'ugh...'

rika awoke slowly, and saw she was in a room. there were ten metal tables, and standing beside her was renamon.

'renamon... ' rika tried to get her digimon to respond, but renamon was standing statue-still, staring at nothing special. it was like she was... frozen.

looking around the room, rika saw two other human shapes strapped to the tables, both looked asleep and strangely familiar for some reason that she could not put her finger on. to her right, a younger girl with brown hair in a yellow shirt and pink trousers, with a gatomon beside her. the gatomon was frozen like renamon. across the room, a girl with light brown hair about her age in a  sleeveless yellow shirt, jeans, and helmet like hat with a frozen biyomon beside her.

'do either of you know what's going on here?' rika asked .

there was no reply from either, irritating rika at first.  taking a closer look and thinking about it, she realized why they looked so familar to her.  

'why are the two of you cosplaying like you're kari and sora? just because you have gatomon and giyomon as your partners?' she asked, thinking  and i thought that takato was the biggest digimon fan of all the tamers i knew of...

once again silence was the only reply.

'they won't talk. k.a.r.i and s.o.r.a aren't activated.' agumon said. rika turned on him angrily.

'activated? so these aren't really girls but some kind of robot?' she asked.

'oh, they were humans once. like you.'

then the realization dawn on her. these girls were acutally robots, and she was strapped to table just like them, with renamon to her side in a similar manner to digimon next to the ''robots''.  and his ''like you'' remark, did that mean this augmon's plan was to make her into a robot too? she also wondered if this meant she was facing the real kari and sora... but this concern was somewhat secondary to the robot threat.

'you're not turning me into a robot.' she said defiantly.

the augmon was surprised this human had been smart enough to put it all together. it saved time explaining to her at least.

'oh, i am going to turn you into a robot... but just not right now. just a press of a button, and it'll happen. i've already injected the nanomachines...'

before he could finish that thought, an alarm rang out through the room. agumon raced to a screen to see what going on, and rika heard the digimon curse.

'it seems your friend has found more of your kind. but don't worry, you don't have to rejoin him. you're going be joining the others here as one of my group's robots.' agumon said, pressing the button. an orange glow emerged around rika and she felt her left forearm begin to heat up painfully, but the computer the table was connected to starting beeping at an error. agumon growled.

'damn it, how are you fighting this?' he demand aloud, surprised at the status of rika's transformation currently showing on the screen.

he  had injected the nanobots into rika's arm rather than her heart, but agumon had thought the amount of time that had passed had surely been enough for the nanomachines to multiply throughout her bloodstream and simply need the signal to convert her to a robot in an instant. it seemed he was wrong.

as he waited impatiently for the process to finish itself some gardromons entered, informing him that the humans and their slave digimon were advancing too fast. At the rate they were going they would be here very soon causing the agumon to sigh.

'take the two originals. this girl is fighting the conversion process somehow so we're going to have to leave her behind. we can get her back later, it's not like they'll figure out how to activate her.' he taunted.

'what about the digimon slaves, sir?' the gardromon asked.

'leave them . not like they be able to break them out of the stasis locks anyway, and we've got backups. they're of no real use to us just now.'

the gardromon obeyed as he and the others began removing the two others.

meanwhile, rika was still covered in the same orange light that sped up the conversion process, only now her entire arm was feeling like fire, but she still heard the computer automatically report.

'error source located, human subject is not digidestined, human subject is categorised as tamer. nanomachines are not optimised for this conversion. automatic compensation attempt underway.' the machine droned.

rika felt hope. apparently it seem that conversion process was optimised for digidestined somehow. she guessed something to do with crest powers perhaps. emboldend, she told herself she was not going to let this beat her. she looked over to where renamon was still as a statue and vowed that augmon and his group were going to pay for what they had done to her partner and what they were trying to do to her....

***
takato, davis, tai and their digimon arrived to a three way corridor in time to see two groups of gardromon running away. each group was carrying something, and heading in different directions through gantries from the central path.

'split up! davis, get the ones running to the left, i'll get those running in the other direction.' tai said.

'hey, where do guilmon and me go? what about rika?' takato asked in alarm.

as if on cue, a yell came from down the cental path, which takato recognized as rika. tai and davis had already moved, so he ran towards the noise. a handful of gardromon made an attempt to block his path, however they didn't last long as guilmon made quick work of them. davis and tai each spotted this, and both pondered how strong the red digimon really was...

