Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the Naruto or Digimon franchises. Comments/Criticism is fine as long as it isn't straight up hate or flaming. If you do not like, no one is forcing you to read and you can just leave.

Thank you for reading and please enjoy

Humon

-Chapter 25-

-Last Time-

However…

The fur on his arms had turned pitch black all the way up to his shoulders along with three of his nine tails, and his arm sleeve things had streaks of blood red along them. Thin streaks of black fur had also branched out from his left eye, which now glowed a vibrant crimson in the black abyss of his sclera. Finally, his shirt had been almost entirely destroyed in the fight, revealing the scar across his chest from the black gear pulsing with dark energy in exact rhythm of his heartbeat.

"Good thing you're… you're here… I… I don't feel… so… well." Naruto barely managed to say before collapsing.

-And Now-

As soon as Naruto hit the ground, the group snapped out of their shock and rushed over to help. Matt and Mimi were the first to reach him and quickly flipped him over while moving Koromon out of the way before recoiling as small dark discharges leapt from the blonde's form.

Concerned but not knowing what to do, Mimi turned to the only person that might and saw that Izzy was already two steps ahead of her. "The dark data that SkullGreymon was releasing must of infected him during the fight. We need to get rid of it fast before he gets completely corrupted."

Instead of pulling out his computer as he was talking like she expected however, the tech genius grabbed the digivice on his bag's shoulder strap and pointed it at the blonde as it began giving off a bright light. Realizing what he was doing, Mimi quickly did the same and was soon followed by everyone else but Tai who stayed back with a look of guilt on his face.

As the light bathed over him, Naruto spasmed erratically for several seconds before small amounts of black smoke began to rise from his body. At the same time, his features slowly started to return to normal starting with his arms and tails, making the kids to relax a bit.

Unfortunately, the relief was only short-lived.

Before the process was even a third of the way done, Naruto suddenly went from spasming to a full-blown seizure as blood started spouting from his mouth and the scar on his chest pulsed rapidly.

As soon as they saw this, everyone dropped their arms or back away in shock, causing the digivices to stop glowing and the blonde to settle down. "What the heck?" Joe asked as he glanced down at the device in his hand then back at Naruto. "That's not supposed to happen, right?"

"Must be because he's half human, we'll have to try something else." Izzy said as he now pulled out his laptop and plugged the cord into Naruto's hand with a bit of difficulty thanks to the random shocks.

"Like what?" Mimi asked worriedly as she leaned over the boy's shoulder as he worked on his computer.

"I could possibly flush out the corrupted data by doing a complete digital analysis and isolating the affected areas." Izzy said while typing, a 3D wire frame image of Naruto appearing on his screen as he spoke. "I just need to modify a few firewalls to act as containment programs and voila." Izzy said while punching the enter key. "Now I just need to wait for… *Beep* Huh? …Hold a second, this can't be right." He muttered in confusion as his computer pinged and several readouts popped up. Reading them over carefully, his confusion only grew before he started typing like mad.

"What can't be right? Izzy, what's wrong?" Matt asked, only to be ignored by the computer whizz as he worked in such a fever it was a miracle that none of the keys of his laptop broke.

Of course, it didn't help that Izzy could be heard muttering, "This doesn't make sense." under his breath as he went through dozens of lines of code within seconds then hitting the enter key to see several different results. This included the image of Naruto being replaced with one of a beating heart with an odd blocky spot in the middle of it, making Izzy's eyes widen upon seeing it. "No… no, no, no no nonononono." Repeating the process, Izzy actually swore much to the shock of the others as it showed the same thing again.

"Damn it! How could I have missed that? I made sure to check everything. I would have noticed… …of course, the glitch! It must have infected my computer when I hooked up before!" He exclaimed while smacking his forehead in frustration.

"Izzy, could you please tell us what's going on?" Tentomon said as he floated to the side of his partner and placed a claw on his shoulder.

"Yeah, starting with that." Matt pointed to the screen, more specifically at the heart on it.

Glancing up at the 'cool guy' of their group, Izzy sighed heavily. "If it's what I think it is Matt, then it's extremely bad news."

"Well stop dancing around it then and tell us already." Sora said, sounding a bit snippier then she intended thanks to her nervousness.

"…I think it's a fragment of the black gear that got him back on File Island." Izzy said bluntly after a long pause, making everyone freeze. "It must've gotten lodged inside Naruto's heart when the gear shattered from Mimi and Palmon pulling it out. That would also explain why Naruto reacted so violently when we used our digivices, the fragment was tearing his heart up from the inside out when we inadvertently tried to expel it."

Before anyone could respond to his explanation, they were briefly blinded by a bright glow from Naruto as he devolved from his Teumesemon form to Kitsumon and then to ChibiNarutomon, with everything but the scar on his chest thankfully returning to normal. He then groaned loudly while sitting up as a stubby hand went to his head.

"Ugh, why do I feel like Ero-sennin used me as a scapegoat for getting caught peeping?" The tiny blonde grumbled as he slowly stood up and rubbed his eyes. When he was done, he blinked a few times to clear the fogginess in his vision before tilting his head in confusion when he saw standing over him with worried and shocked expressions. "What'cha all staring aMMPH?!"

He was cut off mid-sentence as Mimi scooped him up into her arms and smothered him in an extremely tight hug. Extremely confused at the girl's reaction, Naruto sent a questioning look towards the others.

