Chapter 10: Desperation
15:45 PM (Japan Time), Monday June the 15th…
"Alert! Break-in in MoS Area 4! Alert! Alert! Three intruders detected! Counter the attack!"
"Search Man! Combat procedure!"
"Hmpf. I could deal with the vampire! I can deal with more of those!"
Zero and Search Man had been talking when the alarms rang out.
"I'm joining, too!"
"Good timing, Gate Man. The more, the better…"
Gate Man came in and readied his cannon.
"Hmmm! Tengu Man Omicron will punish evildoers! Such is the heavenly command granted into me!"
"Ground Man Omicron is gonna run them over and turn them into dust!"
"And Dust Man Omicron will recycle them!"
"What can that rusted guy do? I'm ten times better!"
"Shaddup! Dust Man Omicron is in charge!"
"What! Dust Man! You lowlife!" Tengu Man cursed.
"Trying to get the glory?" Ground Man growled.
"You two are weak!"
"Hmpf. In-fighting? So much for "evolved" Navis…" Zero scoffed.
"… Which one will die first?" Death Shadow's icy voice rang out.
"Lord Death Shadow!" They all gasped.
"I control your existences… One snap of my fingers… And you will forever be erased from this world!" Death Shadow threatened.
"Hyper Mode: Activate!"
"Hyper Tengu Dive!"
"Hyper Rock Crush Breaker!"
"Hyper Dust Break!"
"Scope Gun!"
"Z – Saber!"
"Gate Cannon!"
Tengu Man flew into the air and then dived towards Search Man who replied by shooting a laser from his built-in "Scope Gun".
Ground Man ran forward while activating his built-in drills and heading towards Zero, who shot some energy swings from his built-in weapon.
Dust Man tried to hit Gate Man with his right fist, and he replied by shooting at his face.
"Is that all?" They all taunted.
"Far from it…" Laika dully shot back.
"Hyper Tengu Thrust!"
"Hyper Rock Crush Breaker!"
"Hyper Dust Break!"
"Go!"
"Satellite Ray!"
"Z – Saber!"
"Remote Gate! Demon's Hand!"
Search Man formed a small orbital satellite, which shot a green laser at Tengu Man as he extended his nose.
Zero countered the earlier attack with the same technique.
Gate Man ran into a "Remote Gate" to avoid Dust Man's attack.
"What!"
He reappeared behind his mole and shot his arm with a claw at the end, which opened wounds on his back, which began to seep "Omicron Factor", but he didn't seem to care.
"Crafty! But how's this one for a change?"
He stepped atop the growing gel puddle and formed a black arm cannon, the barrel of which was glowing with the familiar ghostly blue color.
"Omicron Beam!"
He shot a continuous beam of concentrated and high-pressured gel towards Gate Man, but he warped away and left a bronze statue behind.
The beam bounced off the statue and hit Tengu Man's device, breaking it and making him collapse into the ground.
"I-impossible!" Dust Man gasped.
"You may have beaten the old Tengu Man jerk but I'm still at full power!"
"Once more should do it! Omicron Beam!"
Ground Man and Dust Man ran forward as they formed the arm cannons again and loaded them as gel rained down from black stalactites.
"When did those…?" Meijin gasped.
"Devil. They're trying to reshape the terrain to their advantage!"
"Isolate the sector! NOW!" Gate Man ordered.
"Omicron Beam! It'll pierce through any shields!"
"But it can't handle thick things! Take this! Jizo statue!"
The statuette formed, receiving the blunt of both attacks, triggering its counterattack and making lightning bolts rain down.
Both Navis yelped because their metallic bodies conducted electricity.
"Hmpf! Pathetic fools! I'll show you how it's done!"
Tengu Man recovered, having repaired his device, and forming Tesla coils on his forearms, drawing the electricity towards him.
"Hmpf! Eat your own toy!"
He spun around his axis and shot it just as Gate Man emerged from the Remote Gate and tried to shoot his Gate Cannon, jumping inside of him through the muzzle and damaging him internally.