***

'I refuse to give up'  rika said aloud. now her whole chest area felt like it burned, while everything below had already been converted to a robotic state, leaving it numb and unresponsive to her attempts to make them move.

just then, takato burst in. she was glad to see him and his partner.

'takato!' she shouted.

'rika! are you okay? what's going on?' he asked.

'there's no time to explain, go over to that machine over there and turn it off somehow' she told him motioning to said machine with her neck.

'but…' he said, but rika angrily reiterate her order.

rushing over along with guilmon, they had no idea what they were looking at. takato was stumped

'so we just need to stop this thing, right?' guilmon asked curiously.

as takato just nodded, guilmon nodded back. takato barely got of the way in time to away avoid a pyro sphere that his dragon-like digimon fired at the computer, destroying it. he was going to have to warn his digimon about his choice of 'turning off' the computer but dealing with rika came first.

'okay rika we managed to turn off the computer. rika? are you okay? why are you sleeping all of sudden?' the brown haired boy asked her.

calling out to takato and then yelling at him had caused her to lose her concentration. she barely had time to realize her mistake, feeling her mind going blank just as takato made over to the computer. her eyes had bloomed into the blank single color, and ''rika nonaka'' was now just a quarantined section in the memory of her new roboticized body

'rika?! are you okay?!' takato said as he tried to shake her awake, but she didn't respond.

guilmon then remembered something he once saw done on tv, and smacked rika on the back of her head, then wondered why it felt so hard. however he did not think about this long as his smack caused her to topple forward, landing on takato and giving him an accidental headbutt.  as this was going on, the now robotic red head open her eyes and looked towards takato.

'reploid intelligent kombat array online. purpose: general combat and secondary leadership. what are your orders, master?' she said in a monotone, synthesized version of her own voice while takato recovered from his unwanted head pain.

but he had heard, and he didn't quite understand. he just stared at her in shock, as r.i.k.a titled her head to the side and repeated the statement.

'what are your orders, master'? she asked

***

as agumon's peeper breath attack hit home, having targetted a loose-lloking beam, it fell and crushed two gaurdromon.  though augmon could have easily take them out using nova blast from his champion form of greymon, for some reason he could not go to the champion level, leaving them to improvise. regardless of the methods used though, the gardromon were wiped out, causing what they carried to fall from the sky. tai was shocked to see what, or who, they were carrying.

'sora!' he cried out, rushing forward to try and catch her before she hit the ground. he managed it, but only because she landed on him knocking him out for few minute.

'agh...' he groaned as he came to opening up his eyes to see sora's face right above his.

moving his eyes downward he saw that her lips were lying on his. the surprise at this apparent kiss meant he didn't notice that sora weighed more, or that her skin felt strange. his thoughts were pretty much all on how he they were kissing. however these thoughts were immediately broken when sora opened her vacant eyes and spoke.    

'simple operation reploid alpha online. purpose: general combat. what are your orders, master?' she said, frightening tai greatly as her voice was monotone and sounded synthesized.

'what? sora, it's me, tai!' he said. greymon finished off the gardromon, reverted to agumon, and ran over.

'tai? is that your name master? would you like that name to be stored in my memory banks? ' s.o.r.a asked.

'just get off me and tell me what's going on!' tai shouted. s.o.r.a stood up.

'this unit was converted to reploid status 110,376,000 seconds ago.' she stated.

'tai? what's wrong with her?' agumon asked. s.o.r.a turned her head to him.

'this unit is fully functioning. both alternate combat and primary travel modes are functioning at 100% readiness. nothing is wrong with this unit ' she said.

both tai and agumon reacted to this unexpected statement with extreme surprise, very nearly collapsing from it...

***

'they were carrying a girl?' veemon said, confused as the gardromons carrying the girl had fled. he'd tried to run over but davis had paused.

'tai told us about his sister, remember? maybe this is her. it's not the girl takato was looking for' davis reasoned. after all, that yell earlier had been female and takato had went running.

davis approached the prone form and shook her gently. her eyes opened and she turned her head to face davis

'knowledge array reploid I online. purpose: leadership. what are your orders, master?' she asked.

'...she's not a human…no, more like its not human, even.' veemon said as k.a.r.i stood up looking at davis to give her further orders.

'duh. some kind of trap i think. trying to mess with tai's mind.' davis said sadly.

'maybe it was supposed to ambush him. ask if it can fight.'

'reploid, can you fight?'

'yes. combat mode is at 100% readiness.' k.a.r.i replied.

'show me.' davis said.

