Author's Note: Here's the next chapter. Apparently I got all confused with the time difference between Masks Square and the rest of the Digital World, because that fight STILL isn't over. Instead, we've got some other important stuff to cover!

Davis had been nervously pacing around the site of his recent defeat for a while now, struggling over whether he had made the correct decision. It wasn't so much the loss itself that bothered him- looking back on it, he honestly couldn't think of anything he could have done differently to beat something as powerful as an Omnimon with such short notice- but rather his decision to let Rei go without trying to explain fully why he was fighting against Neo and Hideto. At the time, he had thought that sending Rei to Neo might have been the best scenario- after all, Ken had turned evil because of the loss of a family member (among other things) and was only returned to normal by Wormmon's act of compassion, so maybe seeing his sister and having her explain everything would be the push needed to get Neo off of his destructive path. Now, he couldn't help but feel he had royally screwed up: Rei was a bystander who didn't even have a Digimon, and he had just let her walk right into Daemon's base. Not exactly the best move.

Willis grew tired of watching Davis pace and offered up a plan. "Listen, I get that losing this big of a fight sucked, and we need to come up with some sort of plan to make sure it doesn't happen again, but can we do something other than just pace around here? If we go in the direction Hideto went, we might be able to sneak into Daemon's castle and bust Rei out of there before we even have to fight again."

Davis stopped pacing out of shock. "Wait, did you just suggest we break into Daemon's castle? That's strange. Usually I'm the one with the rash plan of action and everybody else has to convince me there's a safer alternative. I thought you'd be more like Izzy- always looking at every possible option and choosing the best strategy. And since I was thinking about storming the castle earlier only to see all the ways that would go horribly wrong, I don't think this is anywhere near the best strategy. So, did you think of something I didn't that could help the plan actually work?"

Willis sighed and shook his head. "Sorry, just throwing out an idea. I just want to do something to help out Rei, you know?" Davis nodded. "Yeah, me… wait a second, do you want to help Rei because she's in trouble, or do you want to help Rei because she's Rei and she happens to be in trouble?" Willis merely looked confused, so Davis decided to be a bit more blunt. Subtlety had never been his strong suit anyway. "Are you so gung-ho about saving Rei because you've got a thing for her?"

Willis was stunned as he tried to figure out where this all came from, so he took a second before saying, "No, it's not like that." Davis caught the pause and smirked. "You know, you don't have to be embarrassed. Sure she's in college now and three years older than us, but she's pretty and you've been taking college classes since you were what, eight? It's just too bad she's taken. Well, kind of. Sora insists she and Tai are going to get together soon, and as the DigiDestined of Love I tend to just trust her on things like this." Willis, understandably getting annoyed at all this, curtly responded "I don't care. I'm not interested in her like that. She's in danger, and as a DigiDestined it's our duty to help her."

Davis agreed with the last statement, but he wasn't about to let Willis off the hook that easily. Sure, he knew he was being more annoying than he should be, but Willis was clearly bottling something up with the pauses and then quick answers. Now that they had Crests, bottling up feelings could be dangerous- they didn't want to trigger a berserk Dark Digivolution when the pent up feelings burst out, so it was important to have a sort of safety valve. Now might not have seemed like the best time for this, but with their Digimon still recovering from the last fight they may as well do something. "Okay, so you don't have a thing for Rei. It isn't because you're still hung up on Yolei or Kari, right? 'Cause you may have gotten to flirt with them last time, but you've missed your shot with Yolei. She's with Ken now. I'd say you've missed your shot with Kari too, but honestly nobody ever really had a chance with her except TK. So, I'm afraid you'll have to move on."

Just as Davis expected, Willis started to snap. "For the last time, this has nothing to do with that! I'm not hung up on Yolei or Kari. I'm not hung up on any girl!" Davis smirked. Just like when he first became a DigiDestined, he still had the ability to be completely aggravating to his teammates. However, now that he had grown up a bit, he could use this as a weapon instead of using it unintentionally. It would only take a few more pushes for Willis to finally go over the edge. "So, not hung up on any girls, huh? You hung up on any guys, then?"

