The corvette Whisper was a blade of matte-black alloy and whispering engines, a ship designed for silent insertion and rapid extraction. It bore no markings, a ghost in the Federation's arsenal. Inside, it was all business: secured harnesses, tactical displays, and the faint, sterile smell of filtered air and ozone.
Team Obsidian sat in the cramped deployment bay, running final checks on their gear. They wore lightweight, adaptive tactical suits under their Academy jackets. Their weapons were standardized: compact pulse rifles, stun-grenades, and data-capture nodes. But their real weapons were the ones they carried within.
Professor Lynus's holographic image flickered before them, his expression characteristically dry. "Veridia is a Class-7 Garden World, 92% floriform biomass. The incursion is localized to a region designated 'The Canopy Veil,' a dense, mega-floral rainforest with anomalous psychic resonance. Your primary objective is data retrieval. The secondary is containment. The Digimon manifestations are low-tier, equivalent to Class I Kaiju-spawn, but their data-based nature makes them resistant to conventional kinetics. Adapt your tactics. The Whisper will remain in high orbit, cloaked. You have 48 hours. Good luck. Try not to get dissolved into binary code."
The hologram winked out. A moment later, the Whisper shuddered subtly as it pierced Veridia's atmosphere.
The view from the dropship was breathtaking. A world of impossible green. Jungles where trees were kilometers tall, their leaves forming a second sky. Vines thick as starship cables draped between colossal blossoms that glowed with internal bioluminescence. The air, even through the filters, was thick with the scent of alien pollen and damp earth.
"The Canopy Veil," the pilot's voice crackled. "Dropping you at LZ Alpha. Sensors show the incursion epicenter is three klicks north-northwest. Local fauna is docile… mostly. Watch for the pollen of the 'Screaming Orchid.' It induces vivid, paranoid hallucinations. We learned that the hard way."
The dropship settled on a rare patch of clear ground—a spongy, moss-covered clearing. The hatch hissed open, releasing a wave of humid, chirping, clicking life.
"Move out," Ryosuke said, his voice calm. "Chen, point. Stay within visual range. The canopy will play havoc with sensors."
Chen nodded, a blur of motion as he shot ahead, a grey-blue streak against the vibrant green. The rest followed at a swift, ground-eating pace. Ryosuke's Six Eyes were fully active, parsing the environment in fractal layers. He saw the heat signatures of small, six-legged arboreal creatures, the subtle psychic spoor of the planet's own mild consciousness, and… something else. Faint, glitching trails of digital information woven into the biological data-streams. Like corrupted code in a living program.
They pushed deeper. The light grew dim, filtered through layers of leaves the size of landing pads. The air was alive with the hum of giant insects and the distant, haunting calls of unseen avians.
Chen's voice whispered in their comm-beads. "Contact. Ahead. Two hundred meters. Something… wrong."
They slowed, moving to cover behind the massive, ribbed roots of a mega-tree. Peering through the foliage, they saw it.
A clearing, but one that was wrong. The plants here were pixelated at the edges, their colors too sharp, too saturated. In the center stood a creature. It was roughly the size of a large bear, but its form was a shifting amalgamation of data. It had a draconic head rendered in polygonal red and yellow, claws that crackled with electric-blue energy, and a tail that terminated in a spiked, metallic ball. Its eyes were blank, glowing green screens.
"Agumon (Data-Variant). Corruption Level: Low. Threat Assessment: Minimal." Ryosuke's System provided a tag, pulled from the Federation's xenobiology database.
The Agumon wasn't attacking. It was… eating. But it wasn't eating biomass. It was standing over a large, glowing mushroom, and streams of green data were flowing from the fungus into its maw. The mushroom was wilting, its bio-luminescence fading into a dead grey.
"It's consuming the planet's data-stream," Aris whispered, his psychic senses bristling. "The life-force, the genetic information… it's converting it to its own format."
"Hostile?" Varg rumbled, his hand on the grip of his heavy pulse cannon.
"Not yet. But it's a corruption," Sera said, her fingers twitching. "A wound."
As they watched, the Agumon finished its meal. It turned its head, its screen-eyes scanning. It locked onto their position. A glitching, digitized growl emanated from it.
