My head shot up.

The earth shook.

Guilmon began to growl.

The air trembled.

Takato gasped.

"Oh shit."

The lights in the room flickered.

And a moment later, alarms blared.

"Riley, what's happening?!"

"Something is coming from the Juggernaut Hole!"

"What?!"

"What..." Takato breathed. "Is that?"

"The D-Reaper..."

I looked up- I couldn't see the D-Reaper itself, but its presence was... distorting this dimension strangely.

Nothing big- certainly not like the effect that Megidramon's presence could have, but it was having an effect on reality nonetheless.

"We have to evacuate." I noted. "The D-Reaper has just entered this dimension. Get everything you need, I'll take us away."

The people in the room scrambled into action, grabbing a number of things from around the room.

I, meanwhile, paid attention to the slight distortion in reality that the D-Reaper was generating- which was spreading at an alarming rate, growing larger and larger, though not more intense.

"We need to leave soon, people." I stared. "The D-Reaper is growing quick."

shudder

I'd felt that.

My eyes narrowed, and I spread out my senses.

There!

Nowhere near Shinjuku.

Nowhere near Tokyo.

Nowhere near Japan.

China.

It has already spread?

shudder

And again!

shudder shudder shudder

And thrice more.

Where did it go?

I focused.

America. Australia. Germany. Europe.

"We're ready." Yamaki said. He took out a phone, beginning to press keys.

I twisted space, and took all of us away, heading directly to the park- more or less empty this time of night.

"Good, because we have a problem." I faced the Metropolitan Building-

And immediately saw the small, red blob of chaotic mass spreading upwards around the building.

"This is only a single instance- I sensed four others, each one in different countries."

shudder

"Make that five."

"We need a transport at the park, we're retreating to Shibuya." Yamaki said.

I turned to him- and then noticed that he was on the phone. "Sir-"

"Now!"

"Yes sir."

"It's too small." Gorou frowned.

"What?" Daisy asked.

"It's too small." He repeated. "Unless it is exceedingly efficient program, that size shouldn't be enough to conceal its core. Unless... it's just operating off a small list of instructions for now?" He shook his head.

"If you want me too, I can go rip apart another instance and check if it has a core?" I asked.

"That... would be good, yes. If it doesn't have a core, then it's not intelligent on its own."

"Right. I'll be back soon."

I turned to Takato, Guilmon, Rika, Renamon, Henry, Terriermon, Jeri, and Leomon. "You all stay safe, okay?"

I didn't give them a chance to respond- just slipped into a Corridor of Darkness and headed off to Australia.

I appeared in the middle of a city- Sydney, if the Opera House off in the distance was any indication.

I turned, facing the growing D-Reaper mass, identical to the one in Shinjuku, save for the fact that it was slightly smaller.

Only nearly as tall as me, instead of nearly a meter larger.

For a moment, I stared at it, looking on a deeper level.

It is completely separate from other instances.

It grows and then consumes. A pattern repeated until a threshold is reached.

I jumped down, my fingers lengthening into claws, wicked and impossibly sharp.

I hit the ground in front of the mass, digging my claws into it, and then twisting space to take it away from the city, away from where people could get hurt.

I felt it try to consume me, failing utterly as I was not made of data or matter.

I brought it to the middle of the park- where there was nobody around to see either it or me.

I pulled my claws out of its mass for a moment, lighting them up with empyreal fire, and began to burn away at it.

It undulated as I did, roiling and shifting, moving backwards- but not fast enough to escape.

Carefully, I slowly reduced it in size, my black flames leaving absolutely nothing of what they burned behind. It kept trying to shift away, but it wasn't going to get away from me.

When it was small enough, I let the flames on one hand extinguish, and then plunged it into the D-Reaper mass, routing around and feeling for anything that might resemble a core-

But I didn't find anything,

I extended several dozen tiny spikes through the D-Reaper mass, but I didn't encounter anything other than the gooey, red substance.

No core, then.

I burned more of the mass away, retracting the spikes and pulling my hand out of it.

I wasn't entirely sure whether that was good or bad.

I continued to burn the mass, only stopping when there was an extremely small drop left.

I wrapped it in Darkness, keeping it contained for the moment.

For a few seconds, I stared at it.

I wonder...

I pumped a small amount of My Darkness into it, beginning to corrupt the tiny mass.

I felt some... not resistance, but it was slightly harder to corrupt it than it was to corrupt any other random object.

But not impossible.

I poured in a bit more of My Darkness, seizing control over the mass.

It is adaptive, and mutative.

It is Hypocritical, too.

It deletes other programs that have grown beyond their intended purpose.

It has grown beyond its intended purpose.

It was... fairly simple, actually.

Surprisingly simple.

It had been made that way on purpose.

Huh.

I pulled my Darkness out of the mass, letting it return to its normal state-

And then I immediately and violently incinerated it, black flames burning the last bit of the D-Reaper mass out of existence.

Hmm.

I slipped into a Corridor of Darkness.

shudder

"The answer is no."

I appeared inside a van, directly next to Gorou.

He jumped slightly, but settled down quickly.

"That D-Reaper mass didn't have a core."

"You dealt with it?"

"I incinerated it." I answered.

"The D-Reaper is vulnerable to fire?"

"Everything is vulnerable to fire once it gets hot enough." I paused. "Come to think of it, I've been solving a lot of my problems with fire nowadays."

"Nothing wrong with that."