Welcome back to a new chapter people.

Now, fair warning, this one isn't as long as others.

It's mostly a breather chapter, because... well after the last one, we can't really just jump into something massive again, can we?

Anyway, we hope you enjoy.

Much Needed Levity

A few days had passed since the encounter at the shores of the Dark Ocean, and since then, the mood was...tense. After returning to Remnant, the Chosen wasted no time in warning their allies of the predicament. However, till now things had been...quiet. That was the reason why the atmosphere was tense, while they tried to act like things were normal...at least for the time being.

"So… are you going to be ok?" Norn asked Emerald with a frown when she was able to make her friend sit down.

"...I honestly don't know how to answer that one…" Emerald groaned. "Sorry, its just hard to really take it easy after seeing what Nero did."

"I don't blame you," Morphomon agreed. "I know that guy was crazy, but…"

"None of us thought he'd be crazy enough to do THAT," Falcomon agreed with a shudder.

"The fact he opened a door to the Dark Area is one thing… but taking it over and killing… THAT thing? That's another." Keenan said with a slight shiver "When we talked to Gennai about it he said we should NEVER speak its name unless we have a special protection program running, because apparently even saying its name can be enough to affect a person's psyche."

"That sounds… horrifying." Norn said, her face a little pale. "I'm glad you all made it out of that just fine."

"Yeah… I guess other than being shaken up, we're good, so there's one positive." Emerald admitted with a sigh.

"Still, after a stunt like that, there's no way Nero isn't going to try something. He's basically taken control of a great power. Someone with his ego would never be able to do something like that without putting that power to use one way or another…" Oren frowned as he came by with Terriermon and Lopmon.

"The fact he's been quiet for the last few days just makes it worse really…" Terriermon shuddered.

"The tension's so thick you could almost cut it like a hot knife through butter." Lopmon added. "All the others are TRYING to act like nothing happened… but they all feel stiff." he sighed, shaking his head "I suppose we can't blame them, this was a whole other level of crazy, even for them."

"Yeah, makes you wish SOMETHING would happen, even just an alert from a Dark Tower controlled area about some Digimon requesting help." Emerald sighed, her head hitting the table.

"Still, some of us are making more progress than others. I mean, I just came out of a rather...unexpected conversation with Ruby," Oren said.

"Huh?" was the general response he got from anyone other than his partners.

"Well, she randomly pulled me aside to talk about weapons, and that somehow got to the topic of my own weapon. The look on her face when I told her my weapon doesn't actually have a name...I'd swear she looked like I told her the sky is actually green with polka dots or something…" Oren sweat dropped.

"Yeah, she was like how NOT naming a weapon is just wrong, and long story short, Oren's weapon has a name now," Terriermon snorted at the memory.

"Oh yeah? What is it then?" Emerald blinked...surprisingly enjoying the little distraction.

"Clever Scales. Cause my weapon is a Snake Sword and all that," Oren said in mild amusement.

"And Clever because you're a cyber wizard?" Morphomon asked in amusement.

Oren outright chuckled at that "That MIGHT have been a part of it."

"But seriously, what the HECK is Nero doing? It's bad enough for us, but I bet the Resistance have been biting their nails in worry after we warned them," Morphomon frowned.

"Yeah, at least WE'RE safe on this side…" Keenan frowned.

Right as he said that, an alarm went off.

"...what does it say I'm honestly not sure if I should be worried, or feel relieved that he's FINALLY doing something," Terriermon groaned.

"Let's just...deal with the issue," Oren sighed.

The group were soon gathered at the computer room, though when they saw what the alarm was about…

"We should make more than one alarm. So we don't go scrambling over something that is important but not super urgent…" Gyro sighed. The reason for that was because the alarm was triggered by a message, but rather than the typical 'Nero is attacking an area, help quick!', it was from one of the many spy drones that Gennai had released into the Digital World to help gather information.

"Still...this is rather surprising...if a little too convenient," Weiss frowned, as according to the data, an unexpected development had occurred in the Castle Town that served as Oren's base before Nero took it over.

"I agree...Paradiso Castle being empty...either Nero really has abandoned it for some reason, or this is a trap," Nero frowned. "Are the Resistance aware of this?"

"We're sending out the information right now, we can have them as ground troops with us when we arrive so we aren't flying in solo." Tentomon said as he tapped on the keyboard, forwarding the information to their allies.

"Would be for the best. As confident as we are, until every single Dark Tower is destroyed, it's better for us to have numbers on our side." Gyro said with a frown "Maybe we can at least try to crash the system from your computers if we're able to actually retake the place." he added as he looked at Oren.

"Perhaps. I suppose we'll just have to cross our fingers." the wolf faunus said with a frown, hoping this wouldn't turn into yet another SNAFU.

