sora's crest, the last crest needed to be found by the digidestined, had been gained at an apparently high price. sora had been kidnapped by datamon, who planned to create a copy of her to defeat etemon, his plan's failure meant his own destruction when he tried to turn etemon's dark network against him. though datamon was killed in the attempt, etemon merged with the network with increased his power even more then before, and only metalgreymon's defeat of him managed to stopped him. but with his defeat, tai and agumon vanished.

the other six digidestined soon broke apart, tai having held the group together. they didn't know he had returned home to the real world, but he eventually came back. his short time away translated to months in the digital world, and tai then set about try to reunite the group. unknown to him, sora had been help from the shadows without revealing her presence. she would never get the chance to do so.

'maybe we should just leave them a note and tell them what the crests do...' she thought out loud, stopping to write such a note.

this gave the watching eyes a perfect chance to move into position.

'that's one of them. the human digidestined.'

'yeah. think they can come here and order digimon around... make us fight.'

'not for long...'

the eavesdroppers moved and surrounded the human girl while she wrote her note, first dropping in front of her. she recoiled in surprise, dropping the piece of paper, and had her digimon not been more alert, she'd never have known they'd surrounded her.

'more behind us!' biyomon cried out.

sora turned, only to feel something strike her in the back of the head. as she slid into darkness she wondered if that had been her own screaming she'd heard...


***
tai thought he'd heard sora cry out. he'd found almost everyone, though sora was still missing, so hearing what sounded like her crying out filled him with hope and dread. hope that he'd found her, dread she was screaming. but as he ran into the clearing, he saw nothing but the note. he quickly read it, but worried about having heard her scream, he raced back to the others to have them help look.

had he looked a little closer there and then, he could have noticed through the bushes that his friend laid out cold, with biyomon unceremoniously laying beside her. he might have heard voices whisper, heard the voices curse having delayed when he left. they could have caught 2 in a single day... maybe even all of them...

***
the group eventually returned to earth to find the eight digidestined, but had not found sora again. it weighed heavily on their hearts, especially tai's. not being able to find his oldest friend almost caused him to have nightmares about her fate. his concerns and worries were only extended thanks to his little sister, kari, having emerged as the eight child. all these things eventually piled up and only fueled matt's insecurities about tai's ability to lead them. matt also disliked how tai was shielding his sister and by extension her digimon partner, even though her partner was only one of their digimon whose champion level was their normal form while her ultimate form made her a good candidate for third strongest along with patamon. tai seemed to be giving his sister preferential treatment by shielding her like he was. the others tried to tell him it was because she was too young . but that wasn't it: he didn't stop tk fighting and his brother was the same age as kari.

eventually because of these things matt was tricked by cherrymon into a situation where he demanded that not only augmon and gabumon face each other, but that he and tai also fight each other themselves. this stunned the rest of the digidestined who protested, though it was to no avail. the battle commenced regardless, even as the others watched in horror, none more scared than kari. she ran off, unseen by the group except gatomon, who raced after her as she fled. the rest stood too shocked by the surprising events before them to realize she was gone right away, but others had saw her.

***

'she's heading right for the ambush!' one fretted.

'don't worry, we can still take the rest. we just get her for now. i'd prefer them all at once but if we take them one by one so they can't fight back or overwhelm us with numbers...'

after running until the noise of the battle had died down, kari stopped. and then she realized... she had no idea where she was. terror gripped her heart. she was lost in a strange, dangerous world and she was alone!

as she glanced around in panic, she saw a familiar shape ahead, lying on the ground.

'sora?!' kari cried out in surprise.

she was so pleased to see a familiar face, she ran over. happiness she'd found the missing older girl, like a sister to her, was mixed with concern. was she hurt? where was her digimon?

as she neared, something dropped behind her. kari didn't even have time to realize it, but with one blow, she was knocked out

***

some time later…

kari awoke, groaning in pain. her head felt sore, yet when she tried to raise her hands, she found out that her arms werepinned down. looking around the room she noticed it was dark, but as her eyes adjusted to the darkness she saw ten metal slab, like upright tables, but with screens at the very top. one across from her looked like it had something on it. she looked up and saw there was a screen above her. to her left, she saw Gatomon, standing still on a small steel platform.