Terriermon and Lopmon both gasped in shock, while Willis went wide-eyed. "How did you know about me?" Judging by this reaction, Davis immediately figured out why Willis had been so quick to deny any feelings for Rei, and regretted pushing Willis so hard. He had wanted Willis to do nothing more than blow off some steam, but now he seemed to have dragged out a personal secret. Knowing he may have crossed a line, Davis was quick to apologize.

"Listen, sorry about that. I wasn't seriously trying to pry into your life. I was just trying to think of something I could do while waiting for Veemon to recover so I wouldn't keep second guessing myself for letting Rei go when I hit on an idea. I'm not sure if you know all the details from a few months ago, but we only won that fight because most of the older group managed to master Dark Digivolution. Now that we have our crests, we might have to do the same, so I was trying to see if I could come to terms with my inner darkness. It's not a surefire method of control- everybody but Mimi ended up with some pretty nasty side effects- but it worked out a heck of a lot better than pretending you didn't have inner darkness and letting the Dark Digivolution run wild. So, I was trying to work on not repressing any of my negative traits when you made your suggestion. At first, I was just shocked at the plan, and then I thought that maybe you really did have a thing for Rei. Still, from how you denied it, it was obvious you were hiding something big, and since I had just been thinking about not repressing stuff, I guess I got carried away trying to get you to stop hiding whatever you were feeling. I'm really sorry I was so pushy, and I hope you can forgive me. I was only trying to help, but I went about it the wrong way."

Willis seemed to have a hard time processing what was going on. "Wait, what? You just found out about me, and you're only apologizing about how you did it? Why aren't you making a big deal about me being gay?" Davis shrugged. "Because it isn't really that big of a deal? I mean, you're still Willis, right? Whether you're interested in guys or girls doesn't really change our friendship. Well, I guess I don't even know if I deserve to call you a friend. I mean, I haven't really tried to contact you since that summer with Nat-chan, and I did just sort of invade your privacy. I'd understand if you don't want to be friends, but I hope you'll still be willing to work with me to help save the Digital World."

Willis still seemed to be in a bit of shock, as it took him a while to respond. "Of course I'll still—wait, no. What I mean is, I'd still like to think of us as friends. Yeah, your method of getting me to open up could have been a lot better, and you could have told me what you were planning, but I understand you were only trying to help. And I guess I should thank you for something too- thanks for not looking at me like I'm some kind of monster now that you know."

Davis smiled. "Glad we can still be friends. And you do realize that me looking at you like a monster wouldn't be a bad thing, right? I mean, calling someone a monster might be an insult to most people, but we spend all of our time with Digital Monsters, don't we? To a DigiDestined, 'monster' can pretty much be the same as 'best friend'."

Willis actually cracked a smile at this. "You know, Michael said the pretty much the exact same thing when he found out. I guess I don't really have to worry about my friends finding out, do I? I guess you just get so used to keeping some things secret that it's hard to stop hiding them." Davis sent a questioning look. "Alright, you don't have to answer this if you aren't comfortable with it, but why did you think you had to keep it a secret in the first place? Have most of the people who found out taken the news badly?"

Willis sighed. "Well, not too many people know about it, but I haven't really gotten a lot of positive reception. Mimi and Michael figured it out, but they're pretty much my best friends and they were great about accepting me. There were a couple guys I dated for a bit that obviously knew, but we never got past a second date, mostly because of my personality rather than anything else. Some of my classmates must have figured it out too, but then again I was always the weird kid who was taking college classes since elementary school so they already had enough ammo to pick on me as it was. The worst was my mom though. She kicked me out of the house."

