"Are you sure you don't want to go to the hospital?" Yusaku asks, still a bit concerned.
"I'm sure. I don't want to be poked and prodded by needles." Ryoken replies gripping his ring a little tighter, remembering all the times he was forcibly injected with drugs.
"Please do it, for me." Avalon says, hoping that Ryoken will feel some guilt over making him worry.
"No, I won't go." Ryoken says slightly shivering, remembering being held down as a needle was forced into him. The memories flash before his eyes, he can't help but remember what happened to him. Every time he hears anything about a hospital he thinks of a needle being forced into the side of his neck, the memories and the feeling make him shiver more.
"You okay?" Avalon asks worriedly when he sees his best friend shiver.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"I don't know why you don't like hospitals, but you can't get the help you need unless you go to one." Kolter chimes in.
"Kolter's right." Yusaku agrees.
"Then you're going to have to drag me kicking and screaming." Ryoken shutters slightly but tries not to show his fear. Small bits and pieces of memory from when he was held captive began to stair in his mind again, making him feel extremely uncomfortable.
"Please don't make us do that." Avalon sighs.
"I'm not going." Ryoken folds his arms over his chest and completely turns his body away from Avalon and the others, trying desperately not to shake from fear as the painful memories from his captivity come back to haunt him.
"You're acting more like a child than an adult right now." Avalon says annoyed.
"I don't care." Ryoken replies, still continuing to act like he's being stubborn when really he's terrified of feeling defenseless again.
"Give me one good reason why you don't want to go to the hospital." Avalon says annoyed and crosses his arms.
Ryoken sighs trying to calm down but it doesn't really work.
"Whatever it is about hospitals isn't as bad as you think it is." Kolter says trying to loosen up the tension in the truck.
"That's easy for you to say." Ryoken says, more like snaps at him.
"Look, when I was held captive I was forcibly held down and injected with unknown drugs via a needle okay? Can we please just drop it about going to the hospital?"
Kloter and Yusaku look at Royken surprised but stay silent for a moment until Yusaku breaks the silence.
"What happened? How long were you held against your will, and by whom?"
Ryoken remains silent before taking a shuddering breath, "I'd rather not talk about it, and I don't know how long I was held captive.
"He was missing for twelve years, I still remember the day he went missing as if it were yesterday." Avalon whispers to answer at least one of Yusaku's questions.
The silence returns and no one speaks for a good few minutes, not even Ai. But Ryoken is shaking as he allows himself to remember what has happened to him. From the moment of having a gun pointed in his face, to being in pain but using that pain to escape.
In a dark room at an unknown location, a woman sits in a chair at a desk with a laptop resting upon it. The woman is smiling with an amused but evil grin as she looks at her computer screen that has predicted what could have happened to her escaped prisoner. "I think it's time for our little escapee to return home." The woman says to herself, as she presses a few keys on her laptop activating a hidden fail-safe that she had placed in her prisoner long before he wiggled out of her grasp.
A sudden and sharp pain pulses through Ryoken's head as the hidden fail-safe that has been placed into his neck activates. At first he tries to ignore the pain but his body stiffens up giving away that something is wrong with him.
"What's wrong Ryoken, you seem to be in pain?" Avalon whispers to him.
"I'm fine, it's nothing Avalon." Ryoken whispers back to him, he balls his right hand into a fist. Digging his nails into his palm to try and redirect his pain but it doesn't help. Then a new problem arises, the urge to return to his captors is slowly enveloping him. Pounding into the very core of his mind to return to the people that tortured him.
"No. NO! I won't return to that ratchet place!" Ryoken thinks to himself.
"Ryoken what's going on? Talk to me." Avalon says gently grabbing his arm.
This grabs Yusaku and Kolter's attention who look over to Ryoken who seems to be in a great amount of pain.
"What's wrong with him, he seems to be in a lot of pain?" Kolter asks.
"I don't know, he won't talk to me." Avalon replies.
"I'd rather not talk about it." Ryoken says listening to the others as they talk among themselves.
Ryoken tries to play it off like he's not in pain at all. Not wanting the others especially Avalon, to see him as some kind of science experiment. But all his efforts and will power fail him as a sharp ping of pain hits him heard, making him fall to his knees in pain. A painful cry escapes his lips as he clutches his head.
"Ryoken?!" Yusaku cries out in alarm as Avalon rushes to his friend's side. "Please, tell me what's going on. We can't help you if you don't tell us."
"There's a sharp pain in my head and I don't know where it's coming from." Ryoken hisses out trying to fight the urge telling him to go back to the place he escaped from.
"Ryoken… Ryoken…" A soft female voice says in a slight sing song way.
Ryoken shivers at the voice, slightly recognizing it as someone from back home. But the voice sounds a bit too soft to be the person he knows. The voice seems to be coming from deep within his subconscious mind which is why he can hear it so clearly.
