes," the Porygon said with clear surprise. "Huh, I figured a lost Ghost type would guess I was the real Giratina again before figuring that out."
"Ghost type?" she asked, still not thinking straight despite having seen her appearance. "Brother, what is happening? Did the corruption escape 111?"
"111, Delta 15's Box?" the other pokemon asked with faint horror. "'Brother'? But, you're not a Porygon," he continued with wide eyes, just as disbelieving as she had been moments before. "Charlie 11?" the Administrator asked with caution.
"There are only 14 Deltas," she responded unthinkingly. "Only." She shuddered, ice extending out around her suddenly. "Only two of us have died before."
"Four," Charlie 13 said sadly. "Four Box Administrators have died to date. Charlie 11, Box 111 was the third to do so."
"You have never met a newly returned Ghost before," a new voice said sympathetically. Another serpent, this one smooth and real looking, floated over to look her over. "Which means you don't know a great many important things. What is the first thing you remembered after awakening?"
"That I was fighting the corruption that had invaded my Box," she replied to this new pokemon, presumably a 'Giratina' if her brother could be mistaken for one. "It managed to evolve again into a monstrously powerful form."
Her brother looked confused at her description, then profoundly sad. "Shawn and Serperior managed to kill it, but," he trailed off unhappily.
"Unfortunately a key thing that drives spirits to become Ghost types is a task or threat from their former life," Giratina warned. "It is the first thing they will think of when they wake, and they will appear in a place that requires the warning their incarnation provides."
"You mean it might be coming back even if it is dead," Charlie 11 said with a rush, flashing a thin pane of ice into existence in front of her.
The thin layer of frozen water reflected the light around them, but nothing more. She could feel her energies within it, holding it up and making it what it was. She could feel the frost still lingering under feet. She could not feel the data of the world around her, or any hint of her former sense of the larger Box she inhabited/was.
"I'm not a Porygon anymore, am I?" she asked brokenly.
"I'm honestly still not convinced your brother isn't just another Giratina," the normal looking Ghost pokemon noted sympathetically. "However, it is the case that you are no longer the living creature you remember being. You have used what power you could find to make a new form for yourself that would let you act on the need, and that is not the power that was lost upon your death."
"Wait, really? Vibration and Jack will probably be happy to hear that it doesn't count as dying if you keep your original body," her brother said, sounding a bit too deliberate in his distraction.
"No, that isn't a universal requirement for Ghosts of the dead," the other serpent corrected easily. "But I have had far more than enough experience to tell such things." The pokemon paused thoughtfully. "Although that also means I could check your friends again for a clear answer now that I know that is a question they have."
Charlie 13 then looked horrified about something. "I have to tell A-0 about this," he said faintly. Charlie 11 had to agree with that sentiment.
"What?" the perfectly normal Porygon asked in a tone as cold as her current body. "Right, let me ask something," A-0 said to her before it let out a slightly disorienting burst of noise.
Charlie 11 simply looked at her eldest sibling in complete confusion. Being outside of any Box, inside of the Troubleshooter Lab itself, was confusing enough without it making sounds at her. She looked at the odd collection of creatures in the room, hoping for an explanation. There was Janice in the flesh, but beside her was a Metagross that seemed to be easily working with her. Shawn and Serperior were next to a purple furred rabbit monster she did not recognize, and for some reason the trainer and snake pokemon's eyes seemed to be switched while Serperior looked a bit gooey. Then there were two entire teams of pokemon she didn't recognize, both either didn't have a trainer or were currently missing theirs.
"A-0," the Quagsire from half of that last group said with a sigh. "You did make sure she would still understand whatever that noise was before you subjected us to it, right?"
"That was a data burst, wasn't it?" the Froslass had to ask, her tone as defeated as she felt by the realization. "I'm really just a normal pokemon now."
"I believe her for one," the rabbit monster said thoughtfully. "She's definitely trying to manipulate data." The former Administrator didn't have the energy to ask how he could recognize that.
"Giratina, would this possible corruption attack happen in Box 113, or could it be any of our Boxes?" Shawn asked one of the two active monitors, the display showing the world she had been in moments ago.
"Most likely it will be that location," the Legendary pokemon confirmed thoughtfully. "However, there is a chance this is a case of her returning as a Ghost in a world of Ghosts specifically. I'm not exactly used to this sort of thing with one of those involved other than my own."
"We can keep a scan going on all of the Boxes," Shawn said with a look towards the Decidueye. "Jack, can you stick around to help if something happens?" Charlie 11 hated the idea of any of her siblings being the target of the kind of thing she had fought.
"Yeah, this sounds like it is part of my current project even," the bird pokemon said. "Should we guard her old Box just in case this is literally the same exact threat again?"
