Arc 5 Finale, Part 5 of 5
- THE ADDWARE -
The world they arrived in was covered in a variety of tar pools and machine-like constructs across what otherwise appeared to be a featureless grey box of immense size. It was a bit haunting to the newly arrived Troubleshooter team how much it looked like an Alpha or Beta Administrator Porygon's Box.
"Well, this is supposed to be a trap," Gazimon said what the rest of his team was thinking out loud. "Those wall are far too close for somewhere this reinforced."
"They also aren't the same walls that were there for Beta 16, although I can see where they're trying to get close," Serperior added with a cold tone more typical of their trainer.
Their trainer who simply looked at the world around them with grim determination for just long enough to worry his two teammates. "Gazi, Serp, start smashing," Shawn coldly informed the two of them as he flipped open his Pokedex. "A-0, it has a facade over the place right now. We're going to start breaking things and see how it responds. Send backup if we don't contact you in five minutes."
Gazimon took that as a cue to become Devidramon, and the other two joined him as Basirablemon just a moment later. There seemed to be no response as they started to spread tar and cables as they smashed anything that looked like it could do something. This continued for the next five minutes, when A-0 and MasterTyranomon burst through the outer wall of the visible area, with the rest of Quagsire's team present.
"You didn't call us back," the Porygon-2 complained as the group with many Ground types proceeded to use the associated skill set to literally tear the facade apart. Behind the barrier was what appeared to be an even larger underground chamber with veins of tar dripping down that intersected both of the two still present walls to practically give only a small amount of extra space.
"We needed reinforcements and it was faster to not call for some," the blue eyed head of Basirablemon said with a blunt serious tone as he slashed a massive Grass typed blade through one of the larger structures.
"We've been trying really hard to keep this place from altering its geometry around us while we worked on it, but raw stone isn't exactly our best target," the red eyed head added with a Solarbeam that cut off suddenly as it started to be redirected.
"Bad news, I did try and send a request for backup. Just got a reply from 326 after you broke that wall," Devidramon corrected unhappily. "I think it was a sort of bad jammer if you guys actually got our first message."
Tarmory, Tartioise, and Tartops then arrived as planned via the mixed tar and cable pools, with a small support force of volunteer Ichor Dragons and HardWare-Lights that were mostly there to spread Ichor and preform basic data manipulation. They were followed by the temporarily molten forms of Jane's Champion team as they used that same method to travel, with a bit of help to turn back to normal from the few Ichor creatures that had worked out how to reverse the process that were with them.
"You know, them learning how to do that is only going to make it more likely they will use it when they start getting trainers," the Charizard grumbled with a flick of her wings to shake off the last of the tar as it flowed off her.
"We are making that a requirement to have one," Basirablemon said together. "We're considering bumping up that minimum to four Badges instead of three just to cover it too."
"Keep talking, it has monitoring systems in place that I might be able to track down," A-0 said in a way that seemed slightly off to the other invaders, who proceeded to go into detail about the current preparations for the Corrupt Protector's new Legendary Shrine. They didn't stop breaking things, but they took on a half joking tone that many of them were able to successfully fake for a while.
That was interrupted by the arrival of a massive particularly thick tar blob monster that arrived through one of the two walls that had not yet been damaged. This proceeded to shatter what little was left of the facade, and properly allowed the group to inspect the areas outside of the fake terrain. The bland area was in the center of a massive cave that opened to a surface area in the direction this monster had appeared from. It was fairly clear this was only a small part of the entire world, and while this new foe was clearly the greatest threat present it was not alone. Six other blob monsters of various smaller sizes were also present.
"So, new scans confirm larger than Refactor's core world," Youkomon complained as the demon digimon finished shifting into a nine tailed fox and opened a series of dragonfire panes. "Although not as densely packed."
"ADDWARE," A-0 said loudly to the newly arrived enemies with a disappointed tone. "Your big one only registers as a Champion stage digital life form. It is the size of an Ultimate, and registers as a particularly weak Champion. Tyranomon right after we resurrected him weak."