'gatomon! you followed me' kari asked though silence was the only answer she received.

'are you okay? are you angry at me? why are you ignoring me?' she asked worried as no matter how many question she asked, gatomon just kept staring blankly forward.

'she won't…no, more like she can't speak to you at the moment. she's locked up while her data is being scanned and copied. she'll stay that way as long as we need her for a backup.' a voice said over an intercom system. then the lights came on. kari then saw the other table opposite her more clearly.

with the light now on she was able to see that she was not alone. Sora was also strapped to one of the tables with her eyes closed, and biyomon stood beside her at attention but motionless just like Gatomon.

'sora! biyomon!' kKari called out to them, but once again only silence came in response.

'It's useless, human. they can't hear you either. the bird is like the cat, and your friend is like how you will be very soon' the voice over the intercom said

'where are you and why are you doing this to us?' kari demand.

a door appeared from what once a solid wall and she was surprised to see that the digimon speaking to her over the intercom was an agumon. this however was not her brother's partner as it was much bigger than tai's augmon, nearly three times larger. it wasn't even the first agumon she and tai had met when they were much younger, and it had been larger... or she had just been smaller, but she remembered it had been pretty big. but the major difference between the two augmon she had met before and this was one, was that he looked far more intimidating and scary. this was not just because he was bigger then her: this normal human adult size augmon gave off a different feeling to the other agumons she had met, as he had longer claws, more teeth, wide forearms, and red training bracers around his paws.  

'what...what are you doing this for?' kari asked, voice trembling.

'you humans came here to this world thinking you could get away with ordering digimon to fight. you tried to start a war. it's your fault the dark masters emerged from the shadows as they were content with just staying in the background until you killed all the other evil digimon around, but this... this is just one of your failures...'

'we're trying to stop the dark masters!!' kari protested.

the agumon growled and walked up to her. she cringed and struggled to back away as the only feeling she got from this augmon was deep rooted fear she had only felt around few digimon.

'and you're failing. how many digimon have died because of the eight of you? and why? its because you're too afraid. too afraid to do what has to be done and your digimon slaves are suffering too because of your group's cowardice  the enslaved patamon almost died once because of it. when or even if you win against the remaining dark masters, you're going to turn on us and enslave us too! by bringing other humans here and pairing us up with them as our partner to making us fight each other for your amusement. If you can make a well respected and well known digimon like gatomon into your slave then you must be stopped before you enslave us all. and we're going to the one to stop you and liberate those you have enslaved. to be frozen like this is a better fate than permanent slavery.'

'you're wrong! gatomon is my friend! and according to my brother it was digimon that brought him and the others here!' kari protested again, but the agumon bared his teeth and she cried out in fear.

'then why did wizardmon have to die?'

'he… there was nothing we could... it all happened too fast for us to do anything.' kari protested as that was still a sore spot with her.

'typical human excuse. you corrupted gatomon and got her friend killed for nothing. a typical human lie too, you want to blame a digimon for bringing you here, yet when given the chance to leave, you come back with one of you doing it not one but twice. and if you are really friends with your digimon why haven't you been fighting alongside them? why have they been doing all the fighting while you just sit on the sidelines cheering them on? if you really are ''friends'' with your slave digimon why don't you fight the dark masters yourselves?'

'they're too powerful! they'd kill us if we tried fighting them directly!'

the agumon then jumped towards kari waving his claw wildly, flames gathering around his mouth like he was about toast her with an attack. scared for her life by the way this huge agumon was acting, kari screamed and burst into tears which began streaming down her face. as she started crying profoundly calling out her brother's and sora's name for help, a second voice spoke from a monitor located at the back of the room between two rows of upright tables the two captured digidestined were strapped to. the agumon looked at it, but gave one last taunt toward the frightened and mentally shaken Kari.