Davis looked horrified. "She did WHAT? How could she do that to her own son?" Willis put his hand on Davis's shoulder to calm him down. "Listen, I know it sounds horrible, but it's not that bad. My mom and I were never very close anyway. How do you think I could just wander around between New York and Colorado only checking in by phone call when I felt like it? She was never a big factor in my life. There's a reason Terriermon and Lopmon pretty much raised me. She could barely avoid getting in jail with her lifestyle, let alone raise a kid. It took me until I was sixteen and some of my inventions paid off that I could get her into a decent rehab facility. While there, she became a religious convert, and her beliefs are the only thing keeping her from going back to how she was before. Even if those beliefs say homosexuality is a sin and thus I can't live under her roof, I'll still take it over the alternative. I'd rather have a mother who can live a long time hating who I am than one that's going to wind up dead in a back alley somewhere."

Hearing this, Davis at least understood why Willis wasn't lashing out at his mom, but he still didn't think her actions were excusable. However, before he could voice his opinion, Terriermon cut him off. "Don't bother arguing with him- his mind's made up. I don't think it's right either, but if it's how Willis wants it, we can't really change his mind." Sighing in defeat, Davis decided to change the topic. "Alright, fine. So, now that that's all behind us, how do you suppose we go about beating Omegamon? I'm sure we'll have to fight him again between now and beating Daemon, so we should probably be ready for that."

Willis immediately shifted back into a strategist's mindset. "Well, ideally we could contact the others and gang up on him, but I'm not sure how well that would work. I say we find a place to fight that works to our advantage. He's way too powerful to take on in the open like this, but if we find a spot with a lot of cover we might be able to use hit and run tactics on him until he eventually goes down. Problem is, we don't know nearly enough about this continent to know which way to go to find something like that."

Davis was suddenly struck by inspiration. "We may not know exactly where to find something like that, but I've got an idea. Hideto probably flew off in the direction of Daemon's castle, right? How about we follow after him? If we find a good spot along the way, we'll stop there, call for backup, and wait for him to come to us. If not, we'll end up at the castle, and can at least scout out the area for when we'll eventually have to fight there. Worst case scenario, we get AeroVeedramon to fly us the heck out of there if we are facing a fight we can't win. He's fast enough that we should get away."

Willis nodded. "Sounds good to me. But listen, could you do me a favor? When you contact the others, could you not tell them about me? It's something they should probably hear from me, and I'll tell them when this is all over. It's not that I'm worried about how they'll react, but we are in the middle of a war right now and that's probably not the best time for personal revelations."

Davis snorted. "Yeah, you'd think that, but just ask TK and Kari what was going on when they finally got together. Tai and Matt had been brainwashed, we were about to invade the base of all seven Demon Lords, and they still found the time to set up a date. Still, it's up to you when you want the others to find out, so your secret's safe with me. Though, I might have just one condition…"

Willis noticed the joking tone of the last sentence, so he decided to play along. "Oh yeah, and what would that be?" Davis gave a giant grin. "Well, you just have to rate my attractiveness among the male DigiDestined. After all, I've got the looks, the athleticism, and the awesome personality. I'm totally a 10, right?" Willis snorted in laughter. "Yeah, you're a 10 alright. Maybe 10 out of 25, but not 10 out of 10." As a hurt expression crossed Davis's face, Willis managed to restrain himself to just a grin. "Sorry Davis, but I have my standards. But hey, tell you what. If you manage to beat Hideto and stop Daemon you might go from a four to a six on the ten point scale."

Motimon could only stare in shock at the newly Digivolved Seraphimon. "Is that really Lord HolyAngemon?" Leo, who was starting to recover enough that it wasn't a struggle just to hold himself in a seated position, answered. "That is indeed the ruler of this castle, but what you see before you is his true form. HolyAngemon attained his Mega level long ago, but the energy from so much power disturbed the Digimon around him. When he decided to guard over Holy Angel Castle and protect newborn Digimon, he put a seal upon his Digivolution so he wouldn't harm the ones he was trying to protect. He swore to never release the seal, at the risk of harming those around him."