An hour or so later saw them gathered at Paradiso Castle alongside several Resistance Members, the group entering the seemingly abandoned location. "Okay everyone, I don't think I need to say it but be careful," Agumon said.

"Yeah, the last thing any of us want is accidentally setting off something and well...yeah…" Veemon sweat dropped.

The Resistance members present, a trio of Sealsdramon, gulped thickly, understanding fully what he meant. With that in mind, everyone proceeded carefully. As they did though, they were able to see the various buildings...and the more they saw the more they noticed Oren, Terriermon, and Lopmon grow increasingly displeased.

"I know I shouldn't be surprised, but clearly he didn't care enough to maintain any of the buildings while he was in control," Lopmon frowned.

"Especially what he probably called non-essentials. I liked that candy shop," Terriermon said, absolutely miffed at the sight of one of his favorite shops, the sign having literally fallen off thanks to the lack of upkeep. The sad part was that it had only been 2 MONTHS at most.

"My favorite bookstore too." Oren said in some annoyance as they walked past another store. He actually quite LIKED going out shopping in his city when he was there for more than just a few hours.

"Yeah, from what our spy told us, you definitely took the time to make sure the Digimon living here had a good home," one of the Sealsdramon nodded.

"Spy? Oh you mean the Chuumon that moved into the city a while back? Yeah, when we free him too assuming he didn't escape, tell him that 'touring the town' doesn't involve the occasional trying to get behind the counters and the like," Lopmon said casually.

The three Sealsdramon stopped short at that "You… knew this whole time?"

"Of course. I have cameras you know. Security reports any suspicious activity. When we confirmed he was just relaying the state of the city and not actually planning anything though, we decided to leave him be." Oren said with a wave of his hand "I know the Resistance opposed me, but I never considered it's first iteration to be my enemies at all."

"Uh...good to know...I guess?" one of the Sealsdramon said, honestly not sure what to say about that, while some of the other Digimon were trying not to snicker at their expressions.

The exploration soon continued, and so far nothing in the town area, so with that in mind they soon went into the castle, and when they reached the throne room...

"Oh come on!" Oren said in exasperation at seeing his throne room, or rather the state it was in. "Would it kill him to at least mow the grass?!"

"Or take out the trash for that matter," Lopmon said in distaste, picking up what appeared to be an old discarded slice of pizza...which promptly grew legs somehow, causing Lopmon to throw it out of a nearby window in a mix of horror and disgust. "...I don't even want to KNOW how that even happened."

"Great, so aside from evil and insane, we can now add complete slob to the growing list of Nero's bad traits," Terriermon deadpanned.

THAT seemed to finally break the tension in their group, as they all broke into laughter at the fact their biggest enemy yet… was a total slob who couldn't pick up after himself.

"Oh god… I think we all REALLY needed this." Gyro said through his chuckles, wiping the tears from his eyes.

"We've all been so high strung over what he did last week, and now… yeah." Ruby said with a laugh as she kicked a discarded soda can right into a trash canister.

"Yeah, I guess finding out he literally can't keep house even with slaves IS kind of hillarious," Oren snorted a bit. "But in all seriousness...once we make sure he didn't rig anything, can we PLEASE clean up this place? I didn't spend a month designing things to leave it looking like a pig lives in it."

"Gotcha. Unless something comes up, we SHOULD at least make sure this place looks...liveable," Pierce nodded.

"Alright, fan out into small groups people, move carefully, just to make sure we don't trigger any potential traps." Gyro said.

"Can never be too careful with crazies like that guy." Agumon said with a nod as they spread out.

Going through the palace was… actually rather inconclusive for the most part as they all went about it carefully.

"Huh… don't think he actually left anything behind at this point." Nora said into her scroll after a few minutes.

"I'm inclined to agree, nobody's come up with any sort of trap so far." Weiss added.

"In that case, maybe we should head for the computer room to see if we can't grab any info he didn't wipe?" Emerald suggested.

"Good call, there might be SOMETHING useful in there." Jaune said in agreement to the idea.

With that in agreement, and with Oren's directions, the group was able to find the computer room, to which Oren and Weiss quickly got to work checking the system from top to bottom. "...okay, aside from him taking whatever sensitive information he might have stored here, and locking us out of the Tower and Ring controls...it doesn't seem like anything's been tampered with," Oren frowned.

"I don't seem to be picking up any signs of Malware either," Weiss frowned. "Could he really have just up and abandoned this whole castle just like that?"

"Normally I'd say that's unlikely. But...considering he just took over the Dark Ocean...I think that might actually be the case," Gyro frowned.

"That makes sense, if he's gotten control of THAT place, he really doesn't need this castle anymore…" Jaune frowned.