***

tai heard takato cry out nearby, and ran towards him. he told sora to follow, and the converted reploid obeyed. they found takato facing the similarly-converted r.i.k.a asking for orders.

'she's acting really weird! she's like a robot!' takato explained, his face a mask of terror.

'they've both been converted into these robots...' tai said as he realised.

'correct. and so will you two be.' a voice said. it was the larger agumon. and he had reinforcements with him. agumon and guilimon tensed to fight.

'we can't take them all, but they'll regret trying!' agumon said defiantly.

the larger agumon laughed.

'so determined. but i told you our agreement. you could keep the statue of your pet idiot, and i wouldn't come near. but you broke the arrangement...'

'i'll break you in a minute!' tai said angrily.

'yeah, sure. try it human as you slave can even use his champion form thanks that other human preventing it himself with those devices of his' the larger agumon said confidently

a second later though, something had attacked his gardromon. it was humanoid. it had cat-like eyes and two wings, one white and feathered, one black and bat-like. where human ears would be it had small wings, and on top of it's head it had cat ears, that matched its brown hair. it wore fingerless gloves with an orange pattern like a greymon, and wore something similar on it's feet. two dinosaur-like tails emerged from the tailbone, while it wore a long short sleeved t-shirt that went down to its knees. it also had what looked like a digital camera hanging from its neck. the larger agumon and his troops retreated in surprise, allowing the digidestined to escape the small room, though takato was still freaked out by rika's condition he followed after the other with r.i.k.a following after her 'master'.

tai however, was more horrified by the face of the thing that had saved them . even with cat-like eyes, even looking like this, he recognized his sister.

'kari?' he asked in horror.

The girl simply looked at him before respond 'incorrect. this unit's designation is 'knowledge array reploid I'

davis then ran up.

'tai, i know what you're thinking, but this was some kind of trap. That large Augmon must have built this thing to look like your sister and he planned to attack you with it in case you were reverted to normal I am guessing.'

tai looked at sora, and felt both relief and sorrow.

'so... these robots are just decoys?'

'yeah.' davis said.

'but... how would he be able to build a replica of rika so fast? and she called out my name before she became like…well like this,' takato said, motioning to rika.

'master is correct. this unit was recently converted to reploid status.' she said

the larger agumon regarded the digidestined from a distance. he had heard their conversation as they hadn't been exactly quiet.

'they're the real deal. davis, why not ask your new robot friend to read quarantined memories with the keywords, poor kick?'

'probably just another trick but fine. read quarantined memories keywords poor kick'

to tai's horror, k.a.r.i spoke, and relayed a story how she stricken with severe pneumonia and he attempted to cheer her up by taking her to the park to play soccer. however, she collapsed while playing and eventually had to be hospitalized. she then repeated the very words tai heard she had finally come home: 'i'm sorry i couldn't kick the ball properly, tai. you probably never want to play with me again.'

'oh god...' tai said, horrified.

'that's... that's really your sister?' davis said, horrified as he realized he'd used her as a weapon.

more gardromon showed up, bolstering the larger agumon's forces. however, tai's grief was having an effect on his own agumon. he digivolved not normally, but warp digivolved to mega. the larger agumon stared in horror as this was not the normal mega form of the smaller agumon. this was not the wargreymon he knew about.

'fall back!' he ordered his troops. he had no idea how powerful this new form of agumon was, but he couldn't risk finding out. Though he could evolve and go toe to toe with the wargreymon, the valuable robots might get caught in the crossfire causing him not loss them but the secert to how they activated in the first place. they fled. shortly after they vanished, augmon reverted from his new mega form to in training form, while the three boys looked at the former girls shortly after this.

'so... they're robots?' takato said.

'affirmative this unit is robot' r.i.k.a  said

'and they called us all master. so i guess they'll obey our orders.' davis said sadly.

'that is correct, master' k.a.r.i stated

'potential threat approaching. awaiting your orders.' s.o.r.a said.

'i don't want to do this, but... we might have to use them to fight. that big agumon can call on a lot of troops and overwhelm us. we need all the fighting strength we can get now that agumon reverted to koromon and their digimon don't look like they'll helping us any time soon.'

davis and takato had to reluctantly agree...

***

'converting humans into robots that can digivolve? what an excellent plan...' ken said, gleefully. he looked at jeri. the girl had passed out during the last scan .

'yes... a perfect lure to capture the three digidestined out there and get those robots for myself. wormon, find out how that agumon converted them. i want to do it too... but better.'

wormon pleaded not to, but a crack of the whip forced him into it. jeri meanwhile lay unaware of her fate...