HolyAngemon responded in a voice filled with authority, to the point where Motimon felt like he was hearing a divine being. "I may have sworn that oath, but I have no choice. I cannot allow the Super Ultimate to have access to this world!" However, Neo was unmoved by HolyAngemon's resolve, instead staring at his Digivice with a look of something approaching pure glee as he analyzed HolyAngemon's new capabilities. "Perfect! This is just perfect, Arkadimon!" As the mantis-like Digimon charged at HolyAngemon, the Seraph Digmon dodged out of the way before replying "Abomination, taste my special attack. Seven Heavens!"

Seven spheres of holy light slammed directly into Arkadimon, obscuring the Rookie level in a cloud of smoke. When the dust cleared, Arkadimon had clearly taken a lot of damage, as all of its claws had been blown off in the explosion. Seeing this, Motimon began cheering at HolyAngemon's apparent victory, while HolyAngemon himself extended a glowing blue sword from his wrist in order to finish off his opponent. Calling out his Excalibur attack, he began flying towards the wounded Arkadimon, ignoring Neo as the Tamer began chuckling.

"The thing about Arkadimon is the relationship between its level and its power is beyond the grasp of ordinary monsters." True to Neo's words, at the last second Arkadimon raised one of its arms, managing to block the holy blade. Leo could not believe that any Digimon could block the mystical blade with its own flesh, but Arkadimon wasn't done surprising the forces of Holy Angel Castle. While HolyAngemon was busy trying to push through Arkadimon's defense, one of its claws on the ground suddenly shot into the Seraphimon, cutting right through his armor. As he fell back, he noticed the claw change into a tentacle like appendage and reattach to Arkadimon's arm, while the same thing happened with Arkadimon's other claw.

While he had always known the Super Ultimate would be extremely dangerous even in its lower stages of Digivolution, HolyAngemon was still taken aback at how strong this Rookie level was. "You are indeed fearsome, Arkadimon, but this next attack will finish you off. Seven Heavens!" HolyAngemon took a bit longer to fire this attack, as he was clearly charging more energy into the seven spheres. However, Neo didn't seem to care about the larger attack, as he once again started laughing. "Looks like Arkadimon's finished charging. It's too bad. This attack looks like it could do some damage, but you're too late. You can't win now!" HolyAngemon, not one to believe hope was ever lost, ignored the Tamer's gloating and fired his attack, causing Arkadimon to disappear in a massive burst of light.

Leo started cheering at HolyAngemon's successful extermination of the threat, but then a shadowy figure appeared within the glow, and the celebration died within him. What he thought was the glow of the Seven Heavens attack that eliminated Arkadimon was something much worse: the glow that accompanied Arkadimon's Digivolution. As the glow disappeared, Leo could see Arkadimon's new form. It had become much taller and had a lanky appearance, with long arms ending in actual hands instead of sickles. It walked on its clawed toes, giving it a hunched appearance that allowed Leo to see two feather-like growths on its back that seemed to be the start of wings, but were much too small to be usable. This new, pale orange form seemed much more appropriate to the legendary Super Ultimate than the previous, almost cute Rookie stage.

Arkadimon seemed to come to terms with its new body fairly quickly and immediately continued its attack on HolyAngemon. The Seraph barely had time to dodge as Arkadimon's arm stretched as if it were made of rubber and shot right towards him. Flying away, HolyAngemon made note of Arkadimon's attack speed before the monster itself suddenly appeared right next to him and grabbed his face. Seeing this, Neo smiled and gave a simple command: "Prison Fist." As HolyAngemon was held in place, countless tendrils sprang out of Arkadimon's arm and impaled the leader of the resistance, absorbing his data. Leo tried to come to HolyAngemon's rescue, but the aftereffects of Arkadimon's attack made him too slow to react in time, and VenomMyotismon swatted him away before he could cover any substantial distance.