-Elsewhere-

"Dang it! I was so close!" Etemon yelled while smashing the console he had been using to pieces with his bare fists. "Everything was going perfectly! But NOOOOOO! That stupid Greymon just had to dark digivolve at the worst moment!"

As he raged, his Gazimon underlings cowered behind a different control panel, praying to every digital god they could think of that something calmed the angry orange ape down before he decided to turn his anger on them. Said prayers were answered when a soft knocking on the door suddenly echoed through the darkened trailer.

Perking up at the noise, Etemon appeared before the door in the blink of an eye and practically tore it open, revealing a certain nurse doll digimon standing there. However, unlike last time where she was only holding an envelope, Aidmon was effortlessly holding up a large cardboard box almost as big as she was. "Hello again Etemon-sama. Is now a bad time?" She asked with fake curiosity as she tilted her head in 'confusion' at the sight of the huffing digimon.

Taking a few deep breaths to relax, Etemon gave his signature evil smirk as he calmly adjusted his sunglasses. "Why not at all little missy, it is always a good time for my devout fans. I'm assuming that is why you are here again, correctamundo?"

Barely suppressing the wicked smirk that threatened to spread across her face, Aidmon instead responded with an innocent giggle as she hefted the package she carried up for him to take. "You are correct as always Etemon-sama. I do hope you enjoy this fan-mail as much as you did before."

"So do I little missy, so do I." Etemon said in an ominous tone as he accepted the box and gave the small digimon a pat on the head before heading inside, missing the slight disgruntled look on her face as she did so.

As she turned around to walk away, that distaste turned to full on disgust as she took off her hat and started cleaning it with a disinfectant wipe she had in her pocket. 'Be thankful that you bring my master entertainment, otherwise I would have crushed you like the bug you were for daring to touch me.' She thought darkly, sending a brief one-eyed glare at the trailer before disappearing from sight.

Seconds later, dark chuckling could be heard from within said trailer, Etemon was indeed most pleased on what his 'fan' had sent him.

-Back with the digidestined-

"Whoa whoa whoa, hold up," Naruto said with a raised eyebrow, still in his chibi form and being carried by Mimi as the group trekked through the desert. "I have a what in my heart?"

"A black gear fragment." Izzy said as worked on his computer as they walked. "It's absorbing dark data and even generating a small amount of it while corrupting your own data in the process."

"Okay, and why can't you just remove it then?" The blonde asked with a tilted head, sighing a little as Joe handed Mimi a small drenched towelette, who in turn draped it over his shoulders. "If it got in there then it should be able to get out again."

"If only it was that simple." Izzy said with a shake of his head. "The shard isn't absorbing dark data just because it can Naruto. It's reconstituting itself."

"…Could you please speak in a way that doesn't leave me both confused and with a headache?" Naruto asked dully.

Palming his face, Izzy sighed again. "It's trying to rebuild itself inside of you." He reiterated as plainly as he could. "In the time that I've been studying it, the shard has increased in size 1.5732%. Factoring its current size and dividing it by the estimated amount of time it has been within your body and then multiplying by the rate of growth, the shard was most likely only two or three centimeters big when it first entered the heart."

"So now that it's grown, removing it is riskier." Sora finished.

"Try completely suicidal, even with his accelerated healing factor." Izzy said while closing his laptop and putting it away. "The black gear shard is almost an inch big now, the amount of damage it would do would be impossible to repair in time before you…" He trailed off at the end, but everyone knew what he was going to say and a somber mood fell over… most of them.

"Ahhhh, Man Obaa-chan is going to be so mad with how busy she'll be when she's fixing me up." Naruto said with a casual shrug, causing everyone to stop and look at him.

"…Your grandma knows how to do heart surgery?" Joe asked incredulously, his eyebrows vanishing into his hairline when Naruto nodded.

"Well, Tsunade isn't really my baa-chan. I just call her that cause she's really old and hides it under an illusion that makes her look like she's twenty." Naruto explained. "But yeah, she can definitely fix up my heart good as new once I get back home. Hell, she's already done it before when this teme Kabuto almost killed me by severing all the major blood vessels to it."

…

…

Complete silence followed this statement as everyone stared at the chibified ninja, making him tilt his head in confusion. "What?"

"Dude, how can you say something like that so… so calmly?" Matt asked, genuinely freaked out. They way Naruto stated the fact he had almost died in such a gruesome way, in such a simple way like he was talking about the weather, really unnerved the usually stoic boy.

"Meh, it's pretty traumatizing the first few times sure, but after your sixth or seventh near death experience they tend to get a bit repetitive." Naruto admitted with a shrug. He lived a dangerous lifestyle, one where he had been in several extremely close calls and expected many more to come until he either finally died or retired.

His words only made the group around him more uneasy, no more than Mimi herself, having personally gone through a near-death experience. She couldn't even begin to imagine being able to go through such a thing again, let alone six or seven times. The mere thought of it made her stomach churn and her hold on Naruto to unconsciously tighten.

Desperate for a change of subject, she looked around and thankfully spotted something in the distance. "Look, a giant cactus!"

-End Chapter-

AN: I'll admit, this chapter kinda got away from me. I was originally planning on them getting to the boat and dealing with Cockatrimon, but ended up with this instead. Not sure where it came from cause to be honest, I was half asleep through most of it. Thank you for reading and please review.