'that's right. you humans are all just bunch of weak hypocritical cowards.'

as kari sniffled, the agumon replied to the screen. kari couldn't make out the shape on it since it was out her field of vision and tears blurred her vision, nor could she hear very well because her own sniffling cries. but she heard a word like yggdrasil being spoken often, like that was who the agumon was speaking to, as well as something that sounded like new or neo. the screen was still on as kari had calmed down and the tears had cleared from her eyes, but it had changed strangely enough to a 3-d image of Sora, but before kari could figure out what it meant, the agumon turned away from it and seeing him heading back made her feel scared again. she stared at him in fear

'okay. you wanted to know what would happen to you? here.' he spoke

with a snap of his claws, a hologram appeared in front of kari. It looked like images taken from a department store security camera as their was no sound to it. what it showed was sora waking up on the metal slab thinking and reacting almost exactly as kari had when she awoke in this situation herself. thought there was no sound it was clear to see that she was shouting at the agumon that was in front of her.

'she took her time to realize i wasn't the same as that slave to that idiot with the goggles... i'm assuming he's the one called tai from both of you pitifully calling out his name.' the agumon noted. kari felt angry at this.

'my brother's not an idiot!' she said defiantly. the agumon looked at her with a grin.

'well... maybe he can be stupid sometimes but he's not an idiot...' kari mumbled.

'doesn't matter. doesn't even matter he's your brother. his agumon is part of my extended family in a way but i'll show him no mercy. i have to do what i have to do to save him and save us all as i have seen what your kind have done to my distant cousins.'

on the screen, sora had began screaming. the area of the slab around her chest glowed orange as a needle injected something straight into her heart. she struggled for a few moments crying out possibly in pain and what sounded like her brother's name. Eventually though she slumped against the slab as her eyes turned entirely brown and blank and she became as she was right now.

'what did you do to her?'

the agumon then walked over to sora and knocked on her forehead. kari's mouth  then fell open in a mixture of shock and horror as what resulted from the knock was sound of his paw rapping not  on bone but metal. it was a clanging noise that repeated as he knocked on other areas of sora, even opening up her eye lids to reveal the vacant eyes underneath them.

'we converted her into a robotic version of herself. that needle injected into her heart was full of nanomachines. the orange light sped up her heart, rapidly forcing her nanobot infected blood all over her body, converting her into the robot that you see here. since you human are so weak and fragile to be of any real use to us, since we wanted you to be the ones do the fighting with me and my superiors being one ordering her... we took a page out of datamon's book.  but rather than simply switching the slave's master to a puppet under our control it was decided to just make the slave master one with their slaves and turn them into a slave themselves. upload their digimon's data into them after we roboticized them to rid them of their weak and fragile human bodies. then make it so those boosters you call a digivice or a crest are no longer needed to use the powers buried deep within your bodies. and now you are about to experience first hand what your friend went through.'

the agumon stood back, the screen vanished, and a glowing orange light emerged around her heart. kari recognized it as the same from the video.

'what?! no, please don't!' kari pleaded as she saw the small needle near her. trying with all her might and energy she struggled to prevent the needle from injecting itself into her heart. it was pointless as the needle went into her chest. immediately she felt the effects of the nanomachines, her heart going into overdrive  pumping the infected blood across her small body, slowly converting her from human girl into a digital robot of a human girl.

her body was hot , like she was on fire. she hadn't felt this bad since she got pneumonia back when was she was younger. it was not just her skin that felt like this, it was her whole body as the effect seeped down to her core. as she wailed in pain, she noticed that her skin now only looked lifelike to a casual glance. a quick second glance was all it took to see a artificial texture to her skin as she was changing into a metal-like material the same as sora. her body became numb and that slowly caused her wailing to stop as she couldn't move her mouth anymore.

her eyes grew heavy as her mind starting going blank. it was like switches were being turned off one by one in her mind. moments later after the last switch had been flicked to the off position, her eyes went totally blank too, the irises blossoming to fill most of her eyeball. she closed her eyes as kari's conversion to robotic girl had been completed.

now there were two robotic girls standing in the room as deactivated robo-kari simply stood there motionless like robo-sora in front of her

'this make two of you weakling cowards down and six to go' the agumon said but kari wasn't listening any more.

