- Corruption Escalation -
Pam grimaced as their pokemon were drawn away further in order to keep the viral corruption at bay. Adrian's Registeel was still with the three of them, but despite being a Legendary the recently reawoken machine pokemon wasn't even the strongest of his pokemon. Teal's entire team was either returned or on the other side of the split that formed out of nowhere. Her own Scyther was stuck over there as he sent flying blades of flame to shatter the small foes and keep them off Adrian's other pokemon.
This was the third time Digital World Response had faced this specific kind of corruption so far, and it was also the smartest kind of these things they had seen by far. The cackling little sort-of-lizard was short with large digging claws on her hands, thick strong legs, and a wide toothy mouth that she used to swallow various digital constructs and life forms whole. Then when there wasn't anything left the corruption did something to completely crash the digital world, often damaging the physical system as well. Larger ones were more powerful than smaller ones, and worse could split off more smaller ones somehow. Few of them were the same color, but that did not seem to mean anything. Their efforts so far had failed to drive off the copies both of the previous times, and the three of them really needed help at this point.
"Come on now!" the female sounding voice of the largest called out. "You all are slacking off, you did much better last time," she cackled at them.
"I'm really worried about how this one is coherent," Adrian said fairly quietly. "I think the big ones might not even be the strongest."
'Big' wasn't the best description for them, Registeel was at least twice the height of their tallest enemies, but they ranged from fairly common pokemon strength to League level. Teal's pokemon were their strongest, but the Ice types had all still been tired from prior failed attempts. Adrian's Steel types were the ones that made the most progress, but given they were mostly trained to work with computer systems that meant their weakest battlers were doing the best right now.
"Honestly, do I need to go easy on you?" the largest corruption asked, and the smaller ones all laughed. "Let me make you a deal. I'll leave you alone to recharge, and you don't even try to stop me from taking everything this place has."
Pam felt a twinge in her right leg, and worryingly another in her left. She probably should have gotten the cut from two days ago checked out properly, but they were barely tracking this threat so far. "Teal, are we getting backup?" she asked as their leader rapidly used his Pokedex to do something.
"DSS is sending their strongest team," he replied far more calmly than she could have managed given the situation. Then a moment later she realized who exactly that would be, and tried to work out the best way to tell Scyther without warning their foes.
She didn't have time anyway, as three figures appeared in a very sudden flash. Two were familiar members of the Troubleshooter team that had first introduced her to the idea of corruption back when she was just renting space in their pokemon boxes. The third was a purple furred rabbit pokemon of some kind, possibly an advanced Porygon given the flat black constructs that formed next to the group. She could see her strongest pokemon flinch slightly at the presence of the massive snake pokemon, Scyther even turning to protect his remade digital claw from that strangely liquid looking arrival.
"Serp, take the left side. Gazi, looks like we need air support," Shawn Reading coldly said while focused entirely on the largest corruption. His Serperior immediately liquefied and surged away to the largest collection of enemies, while 'Gazi' somehow changed from a rabbit to an armored horse with wings and took off.
"Ha, another trainer then?" the largest enemy laughed and started to move to attack the now isolated human. "You know you all have the same exact problem." The creature started to leap at the Troubleshooter. "Get you away from your pokemon and you're help-" There was a flash of green, and then a shattering sound as the two halves of the corruption hit the ground behind the newly arrived trainer.
"Leader was just above Champion," Shawn told his team with the same cold tone, and Pam realized dully that the other trainer was planning on taking on the center force of enemies himself.
"Ha!" all of the corruption laughed joyfully. "Finally, a real threat! Come on, show me what you can do!"
It turned out that the Serperior could whip up a storm of leaves that could shatter all of the enemies on the left side of the battlefield at once while somehow avoiding anyone else, the maybe-Porygon could use some kind of area attack version of Swift to take on the right side, and Shawn had apparently learned at least Leaf Blade and Grass Knot given how he tripped up the central foes and sliced them apart.
"Pam, I think you might have understated how scary this guy was," Teal said from next to Registeel.
"He's worse now," she had to admit as she tried to ignore the ache in her legs.