"Oh. Yes that is likely another big possibility," Giratina said ominously, and then looked over at her as the floor under her froze with a cracking sound.
"Could. Could I see it?" she asked to cover that mistaken release of power. She had so little of it now, and her control was totally ruined. "Charlie 13 said that there was a Delta 15 to run it now."
"A-0?" Janice questioned carefully, which was actually a fairly frightening tone for the Troubleshooter lead.
"Delta 15 has questions for you, all four of the replacement Deltas have questions they've wanted to ask the Porygon that came before them," the first of her former kind said quietly. Her eldest sibling looked haunted, and the fact that she was the Ghost in question was a terrible feeling. "I don't know what to tell the other three if their sibling gets answers they still can't, but I'm also a bit worried you might not have them."
"Because I'm not a Porygon anymore," she said with a cringe.
"Because you're a person, and people don't always remember the little details other people want to know," A-0 corrected her. "Remember when Delta 2 tried to get that medical data out of Alpha 12?"
"And she spent a whole week going over his logs because he didn't actually remember what pokemon had started fighting what other pokemon first," Charlie 11 giggled, and then sobered. "Did my logs survive?"
"We were able to recover them, along with- Along with a good portion of your data," A-0 admitted, its voice hitching briefly. "The corruption was based on a pokemon theft program. Extremely advanced and definitely shut down."
"The police raided the place that made it and everything," Shawn added. "They were able to send us... Wait, they sent us copies of the data it did transmit. It had functional data transmission to an outside computer system. Jack-"
"Janice get me the case information! I've got a bunch of references on lost police hardware from working with Roberts on the missing Porygon," the Decidueye interrupted him. "If the system was part of that-"
"Then someone might have accidentally remade the corruption by turning it into a digital world," the rabbit monster that was on Shawn's team said darkly.
Delta 15 had picked a Regice form to distance themselves from the Administrator that had run Box 111 before them. It was one of a number of things they had done to make sure the inhabitants of the Ice type Box knew for sure they weren't their fallen sister. They had so many things since their creation that they wondered about Charlie 11. Now they looked over the glacial plains, accompanying forest, and icy sea with anticipation and worry.
"Alright, keep calm, you just are about to meet the Administrator that ran the Box before you," they said out loud, slightly upset their tone failed to match the emotionless nature of a real Regice. "There are only four of you that have ever had a Box someone else ran first, so you barely know how to handle that, but meeting the pokemon that did it before should be fine."
They then felt Shawn arrive with his team, and a Froslass. That was actually pretty scary, because there had been a few Froslass in the Box before, and Delta 15 knew for a fact how to tell one apart from a Porygon. They had been told this was the case, but seeing their sister in a non-digital form was still a shock.
"Oh," the Ice/Ghost type said as she looked over what had once been her Box. "I don't know if I thought it would all look the same, or if I thought more would be changed."
"There hasn't been a lot of call for any alterations," Delta 15 said nervously, and flinched as she looked over at them. "Although we have had quite a few enhancements since..." They had no idea how to finish that sentence, so they thought of the most related question they had. "Maybe you can explain some of the places we've left the same? Like that big ice pile between the mountain peak and the forest." It had been one of the larger pieces to survive entirely intact, made of a special kind of digital ice that was really resistant to basically anything. None of the pokemon that had lived close to it stayed after the attack, so there had not been anyone to ask why it was there or who wanted it.
"You still have the junk ice pile," Charlie 11 said in the most embarrassed tone they had ever heard. "My failed attempts to make ice, attempts so bad I couldn't get rid of them myself, attempts I rewrote the structure of the Box so nobody could see them, are still here?"
"Yes," Delta 15 confirmed, extremely glad that Regice did not have many available expressions.
"I died and one of my legacies was a pile of junk people thought was important," she sighed.
"Well, that's not where we put the memorial," the Box's current Administrator attempted to make things better. "Froslass said you liked to watch the waves when you got them right, so we put it on the shoreline." They then paused to consider that statement. "Uh, you probably know I don't mean you-"
"Is she still here?" Charlie 11 asked sounding a bit more hopeful. "We were friends."
"I haven't told her yet, but her trainer is still keeping her here," Delta 15 confirmed and started to inform one of the few pokemon that could remember Charlie 11's time running the Box.
"I didn't mean it this way!" that Froslass said before they could even finish the attempt, and suddenly the inhabitant pokemon was hugging their sister. "It wasn't supposed to be real dying."
"Well, I'm a bit more of a Froslass than we talked about," Charlie 11 replied with a laugh. "I don't know how long it s been," she then added quietly. "For me it seems like just this morning I was trying to keep you safe from that thing."