"I was under the impression I was so damaged that I technically did not meet the requirements," MasterTyranomon said with a confused blink as A-0 fired a particularly strong Signal Beam into the noted blob monster to splatter it. "And that news makes for very concerning context when you casually destroy it like that."
"0h? Has my sib1ing?" the ADDWARE asked mostly clearly as the blob in question attempted to recollect back into a massive single form.
This failed and instead managed two slightly smaller and clearly weaker versions. "Yes," the blue eyed head of Basirablemon said a bit tiredly. "It appears to have done so."
"No, no we aren't in one of those," the red eyed head began to deny, and A-0 blinked at the statement. "You wouldn't."
"Wouldn't I?" the ADDWARE clearly and darkly asked.
"Guys, explanations?" Youkomon complained while all of the newer DSS forces looked perplexed.
"The worst kind of corruption issues," A-0 started with the kind of tone that implied it wasn't the most serious use of the word 'worst'. "The really big ones that aren't actually a threat but needed to be cleaned up as soon as possible."
"The boring ones," Basirablemon lamented as ADDWARE laughed loud and fearlessly.
"Janice, how bad is that actually?" Jack asked with what seemed to be honest fear at the news from the open communication line. "Because I know those two, and that is genuine worry in their tones."
The Troubleshooter Lead took a moment to respond, and that turned out to be because the Lucario was similarly frightened. "The last time we had a small but persistent corruption in a Box it took three weeks to fully clear out, and that was a case where we had the Administrator on our side while we completely leveled her Box," she said a bit faintly. "The first time was before we lost Beta 16, and I was stuck going in and out of a Box with A-0 for a full month." She slumped slightly. "I don't know how long ADDWARE can draw this out if it can pull that in a Box this massive."
"I'm calling Refactor," Smog said in response to that. "It doesn't need to sleep, my brothers do." The digital Salazzle paused for a moment instead of calling. "They do typically get some sleep on this kind of operations, right?"
"Checking emergency stimulant supply for viability and side effects," Metagross sort of answered.
"We had help from a few of the more combat oriented pokemon and developers at DSS for those to give some time for it, but I'm glad we have as much backup as we do now," Janice said without really answering and refocused. "Quagsire, I'm probably going to have your team and Jane's pull back so we can set up some shifts to cover this one."
"If that knockoff Raremon is the best its got then aren't there only Champions against us?" Crusher asked as her trainer and his starter both sputtered at the idea that Shawn and Serperior used stimulants to stay awake for this kind of target. "I thought the big problem with using Basirablemon's army was that it couldn't take anything stronger than that."
The room paused to consider that idea. "Basirablemon, I have bad news that might just make this manageable. Although we still might pull some people back," Janice said thoughtfully to their forces in the field.
"Unf0rtun&te. I did n0t think you had rescued this many of Golden Guard's minions from that battle," the ADDWARE admitted as a literal flood of Ichor Dragons emerged from the cave to the surface of its world. Its voice was still entirely unconcerned. "Or that they would remain this well pr32erved." The surface featured a mixture of large buildings and cave systems across a blasted landscape with rivers and lakes of tar. The sky around them was a black rippling void with the occasional shimmer of red, blue, or purple to make it look like they were surrounded by a great dome of liquid tar.
"Not everyone breaks things when they try and take them over," Youkomon shot back with a cautious glance at the two nearest structures as the fox digimon emerged from the first cave alongside his teammates. "Something's wrong here."
"None of this stuff is doing anything," his trainer's massive red eyed head agreed as he looked up at the 'sky'. "It might have done something once, but this is all decayed beyond functionality."
"These might be a distributed control system, but the data traffic and quality is terrible," Serperior's blue eyed Basirablemon head allowed unhappily. "This might be another case of destroying everything just to be sure. Which sucked every time before, and will probably suck again next time too."
"A-0's going to make us use the dragons again next time," Shawn unhappily agreed as the Ichor-Network hybrids with them emerged from where they had helped to fortify the cavern with some basic Network defense systems. "Not to mention they might be safer than calling in the dev team's pokemon," he added a bit more grimly.