"Sorry, Shawn, most I can say is she definitely was in contact with other versions of herself in other digital worlds," Youkomon told his trainer from the middle of a circle of dragonfire Panes while the rest of their team checked out the group they had arrived to rescue. "Unfortunately I probably should have gone with this form to start. Pegasusmon isn't great for data tracking."
"She might be an Ultimate," Serperior complained. "Some of the bodies I fought were weak Champion stage, and I doubt that leader was actually the strongest she gets." He then shuddered, an interesting thing to see given he was still partially melted from combat. "Also I think she was in all of them at once like our mom and sister."
"Please don't say it like that," Shawn said with annoyance as he scanned their objective. "Pam, you of all people should understand the reason to get corruption exposure checked as soon as possible." Her Scyther in particular was upset with that statement. "Youko, get us ready to go to Delta 2 ASAP."
"We're ready now, I'll tell you the rest of the bad news later," the digimon replied.
"We were trying to stop those things," Pam grumbled even as her pokemon rushed to try and check her legs. "It didn't seem like it could wait for you to cut off my legs."
"Pam, there are at least two other sites being hit by this right now," Teal responded. "Troubleshooter Reading, I'm sorry for the inconvenience."
"Good news Pam, we now have someone who can work on this problem with less amputations," Serperior said to the Bug type trainer after checking what his trainer meant. "Bad news, you might end up with legs that work a bit differently. How bad is it?"
"Why are those pokemon talking like humans?" the last member of Digital World Response questioned fairly quietly, still mostly hidden behind his Legendary pokemon. To be fair the Registeel did not look too comfortable with the three of them either.
"Ugh, do not get me thinking about 'why' again," Serperior groaned. "It has been weeks since I last had to think about how corruption exposure got me stuck being understood." He added with emphasis on 'corruption exposure' directed at Pam.
"I think it has been months since I was around someone who thought understanding monsters was the stranger option," Shawn agreed. "And you will need to worry about accidentally catching yourself. It isn't that bad of an experience."
"I'd say it wasn't the greatest result," Teal agreed with a nod, and carefully removed a Frozen Flame from his belt while quite clearly not touching it to his skin. "I was 'lucky' enough to find one of these at the base of Flameheart, and unlucky enough for it to work for me." He put it away and with a smile. "I have to thank Champion Felsic for revealing how that works so I can actually explain that properly now."
"Wait, you're a pokemon too?" Adrian asked and with a flicker he was a Mawile. "Does that mean I can stop using that trick? It is really tiring, even if it is the best way I can be a human."
"Suddenly I have a better idea why Janice was embarrassed to hear you were working with this group," Youkomon sighed.
Janice looked over the fairly long time customer with some concern. Mostly because he was currently made of cracked clay that glowed with heat from the inside. "Reaction to something?" she asked as she inspected his team of Water types that had similar changes to Fire, Rock, or Ground types.
"Some idiot said they wanted to hire me to ship this big bag of something called 'treated Groudon ashes'," the customer replied with a curious look towards the region's newest Champion. "Insisted on loading it themselves, and it ended up everywhere. Got my whole team changed, which is apparently normal for the stuff, and I found out it works on me too." He creaked slightly as he shook his head. "Then the police officer I spoke with about that mess gave me some really silly advice to just wait out the month in a Pokemon Paradise box. I wonder how much that guy was getting paid to suggest I put myself and my team in a normal box where I won't even know when it is time to get out and hope whoever helps me lets me out at the right time. DSS has always been good to my team, so coming here instead was an easy choice."
"While we can't really keep your affected team members in our Water type Box, we do have a medium term storage Box that handles multiple types. It is run by Administrator Delta 7, and I can tell him your situation as soon as you clear it with sales," Janice said to him, but she still looked over at Jane cautiously. That rival storage facility sounded unfortunately familiar.
"Did you get the name of the officer that made that suggestion?" Jane asked carefully. "I am working with an Investigator who has found quite a bit of corruption related to digital technology, and we have just finished going through the data on a site that had launched an attempted pokemon storage box attack. Pokemon Paradise is in fact the next site that location had planned to attack."