After about a minute, Neo sighed. "I think you've eaten enough, Arkadimon." Using his Digivice, he sent Arkadimon a command that caused him to stop feeding and drop HolyAngemon to the ground. All the data for his Mega level had been absorbed out of him, causing him to crash to the ground in his Ultimate form. He lay in a bloody heap, barely able to breathe from the pain. Seeing this, Neo turned away. "Well, Arkadimon has done what he came here to do. I've managed to absorb the power of the pinnacle of light on this continent. There's really no reason for me to stay. Now, originally I was planning on sparing you once Arkadimon had his fill as a way to spite Daemon, but I suppose I do need to do something to reward this army. So, I think I'll just let them demolish the rest—"

Neo's words were cut off as he noticed a sudden gust of wind. This gust was coming from the exact opposite direction as the previous gentle breeze, immediately snatching the Tamer's attention. Turning in the new direction, he saw what appeared to be two specks flying towards him, and felt a smirk cross his face. After all, these things were coming from the same direction where Mari had been stationed. This was bound to be interesting.

VenomMyotismon seemed to notice something amiss as well, and turned towards the gust of wind. However, by the time he was facing the oncoming enemies, they were close enough that Neo could hear the first shout of "Fenrir Sword!" Before VenomMyotismon could react, he had been decapitated by what he could only describe as a white blur. As ice began encasing his upper body once again, VenomMyotismon's true face revealed itself, no longer having its decoy head to see with. However, before he could do anything more than snarl, he heard a buzzing voice call out "Dimension Scissors!" He barely had time to see a black insect shoot a claw shaped blast of energy from its pincers before the attack was passing through him. As the vampire burst into data, Neo had to admit Mari's opponents knew how to make a flashy entrance. He started scanning the data of the Valkyrimon and GranKuwagamon that had so suddenly appeared on the scene, giving Yolei and Ken time to climb out of GranKuwagamon's arms and return to solid ground.

Looking back up at his partner, Ken smiled. "Are you happy now, GranKuwagamon? You finally got to show off your attack, and it took out a VenomMyotismon with ease." GranKuwagamon merely chuckled. "If you think that was impressive, you should see what happens when I'm not holding on to you and forced to use the weaker, long-range version of that attack. In its melee form, that attack doesn't so much cut things as it cuts space. It essentially turns me intangible as I cut through higher dimensional space. Things I hit don't feel anything right up until they implode into the void that I cut."

Yolei was a bit disturbed at how enthusiastic GranKuwagamon was about his rather brutal sounding attack before she realized something and turned to her own partner. "Wait, Valkyrimon, do you know what this means? We fought against MaloMyotismon in that dream world, beat a Myotismon here in Vamdemon, and now we beat a VenomMyotismon just now with Ken. We've beaten all three of Myotismon's forms now!" Valkyrimon seemed less impressed with this than his partner was. "Yes, that's great Yolei, but now isn't the best time. Sure, we took out one Mega, but there's still a really big army here we have to worry about."

Neo was content to let them talk instead of fighting until he finished scanning Valkyrimon and noticed something interesting. If he played his cards right, he could turn this new arrival into an unexpected success. And as the world's best Tamer, he knew exactly how to play his cards right. In order to draw the attention of the new arrivals, he began a slow round of applause. "Well done. Most people wouldn't be able to defeat a Mega level so quickly. Then again, I suppose I should expect nothing less from you. It isn't easy to defeat Mari, after all."

As expected, Neo's speech managed to grab the DigiDestined's attention. However, they were much less civil about returning his greeting. Yolei glared daggers at the Tamer, shouting out, "I don't care what you think, Neo! We won't let you get away with what you've done!" Neo merely sighed- when working with Daemon, displays of hostility quickly became routine. "I was just trying to be polite, but I can see you aren't in the mood for that. Very well, I suppose if you won't stick to your manners, then I won't have to stick to mine. Why don't you fools look around you? I've already done what I needed to. The Super Ultimate has already hatched and fed. This orange monster you see is Arkadimon in its Champion stage. That IceLeomon you see hunched on the ground was the commander of the forces in this castle, and he fell to Arkadimon's Rookie form. Then, that MagnaAngemon lying in a bloody heap Digivolved into a Seraphimon and tried to destroy Arkadimon, but Arkadimon Digivolved and absorbed his data."