"And that's actually a lot scarier than you'd think…" Gomamon winced.

"At the very least, I don't think he's strong enough to just drag the power of that place out into the rest of the Digital World. That would be too much, even for him." Blake said with a frown.

"Yeah, he'd need to have so much Dark power he eclipses absolutely all of our Light." Patamon said with a nod of agreement.

"Let's just hope he never actually gets THAT far...I'd legitimately be worried about what he'd do with that kind of power," Wormmon shuddered.

"All the more reason we need to stop him," Ren nodded.

"But first, clean up our castle and town please," Lopmon said.

"Yeah, let's just get some more people on this since we can use it as a forward base." Gyro chuckled, motioning Weiss to send out a call. They'd need the rest of the Resistance for a job this big.

A few hours later saw a small army working together to clean out the castle town, while the chosen were helping Oren clean out his castle. So far work was going smoothly and in this short time, the streets were looking better already.

"You know, when I signed up for the Resistance, I sure didn't think I'd spend a day cleaning up the King's capital," a Dondokomon commented as he was helping pick up trash.

"Well...it's better than fighting him again," a Cutemon sweat dropped as they used a small broom to sweep some dirt into a bag.

"...fair enough," Dondokomon sweat dropped and winced.

Overall the cleanup efforts didn't have much if any issues, so it wasn't long before Paradiso Castle was looking presentable again.

"There, that looks better already," Oren said, wiping the brow off his face as he'd finished mowing the grass that had been planted to make his throne room look nicer.

"And hopefully it stays looking better," Pyrrha said in mild amusement.

"So, now that you've got your castle back, what are you gonna do with it?" Gabumon asked.

Oren paused at that. "Honestly...I'm not sure," he sighed.

"Well then, we have a suggestion." Gyro said as he came into the throne room followed by Agumon and Kinkakumon.

"We could use the town as a forward base for dealing with your brother." Kinkakumon said "It's a far easier to defend position then our old bases were, and you already have defense systems in place in the city itself that would facilitate this.

"Hm...that would be a good idea. I'll have to adjust the defenses to ensure he can't bypass them as easily as he did before, and I should be able to do that. This Castle WAS supposed to be my forward base for my campaign," Oren mused. "Of course I'll want to talk it over with the followers we've freed so far. This place was their home too."

"That's fair," Gyro nodded. "It wouldn't really be fair to just make this place our forward base without at least getting their say in the matter."

"It's what we were going to do anyway, don't see why we need to state it." Kinkakumon said with a sweat drop.

"Alright, so what's this new idea you got for the security system?" Pierce asked as they were in Oren's computer room, where he and Weiss were tapping away at separate keyboards.

"Well, while we were cleansing the system of anything Nero may have left behind, we had an idea on how to make sure he can't hack it again." Weiss started.

"We know he got in the first time due to sharing the same DNA as me. So we figured that we should have it require MORE than just my DNA to be opened, it would use all of ours instead, in different combinations of two DNA scans. So for example, one of the keys is a scan from Yang, with a scan of Nora." Oren explained.

"Smart, we'd basically have 7 different keys, and it's best if we avoid the obvious key pairs, just to make it harder for him to figure out." Gyro said with a nod of approval.

"On top of that, the DNA sample needs to be well...it can't be more than a couple hours old," Oren said. "With how much we're on the frontlines, it'd be stupid to think he won't at some point get DNA samples even with our Auras," he explained.

"Maybe it needs to be minutes old instead? Otherwise he might rush back with hair strands from everyone if it can still be used within hours." Ren pointed out.

Oren and Weiss paused at that...before quickly making the edit. "Thank you, Ren. That was quite an oversight on our part," Weiss sighed.

"So far so good. Guess today is gonna be a peaceful day after all," Terriermon said.

Right after he said that, their Scrolls went off, revealing an urgent message from Gennai.

"...spoke too soon…" Terriermon groaned.

Nobody commented on that and quickly got out their Scrolls. "What's going on, Gennai?" Ruby asked with a frown.

A few hours later…

"How the heck did Nero plant all these so quickly?" Yang whistled, as the Chosen were now gathered at a desert area, not far from a cliffside. The area itself didn't seem strange, but the sheer number of Dark Towers planted on the ground was so large that it apparently created a dark miasma around the area at the base of the cliff.

"Okay, so what's the plan?" Tentomon frowned.

"Well...from the looks of it, I don't think anyone is here," Palmon said. "It's a desert, and it's full of Dark Towers…"

"...so nuke this place?" Bemmon said.

"Let's just confirm first." Gyro said, even though he chuckled at Bemmon saying so bluntly, pulling down his goggles and zooming in to scan the area more closely "Yeah… yeah, it looks good." he said with a nod "No Digimon in sight. So, who wants the honors?"

