Chad is lonely. He misses Jason like he's never missed anything before in his life. Yeah, Shelton's awesome, sure, but... he had wanted to team with Jason for so long, to have him taken away so abruptly has left him uneasy, lost in doubts and recriminations. Things he could've done differently to strengthen their partnership, make them invaluable to Shane and Daniel as a tag team where they would've laughed Angle out of the building at the mere suggestion of trading Jason over to Raw. But this hadn't happened and he'd lost his brother, his best friend.

Wrestling isn't as much fun, going to the Digiworld feels bleak and empty, fighting against an unending wave of spreading darkness and disaster, and Chad kind of just wants to ignore the next summons. But he doesn't- gets in line with the others and goes. Half listens to Luke, to Kevin, to anyone who has anything to say about what they're doing here now, and then trudges after them to the next problem spot on the map.

It's all gone as soon as they arrive, barely cinders left, data thick and heavy in the air, and Chad closes his eyes, grips Punimon tightly as the rest of the digidestined make distressed noises and start searching for someone- anyone. But he can tell already, everyone's been deleted. The village is no more. He stumbles away, needing a minute, and walks for what feels like forever but is probably only a few minutes when he trips and lands at the feet of a humanoid creature, peering up at him. "It was you," he says lowly, startled at the pure flames bleeding from his hands, his shoulders, all along his body. "You destroyed that entire village."

"I didn't mean to," he chokes out. "Truly. I just... lost my temper... they sent my best friend to another village... and the loneliness, the anger, it built up... I didn't mean to."

And oddly enough, Chad believes him. But it's clear he has no control over his powers, not anymore, so he presses a button on his digivice to contact the others and stands anxiously until Shinsuke and the others arrive. Nakamura handles it quickly, smoothly, deleting the creature so that his data will purify and hopefully be reborn back into the gentle creature he was before. Before losing who seemed to matter most to him.

Chad closes his eyes, thinking about the coincidence of running into a creature suffering the same as he is. "Jason wouldn't want me to throw everything away, and I'm sure that digimon's friend wouldn't have wanted it for him either. I need to get my head back in the game, be the tag partner that Shelton deserves." He's still best friends with Jason, they talk all of the time even if they don't travel together or wrestle side by side. It'll do.

He smiles calmly.