The dull clattering of an old watermill creaked in the dry wind, utterly out of place in the endless expanse of sunburned dunes. A narrow stream—barely more than a trickle—ran alongside it, fed by some unseen underground source. Camp had been made here, where a sliver of shade and a splash of water offered the only blessings the desert could give.
It was the day after their desperate escape, and while the others lay scattered about the makeshift camp—sleeping, eating, or tending to wounds and Digivices—Sora's mind was heavy with unease.
She found Izzy sitting cross-legged beneath the mill's shadow, laptop open on his knees, the green glow of its screen reflecting faintly off his glasses. His fingers hovered above the keyboard, twitching slightly as if thinking ahead of his hands.
"Hey, Izzy."
He didn't look up immediately, blinking twice before glancing her way. "Oh—Sora. Sorry, I was just reviewing—uh, a few system logs."
Sora crouched beside him, arms resting on her knees. "I was thinking… do you think you could get in touch with Gennai again?"
At that, Izzy paused. His fingers stilled, and his gaze sharpened.
"There's a lot I want to talk with him about," Sora continued, her voice quiet but firm. "Not just about evolution, but what we're supposed to do now."
Izzy adjusted his glasses. "Getting in touch… isn't impossible, I think."
Her brows shot up. "Wait, seriously? Then can you do it?"
"Possibly," he said cryptically, eyes returning to the screen.
Sora frowned. "How?"
He gave a soft hum, then said, "If I use the black cables, there might be a way."
Sora blinked. "Black cables?"
Izzy turned the laptop slightly so she could see an image: a rough schematic, hastily drawn in code and labeled with his own notes. Then he began to explain.
"Remember the corrupted Greymon we saw in the coliseum? After SkullGreymon's rampage, I went back to the arena ruins. I found a nest of those black cables where it had been standing. One of them was torn clean in half, but I followed it… and found the other end connected to a modular jack—same type as the ports on my laptop."
Sora's eyes widened. "Are you saying the Digimon are being… controlled? Like machines?"
"More like monitored," Izzy muttered. "These cables don't just send power. They relay data. Commands, surveillance—maybe even artificial enhancements. And I've just found another cable running through that dried-up well over there."
He pointed behind her, where the stone ring of a well rose from the sand like a grave marker.
"I think the entire Server Continent is covered in a network," he continued, "a sort of dark meshnet. I could tap into it—potentially."
Sora stared at him, speechless.
"Then why didn't you say anything before?"
"I couldn't," Izzy replied softly. "Not after what happened with Tai."
The words hit her like a bucket of cold water.
"You think it's your fault, don't you?" she whispered.
He didn't answer.
Instead, Izzy looked down at the laptop, his voice low. "If I had said anything earlier, everyone would've looked to me for answers I didn't have. And if I tried to break in and we were caught… we might've all ended up like that Greymon."
A cold silence settled between them, broken only by the wind sighing through the broken mill blades.
Sora shivered. She remembered the corrupted Greymon, the way its eyes had glowed red like dying embers, its movements jagged and unnatural. Just the memory made her heart clench.
"But… is there a way to get in without being caught?" she asked.
Izzy sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Maybe. If I'm careful. Etemon's minions must use terminals to access the network. If I mimic their data patterns… maybe the system will think we're one of them. But if it asks for a password or any form of authentication, we're done for."
He paused. "One advantage is that no one expects anyone to break in. Security might be minimal… because they think no one's clever or crazy enough to try."
Sora managed a small smile. "Well, good thing we've got you."
Izzy began speaking rapidly again—words like access logs, binary protocols, and proxy tunneling tumbling out of his mouth with more energy than the little watermill could ever produce. To Sora, it might as well have been Parseltongue.
She watched his mouth move, but the meaning twisted into a murky fog of technical jargon. And yet, through the confusion, one thing became clear: he believed. Somewhere beneath the caution, under the heavy fear that had blanketed their group since the coliseum, Izzy was beginning to believe there was a chance. A small, flickering light in a world quickly darkening around them.