"You're feeble! But I'll remake you into an evolved existence!"
He rushed for Gate Man but Zero appeared on his path and stabbed him on the lower torso, stopping him as he formed a flaming fist on his left fist and punched the control device with it, only to be bounced off.
"Hmpf! I accounted for the weakness!" Death Shadow scoffed.
Zero didn't comment and merely jumped backwards as Gate Man evacuated from the area and Tengu Man grumbled.
"Hmpf. Fine. Then be destroyed when Omicron rules this pitiful planet!"
He formed two blue swords on his forearms and began to clash blades with Zero, who silently yielded terrain.
"I'm hovering! Mines won't harm me!"
Zero didn't say anything and merely formed an extra blade to be able to fight Tengu Man at the same level, each one parrying the other's attacks.
"Hmpf! We outnumber you, little green soldier!"
"Maybe you need horn broken like little Kimari?"
"You're no better than schoolyard bullies!"
"What!?"
Ground Man and Dust Man were trying to intimidate Search Man, but they were ignited when Laika counterattacked.
"I see you wish to be wiped out with those other fools…"
"N-no, our Lord! We fight! Omicron Beam!"
Both shot their arm cannons at Search Man, but they only managed to shatter a set of mirrors set there and had projected his image.
"What!?"
"Sorry for the holdup… Yamato Man has come!"
"Reinforcements! Devil!"
Yamato Man ran in and stopped to assess the situation.
"Whatever! Dust Man! Go shatter little Kimari! I'll shatter that fool!"
"Hmpf! Whatever!"
Dust Man jumped further in to try to locate Search Man.
Ground Man used boosters to rush for Yamato Man, but he merely flung his spear at his face, between both eyes, and shattered a small blue jewel.
Ground Man groaned as Yamato Man jumped over him with a new spear, and stabbed the left caterpillars, shattering the outer layer and managing to get the spear stuck between the wheels.
"This won't stop me!"
He formed a new set of boosters to fly upwards and then began to fling the infamous grenades.
"Spiral Spear!"
Yamato Man spun the spear on his hands and bounced them back at the attacker himself, momentarily stunning him through the detonations of each of the grenades.
"Thousand Spears!"
He rushed forward and moved his spear in a quick succession of thrusts, giving the impression there were countless spears.
The attacks didn't inflict much damage, but they began to push the mole backwards and to impede him from counterattacking.
"T-this JERK! I've had enough! Hyper Mode! Fragmentation Grenades!"
He turned on his device and flung a new set of grenades that shattered upon detonation and scattered droplets of gel across the area.
"Compared to your stunt at IPC, this is lame…" Laika taunted.
"You're the one who's LAME! Hiding all the time!" Ground Man growled.
"A sniper never reveals their location…"
"Not even DUST will remain of YOU!"
"Less boasting. Use the AI…"
"You wish to see the end of evolution so much; I shall grant your wish!"
"What? Devil!"
The purple "portal" formed in the air and countless blue Net Navis dropped down into the area, forming puddles upon touching down.
Their masses vibrated and split in two at the center to then grown the missing half and become one again.
"I'm fed up! Tengu Thrust!"
Tengu Man ran out of patience and tried to hit Zero, but he ducked and stabbed both blades diagonally below the device and they pierced through his chest to emerge from behind and make the gel leak out.
"I see. He judged that Tengu Man is impatient and used that chance to force him to switch to another attack and expose his weakness…"
"Sir Laika. These "blue Navis" are increasing beyond control, sir!"
"I can see that. Guess we'll have to sweep!"
"Found you! Omicron Beam!"
Dust Man stopped running in circles and looked in one direction to then shoot the beam there, hitting the wall and breaking a stone wall.
Search Man rolled out of the camouflaged space and shot a precise shot at the right ankle of Dust Man, making him wince and stop on his tracks before he could run for Search Man.
"Optical camouflage ignited…"
He turned invisible and Dust Man growled as he swung his arms.
"I'll hit you sooner or later!"
"Satellite Ray!"