"Our tar is dissolving the ground here," Tarmory cut in as she flapped up to Basirablemon's eye level. "I've had the equipment placed on some Dark Network constructs that will hopefully hold it steady, but we might have issues with safe places to stand if we let it sit on this stuff too long."
"That might be needed," they both replied to her. "We've had to pull up the ground for these kind of things before, and that's when the ground isn't enough of a part of our enemy that we passively attack it."
"If you can stay safe doing it, fly around this rock to get a look at its size," Youkomon instructed with only a briefly annoyed glance at his teammates for once again having already dealt with this sort of issue. "I do not like the way this place curves in the distance, and I think I might see some more rocks up there in the 'sky'." The Skarmory based hybrid digimon nodded and took off to do that.
"How are the HardWare units?" the red eyed head of Basirablemon asked Tartioise as they started to look over the structures.
"They finished setting up the monitoring equipment and went back to keep track of things on it," the Ichor-Network hybrid answered. "Delta 2 is checking everyone on their way back for exposure now."
Tai could vaguely hear Davis in the next room as the others went over last minute preparations for if DSS called on them again. He was on hand with Sora and Biyomon to be ready to send their most experienced Megas first if they were needed. "So long and boring is worse than quick and 'exciting'?" he asked as Janice explained the unusual situation they had actually ended up in.
"Honestly, Tai, looking back on it we probably were more in danger of starving back when we were stuck in the digimon world than from any of the fights," Sora admitted, and after a moment of thought he had to agree with the idea being at least possible. Although not enough to actually say it.
"The second Administrator we ever lost was to one of these kind of issues," Janice answered his question with a dark tone. "That means that one of our few losses so far have been to this kind of threat." Which was an uncomfortable reminder that the Digidestined were actually more used to allies dying than DSS. "Charlie 99 was hit by a ransomware corruption that was functional enough that it managed to encrypt his entire Box. We were incredibly lucky that he was between contracts at the time, so there were only a couple of pokemon present that we were able to get out safely."
Tai looked over at Sora, who seemed just as uneasy with the idea of being 'encrypted' as he was. It sounded like something that he both needed to know about, and did not want to ask Izzy to clarify. "You couldn't fix it?" Sora asked uneasily.
"We didn't fix it," Janice said instead. "Shawn and Serperior were able to 'convince' its creators to give us the keys to unlock it, but becoming a corruption meant we had to do that bit by bit. Two weeks into our five week projection of how long it would take us to fix it one of the development team pokemon helping out made a mistake. A-0 had exhausted itself the day before, and this was before Shawn and Serperior could provide data manipulation support. We got everyone we could out, but Charlie 99 didn't make it."
"Okay, so we need to keep ourselves from getting tired from this," Tai noted at that grim tale. "How many do you want for the first shift?"
"I want to keep your people on standby for at least the rest of today," the Troubleshooter Lead replied seriously. "We want to make sure this isn't just stalling until the trap is ready. Tomorrow morning at the earliest if we need a lot of firepower by that point."
"Any ideas on what the trap could be?" Sora questioned carefully with a glance over to where the conversation in the next room cut off suddenly.
"Honestly, I kind of hope we find one. If there isn't then the ADDWARE is far too casual for this," Janice admitted. "If it isn't some kind of trap then it is something worse somehow."
A-0 returned to the target world around eight hours after it first arrived as backup, this time accompanied by a literal army of every Refactor drone the Corrupt Researcher could spare. After it had barely got a short three hour recharge that was quite troubled the Porygon-2 was moderately ready to cover the second shift.
"So sibling, you have brought my old... Hmph, I s33 th&t you have upgraded, Refactor," the ADDWARE commented as soon as they appeared.
"It has been occasionally commenting on our lack of progress," Shawn's half of Basirablemon noted as it turned to the group they were taking over for.
"None of the structures on the largest rock are functional, and they haven't been for a long time," Gazimon, who A-0 wasn't sure should be in his Rookie form, began to explain as part of the hand off. "There are five smaller ones we haven't been able to check yet."