To Sora, that was enough.
"Try it, Izzy-kun," she said, her voice calm, steady. "I'll take responsibility for whatever happens."
Izzy's fingers froze over the keyboard. His wide, analytical eyes met hers—caught between admiration and alarm.
"Sora… are you sure?" he asked, much more softly than before. His previous excitement ebbed into something more solemn.
"No," she admitted, folding her arms. "But we don't have the luxury of waiting around anymore."
The sun beat down against the desert sand outside their shelter. The old wooden beams groaned like the bones of an ancient creature unwilling to keep holding up this sanctuary for much longer. Sooner or later, Etemon would come, stomping through the desert with his band of fiery monsters and mad laughter.
"We can't live like this," Sora whispered. "Not forever."
She thought of Tai, of the haunted way he had been sitting alone near the waterwheel, barely speaking. She thought of the others—Joe still clutching his bandaged wrist, TK pretending he wasn't scared, Mimi looking like she wanted to cry whenever no one was looking. They were all trying to stay strong, but the cracks were showing.
Izzy closed his laptop slowly. His small, awkward smile tried to reassure her, but it came with a weight behind it—like someone trying to joke before taking a plunge into black water.
"…Very well. I'll try it," he said.
Then, almost teasingly, "But I don't think we should get our hopes up. I'm used to not finding him."
He gave her a lopsided grin.
It wasn't much, but Sora found herself smiling back.
"Then we'll both be disappointed together."
Folding himself into the base of the dry well, Izzy crouched in near darkness, the soft hum of his laptop the only sound aside from the wind whispering above.
It was cooler down here, tucked beneath the sun-blistered earth of the Server Desert. The stone walls were cracked, worn smooth in places by time, but they formed a narrow cocoon around him—isolated, secretive, like a spyhole carved into the fabric of a crumbling world.
Above him, Sora's silhouette occasionally passed over the mouth of the well, her face framed against the blistering sky, worried and watchful. She didn't speak. She didn't need to.
Click, click, click. His fingers danced across the keyboard with the familiarity of muscle memory, like casting a silent spell he'd long since memorized. Lines of code scrolled rapidly on the screen, symbols and commands flowing like digital incantations. And then, to his astonishment…
No password prompt.
He blinked.
"…Huh."
It was almost too easy. The connection tunneled in smoothly, like a key slipping into a door that hadn't been locked in the first place. And beyond that door lay an empire—Etemon's network, vast and sprawling, branching like veins across not only Server Continent, but reaching even into the data-streams of other continents beyond the horizon.
And yet, something was… off.
A robust security system was in place—walls of firewalls and authorization gates, strict enough to rival a corporate databank. But they were… dormant. Sleeping. A knight's armor left on its stand.
Why?
Was it arrogance? Overconfidence? Or perhaps… misdirection?
Izzy didn't let himself dwell on it. Caution was his companion, and he moved quickly, like a thief in a digital cathedral. He rewrote the access logs, clearing his trail, erasing every fingerprint of his intrusion as if he had never been there. It was like invisibility magic, only held together with keystrokes and logic.
And then, just as he was preparing to disconnect—
Ping.
An alert in the top-right corner. An email.
Sender: andromon@factorial-town.file-island
Izzy's breath caught.
He opened the message with the careful reverence of someone unsealing an old scroll. It was from that Andromon—the one they'd saved from the black gear back on File Island. The same one who had shown them the sewage route to Toy Town, and who had once said, "If you ever need me, I'll be monitoring the factory."
Andromon's message blinked into life like a reply in a chatroom:
"I've informed Gennai of this.
The reason why he hasn't contacted you until now was because Etemon was blocking him,
but thanks to you, the network has jammed.
He can now contact you directly."
Izzy's eyes widened. His heart quickened. The screen's light glinted off the lenses of his goggles.
