The inside of the pyramid pulsed with ancient menace — not the sort born of age or time, but of purpose. It was built to keep people out. Not intruders, not enemies. People. Those with hearts, with wills of their own. The very walls whispered this.
Sand drifted across the marble-like floor, catching faint rays of flickering red light. The air was hot and still, not just with heat, but with the tension of a thousand invisible eyes watching, judging.
Naruto raced forward, the echo of his sandals like gunshots in the tense silence. Beside him, Sora ran with tight-lipped determination, her eyes scanning the dimly-lit passageways as if she could sniff out the danger that slithered just out of sight.
Behind them, a clone of Naruto carried T.K. in his arms — the boy's eyes wide as they passed through the shadowed corridors. It didn't take long. One of the passageways opened into a wide chamber, plain and unadorned save for a barely visible etching of the Crest of Hope in the wall. As if it had been waiting for TK all along.
"There—!" TK gasped, heart leaping.
"Go!" Naruto ordered the clone, not breaking stride. "Get him out safely. MetalGreymon's buying us time."
The clone vanished in a shimmer of air, carrying the child and his precious crest toward the exit.
Then it was just Naruto and Sora.
The deeper they went, the more unnatural the pyramid became. Light shifted oddly. Angles didn't quite add up. Ancient power coiled in the walls like veins of lightning beneath skin.
"Here," Sora whispered, her hand brushing Naruto's shoulder.
Before them, a narrow bridge stretched across a chasm that hadn't been there a moment before — endless, black, and humming with menace. The bridge itself was thin, stone carved with spirals and runes that flickered faintly like dying stars.
They crossed without words.
As they neared the next chamber, something snapped.
CRACK!
A blade of light burst from the wall beside them — sharp, sudden, and humming with lethal intent.
Naruto flinched — then vanished in a blur, reappearing with Sora pulled safely against him just as a second blade erupted from the floor beneath where she'd stood.
"Even without power, these traps are running," he muttered, narrowing his eyes. "They're using pressure. Magic. Or something worse."
Ahead, thin vents hissed, releasing crimson mist that shimmered like blood in sunlight. Naruto pressed a hand to the wall — his chakra flared — and the wall groaned. Ancient mechanisms clunked and shuddered before exploding outward, chunks of rock and splinters of metal hurling through the air as Naruto's chakra tore through the inner systems.
One corridor began to close behind them. Stone walls slowly grinding together like hungry teeth.
"Go!" Naruto roared, blasting a shockwave forward. His palm struck the wall — Rasengan! — and the corridor exploded in a spiral of stone and fire, creating a new path.
Finally, they arrived.
A vaulted room, tall and immense, walls carved in glyphs glowing with hostile red light. At the far end, a console of pure black metal stood, twisted and steaming, with cables that ran like vines up the walls and into the ceiling. And in the centre of the room, small and hunched before the console, was Datamon.
He didn't even glance at them.
His fingers flew over controls, sparks flying, circuits screaming. The console pulsed with alien energy. The screen flashed with the strange polyhedron Naruto had glimpsed in brief flashes — a code so ancient, so wrong, it hurt his eyes to look at.
"I can't stop it," Datamon muttered, voice frantic. "It's inside everything. It's rewriting me— rewriting the system—!"
Sora had already moved.
Her eyes were locked on a soft light glowing behind a protective cage near the far wall — a simple pedestal, encased in glass-like crystal, and atop it — the Crest of Love.
She stepped forward slowly, almost reverently.
As she reached for it, her fingertips brushing the edge, the room screamed.
Not aloud — but in Naruto's soul.
He felt it. A pressure like the ocean collapsing in around him. Not power — he'd felt power before. Not rage.
No — this was different.
This was presence.
Something vast. Something awake.
The room turned cold. Naruto's breath caught. The chakra in his body recoiled — not out of fear, but in deference. Like it too could feel what had arrived.
He gritted his teeth.
"Wha… what is that?" he whispered, his voice barely his own.
Datamon screamed. "It's alive! IT'S INSIDE EVERYTHING!"
On the screen, the spinning polyhedron turned, and turned… and then looked back.
Naruto felt it — the moment it noticed him.
And for the first time in his life — truly, without exaggeration — he felt afraid.
Not for his life.
But for everything.
--------------------
"Ukikikikiki!"
The taunting laugh echoed down the corridor like nails dragged over glass, mocking and unhinged. The pyramid itself seemed to flinch at the sound — a groan rumbling through the old stone, as if the structure was painfully aware of the thing that had just slithered past its defenses.
Through the crumbling entryway and past the chaos of MetalGreymon's blasts, Etemon burst into the chamber like a dancing shadow — slipping through the cracks of the moment, grinning far too wide, sunglasses catching the last flickers of the dying control lights.