Janice shook her head and looked over at Metagross to get an update on the rush request to get a corruption team some serious help as the Champion handled getting that information. "Digital World Response is being checked by Delta 2 and TyranoGazimon," her pokemon quietly replied. "Quagsire's team will be back momentarily with Jack, they report that they have finished cataloging the data from the corruption's home site." Janice nodded at them and started to check what data had been sent over.
"Thank you for the help," Jane said just a little louder to catch her attention a few minutes later. "And I will make sure your ship and team stay safe." The Champion had apparently turned into a Charizard at some point in the conversation.
"Thank you Champion, and I'll go see what sales has to say now," the customer said to her before leaving.
"For the record, it is only one in ten thousand humans that actually are affected by that stuff," Jane grumbled. "So that probably was supposed to just be an attempt to steal his pokemon, instead of intentional kidnapping of the trainer too."
"Stasis style boxes don't actually run out those kinds of time limits," Janice added unhappily. "A nearby ranch should have been the first suggestion, even if they didn't want to start with us." She double checked something. "Unfortunately we might have a bigger problem."
"Bigger than the police and thieves apparently working with corruption to steal pokemon?" the Fire/Flying pokemon grumbled.
"There was a middle man. They didn't have direct contact with the Poke-Snatcher virus, but someone did pass along a set of targets and drop off points," she listed, and brought up the relevant data on the monitor array. "Can't tell from this data if we are looking at another digital life form or a human group, but somebody else had been targeting the attacks."
"Janice, we have a Mawile that you apparently trained here," Shawn interjected from her console, and the Troubleshooter lead groaned at the reminder of that event. "That is the least concerning part of the whole thing. We have evidence of an Ultimate stage corruption."
Janice could feel the blood drain out of her face. "Should I call the Digidestined now?" she asked quickly.
"I'm right here you know," Joe answered from the line to Box 201. "That gives us two of them ourselves, assuming I can't find a way to turn that into three using myself."
"From initial scans I can say that there is at absolute most two Ultimate strength instances of that particular corruption," Gazimon more helpfully added. "She, and unfortunately she was advanced enough for us to tell that, can split off copies that are weaker than the originals. From the looks of things she gets stronger from a mixture of energy transfer from the smaller bodies to larger ones, and increased knowledge shared between the copies."
"She's also part Fairy type," Adrian added nervously, confirming that the other Steel type she had trained in digital world support was in fact there. "I don't know what she does with the stuff she's eating, but it can't be good."
"Strip Mine," Jack cut in as he entered the Troubleshooter Lab with a stack of papers. "An attempt by a group a few years back to steal data from sites and ransom it back to the users, with the added 'feature' of crashing the target system. Source hardware was sold in the second batch, and we got a few reports of new attacks until about a week after Upload's creation method got out."
"The people who incarnated her specifically gave her appearance yesterday when they were confronted," Smog clarified, although the digital Salazzle glared at the translator as it did not respond to her already comprehensible statement. "We were hoping that you had some data to track whatever new site she's set up in by now."
"She has a mind like yours, so she was easily able to hit that site from multiple sources," Gazimon replied instantly. "I'm trying to find if there is a problem, but this might be a case of finding the biggest ones and just keeping the rest down to manageable levels in the future."
"I thought I said not to say it like that," Shawn groaned. "She definitely did not care about dying, and the last ones went down with a smile."
"Shawn, please tell me the corruption wasn't flirting with you," Smog complained.
"Well now I'm worried she was," Serperior said with concern. "I'm going to share a body with him when we do run into her Ultimate form."
Tyra had a headache, and the main reason was the terrible mess of code that was in the woman's right leg. "So, that thing is trying to transmit," she grumbled to the patient. "But, you were lucky enough to actually have your pokemon succeed in disabling the worst of its code."
"I have done what?" said Scyther asked with clear confusion.