Yolei bristled. "You think any of that will make us want to stop you less? I told you, you won't get away with what you've done. It doesn't matter if you've done what you wanted, we're going to make you pay for your actions!" Neo couldn't help a small smile from crossing his face. It almost felt like he was arguing with Mari again, not a new foe. "Yes, I understood you the first time, but you didn't let me finish. As the Super Ultimate, Arkadimon grows a little bit differently than ordinary Digimon. It absorbs the data of opponents, and uses that to Digivolve. As a Baby, it fought against Rosemon, and used her data to Digivolve all the way to the Rookie stage. Then, as a Rookie, it absorbed IceLeomon's data, later using it to Digivolve to the Champion level. It then easily defeated Seraphimon and absorbed his data. If you follow, that means as a Champion it is superior to the average power of a Mega level. And since it absorbed a good deal of data in its Champion form, it can now Digivolve even further!"

Arkadimon was then consumed by a painfully bright light, and when the DigiDestined could finally open their eyes they could see Arkadimon's newest form. While it wasn't significantly taller than its Champion stage, it had grown considerably more muscular, no longer appearing lanky. The feather-like extensions on its back had become full wings, and its hands now were tipped in something between tentacles and claws. Now, Arkadimon looked more demonic than insectoid, with the only remnants of its previous forms being the silver exoskeleton that served as a form of armor.

Neo smirked before continuing. "So, what do you think of the Super Ultimate now? This is only its Ultimate form, but I assure you it is more than a match for both of your partners combined." Yolei looked like she was about to shout out a response, but Ken cut her off. Letting a cool edge slip into his voice, he copied Neo's smirk before responding. "Oh, your monster looks impressive all right, but we're not exactly impressed with the claim that you'll beat us. BlackWarGreymon was more than a match for all of us. MaloMyotismon was more than a match for all of us. Armageddemon was more than a match for all of us. The Seven Demon Lords were more than a match for all of us. Want to know what all of those have in common other than being more than a match for us? We fought them all, and we're still here. Your monster might be superior to ours in every statistical regard, but you won't beat us."

Neo raised an eyebrow. "Lists of achievements are more effective when they aren't just names that may as well have no meaning. And as much as I would enjoy proving you wrong, this was just an opening act as a teaser of Arkadimon's power. If you want to get a better picture, I'd be happy to oblige, but I doubt you really want to see that." Yolei rolled her eyes at this. "Okay, I suppose I can give you a pass for BlackWarGreymon not sounding impressive, but if you had any connection with Digimon whatsoever you would know the other three. Every DigiDestined in the world came in to finish off MaloMyotismon, Armageddemon took over the internet as Diaboromon and then almost leveled Tokyo Bay, and you work for one of the Seven Demon Lords. Anyway, do you really think we'd just back down because it fits in to your little script? Valkyrimon, why don't you show him—"

"Are you sure you want to do that?" Neo interrupted. "Take a look around you. This castle's forces are severely weakened, its commander and leader have both fallen and are on the verge of deletion, and I have Daemon's army backing me up. Not that I need the army to defeat you, but what do you expect them to do while you are fighting me? If Arkadimon could easily defeat a Seraphimon as a Champion, I assure you it will take both of your monsters fighting against it to even stand a chance now that it's an Ultimate. So, fighting against me now would be abandoning all the newborn Digimon sheltering here to fight against Daemon's army. If you really want to do that, be my guest, but if I were you, I'd accept the deal I'm about to offer."

Ken and Yolei were immediately suspicious about this deal, but knew they had no choice but at least listen to it. Neo was despicable to bring the newborn Digimon into this fight, but he was absolutely right that the DigiDestined would be unwilling to let innocent young Digimon be hurt without trying their absolute best to stop it from happening. Neo took their silence as acceptance of the situation and resumed talking.