The beam from the satellite set fire to the gel on his back and he yelped as he rolled across the ground and tried to put it off, but he only managed to ignite the puddles building up there and several of the blue Navis.
"Hmpf. Matters not. I have plenty of them in store…"
"Stay still, Samurai wannabe! I'll make you become one with the SOIL!"
"Hmpf! Prove your strength first, you fool!"
Yamato Man was jumping around Ground Man, who was trying to hit him, but he was unable to do that due to his slow movements.
"Omicron! Make me evolve! Beyond this weak body!"
"So be it! Embrace the power of the Universe!"
Ground Man roared as the energy reached a peak and his caterpillars dissolved into gel to be replaced by thick clawed legs.
His arms also grew bigger and turned into huge machineguns.
The drills on his shoulders became cannon muzzles and the head drill was replaced by a spear.
"Hmpf. Evolve? Power of the Universe? Laughable! It is but delusions!"
"CRUSH!"
Ground Man howled as he sprinted forward, faster than expected, and unloaded his cannons into Yamato Man followed by his spear piercing through his neck and pinning him into the ground.
"DELETE~!"
"Hmpf. Fool!"
Yamato Man simply made his spear become a flaming body and it flew towards the chest device, shattering the barrier and piercing inside of it to ignite the gel inside of Ground Man.
"Time to purge with the flames of demon's bane!" He scoffed.
Ground Man howled but didn't stop his advance, using his claws to tear through Yamato Man's chest armor and into his body.
He loaded up the cannons and shot two streams of gel at his chest, piercing through it and forming a puddle beneath him from which countless tendrils emerged and attached to his body.
"I'll take that body~!" Ground Man roared.
He bombarded it with the machineguns before replacing them for hands and gripping the body with both, lifting it up and bringing it towards him.
However, the body's chest glowed, and an energy release ensued.
A beam of pure light shot out from there and pierced Ground Man's head, erasing the spear on its wake and making him howl as a golden sphere emerged from atop the head and flew upwards.
"What was that!?" Death Shadow growled.
"Hmpf. Lord Serenade's strategy was brilliant, as always…"
Yamato Man reappeared at another spot of the area.
"That was a fake body…! Remotely controlled…!"
"Indeed. And Lord Serenade's purifying program has isolated his consciousness program and his memory files, quarantining them because that body is beyond repair and will have to be burnt down…"
"Why, you…! Petty tricks…!"
Dust Man was trying to stand up from his position, on his fours.
Most of his central body was gone and he had burn marks over the rest.
Fires rampaged around that section of the area.
"I secured Tengu Man already. You're next!"
Zero rushed for Dust Man and swung his left arm to make a golden net drop down and pin Dust Man to the ground before wrapping around him and warping him outside the area.
"Any other hostiles, Search Man?"
"No. The earlier fire wiped out all "blue Navis"…"
Zero looked over at where the mutated Ground Man had been, but the only thing left was a burn mark on the ground.
"Hmpf. Too early to consider yourself victorious, fools…"
A blizzard blew across the area and put out the fires as the ground froze.
Snow built up across the area, too, as well as ice spears.
A growl rang out as a mass of gel grew bigger and formed a copy of the "Gospel" beast coupled with two huge wings and holes on its underside from which gel dropped down and generated copies of Viruses.
There was an explosion, and a beam of energy flew for the beast, but it simply opened a hole on its body to allow the beam to fly past it.
"Hmpf. Excellent… Lured out by the bait…" Death Shadow muttered.
"Out of my way, fools… This power is mine!"
"Devil! That's Forte!"
"What!"
Forte had shown up there, his eyes glowing with eagerness.
He jumped for the beast as the foe formed several devices on its crown, and they ignited to fire thing lasers aiming for the edges of his body.
Forte flung his cloak at it and flipped in mid-air to form a jetpack.
He flew over the beast and drew his Dark Arm Blades.
He dived head-on for the main body as a hole opened.
"Or so you thought? Eat this!"
He formed a purple energy sphere and dropped it inside the hole before flying away as the hole closed.
The sphere detonated in a ring-shaped shockwave and split the body into two horizontal halves.