"The children are here, and so is Datamon," he sneered, his voice laced with playful cruelty. "Now, who should I start with first…"
He paced forward with all the relaxed confidence of a predator in a room of prey. His golden mic cord swung lazily by his side like a whip, crackling faintly with corrupted data. Datamon, still hunched before the console, didn't even turn.
Etemon's face twisted. "Ignoring me? You? That's rich." He lunged forward. "Kiii—I'll start with you, then!"
His clawed fingers clamped around Datamon's shoulders, ready to fling the smaller Digimon into the wall—
—and the universe broke.
From the monitor behind them, a shape surged forward — a double helix, made not of DNA but of metal and shadow, its links glowing faintly with a sickly blue light, each one pulsing like a heartbeat.
With a horrible wet clank, the chains wrapped around them both — spiraling and binding, crackling with something colder than death — and then, like spiders retreating with their prey, the chains yanked them backward.
Into the screen.
Into the code.
Into something that should not have existed.
"W—What happened?" Naruto gasped, eyes wide.
Sora stepped back instinctively, nearly stumbling. "Did they just—? That's not possible…"
But there was no Etemon. No Datamon. Only the gently flickering monitor, as if nothing had happened at all.
And then— it shattered.
Not like glass. Not like metal. But like space itself caving in.
The monitor crumpled inward, imploded — crushed by unseen hands with infinite strength, folding in on itself again and again and again until there was nothing left but a shape.
A sphere.
A large, silent, jet black sphere, suspended where the console had once been.
The light around it dimmed. Not because it had darkened, but because the sphere was eating it. Consuming it.
Naruto stepped in front of Sora, protective instinct kicking in. "Wh—What is that…?"
He hadn't expected an answer.
But Sora's eyes were wide, her face ghostly pale, lips barely moving.
"I… I think it could be…"
He turned toward her sharply. "It could be what?"
Sora swallowed, her voice no louder than a breath.
"…A black hole."
A beat of silence.
Then—
WHOOOOOOM.
A wind began.
Not the sort that pushes.
The sort that pulls.
The air bent. Pebbles began to slide. Dust lifted upward, like it had changed its mind about gravity. Even the faint hum of the digital energy around them was growing distorted, as if the very sound waves were being dragged toward the sphere.
"What the hell kind of black hole sucks in digital code?" Naruto shouted, his voice barely audible over the rising roar. "This isn't real. It can't be real."
"It is," Sora said, tears prickling at her eyes. "It is, Naruto. It took them like they were nothing—!"
The wind doubled.
Panels peeled off the walls. The floor buckled. The air trembled. The pyramid itself screamed, a low groan that reverberated like the death knell of a titan.
"We gotta get out of here!" Sora screamed, grabbing Naruto's hand.
But he was staring at the black hole — not with fear anymore, but with fury.
"I'm not leaving without your crest."
"I have it!" she cried, holding it up, the glowing emblem gripped tightly in her hand. "Now move!"
Then the black hole pulsed.
A pulse that broke the ceiling.
Chunks of ancient stone lifted off like feathers, pulled upward, spinning toward the dark sphere with increasing speed.
They ran.
Naruto scooped Sora up as the ground beneath them began to shatter. His chakra flared — blue energy burning bright — and he blasted through a collapsing wall, bursting into the main corridor just as the void behind them grew larger, hungrier.
The pyramid was falling apart, not just physically, but existentially.
Like something outside the code had reached in — and touched the world.
-------------------
The desert heat shimmered on the horizon, distorting everything like a dream on the verge of collapse. The pyramid, once majestic and immovable, now wavered like a ghost caught in a storm — its edges warped and bending inward, as though reality itself were being seen through a convex lens.
Joe rubbed at his eyes, blinking rapidly. "Is that… a heat haze?"
But then—BOOM!
The sound cracked the air like a thunderclap. One of the ancient pyramid's walls exploded outward, and a rolling plume of thick, dark smoke bellowed out as if the pyramid were exhaling its final breath.
From within the cloud, something vast moved.
"Wh—what in the—?"
Joe's voice caught in his throat as a colossal form burst from the smoke — MetalGreymon, the chrome-scaled, missile-armed dinosaur cyborg, his metallic wings flaring like blades of light in the sun. Riding upon his broad armored shoulders were Tai, Sora, and Naruto, their figures backlit against the glow of destruction.
"It's Tai! Naruto! And Sora-kun!" Joe cried, pointing as he scrambled up the dunes for a better look.
The three riders were shouting, but their voices were lost in the roaring wind now surging from the heart of the pyramid. It wasn't just smoke pouring out anymore — it was being sucked in, like water swirling into a drain.
The inside of the pyramid was imploding, a spiraling abyss collapsing in on itself. Walls twisted. Pillars bent. Stone turned to dust midair and vanished into the growing dark spot at the center.
"W—What's going on?!" Joe gasped, stumbling back.