"I see you've at least got some sense in you. Like I said, we can fight now, or I could call a ceasefire and bring Daemon's army away from here and back to base. In exchange, I only ask for one simple thing." Turning to Valkyrimon, he continued. "I've explained before how Arkadimon Digivolved from Baby to Rookie by absorbing data from Rosemon. However, this was before I was aware of all of Arkadimon's abilities, and I didn't even know it possessed that power. Now I have control to the point where I can stop the absorption at any point I want, but that wasn't the case when Mari agreed to test out Arkadimon's power. Rosemon was absorbed completely. I've managed to isolate Rosemon's data and can extract it at any time, but it would just be loose data and scatter through the world. I need help restoring her to a DigiEgg so Mari can get her partner back."

Hearing this, Ken and Yolei were overcome with a bit of surprise. It was almost like Neo had been wearing a mask of indifference, but it had now slipped away to reveal that underneath, he did care about some things. Almost as soon as they noticed the change, however, Neo slipped back into his usual personality before continuing. "According to my scans, Valkyrimon can produce an aurora that can resurrect fallen Digimon and return them to DigiEggs. So, in exchange for me sparing the lives of the survivors at this castle, you just have to bring one of my Digimon back to life. I'll give you one minute to make your decision."

Though Neo had given them one minute, it didn't take the DigiDestined long to decide. While they weren't all too fond of trusting enemies, and Ken knew how easy it was to seem to offer a deal when it was really just a ploy, the potential benefits far outweighed the risks. If Neo didn't keep his word, the only setback they'd have would be returning Rosemon to the opposing side, but as a DigiEgg. Even if she hatched right away, she wouldn't be able to go above Champion level since Mari didn't have a Crest and it would be a very long time before she would be able to naturally Digivolve back to her Mega level. They'd still have to fight Arkadimon and Daemon's army whether they denied the deal or accepted it and Neo broke it, so there wasn't too much to lose in this case. Besides, Ken knew what it was like to lose his partner, and indeed it had been the loss of Wormmon that had made him see the truth behind his actions as the Emperor, so the DigiDestined of Kindness wasn't about to let someone else wallow in that darkness when he had the ability to prevent it. Yolei seemed to be of a similar mind, and after exchanging a quick series of nods they agreed to Neo's offer.

Of course, even though they were accepting Neo's offer, they weren't going to just blindly trust him. As Valkyrimon approached Arkadimon in preparation for restoring Rosemon's data, GranKuwagamon hovered nearby, ready to use his claws at the slightest hint of betrayal. Still, Arkadimon remained almost docile, not caring about the Warrior Digimon floating a few yards away, even as Valkyrimon began emitting a red and gold aurora from his armor. When Valkyrimon was ready, he turned and nodded at Neo, who input a command into his Digivice. A small burst of data suddenly shot out of Arkadimon's chest, and upon hitting Valkyrimon's aurora it condensed into a pink DigiEgg with white spots. Neo slowly approached the DigiEgg, almost as if he didn't quite believe what he saw, before he picked it up and turned away from the DigiDestined. As he began walking away, he was unable to hide the relief in his voice. "Well, now it's time for me to honor my end of the bargain. I suggest you work on healing up anybody left here- I can assure you this ceasefire will not be permanent. I'm sure we'll meet again, and then we will see exactly how well you fare in a fight with Arkadimon."

From his words, it was obvious that Neo wanted to keep up the appearance as the calm and collected Tamer trying to destroy the world, but the impression was ruined both by the tone of his voice and the gentle way he was cradling just one DigiEgg as he hopped up on Gryphonmon's back. Gryphonmon then took off and flew away, closely followed by Arkadimon. The rest of Daemon's army seemed more reluctant to retreat from the scene of a good slaughter, but the fear of what Neo would do to them for disobeying orders overrode their desire to fight and they too retreated. Without any further enemies in the area, GranKuwagamon and Valkyrimon both reverted to their In-Training forms, glad they wouldn't have to hold their Mega forms for much longer as it had been a fairly lengthy flight just to get to the castle.