"Well, since you got the idea, how about you do it?" Hawkmon said, looking at Bemmon.

"Sure, if you don't mind, Rusty?" Bemmon said.

"...eh, sure," Rusty shrugged, before taking out his Digivice and Crest, while everyone gave them some room.

"Bemmon, Blast Evolution! Destromon!"

One bright light later, and Destromon towered over the scene. Wasting no time he aimed at the desert and charged up his main attack. "Juggernaut Cannon!"

The attack fired, lancing through the air, and the result….

"Looks like this area is now a glass field. Literally," Gomamon whistled at the end result of the attack, as the Dark Towers were gone...and much of the desert was now glass.

"What are the odds Nero was caught up in that blast?" Terriermon asked half morbidly.

"Knowing my insane brother? Very slim," Oren sighed.

"Let's go give ground zero a look then." Pyrrha said before they all climbed onto Destromon, who walked to the area at a brisk pace, his huge stature allowing him to make large strides, before he stopped right over the now glass floor at the base of the cliff.

"Huh… what's that in the center?" Ruby asked, pointing right at the middle of the glass floor, all of them walking ahead, until they saw what looked like a large hangar door in the ground… made out of a red metal of some kind.

"What's this?" Aile blinked.

"It seems to be Red Digizoid," Oren frowned.

"Digizoid? Like Chrome Digizoid?" Ruby blinked.

"Yes, but I've heard that the colored variants are different in that they have their own unique properties. I think Red is supposed to be harder than the normal Chrome," Oren explained.

"I THINK I remember something about that in some Analyzer entries? Doesn't UlforceVeedramon have Blue Digizoid armor?" Blake said, vaguely remembering something like that.

Pierce hummed, checking the app on his scroll, looking at the entries on his partner "Yeahp, Blue Digizoid. Maybe we should try to look into that some more."

"I've been trying to do that myself." Oren said "I managed to find regular Chrome Digizoid at least and built the metal pieces of Clever Scales out of it."

"Huh, that's pretty cool," Yang nodded. "Though...more importantly...how are we gonna get through this?"

"We could try seeing if anyone can cut through this, maybe?" Ruby suggested.

"That...could work," Ren frowned.

"Though...here's a counter argument. Do we REALLY want to do this right now? I mean, assuming nuking the desert didn't do it, breaking through this door would definitely alert Nero that we're here," Salamon pointed out.

"And this is probably super important, so no way he'd leave this undefended…" Oren frowned, seeing what she meant.

"So maybe we SHOULDN'T try and break in?" Patamon frowned as well.

"But we can't leave it be either, so...put this place under surveillance?" Biyomon suggested.

"Best thing to do." Gyro said, smiling a bit down at the Digimon, he'd actually been just about to say the same thing himself before Salamon beat him to it. "For all we know, he's got some massive, deadly weapons in there, and maybe even MORE Dark Towers that we would be able to do nothing against once we're inside. It's best if we just give him this little setback and keep watch on what he does for now."

The group nodded in agreement at that, before they all moved to leave, heading back the way they came while talking about what manner of surveillance to leave behind.

As the Chosen were leaving though, the inside of the base they'd left was...full of relief. "Oh thank Oum they're gone," Nero sighed, throwing aside a damp handkerchief he'd used to wipe the sweat off his brow.

Contrary to what the Chosen believed, Nero actually WASN'T prepared. Had they managed to break through the door, they'd have found an underequipped base as well as a notable lack of Dark Towers and various other defenses.

"Maybe we messed up setting up all those Dark Towers too soon," the blue clothed man sighed, wiping the sweat off his brow.

"Indeed...it's only because of that door...and their own cautiousness that our plans weren't stopped cold…" the red clothed woman gulped, fanning herself with her hat.

Eventually though, Nero quickly shook his head. "This changes nothing. We proceed as planned...though we definitely should make the defenses first. That was far too close for comfort, and we can't allow ourselves to grow complacent again."

"Understood. The main project can wait until we're NOT sitting ducks," both of them nodded.

Nero nodded in return before frowning as he looked at where he'd placed his D-Necron, the device still sparking as energy tried to escape it. "It seems I will have to master this power sooner than intended as well…" he glared at the device, the remnants of Dagomon still continuing to defy him.

And there you go!

Yeah, as I said earlier, this was mostly a breather chapter.

The Chosen needed something to finally break them out of their worry after what they saw last time.

And of course... if they had just been brash for once, they might have nipped Nero in the bud.

But really, can you blame them for being careful about what was obviously his base that he'd reinforced with Red Digizoid of all things?

Either way, hope you enjoyed this one, because...

The Adventure Evolves