They weren't alone in their panic. Matt, Izzy, Mimi — all of them stood frozen in horror, eyes locked on the pyramid as it disintegrated not with fire or fury, but with an eerie silence, as if even sound was being swallowed.
MetalGreymon landed beside them with surprising grace, his talons digging into the sand, sending up a wave of dust. Tai leapt down first, his face pale, sweat beading on his forehead. Sora followed, clutching something to her chest — her crest, glowing faintly. Naruto was last, his usual composure shaken. Even his chakra cloak flickered erratically, reacting to the unstable energy.
"We're in big trouble!" Naruto shouted, his voice hoarse. "It's a black hole!"
Matt blinked, still dazed, his hair whipping in the vortex wind. "A black hole…? What the heck did you guys do?"
But Izzy's eyes had already gone wide. His laptop beeped frantically in his arms, warning lights flashing red. "It doesn't matter what happened. We have to move. Now."
"Move where?" Mimi asked, struggling to steady her wide-brimmed hat in the gusts. "Where's safe from that?!"
"For the time being," Izzy said, grimly clutching his Digivice, "just as far as possible. I don't know how much distance we need to be safe, but if we stay here—we're as good as gone."
Tai's eyes sharpened. "The bunker! Piximon's bunker! TK is there. He's already set up a barrier. It's the only place we have!"
"Run!" Naruto barked. "Don't look back!"
And they ran.
None of them looked back.
Not Matt.
Not Joe.
Not even Mimi.
Because they could feel it — the way gravity itself was bending at their backs, as if invisible fingers were clawing at their clothes, their hair, their very souls.
If they turned to look, they might freeze.
And if they froze, they'd die.
Behind them, the sounds of stone folding, steel warping, and reality itself being unraveled filled the air in a relentless, grinding roar. It was like listening to a planet being chewed to pieces.
Then — silence.
A terrible, suffocating silence.
They didn't dare stop until they saw it: the bunker, low and grey, barely visible amid the rolling dunes, reinforced with shielding runes carved by Piximon's staff. The moment it came into view, Tai and Sora — already ahead on MetalGreymon — began waving frantically.
"Hurry!" Sora shouted, hoarse. "Don't stop!"
The group sprinted toward the safe haven with every ounce of strength left in them, hearts thundering, lungs burning.
A sudden darkness fell over the desert like a curtain being pulled across the sun.
Matt stopped in his tracks. So did Mimi, Joe, and the others. A moment ago, the skies had been a cloudless stretch of radiant blue. Now, everything was dimmer… colder.
"There weren't any clouds just now," Joe muttered, dread crawling up his spine like a line of cold sweat.
Tai's eyes snapped skyward. His voice cracked like a whip. "MetalGreymon!"
With a metallic snarl, the chrome-armored Digimon crouched low and stretched out a clawed hand. Tai leapt up, catching the outstretched fingers before climbing to the shoulder like a seasoned rider mounting a war-beast. MetalGreymon's eyes glowed a fierce orange. With a massive creak of his wing joints, he lifted off in a blast of sand, his wings slicing through the air with a roar like a Harrier jet at full thrust.
And then—
A crash.
A shriek.
A howl of grinding metal and fury exploded across the sky.
"Ukiiiiiiiiiiiiii!"
The sound cut through the atmosphere like a broken siren.
Everyone looked up—some gasped, others froze.
From above, he descended.
A hideous, grotesque parody of what he once was. Etemon, once a flamboyant simian draped in star-shaped sunglasses and Elvis swagger, now floated in midair like something spat out of a nightmare.
His upper half still resembled Etemon — that smarmy, fur-covered torso and sneering face — but everything below the waist had been replaced by a hideous, glowing sphere of junk. Twisted cables, sheets of iron, melted circuits, pieces of ancient Digimon tech — all warped and fused into a screaming orb of dark matter and debris. It hummed, faintly, with the same unnatural pull as the black hole they had just fled from.
Naruto's eyes narrowed. "He… survived that?"
Sora stepped closer to him, unable to tear her eyes away. "That's not just Etemon anymore… it's like he fused with the remains of the pyramid. Of Datamon… maybe even part of the black hole."
Tai, high above, shouted down at them. "Everyone — stay sharp! This isn't the same fight as before!"
Matt clenched his fists, already stepping in front of TK, shielding his little brother instinctively. "He's not just alive… he's evolved into something else."
As if in answer, the warped monstrosity that was now Etemon cackled, his voice echoing like radio feedback in a wind tunnel. The ball of metal below him spun slowly, arcs of digital static trailing from its surface, pulsing with a volatile energy that even the Digivices couldn't identify.
"I'm better than ever!" Etemon roared. "Call me… Dark Network Etemon!"
And then he charged, a comet of screeching chaos hurtling from the sky toward the desert sands.