'kari' was now just a quarantined portion of the robot once known as hikari 'kari' kamiya's memory, all that was left of her inside. the only exterior remnant that she was ever human were the tears that kari had shed before being fully converted into a robot, but they would soon dry and vanish leaving just the robot in her image that had been created from her.

'commence the data upload. i want her to have everything that fits. same path creation as before, make sure it reflects her personality...' he ordered to another digimon that had come into the room as his part of the job was done for now.

***
back with the other digidestined at same time kari had been kidnapped, tk realized kari was gone. though when he cried out this fact, tai had become startled and distracted, matt couldn't capitalise on it as the panic tai fell into realizing that his sister was missing made him reconsider all he'd thought about. matt halted the fight, and a quick search for her occurred, but of course, she was never found. matt blamed himself for starting the fight, but tai didn't. tai knew he should have looked out for her, knowing she'd have hated to see her brother fighting like that. kari's disappearance hit the whole group hard, but tai was of course the worst affected. however, he carried on, working past his grief at his sister vanishing like his oldest friend had and utterly unwilling to blame anyone but himself. encouraged by his bravery the others fought on as well, until finally they reached the final hurdle. piedmon. it would be tai's advice to matt before they faced machinedramon that ultimately, unknowingly, almost doomed them all.

'don't let tk out of your sight.' tai had said one night when everyone else was asleep. matt couldn't think of an easy answer, knowing how much the prospect of tk vanishing like kari frightened him, and still feeling responsible. if he'd never started the fight, kari wouldn't have run off.

'i won't.' matt had replied eventually. tai had simply nodded in response before he fell asleep.

it meant matt had tried to save tk from piedmon's clown trick, and had been caught with him. the two brothers were the first to become keychains. izzy was next, along with lillymon and patamon. the others went one by one, their keychains being snatched by piedmon until just tai and wargreymon remained. but tai's anger at the events that had unfolded influenced wargreymon in the battle. it only took one hit and the dark master was reeling. from the follow-up, he was down. tai raced in, judgement clouded by anger, to rescue his transformed friends.

'wait, tai!' wargreymon said, but his partner ignored him.

the boy rushed forward to piedmon's fallen form and quickly grabbed the ten keychains he had made of the other digidestined. he was turning to leave when piedmon grabbed his foot. the clown mega was down but not out not just yet. tai didn't have even a second to be surprised as he felt his whole body become cold and numb in an instant. piedmon had used the last of his energy to petrify his foe.

'tai! no!' wargreymon shouted, watching as piedmon disintegrated having succumbed to his mortal damage, pleased that while he may have died, he transformed six digidestined and all but one of their digimon. He was going to have the last laugh in the end.

wargreymon devolved back to agumon as piedmon faded beside the petrified tai, and the small orange dinosaur raced over to the stone-stricken digidestined leader. his head to his toes, his clothes, his goggles, his digivice and even the keychains of the other digidestined had transformed into stone. the digidestined had defeated the dark masters at a cost...

'i... i have to get tai somewhere safe and guard him.' agumon reasoned, and carefully began moving the boy-turned-statue to safety...

***

meanwhile, the two digidestined who had vanished lay unactivated. their intended purpose had passed for now. the two other sides had destroyed themselves leaving behind no true winner, and the single remaining survivor was no threat.  the digimon who had converted them decided they would make a good insurance policy. after all, there could be more digidestined some time soon, and possibly another evil for them to provoke.