"Foreign data detected. Scanning… Lifeforms. Biomass. Potential energy source." The words weren't spoken; they were broadcast on a frequency their implants translated.
It charged. Its movement was unnerving—a series of rapid, teleporting jerks rather than a smooth run, leaving afterimages of itself.
"Engage," Ryosuke said, his mind entering the crystal-clear zone of combat. "Non-lethal. We need data on its composition. Sera, soften it. Chen, harass. Varg, brace. Aris, look for a psychic interface."
Sera didn't use her full pyrokinesis. She extended a hand and focused. The air in front of the charging Agumon superheated in a tight, invisible band. The creature's polygonal hide sizzled, and it screeched in digital pain, stumbling.
Chen was a blur, zipping in and delivering a series of stunning kicks to its joints. His blows connected, but the effect was minimal—the creature's body seemed to partially phase, dissipating the force.
Varg stepped forward, planting his feet. As the Agumon recovered and lunged, swinging its spiked tail, Varg caught the blow on his reinforced forearm. The impact rang out, and Varg skidded back a foot, the ground tearing under his boots. "High kinetic force! Low mass!" he reported.
Aris closed his eyes, his telekinetic feelers extending. "Its mind is… not a mind. It's a program. A very angry, simple program. I can't influence it, but I can see its core data-node. Center of mass."
Ryosuke observed it all. The Six Eyes showed him the creature's Fate-Lines. They weren't organic, flowing lines. They were branching, binary decision trees. He saw its attack patterns as probabilities, its weak points as glowing data-clusters.
The Agumon, enraged, opened its maw. Energy coalesced—not fire, but a sphere of compressed, glitching data. "Pepper Breath!"
The sphere shot towards Varg.
Ryosuke didn't move from his position. He raised a hand and made a gentle, sweeping gesture.
He applied Blue.
A point of intense spatial attraction formed just to the left of the incoming data-sphere. The sphere's trajectory bent violently, slamming into a giant tree root instead. Where it hit, the organic matter didn't burn or explode. It corrupted. The root turned grey, its texture becoming blocky and pixelated, a patch of reality rewritten into low-resolution code.
"Interesting," Ryosuke murmured. "Its attacks are ontological viruses."
He decided to test a theory. "Sera, Chen, keep it distracted. Aris, pinpoint that data-node."
As Sera laid down lanes of searing air and Chen zipped around its head, Aris focused. "Node is… shifting. But it has a cycle. Now! Directly behind its visual receptors!"
Ryosuke moved. He didn't run. He took a single, gliding step, his body flowing with an unnatural grace. In his mind, the world simplified into vectors and probabilities. He was in the zone.
The Agumon turned to swat at Chen, exposing its head. Ryosuke was already there. He didn't use his rifle. He extended his index finger, focusing a minute, hyper-precise application of the Severing principle. Not to cut the creature, but to interrupt.
He tapped the air precisely where Aris indicated the data-node's location was at that exact microsecond.
There was no flash, no sound. The Agumon froze mid-motion. Its glowing green eyes flickered wildly—red, blue, green, static. It let out a distorted screech of binary agony. Its form destabilized, polygons breaking apart, data-streams unraveling.
"ER-ROrR… c0rRupTI0n… deLeTE…"
It dissolved not into gore, but into a shower of glowing, hexagonal data-fragments that evaporated into the air. Where it had stood, the pixelated corruption on the ground and root began to recede slowly, the world healing itself.
Silence returned to the clearing, broken only by the jungle's normal sounds.
Chen let out a low whistle. "You… poked it? And it died?"
"I severed the logical thread holding its aggressive subroutine together," Ryosuke said, analyzing the fading data in his perception. "It wasn't alive. It was a process. I ended the process."
Aris was pale. "That was… surgical. You edited a hostile concept out of existence."
[Combat Data Recorded: 'Data-Beast' Neutralized. Severing Principle efficacy confirmed against non-biological, informational entities. +5 Comprehension Points.]
[Mission Progress: Initial threat neutralized. Incursion source likely nearby.]
"Move," Ryosuke said. "The source is close. I can feel it now. A… dissonance."
The dissonance led them to a cave mouth hidden behind a waterfall of glowing sap. The entrance pulsed with a sickly, green digital light. The air smelled of ozone and rotting data.
