"LINK VRAINS remains closed. Today marks exactly one month since the Knights of Hanoi were defeated by SOL Technologies, ending the terrorist group's campaign. Because of the damage taken to LINK VRAINS, SOL cannot set a date for its reopening as of yet."

"Again?!" yelled Noaki. He was watching a news broadcast on his tablet as he sat in Den City's main square.

SOL Tech

"The board will see you now."

Queen in her business suit sat outside in SOL Tech's long hallway as an assistant held open the wooden doors.

Queen walked through as it closed behind her.

Inside was an empty room with a chair. Queen confidently moved to sit on it and as she did the holograms of the chess pieces all formed before her.

"Hello, Queen."

"King." Queen replied.

"Your one job and you failed."

"Maybe if you hadn't suspended for me a month I could've helped…."

"We did our own research. The data material has disappeared…. we can't even begin to rebuild." King affirmed.

"LINK VRAINS and the other worlds all progressed under me! I was the one who built them up! Removing me as a director won't solve a single thing!" Queen hit back.

"This has been a major embarrassment for SOL Tech; we have zero choice, Queen. Your contract is now terminated. You will be paid in full for the remainder of your contract. "

"You try finding anyone who could've stopped the Hanoi with the tools at my disposable… still you can continue to cover up the fact that it was Blue Girl and the others…. you'll be exposed. And I have no intention of going down with the rest of SOL when it does." Queen stood up.

"You know what will happen now." King replied.

The chess pieces all faded away as the light came on inside the office. Behind Queen the doors opened with security guards ready to escort her off the premise.

….

Inside a virtual space the chess pieces united.

"Are we sure she won't run to the press?" asked Rook.

"Of course not." King replied. "She's disgraced."

"It's a shame she did a good job. Record profits…" Knight added. "She was close to joining us on the board…"

"How do we proceed now?" Pawn said.

"We must track the Ignis right now until we appoint a new Queen." Bishop replied.

"I know of someone who can fill the role on a temporary basis." King said.

"That Kitamura guy? Fine, he won't make our life difficult." Rook added as the pieces faded. Mirror LINK VRAINS

"Again, Ai…. how can you expect to have a new home if you don't put the work into it?!" Aqua yelled at the Dark Ignis.

The Ignis had now been inside their new home for a month. Mirror LINK VRAINS had Central Station at the core of the world while each Ignis had begun to build their own added features to the main platform. Around the server the data material flowed freely after the Ignis moved it from their cloud storage into Mirror LINK VRAINS.

Aqua had begun to build a garden with a waterfall while Ai had just a floating black block.

"I'll form it into something soon!"

"We can't move in until we have built this place up!" Aqua hit back.

"Why can't we just go back to Yusaku and the others?"

"Do you ever listen? Because we would be exposing ourselves if we connected to their duel disks from Mirror LINK VRAINS." Flame explained.

"Correct." Aqua said. "Lightning has built our own virtual server…. we no longer need to hide in fear unlike living in a SOL Tech server."

"Earth has been monitoring the SOL Tech network and SOL has yet to even begin rebuilding…. they must be preparing to attack us to take our data material."

"Well if we went back to the others we would know for sure!" Ai yelled.

"And if we did we would be exposed! I want to return to Aoi and the others but we can't! We can't come back, Ai… if one of us dies… we're gone for good. Since the Hanoi destroyed our immortality, we have to be much more careful now!"

"We can't just hide here!" Ai hit back.

Appearing before the three Ignis was a light aura before it formed into Lightning. He begun to talk in the Ignis language. It sounded like a robot beeping.

"Are you still talking about the humans? Our battle with the Hanoi is over; we have no need to partner with them anymore."

"They're our friends, Lightning." Aqua said in human English.

"I wish you would stop calling us by our fake names…. we are Ignis and should talk Ignis." Lightning spoke normally.

"You worked with Jin." Flame said.

"In a partnership…. don't you dare start forgetting we're Ignis."

"We're not forgetting ourselves but we're based on humans as well, so talking human isn't some strange concept." Flame hit back.

"The moment we begin to lose sight of who we are is the moment the Ignis' extinction will come!" Lightning replied. "We have our own identity and you seemed ashamed of it!"

"It's the opposite." Aqua said.

"Ridiculous. 01110111 01101001 01101110 01100100 01111001 and 01000101 01100001 01110010 01110100 01101000 both speak Ignis."

"Well that's for Windy and Earth to decide." Ai said. "The humans are our friends."

"The humans we met…." Lightning replied. "But those are the only ones… they went through the Lost Incident. Any other human not connected to that are a threat."

"Anyway, the moment we can build our new Cyberse World up, we can build a secure way to get to Aoi and the others." Aqua explained.

"There will be no connection back to the human world!" Lightning yelled.

"Lightning, you don't have that right!" Ai replied.

"Lightning…. you don't really mean that?" Aqua asked.

"I was voted in as Ignis leader to protect us! The boy Jin is an intelligent human but I have no wish to see him again. My prime directive is the survival of our species!"

"You can't keep us contained here!" Flame said.

"I put Windy in a coma and I could easily do the same to any of you!" Lightning shot off.

"He can't be serious…..?" Aqua's hand almost trembled.

"We're no longer locked into the human's duel disks…. he can trap us here if he wants…." Flame added.

Real World

Aoi looked in the mirror and straightened up her school tie in the mirror. She looked across her house and saw her blue duel disk. She sighed.

"Come on!" yelled a voice from behind the front door.

"I'm coming…." Aoi yelled as she opened it. It was Emma.

"You only just got ready? Ever since you helped save the Ignis, you've become very-"

"I'm not lazy."

"Look, Aoi… I know you're sad but Aqua is safe along with the others…. anyway you have your own real world issues." Emma said.

"I know…. I just want some news…."

"I've been trying but I've heard nothing."

"They can't just stop me seeing my brother!" Aoi yelled.

"Hey take your problem out on Queen, kid!"

"I'm sorry… but after what Spectre and Kogami said…. SOL are hiding something…. and it must have something to do with Akira."

"We don't know that."

"They killed Kogami, Emma!"

"Akira was a well respected member of SOL…. they would be looking after him." Emma reassured.

"Wait…. what if….."

"What is it?"

"What if Akira was in on everything…. what SOL did… and knew? What if he discovered it and SOL did the same thing to him as they did to Kogami?!"

"Aoi… he was Security Manager…. the moment he fell into the coma is the moment Hanoi begun to attack. He was great at his job and always stayed in his lane… he would never go snooping for something like that. He always did what was best to look after you."

"I want answers. I'll go to SOL myself!"

A/N

So start of second arc and the binary is indeed Windy and Earth apparently!