He had done it.
A burst of relief—quiet but potent—washed over him like a wave. After days of wandering in the dark, after all the fear and frustration, they had finally opened a line. A real line. Gennai—whatever cryptic guidance he held—was within reach.
Above, Sora leaned in further, calling softly, "Izzy? Anything?"
Izzy tilted his head back and let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
"…Yeah," he said with a quiet grin, his voice echoing slightly against the well walls. "We've got mail."
Just as Izzy clambered out of the well, brushing dirt from his sleeves, TK came jogging up the hill, breathless.
"Izzy! Sora! Gennai's here! You gotta come quick!"
They hurried after him, feet crunching dry grass beneath them as the desert wind swept in low waves. Izzy's laptop, still warm from the connection, was cradled tightly in his arms. His mind, though, was whirring faster than the processor could ever hope to.
"Thanks to you, the network has jammed," Andromon had said.
But Izzy hadn't done anything to actively jam it—had he? Maybe setting up that inbox had created a ripple, or maybe Etemon's system had been so unstable that one foreign log-in was enough to trigger a systemic reaction. Either way, it made his stomach twist. He didn't like unknowns.
Behind the creaking water mill stood a hulking cactus, towering like a sentry in the night. Beneath its shadow, the group had gathered—children and Digimon alike, faces lit faintly by the flickering blue hue of the hologram.
Tai's voice rang out, cutting through the desert air.
"…Why?!"
Izzy arrived just in time to hear the tail end of it, but the frustration in Tai's voice needed no context.
The holographic figure of Gennai floated gently above the ground, hands clasped behind his back, wearing that half-smile that never gave anything away.
"So you've evolved. Hmm. The thing is, there are many possible paths of evolution. None of them are truly right or wrong. But the reason why you didn't achieve the evolution you were expecting… is because you are still inexperienced."
Tai flinched at the word.
"Inexperienced…"
"That's right. Your Digimon evolve in reflection of your personal growth," Gennai continued, voice soft but firm, like a teacher both patient and disappointed.
"Then what do I have to do to grow?" Tai asked, almost pleading now.
"I'll send you a trainer. His name is—"
Static.
The image flickered.
"…mon… isten to what he sa—"
And then the image collapsed into shimmering fragments and vanished into the wind.
"Ah…" Izzy let out a sound of deep frustration, his shoulders sagging. So many questions... all gone.
The others stood in contemplative silence, the weight of the moment grounding them.
"He said he was going to send a trainer, did he?" Mimi asked, turning to Palmon.
Palmon nodded, her leaflike ears drooping thoughtfully. "Yes, he did."
"So maybe that means we'll get a bodyguard or something," Mimi added hopefully.
"If we're lucky," Joe muttered under his breath, crossing his arms.
But none of them looked particularly confident. Suspicion still clung to them—Gennai was an enigma, and not all enigmas earned trust.
Above them, sitting silently atop the windmill like a shadow, Naruto watched it all unfold. His arms were loosely draped over his knees, Sparky curled beside him like a glowing ember.
He wasn't part of their inner circle, and he knew it. Whatever history they carried, he hadn't lived it. He didn't know who Gennai was or what evolution meant to them—not in the way they understood it.
So he remained silent.
"It's a beautiful night," Sparky said, tail flickering softly.
"Yeah," Naruto murmured, his voice low.
His eyes swept across the distant dunes, the starlit sky above, and the faint glimmer of the digital moon overhead. And despite himself, despite the purpose that had brought him here, he felt a tug in his chest.
Home.
The ramen shop. Iruka's scoldings. Konohamaru's jokes. Sakura's stubbornness. Sasuke's quiet smile. Kakashi's distant encouragement. Jiraiya's grandfatherly presence and Tsunade's motherly warmth. The faces of those who mattered, who felt so far away now.
"You thinking about them?" Sparky asked.
"…Yeah," Naruto said, voice barely above a whisper. "I miss them."