Inside, the cave was not rock. The walls were composed of crystallized information—frozen streams of code depicting alien landscapes, creatures, and impossible geometries. At the center of the cavern was the source: a rift in reality, about the size of a door. It wasn't a tear; it was a rendering error. A jagged, glitching hole in the world, and through it, they could see a swirling vortex of pure, chaotic data—the "Digital World" bleeding through.
Around the rift, four more Digimon were active. These were larger, more complex. A bird-like creature made of sharp blue polygons (Birdramon), a armored insectoid with drill-arms (Kabuterimon), a cloaked, floating wizard-type (Wizardmon), and a small, fast mammalian one with speed-lines perpetually rendered around it (Gatomon). They weren't eating the environment. They were building. They were using streams of data pulled from the rift to construct a complex, crystalline structure—a Anchor. If completed, it would stabilize the rift, making it permanent.
"Intruders," Wizardmon's synthesized voice hissed, turning. Its staff glowed. "Biomass must be purged to cleanse the corruption of this analog world."
"Hostile intent confirmed," Varg said, hefting his cannon. "Orders?"
Ryosuke's mind worked at light-speed. A direct assault against four, in a confined space, with a hostile reality rift at their backs, was suboptimal. But they had advantages: diversity, synergy, and his comprehension.
"New plan," he said, his voice a low, calm command that cut through the digital hum. "This is a data-war. We fight it on our terms. Sera, you're on environmental control. Superheat the air around the rift—not to damage it, to create thermal turbulence. It will disrupt the data-streams they're using to build."
Sera nodded, her hands already glowing.
"Chen, you're on the fast one," Ryosuke continued, his eyes tracking Gatomon's probabilistic movement lines. "Use your foresight. Don't try to hit it. Herd it. Drive it into Aris's zone."
"Got it!"
"Aris," Ryosuke said. "The wizard. Its power is structured, logical. Use your telekinesis not to push, but to tangle. Introduce chaos into its spell algorithms. Make it glitch."
Aris focused, his eyes narrowing.
"Varg. The big one. Kabuterimon. It's a tank. Your job is to be a bigger tank. Draw its attention. Keep it occupied. Do not let it near the rift or Sera."
Varg grinned, a feral thing. "Gladly."
"And me?" Ryosuke asked himself, his gaze settling on Birdramon, already taking flight, and the overall tactical pattern. "I'll handle the air support… and the architect."
The fight erupted.
Sera clapped her hands together. A wave of invisible heat radiated out, turning the air around the data-rift into a shimmering, distorting mess. The smooth streams of data feeding the Anchor sputtered and fragmented.
Gatomon blurred towards Chen. Chen's eyes widened, his low-level precognition kicking in. He didn't dodge where Gatomon was; he dodged where it would be. He spun, kicked off a data-crystal, and landed a solid stun-shot on its flank as it passed, driving it sideways.
Aris faced Wizardmon. The Digimon raised its staff, summoning a crackling bolt of digital lightning. Aris didn't block it. He extended a telekinetic tendril and plucked at the forming energy matrix, introducing a random variable. The lightning bolt fizzled into a shower of harmless pixels. Wizardmon staggered, its code conflicting.
Varg met Kabuterimon's charge with a roar. Drill-arm met reinforced fist in a shriek of metal on chitinous data-matter. The force shook the cavern, sending shards of data-crystal raining down. They became a grinding stalemate of pure power.
Birdramon soared upwards, its polygonal wings shedding fiery data-feathers. It opened its beak, gathering energy for a Meteor Wing attack.
Ryosuke watched it rise. He calculated its trajectory, the density of its data-form, the weak points in its rendering. He didn't have Kurokaze's blades. But he had the principle.
He raised both hands, fingers splayed as if gripping an invisible sword hilt. He focused on the concept of the space between himself and Birdramon. He didn't see air. He saw a tapestry of Fate-Lines, and among them, the line that defined "connection" between the Digimon's flight command and its physical form.
He made a single, horizontal drawing motion with his hands.
Spatial Sever.
There was no visible cut. But Birdramon, halfway through its ascent, suddenly shuddered. The connection between its will to fly and the data constituting its wings was… interrupted. Its wings locked. It wasn't damaged; it was invalidated. With a digital shriek, it fell like a stone, crashing into the cavern floor in a burst of fragmented polygons.