"This place might be the remains of multiple digital worlds that it has effectively eaten," Serperior's head added grimly. "Be careful, and stick close to Refactor's Light emitters. We're going to get a full scan before getting some sleep."
"Delta 2 is ready for you, and Tyra is waking up afterward to cover my shift," A-0 informed the group, uneasy with how many they might need to check.
"ADDWARE, your actions have been unacceptable," Refactor said with a hostile tone and clearly without any desire for response as the drones took off all across the world to check the remaining potential targets. "Your death will be comforting."
"S0 s3rious ab0ut that," ADDWARE replied dispassionately. "Perhaps you can explain how you can so easily resist me in the heart of my power."
"We could bring in Kari to demonstrate liberal applications of Light, but I think you should already have an idea about how that works, sibling," A-0 bluntly told the Corrupt Admin. "She was the black cat that vaporized some of the Ultimate drones you had Skeletal send against us." It heard a chuckle from all of Shawn's team as they left along with a good number of the Ichor Dragons.
"We should probably not until we have confirmed nothing needs to be kept intact," Refactor somewhat uneasily said in a way that told A-0 that it had not understood it wasn't an entirely serious suggestion. "I have significant sections of my core that her specific group broke in some very unpleasant ways," the allied Great Corruption added to make it clear it was actually following up on the joke. Although it might have been serious and just still upset with the Digidestined.
"I'm pretty sure that wasn't her idea at least," A-0 said just in case it was the second option.
"It would have been better if they completely vaporized the equipment instead. It all needs extensive repairs of small components, but the majority of the structures themselves are intact," the Corrupt Researcher continued to complain, even as its drones spread out across the entire Box. "Which means they need to be disassembled entirely and then rebuilt with new parts. They only left the parts that are cheap to replace intact."
"I had two dozen fully setup worlds before you attacked them," the ADDWARE attempted to join in on the conversation.
"You had two dozen places you had reduced to piles of barely functional scrap in a desperate attempt to keep them from becoming piles of total scrap like what we've found so far here," A-0 uncharitably informed its least favorite sibling.
Jack and his team were on call for A-0 and acting sort of as backup for DSS as a whole while the teams set aside for shifts rested. Naturally, this meant that an issue immediately came up requiring Metagross to intervene. They were as a result nervously standing around the Troubleshooter Lab with just Giratina for company.
"I don't like how we haven't found anything that looks to be the ADDWARE's body," Vibration the Flygon said with worry as they watched A-0 and Refactor analyze and destroy the various structures on the smaller rocky bodies. "Every Fragment had one when they tried to talk to us, and we needed to find Skeletal's bodies in order to take them out."
The rest of his team didn't outright respond, but the sentiment was shared among them. Nothing that the DSS forces had attacked in the world so far had actually seemed to hurt the ADDWARE, or even inconvenience it to any degree. The worst that it had done in response was an attempt to infect everyone who had gone into the world, and even that had not had any real impact.
"We do know we have the right place?" Smog asked with unease. "This thing isn't pulling something like what I'm doing right now, is it? Two places at once?"
"It is not, but I fear this creature does not have an avatar," Giratina grimly replied. "For reference, if I was to dismiss my avatar, the body you see now, then the only way to injure me would be to attack the very barriers around the pokemon worlds in our set of creation that I maintain." He moved a shadowy claw/wing/shadow to form a half there impression of their current target that the various Ghost types could partially recognize as the place from the outside. "There is no barrier to prevent entry to this world, and if nothing inside of it maintains its structure, then I fear we might need to start looking for another way to destroy worlds."
"I don't suppose we could force it to make one?" Jack questioned without any hint he thought the answer could be 'yes'.
"There is a reason I was hopeful that Strip Mine would not self destruct like the prior destruction Legendary," the Ghost/Dragon complained. "This is not the first time I have seen this particular issue. In fact I was hoping to ask for her help with some sealed issues of this kind before..." The grey and gold creation pokemon shook his head. "I wish I could even say. The problem with creatures like her is they die so often it is never clear that they truly fell."