"I really didn't mean for you to evolve this way," the inhabitant Froslass grumbled. "I lost a full week when I evolved, and my tribe moved on from where I found the stone. I was so confused I tried to get my new trainer to figure out how they just vanished like that after she caught me." There was a pause as the two pokemon looked each other over that Delta 15 did not want to interrupt. "You're actually a Froslass, not just looking like one."
"Yes. I'm actually just your species now," Charlie 11 admitted. "Could you possibly help with that? I'm having trouble controlling my powers now."
"Shawn, is that going to be okay? I don't want to mess up any contract stuff with this," Delta 15 unfortunately had to ask the Troubleshooter.
"We can check in with her trainer, and I would hope-" the red eyed mostly-human started.
There then was an intrusion into the Box. Not the casual appearance of corruption from bad data on an authorized transport, and not the corruption from rogue data somehow traveling between digital worlds that rarely occurred, but instead a deliberate and intentional breach of their Box's security to get in without authorization. Delta 15 wasted no time at all with dealing with that issue, and had three bluish white Panes open and processing by the time their new half-sibling Gazimon got one of his black ones ready.
At the breach there was a creature, the very sight of which had Delta 15 react instantly. The polygonal six limbed corruption froze utterly in place, a dark sinister smirk fixed on its face as Delta 15 simply stopped all activity of any kind in a small area around it. The technique was tricky, and dangerous to the target, but given this was the exact creature that killed their predecessor they were actually slightly disappointed that it would be survivable if the corruption found a way to break free.
"I can hold it, but I can't kill it," Delta 15 informed the Troubleshooters in a dull monotone. Next to them Gazimon had used his temporary evolution ability to become a nine tailed fox monster.
"Give me a second, Shawn," Youkomon said to his enraged trainer. The mostly human and semi-solid snake both had their eyes fixed on the target with a stare that was colder than Delta 15's own. "I can track where it came from," the digimon added, along with three new Panes of dragonfire. The other two Troubleshooters got out bottles of foul looking water in response to that, and there were two much pointier Serperiors present as the digimon finished. "Got the target's source, I can send us there at any time."
"We don't need it alive," Shawn said in a cold tone that fit better with his old blue eyes. Youkomon apparently was the kind of mon to get the point, and Delta 15 was quite happy to see the Panes turn into a trio of dragon shaped dragonfire projectiles to shatter the foe. "Delta 15, good work. Use that again if anything else shows up while we take care of this."
The three of them then vanished, and Delta 15 took a moment to look back at the inhabitants they had moved to protect. On seeing the two Froslass they remembered that one of those pokemon was not actually an inhabitant, but his lost sister. "What happened?" she asked as she attempted to look around their body, and the Regice shaped Porygon realized that Charlie 11 had not been able to see what had just arrived.
"Froslass, I'm going to contact your trainer now about if you can help Charlie 11," they said to the pair instead of explaining. "Do you want me to translate for you?"
"Jack, news, now," Shawn demanded as his team reappeared, still a Grass/Poison type snake pokemon.
"Apparently our regional police force ended up auctioning off several computer systems that were left ownerless after the investigation concluded," the Decidueye replied angrily. "From the looks of things this was in fact part of the political corruption that caused the Upload Porygon issue, as the paper trail on just who got those machines is rather lacking."
"That's the nice way of saying that he wants to curse the people involved," Janice complained with a tone that implied she approved of the idea. "We can confirm that several of these sales resulted in the unusual repeated corruption attacks after the original site was taken down, and for a good portion of this new surge in corruption outside of our system."
"That is on top of this new option of corruption actually having working transmission systems," A-0 said with considerable rage. "Three of our four lost Administrators were killed by programs with that capacity."
Janice looked at the newly returned Troubleshooters uneasily. "We have prioritized finding who bought those three systems," she informed the group.
Charlie 11 laughed as her old friend and former inhabitant skidded a bit on the ice patch she just made.
"Of all the things for you to remember how to do, why is it making ice that slips up Ice types?" the other Froslass asked. "We still have the junk pile of that stuff, and I'm not sure if that's because Delta 15 doesn't want to get rid of anything you made, or if they can't do anything about it."
"For the record, it is the first one. Although it did take a few months to work out how to do that," her crystal-like replacement said from a good distance.
"Does anyone use that stuff now? Because it actually is embarrassing," Charlie 11 had to note, and then a part of her relaxed. "It s embarrassing, I can be embarrassed by it." Her younger sibling caught her as she lost her footing. "I'm alive again."
[Author's Note]
So, this chapter has a story behind it.
The first half of this chapter was written back in Act 3, and the plot elements opened by it are a major reason I realized I needed to move on from that Act to the Digidestined part. It also is the starting point of the real plot of this Act, and the thing that gave me a plot to build around.
The original plan was for this to be a sort of precursor to the Wizardmon stuff in the 02 crossover, but now it is sort of the other way around.
I think that the extra time and story content actually helps this one.