Ryosuke didn't pause. He was already moving towards the central Anchor, the crystalline structure the Digimon had been building. It was a complex data-lattice, humming with power. His Six Eyes saw its core algorithm—a simple, repeating loop designed to resonate with the rift and lock it open.
This was the architect.
He could smash it. But that was brute force. He was a surgeon.
He placed his palm against the cool, humming crystal. He poured his consciousness into it, not as a hacker, but as a conceptual editor. He perceived the Anchor's purpose, its "desire" to stabilize.
He didn't attack that desire. He redefined it.
Using the Severing principle intertwined with his own will, he performed a microscopic, ontological edit. He changed the target of the Anchor's stabilizing resonance.
From: Stabilize the rift to the Digital World.
To: Stabilize local reality compliance to Federation Standard 1.0.
The effect was instantaneous and profound. The Anchor's hum changed pitch, becoming harmonious with the natural world. A wave of clean, stabilizing energy pulsed out from it. The glitching, jagged edges of the data-rift began to smooth over. The chaotic vortex of data visible through it slowed, clarified, and then winked out. The rift sealed with a sound like a sigh, leaving behind only a faint scar on the air that quickly faded.
The remaining Digimon froze. Their connection to their home world, their source of power and purpose, was abruptly severed.
"Connection lost. Primary objective… null. Error." Wizardmon said, its voice fading.
One by one, their aggressive subroutines failed. The hostility bled from their screen-eyes. They looked at each other, then at the humans, with something resembling confusion, then… curiosity.
The fight was over. Not with destruction, but with a precise, conceptual correction.
Team Obsidian regrouped, panting but unharmed. They watched as the four Digimon, now passive, gathered in the center of the cavern. Their forms began to glow softly.
"Analog world… not corrupt. Data… different. Interesting." Gatomon chirped, tilting its head at Chen.
"We are… stranded. Logic dictates… observation mode." Wizardmon intoned.
The Digimon didn't vanish. They sat down, their forms becoming less aggressive, more simply… present. They were now neutral entities, curious observers trapped in a world of flesh.
"Mission accomplished," Sera said, looking at the sealed rift. "But… what do we do with them?"
"Data for OSTA," Ryosuke said, activating his data-capture node to record the scene. "They're no longer a threat. They're a… research opportunity."
As they made their way back to the LZ, the Veridian jungle no longer felt hostile. The digital dissonance was gone. The planet's own psychic hum felt stronger, healthier.
On the flight back to the Whisper, Chen replayed the fight on his slate. "You cut its wings off without touching it, boss. That's just not fair."
"It was efficient," Ryosuke said, leaning back and closing his eyes. The clarity of the combat zone was receding, leaving the familiar, arrogant calm in its wake. He reviewed the data in his mind. The Severing principle worked on data-entities. His team performed flawlessly under live conditions. Their synergy was battlefield-proven.
[Mission Assessment: Success.]
[Team Performance Rating: A+]
[Individual Performance (Ryosuke Tanaka): S]
[New Data: 'Conceptual Editing' combat application verified. OSTA interest level: Increased.]
[Rewards: 500 Academy Merit Points (Team), 200 Personal Merit Points, Priority Access to Primordial Archives (Limited).]
Back in their suite on Omnius Prime, the debriefing report filed, they finally relaxed. The adrenaline crash was real.
Chen was already at the replicator, this time ordering "safe," pre-approved nutrient packs. Varg was meticulously cleaning his augmentations. Aris meditated, processing the alien psychic signatures. Sera sat on the balcony, watching the triple sunset paint the Spire in fire.
Ryosuke stood beside her, the vastness of the Academy spread below. They had passed their first test. Not with overwhelming power, but with precision, teamwork, and a comprehension that turned enemies into puzzles to be solved.
He had felt the ghost of twin katana hilts in his hands during the fight. A promise of sharper cuts to come.
The path was clear. Study. Comprehend. Hone his team. And climb the ranks of this city of gods and soldiers, one severed fate-line at a time. The Inter-House competitions were coming. The Interschool championships loomed on the calendar. And somewhere in the Primordial Archives, the physical form of Kurokaze awaited its pilot's call.
He was a monster among geniuses. And this was only the beginning.