"We have a couple pokemon with her corruption in them," Crusher noted with a look to the currently disconnected medical line where the Monochromon's sister was standing by for support for this shift. "Maybe they could do something?"
"Quagsire, remove everything we didn't bring, and leave the stuff we did for Shawn's team to take out," A-0 said to its replacement after eight long hours of it becoming increasingly clear that they had destroyed everything of value the ADDWARE had controlled before they even arrived in this world.
"That bad huh?" the amphibian trainer said with a look around the now simply rocky world. "I see there aren't any buildings left for us to work on."
"We wasted time to confirm that it has reduced or lost its ability to restrict its decay rate with the loss of the Fragments," Refactor explained with annoyance. "The few structures that had once contained functional equipment began to decay as soon as the communication block was in place. None survived in a useful capacity at the time of your initial assault."
"Because of course things aren't looking great," Quagsire sighed. "Jane, I think we are going to have to take this shift slow," she then added to the comm line back to the DSS facility with a critical look over the amount of rocky landscape present. "But we're going to have to go steady. Can we bring in some Digidestined for firepower?"
"I will need to speak with them about my current thoughts on that," the Flameheart Champion replied with a thoughtful tone. "I haven't heard anyone mention redirected attacks in the reports yet, even though we know the ADDWARE can do that. I don't want to hand it Mega scale attacks if it can't do anything to match those without us starting it."
"I'm a bit concerned about the Ultimate scale attacks we were throwing around when we first hit the place," A-0 agreed tiredly. "I know it redirected some of them, but we didn't keep clear scans of what the damage rates for everything were like."
"It does seem to like taking the things of others to use until they decay," MasterTyranomon said with a look at the terrain around them. "I am not looking forward to stripping the terrain away with low powered attacks to avoid that issue."
"It might not be a better idea to hold back," Grant warned everyone with a critical look at the shifting visual that acted as a sky. "The longer this takes the more chance we have for something to go wrong."
"Yes, we have heard the older teams panic about that," Kabutops quickly agreed with some annoyance. "Can we work a bit faster? I don't like how this place feels."
"Joe, why did we just spend weeks rushing to get Mega forms if we aren't actually going to use them?" a MegaKabuterimon, which was only an Ultimate stage giant red beetle monster, asked over a sudden communication line with considerable anger.
"Izzy, I'm sure we would have needed them if not for this development," the other MegaKabuterimon currently assisting Jane's team in literally stripping the ADDWARE's world of everything attempted to calm the Digidestined's frustrated tech.
Joe sighed and shared an unimpressed look with Gomamon. The two of them were the medical team on call for this third shift, and this was the third Digidestined so far to ask them this question. Tai had been mostly resigned as their leader took on a MetalGreymon form instead of the relatively untested WarGreymon option, while Sora had asked more out of sympathy for the others given her own use of her Mega form during the Refactor Core battle.
"Please keep focused," Joe told the group currently present as he turned back to Biyomon to continue the cleanup check. "We've been losing track of attacks all shift." Which so far had only made the whole process take longer as they needed to use more of their own power to destroy the apparently useless rocks.
"We wanted you for one of these to see if you could find where it is keeping them," Jane said from the other side of the line with some rather hazardous flames clearly audible from near her position. "Given how much of this stuff is gone I think we can rule out hidden under the ground, but if you can't spot something we might need to wait for the more experienced Troubleshooters to check some of the odder options I've been hearing about." Izzy then replied to the Charizard too quietly to be heard instead of continuing to interrogate Joe, and a moment later the Floatzel let out a sigh of relief as the line closed.
"It's definitely trying to be tricky, Joe," Gomamon said as if their examination had not just been interrupted. The ADDWARE's tar had apparently been unable to stick to Shawn's team and forces, and Refactor had handled A-0, but for their current teams they needed to switch out more and more often to make sure they didn't need more extreme options to keep people safe from corruption in the ADDWARE's world.