The upper half shifted backwards some centimeters in mid-air before dropping atop the lower half and making the legs yield, becoming a feature less mass of gel that scattered across the ground.
Purple spots began to form on the surface, and they began to interlink, triggering chain reactions and igniting the gel while drawing patterns.
"Hmpf. Is that your wisdom, Ultimate Net Navi? Or is it Serenade's?"
"Hmpf. At this point, it doesn't matter… Fight me for real!"
"Death Spiral Beam!"
"What? Hell!"
A hum rang out as energy loaded up.
A spiral rotatory beam propelled forward from "nowhere", hitting his back and staining it with gel.
"Hyper Missile!"
A white and blue missile shot out and detonated right before the neck, dropping more gel over his head and neck.
"Death Beam!"
A red beam shot out and latched to his back to then siphon energy.
"Scope Gun! Satellite Ray!"
Search Man's attacks hit the source of the attacks and shattered the optical camouflage of Death Shadow, who shrugged and thrust forward to plunge his left hand's fingers into Forte's body from behind.
"You lowlife…!" Forte growled.
"You brought this into yourself! Greedy fool!" He laughed.
"Salamander!"
Death Shadow had already put distance as Forte shot upwards.
He dived for him, but Death Shadow loaded up energy on his arm cannon and shot a charged attack at the ground in a diagonal angle, forming a trail of dark blue gel on its wake.
Forte ignored that and continued his dive, but Death Shadow slowly began to lift his cannon to change the angle of the beam and it hit his adversary when he was loading up energy on his right hand, taking out the hand and causing for the unstable energy to detonate and damage him.
Forte howled and drew his Dark Arm Blade to split the arm cannon into two pieces, but Death Shadow merely gripped his face and plunged his fingernails into his skin.
"I am the source of Omicron Factor! I have the power of the Universe!"
"Shut up!"
Forte groaned as blue gel began to seep out from his eyes and mouth.
"Despair!"
Death Shadow turned around and put Forte behind him as Zero tried to stab him from behind but only managed to pierce through Forte's body below the chest.
"Did you think I do not know how to use a radar?" He taunted.
Zero merely jumped back, drawing out the sword, before Death Shadow punched Forte's chest emblem with the regenerated arm cannon and pushed him away, tossing him into the ground.
He then formed a white ovaloid with three square lights lined up vertically along the center stripe of it.
"That's a power bomb! Put distance!" Meijin warned.
"Run in vain, fools!"
He flung it into the air as he hovered away and formed a crystal out of the gel to shield himself from the detonation.
Zero grabbed Forte and jumped away as Yamato Man also did the same.
The device beeped and detonated, causing for an energy shockwave to sweep across the area and scorch it on its wake.
The crystal where Death Shadow was sheltering began to crack and shake, but it didn't fully yield.
"Hmpf. What "Ultimate"? It is but delusions! Illusions of power!"
He shattered the crystal to come out and brandished the left fist.
"This IS true power!"
"Screen Divide!"
"Magma Seed!"
"Hmpf. More fools? It shall not change the outcome of this struggle!"
"I am Colonel! I'll defeat you! Get ready!"
"I'm Iris, a support unit! And I'll showcase my strategies!"
Colonel and Iris (in her Net Navi outfit) rushed into the area.
Colonel shot his streaks of green lightning while Iris flung a capsule.
The ground around Death Shadow turned into magma but he was unfazed as he swung his left and formed a shield from thick algae around his body.
Colonel and Iris took up positions on opposite sides of the area to be able to decide their next move.
"This can't be…! I'm the strongest…! I survived on my own…! It can't be that I lose so easily to such fools…!" Forte groaned.
"You overestimate your power output!" Yamato Man grumbled.
"Shut up…!"
"Can't you tell Serenade to retrieve and shelter him?"
"Here I am. I shall use this program Omega gave me to purge him!"
Serenade stepped into the area and crouched next to Forte.
His hands glowed as he hovered them over his face.