"This is why I wanted you to tell us if he was going to be working on digital world stuff," Delta 2 said with her face pressed against a nearby wall. "Because then we could actually train him in how to purposefully use that stuff instead of trying to fix this stuff after the fact. To be blunt this injury is the data equivalent of setting a bone wrong, and that includes all of the horrible long term side effects."
"Okay, I'm liking the idea that I've done something here less and less," Scyther stated quite clearly, and the patchwork digimon flinched at how he quite strongly felt upset by that reality.
"Probably just cut off something that was stuck in her," Tyra grumbled as she tried to work out how to avoid having her Psychic powers muddled with the limited data receiving capacity she had. "The bad news is that you are still a source of digital code, and we put in an antiviral system as part of your checkup when we found your new blade existed. Looks like the program copied itself, which isn't quite what we wanted, but is something we warned you about if you ran into any other partially or fully data based creatures."
"You are going to be spending a while with Scyther feet," Delta 2 informed the patient dully. "At least as long as it takes for us to find another way to make this safe for you."
"I'm a little worried about how quickly you made them look like that," Pam quietly said as she stared at the three clawed insect feet at the end of her legs.
"We barely did anything, you are lucky we stopped it from going all the way to making you entirely a blocky digital Scyther," Tyra clarified dully. "This isn't how far we changed you, this is where we got it to stop."
"Okay, alright. So if I am understanding this right I almost turned my trainer into another Scyther?" the Bug/Flying pokemon asked angrily.
"No, the fact that she didn't immediately come here as soon as she was injured by a corruption almost made her into who knows what. You only made it so the result wasn't as bad," Delta 2 said and started to move to the doorway. "Shawn, I need an example of how bad things can get. Bring your brother."
"Why do we- Delta 2, she had normal feet when we got here," Serperior complained as the pair entered.
"These two are in each other's bodies," Delta 2 said instead of responding to the serpent. "That one is the one whose body is supposed to be human shaped." The Chansey shaped Administrator blinked. "Have we actually checked what you look like as a human since you learned Acid Armor?"
"We are not finding that out, because I don't even want to try being human again," Serperior darkly replied. "At this point none of my family can really say that kind of thing is even odd."
"You got off lucky," Tyra said to the patient as Pam simply stared at that exchange.
A cackle echoed through the rocky cavern as four creatures arrived to meet for their weekly get together. "Oh what news I have," Strip Mine said to her fellows with a wide smile.
"Is it good news you little menace, or are you happy about another defeat?" a serious and regal voice questioned sarcastically.
"Well I can't help it if you aren't managing to be enough of a threat for me," the impish reptile replied.
"Provisional unit 'Poke-Snatcher' has been destroyed," a mechanical voice said with just enough tone to tell that it was ignoring the byplay. "Base system attacked and rendered inoperative."
"Did 1t compl3te any 0f the t sks it was pro7ided?" a somewhat scrambled broken sounding voice asked.
"I would hope that a prospective member of our group would at least manage some progress," the regal voice complained. "There are few enough greater corruption that last long enough to matter."
"Aw, does golden boy not have enough allies to fight?" Strip Mine asked with a chuckle, then turned a dark look towards the mechanical voice. "What did the new idiot fail at?" she then asked seriously.
"Redirected to former target after provided orders failed to meet with non-digital actions. Target pokemon team did not enter standard box storage, instead selecting DSS systems. DSS target that originally ended Poke-Snatcher," the mechanical voice replied. "Monitoring showed large serpent monster devastated base system."
"DSS. Snak3 and tra1ner," the broken voice said thoughtfully.
"Ha! Well then it looks like I do have news that matters for that," Strip Mine laughed. "Snake monster that could turn liquid and shatter an entire army of me at once, some kind of shape shifter that could manipulate data like a Porygon, and their trainer." She smiled widely as she finished. "Their trainer who took me on himself with just a leaf blade and enough grabbing plants."
"Pokemon species of trainer?" the mechanical voice asked.
"Human~" she singsonged. "A human that could actually fight!"
"So some species that can look human," the regal voice criticized. "And apparently a Grass type."
"DSS inv0lv3ment 1s una((ept ble," the broken voice said more loudly, and less clearly.