"Are you guys going to be safe helping us with this?" Biyomon asked and then flinched as Joe used one of the latest Light emitters on her, his Digivice currently being used on Sora by Gomamon.
"We have one of the Golden Guard infection suppressors active here," Joe noted and pointed at a crystal construct behind some fairly robust glass. "One of Refactor's new Light emission towers." That was a tiny version of the digital Archive's central tower that was honestly agreed to be painful to look at when active by everyone who had seen it so far. "And Delta 2's full scanner system to lock us down to stay next to both of those until it isn't detected in any of us anymore."
"If we're lucky you won't end up stuck here until Izzy is fixed because we can't finish the mess ADDWARE made of you before they need to come back," Gomamon complained loudly. "Which feels likely because I'm not the Kido brother that studied medicine seriously, I'm the one who tried to get something closer to a botany job to stay out of it."
"An entire type of pokemon is closer to botany than our typical medicine, Goma," Joe dully countered. "Basirablemon is honestly just botany and chemistry with a bit of digital work thrown in."
"I'm glad Mimi is still out doing Contests right now," his brother replied to that. "I don't need people who are chemistry to work on right now."
"Davis is up next," Sora grumbled in a vain attempt to get them to stop complaining. "I think he's as much chemistry as she is, and he doesn't turn back."
Shawn, Serperior, and Gazimon looked at Quagsire's exhausted team from two of the platforms of Forest's Ichor and Dark Network cables that were now the only physical objects that could be seen in the ADDWARE's core world.
"So, destroying everything didn't work then?" Gazimon asked the tired and clearly worried Troubleshooter team they were back to replace.
"We are hoping you guys can find somewhere it is hiding the real stuff, and the attacks we lost destroying everything else," Kabutops said while Quagsire simply yawned.
"The medical checks have been taking more out of us than the destruction," the amphibian trainer admitted uneasily. "I don't know what to do if we can't finish this quickly."
"Monitoring most likely," Shawn replied with a half joking tone that the half asleep Water/Ground type did not seem to catch wasn't joking very much at all. "Go back and rest, we can take care of this for a while." After that the other team left for one last medical check that hopefully would go fast enough to not keep them from getting rest too long.
Shawn and Serperior calmly changed to Basirablemon and Gazimon to Youkomon, and then the three of them spent a moment to simply look around the Box. Youkomon did not form panes, and Basirablemon did not call on any of the Ichor Dragons or Network Hybrids.
"So, are you going to explain the plan, or will we have to?" Serperior asked grimly as the blue eyed head of Basirablemon sunk into the tar to move to a different platform that his brother's head.
"I think it is qu1te self explanatory," the ADDWARE replied calmly. "I can not lose this fight. My existence is the world around you, and no matter how empty it becomes I will remain as long as it exists." Its voice was accompanied by ripples of dark and light in a vast image of its tar around them. "I have in fact won as much as I need to, as I have trapped you in the longest possible mission I can. A constant effort to keep me from growing beyond this place, with the constant risk of infection for whoever guards me. Five more years, a decade, perhaps even a century, I can wait as long as it takes." The immaterial shadow around them pulsed oddly as the ADDWARE took a moment to simply laugh at them. "The most you can do to me right now is seal me away in this world, a grave threat always at risk of escaping its prison."
"We do have Light to go with Ichor and Network," Youkomon said with a tone that did not indicate he truly disbelieved the Corrupt Admin's statement.
"And how l0ng do you think I will need to t3st those to find a solution to at least one of them?" it asked in response with a laughing tone. "You would need to space out all three to keep this up given what I've just seen over this short time."
"You sound certain nothing can be done to destroy this world," Shawn said instead of answering the question, which drew a cautious look from his brother and a cringe from their digimon teammate. "Your efforts so far have been rather unimpressive. Golden Guard wouldn't have drawn anywhere near as much attention to you if he hadn't gone after us so seriously, and your attempt at taking over Refactor failed spectacularly to lead to this situation."