After Daemon's army had disappeared over the horizon, Yolei let out the breath she had been holding for a while. "You know, I can't believe our opponent offered us a deal and then stuck by it when we had done our part. I don't think we've ever fought against somebody who would do that before- they either wouldn't offer the deal in the first place, or they'd use it to set up some form of trap. It feels kinda weird." Ken was still absorbed in his own thoughts, so Yolei instead turned towards Poromon.

"That's really cool how you can bring Digimon back to life after they get deleted. How come you never mentioned that on the way here? GranKuwagamon practically talked about his abilities the entire way here." Minomon was too busy worrying about what Ken was thinking to respond to the playful jab, so Poromon spoke next. "Well, honestly it didn't seem like that useful of an ability to mention. After all, in most cases Digimon automatically reformat into a DigiEgg without my ability. It might be useful in a fight in the real world, but that's not exactly something I want to test out because if it doesn't work we'll have killed a Digimon for nothing. It worked great now, but it isn't often we're going to come up against something that's absorbed the data for a bunch of Digimon and then decides to spit it all out right in front of me."

Yolei had to agree with her partner, and then shot a glance back at Ken. Seeing that he was still brooding, she decided to find out what was bothering him. "What's the matter, Ken? You've been spacing out ever since Neo left." Not getting a response, she placed a hand on his shoulder, finally causing him to snap out of it.

"Sorry about that, Yolei, but I've just been having a lot of bad memories. Neo is doing so many things that are basically the same things I did as the Digimon Emperor. This whole thing with Arkadimon is pretty much what I was doing with Kimeramon, and from the looks of things he's already got most of this area of the Digital World under his control. Then there was this whole thing with Rosemon's DigiEgg. When I was the Emperor, Wormmon only stuck by me because he knew that the real me still existed, with the kindness hiding behind all the darkness. It took losing him and then getting him back in order to finally find myself again. I guess this whole thing with Rosemon's DigiEgg is reminding me of that, and I can see some of the goodness within Neo now that he's just trying to help one of his friends. All of this is just too familiar. I know I've moved beyond the Emperor, but seeing someone else do the exact same thing is just hard, I guess."

Yolei nodded. "Hey, don't worry. I'm sure this will all work out just fine in the end. After all, you only became the Emperor because an evil Digimon manipulated you when you were vulnerable. I don't know about you, but Daemon seems like the evil, manipulative type to me, so Neo might be going through the exact same thing you did. We had to stop you in order to save you, so maybe we can do the same thing for Neo. Still, he was right in that we should help heal all the defenders left here. Not like we can go charging after him with two In-Trainings anyway."

Ken let out a small smile. "Thanks for understanding, Yolei. Still, do you have any first aid kits on you or something? I'm not exactly sure how we'd even go about trying to heal everybody here." Yolei started giggling nervously. "Right, forgot about that. Um, maybe the castle has an infirmary or something? We could probably ask one of the baby Digimon." This brought out some laughs from the DigiDestined and their partners, glad to have some time to de-stress before they were once again thrown into battle.

Author's Note: And there we have it. Just more of my takes on certain characters. Slower chapter, but development can be important. I can't have Arkadimon being the only one changing throughout the story, can I? So, we get some more insight into Willis's past and Neo's present.

Speaking of Willis, I'm hoping I didn't offend anyone with my portrayal of him coming out. I know he canonically kisses both Yolei and Kari, which makes this seem like a total change, but we know at that time he's around 11 and hasn't had much human contact at all. It wouldn't surprise me if he was acting a certain way based off of some movie or book in an attempt to seem normal. We know he had stunted social growth, so maybe it just took him a while to figure out his own sexuality. Not everybody has that figured out by age 11. I was actually asked to include a gay character by lordtrayus, a great author here whose continuation of Digimon Adventure inspired me to write my own fanfiction in the first place. He also helped me by letting me bounce ideas off of him in our many, many messages regarding his story. Seriously, you should check his stories out. So, lordtrayus, I hope this doesn't completely disappoint you. And to all my readers: please let me know what you thought! Next update comes tomorrow!