"Forte. You are strong, but you do overrate your power and rush in thinking it all takes one blow to win… That is why I was trying to teach you that one must use wisdom to make it through…" He sighed.
"Says the fool who never fights me for real…!"
"We will argue that later… Yamato Man. Secure a way out…"
"Roger, my Lord! Right away!"
Yamato Man ran towards them and formed a golden gateway.
Serenade made Forte hover in the air and then headed there, towing him.
"Remember the taste of evolution! You will soon carve for more!"
"Shut up…! Freak…! That's no evolution…! It wants to turn me into a freak like you and feed on the weak…!" Forte groaned.
"Freak? Hmpf. Fools that cannot comprehend evolution are always quick to try to deny it… Kurayami and Kanaya told me there is plenty of them that cling to fantasies and avert their eyes from reality because it does not suit their "wonderful image" of how the world came to be!"
"While I cannot deny there are such humans out there, what you are doing is hardly "evolution"… You call it like that to sound imposing and pretend it is natural selection… But it is but turning things into grotesque deformations and robbing them of will, making them things that can only act upon instinct and devour each other…" Serenade argued back.
"Survival of the fittest! Now… Be gone!"
"He's going to use a power bomb again! Shelter!"
"Not if I can stop it! Scope Gun!"
"Wise move, Search Man!"
Search Man managed to hit the bomb before it activated and make it fly away from Death Shadow's left hand, shattering in pieces in mid-air.
"You are merely delaying the inevitable! The will of the Universe!"
"Colonel Cannon!"
"Paralyze Bomb!"
Colonel and Iris used the chance to attack, but the foe didn't bother to block or avoid the attacks, merely shrugging them.
"I am Death itself! This is but an incarnation of my power!"
"What. Trying to say that even if we destroy your body, it's in vain?"
"Indeed! Because you cannot run away from your fate!"
"I never said that, though?" Meijin argued back.
"Don't bother, Meijin. I doubt anything we say is worth it…"
"Hmpf. If I feel like it, I will make a blizzard bury you under its might!"
"Trying to intimidate someone stationed at Siberia with blizzards?"
"You humans are fools, believing that walls master the nature!"
Death Shadow built up energy around his body as he hovered and then shot forward at Colonel, who readied a set of Stone Cubes.
"Colonel Army!"
His soldiers emerged from them, shooting machineguns, mortars and bazooka at the incoming Death Shadow, who let them hit them as he didn't heed the damage and loaded up energy on his arm cannon.
He, however, turned to the right and shot towards an empty space.
The attack shattered a mirror as Search Man flew away from his spot.
"My network of nervous systems allows me to see anything that exists within this area and others! There is nowhere to hide!"
"Search Man! We'll pull out before it tries to infect you!"
"That is enough games… I must continue the experiments… Although… The data that I have collected will be useful… Omega! I am sure that you must be watching this from somewhere… I shall be waiting for you!"
He laughed in a cold way as he broke down into particles that flew away.
"Devil! He's able to decompose his body into small data packages which aren't detected by radar because they're so small!" Meijin grumbled.
"Hence why he was able to come in undetected!"
"We shall have to come with filters to hinder his advance…"
"What is the status, Lord Serenade?"
"The program is working and purging the small traces of the factor…"
"I see. You put him to sleep so that he won't fight back…"
"We shall retreat to my domains. I shall warn you if I find something…"
"Understood. We'll need to design something to fight that thing, too!"
"Sheesh. It reminds me of Nyx Avatar in Persona 3…" Laika grumbled.
"Now that you bring it up… That thing was also a personification of "death" itself, too…" Meijin muttered.
"At least it doesn't have a second phase that's blown out of proportion!"
"We should be glad of it! Let's hope he doesn't take the idea from there!"
"I apologize for being unable to properly conduct the tasks, sir…"
"You did what you could. This situation is too crazy, beyond logic!"
"We should start work on rebuilding Ground Man's body, too…"
"What about Gate Man?"
"Minor damage. He'll soon recover, too…"
"Iris and I will continue to hunt for leads… They don't scare us!"
"We must put a stop to them soon, or else…!"