"I can &dmit that the Golden Guard situati0n was a mistake," the ADDWARE gleefully replied. "However my victory was assured the moment you faced Strip Mine. No matter the outcome I won. Either she defeated you, and my takeover would finish both of you off, or what happened would occur." The Troubleshooters tensed at this, and Shawn's red eyes focused on one particular spot with cold rage. "You helped me destroy the only creature that could possibly truly kill me. Anything more than that would have been a clearer victory, but the moment she died I became invulnerable."
"Oh? I've died quite a bit, ADDWARE. What made that time special?" a familiar voice asked from behind the Troubleshooters, to the surprise of the fox shaped digimon and blue eyed Basirablemon, but simply a smugly relieved look from the red eyed head. The world around them rippled to mostly blue and red in a clear display of shock.
"I think the ADDWARE thought you needed your Ultimate bodies for it to work here," Shawn informed the slightly pained looking group of six Strip Mine clones. The small reptile corruption were some of the smallest size they had seen before and all a sickly yellow color instead of a bunch of different ones. "What do you think?"
"Shawn, if you have been conspiring with her this entire time just to hide that she was alive, I'm going to be angry with you," Serperior's head said before anyone else could comment.
"I'm pretty sure he's just been overconfident, with good luck as well," Youkomon grumbled.
"Imp0221ble," the ADDWARE said the most distorted yet. "Save on-It is n0t p0221ble. Data transmission had halted between the lesser copies," it continued audibly forcing its voice back to clarity. "This illusion will not intimidate me."
"Oh I'm much harder to deal with permanently than that, and for the record if Shawn knew then even I didn't know he knew," Strip Mine loudly declared in response to that. "Serious time guys, I'm nowhere near 100%, keep him off at least three of me," she quickly and quietly added to the Troubleshooters as her copies began to do something with their claws while simply floating in the massive void.
"For how long?" Youkomon asked even as he shifted to Pegasusmon and started creating barrier panes around the Corrupt Destroyer.
"Fuck if I know, I barely made it here with help from that taunt," she quickly and with great annoyance replied.
"Wait, Shawn was right that saying you were dead would summon you?" Basirablemon's blue eyed head asked as the various platforms began to shift to assist.
"No," the ADDWARE declared and a number of very poor condition Golden Guard Knights, Refactor combat drones, Skeletal Fragment constructs, and even a few distortion constructs appeared just outside of Pegasusmon's barrier. All of these creatures were partially melted into the same raw tar they had faced when they first entered the world. It was clear from how they moved in their immediate attempt to land their attacks that Pegasusmon's efforts had displaced at lest some of them outwards from Strip Mine's positions.
"I think 'yes'," Basirablemon commented as they sent a devastating barrage of leaves and tar that shattered the decayed force, and then the thick Ichor of that attack clung and spread to surround the sphere of shields.
"Can someone come inside of this thing to see if it tries to attack?" Strip Mine called out for the now quite opaque sphere as the two heads of Basirablemon retreated through their tar. "Uh, okay, now there are a few of the smaller guys in here." Then the two halves of the massive root snake Corrupt Protector emerged from the tar of the sphere and curled around it as well to add their bodies to the defense. "Whoa, wait a minute little guys, I don't need any other heads!"
"Be sure to be firm about that," all three of the Troubleshooters noted. "They can get pushy if you let them."
"Pl3&se pay att3nt1on when I'm tr7ing to ki1l you," the ADDWARE buzzed and sent a barrage of stolen attacks at them. Lightning, energy balls, Basirablemon's own solar beams, and at least a dozen more things attempted in the clearing of the Box slammed into the hastily made barriers, the wood of Basirablemon's form, the tar beyond that, and some even making it to the hidden barriers below.
"Strip Mine, we're both barely recovered from a hard hit," the blue eyed head of Basirablemon cautioned with a flinch as a particularly large chip of his half of the body was knocked off by a strong blast of flame. "I understand that back from the dead is a bit worse than that, but a bit faster would be appreciated."
"I've lost two already. Just buy me another minute, and then you're going to need to get all of us out," the Destroyer shot back.
"Strip Mine, please tell me you haven't brought all of yourselves here," Shawn said with concern as Pegasusmon opened four different panes and moved behind the bulk of Basirablemon to protect them.
"Not all of them, but the ones still left behind might take a bit of work for you to find, and possibly can't move themselves," she admitted quickly as the attacks began to fall off. It clearly was more the result of a lack of options than a desire to stop sending them, but a smaller number of tar and conventional light based attacks typical of a Porygon that were notably weaker but clearly the ADDWARE's own attempted to take over the fight.
"N0. N! Available for a limited time!" the ADDWARE raged incoherently. "Save 50% off one when you buy six!"
"Die!" Strip Mine shouted from within the barrier, and then the world quite literally cracked.
"N1 n23- al33 f24b n20. M3t e7231b7n go2n3 at-" the ADDWARE attempted to speak, and then let out a burst of static, "49276d20736f727279207369626c696e67732c2049207761736e2774207374726f6e6720656e6f75676820746f2073746f70206d7973656c662e"
"Exiting!" Pegasusmon shouted, and they vanished in a flash of light just before the ADDWARE shattered.
"Strip Mine?" was the rapid confused question out of Delta 2 when the four bodies left crashed onto the floor of Box 201 alongside a Basirablemon that lasted only moments before shifting back into Shawn and Serperior, and Gazimon who similarly was turned back to his typical form immediately. "Shawn, please tell me you didn't recruit Charlie 13 into more necromancy just to kill the ADDWARE!"
"Listen, can- wait 'more'? Necromancy is a 'more' for you guys?" Strip Mine questioned a bit fearfully and then shook her heads. "No, wait, this is DSS, those questions are to be expected. Can someone find out if Refactor still has the records of my repairs? I had to go back a lot of backups to survive, and these bodies weren't entirely up for that stable of a world."
"So you were able to survive then," the medical Administrator said with some relief even as she opened a pane to contact the Researcher.
"Barely, most of the backups older than the one I activated have decayed in storage," Strip Mine answered tiredly. "There were only three intact ones that weren't infected, and the two older ones have developed problems with their transport systems."
"Does anyone else feel like a great weight has been lifted? Because it is kind of freaking me out," Gazimon contributed.
"Shawn, how the heck did you just do that?" Janice suddenly cut in. "Mew just popped in as soon as it died freaking out about how a great evil just died and he didn't even know the ADDWARE was that bad."
"I am a pretty Fairy who just had to show up to prove my enemies wrong," Strip Mine singsonged sarcastically. "I think I caught the tail end of the ADDWARE admitting it had basically lost, and only hadn't died because I wasn't there. So I think formal congratulations can be given to the Corrupt Protector for winning overall."
"So, we do still have the Legendary that can destroy worlds? Because Arceus asked me directly about that a week ago, and I really want to tell the Creator we don't need to make a new one," Mew replied instead with a different kind of concern.
"So, its done then? No more major threats we need to worry about?" Tai asked a bit tiredly after being woke up in order to quickly inform their allies of the outcome of the battle.
"We have new options to deal with corruption, can track a lot of the increase in corruption attacks to the ADDWARE's efforts, and more local support than ever," Janice attempted to reassure the MRT leader. "I feel I can safely say that DSS isn't going to need direct support again unless someone deliberately attempts to make a threat, and at this point I'm half tempted to ask Dialga for help making sure we get a year off from that after how things have gone."
"I'd like to finally learn what it is like on a normal day for Troubleshooters," Quagsire agreed just as tired as the Digidestined of Courage. "How are you taking things, A-0?"
"We are adding the ADDWARE to the list of lost Administrators," the Porygon-2 declared as it listened to the final moments of the ADDWARE for the fourth time so far, and then quite deliberately closed the audio file. "It was close enough to count, and I want some record of it left."
"Do I want to know what it was saying at the end?" Janice asked grimly.
"No," A-0 replied with a somewhat haunted look. "I don't think you do."