Avalon, Yusaku and Kolter try to get Ryoken's attention, but he doesn't answer them. Seeming to be distracted by something. The female voice continues to call Ryoken's name wanting him to respond, he wants to respond but he's unsure if the voice he's hearing is even real when the person it belongs to isn't physically beside him.
"I miss her…" Ryoken whispers to himself unknowingly responding to the female voice in his mind, his pain seems to lessen a bit when he responds.
Yusaku looks at Ryoken in confusion, not understanding what he's whispering about and turns to Avalon for answers. "He's whispering something about missing someone, a girl."
"She's a very close friend of ours." Avalon replies a bit saddened. He's not sure which of their female friends Ryoken is missing the most at the moment, but he has a pretty good idea on who it is and she didn't take his disappearance too well either.
Ai's head kind of perks up a bit as he feels some sort of strange code surge through Ryoken's body. He looks between the three worried humans who are trying to figure out what's going on.
"If I go back, will all the pain stop?" Ryoken whispers out loud as the female voice takes on the shape of his close friend.
"I promise the pain will stop, you won't have time to focus on it when you're with the ones you love."
With Avalon being the closest person physically to Ryoken hears him whisper out about going back, but he's not sure what he means by going back. He can't see or hear the fake version of their close friend tempting him to go back to his captors, nor can Yusaku and Kolter see or hear the figure either. Ai can't see or hear the figure, but he can feel a strange code surge more when he presumes that Ryoken's in less pain.
"I don't know what's wrong with him but I can feel a strange code surging through him, and it seems to be getting stronger while his pain seems to subside." Ai says getting everyone's attention but Ryoken's.
"Where is this strange code coming from Ai?" Yusaku asks a bit frantic.
"I don't know, but if I had to guess whoever was holding him captive put something inside him to make him easier to control."
Avalon's face becomes pale. He now understands what Ryoken meant by going back and turns to him, grabbing him by both shoulders and shaking him a bit. "Ryoken listen to me, whatever's going on don't listen to it. It's trying to trick you into going back to the people who hurt you."
But Ryoken can barely hear him over the sweet voice of his female friend, his pain is slowly melting away as he gives into the fail-safe. His body physically relaxing as a comforting feeling replaces the distress he was in just moments ago.
"That's it my love, come back to me and all your pain will disappear. Give in to me." The figure says, extending a hand to him which only he can see.
"You meat bags better do something fast because he's slipping faster than life points in a duel!" Ai cries out.
"Ryoken please, you have to listen to me. Whatever is happening isn't real. You're being tricked into going back to the people who hurt you." Avalon says as he shakes Ryoken again.
Yusaku and Kolter don't know what to do, they can only watch as Ryoken slips further under the control of the fail-safe. While Ai watches the events unfold, he notices how the fail-safes' code seems to have a stronger pulse the more Ryoken relaxes. So in an attempt to be helpful he tries intertwining the fail-safe's code with a code of his own design, at first nothing happens but he tries again as he adds more to the intertwined code that he's already created. Ryoken yelps out in pain and holds his head as Ai's code mixes with the pulses of the fail-safes' code. For a few moments Ryoken's back to his old self but it doesn't last long as who he thinks is his friend starts calling out to him again.
"Ryoken please you have to come back, we need you." The female pleads.
Ai's head perks up as he can now hear the voice that Ryoken hears.
"I have to go back, she's calling for me." Ryoken whispers, his hands slowly falling from his head as the pain he feels slowly dissipates.
Ai leans out of Yusaku's duel disk over to Ryoken and whispers to him, "Whoever this girl is, she's not your friend. She's trying to trick you, hurt you."
Avalon's eyes widen as he hears what Ai is saying to Ryoken, he can only assume that Ryoken can hear something he can't and it's taken on the voice of a female that they know.
"Ai is right, whoever you're hearing is lying to you. They're just going to lead you into more suffering and pain." Avalon says trying to help Ai convince Ryoken.
"Who are you going to believe, them or me?" The voice whispers into Ryoken's ear.
"Don't believe her, are you going to let some voice be the boss of you? You, the leader of the Knights of Hanoi?" Ai says in a slightly mocking tone, trying to get Ryoken to snap at him.
But Ryoken pays no mind to the Ignis, still listening to the voice he thinks belongs to his beloved friend.
"Please Ryoken, leave this place and come back to me. I need you, I miss you. A queen is not complete without her king."
"Uh, do you two know anyone that's a queen?" Ai asks, turning to Avalon.
Avalon looks at Ai in horror then grabs Ryoken by his shoulders and forces him to look at him. "Ryoken listen to me, that's not her. Shing would never lie to you much less put you in harm's way. Whatever you're seeing and hearing isn't her, it's all a lie by the people who hurt you. They're using your memories of the ones you love to use you, to cause you more pain."
Ryoken turns to glance at him, uncertainty in his half clouded eyes. "But she…"
"It's not her, she's waiting for us to come home. I promise you, what you're seeing and hearing is only going to lead you back to the pain you escaped from." Avalon whispers to him. "Shing would never want you to be in pain."
"You can't have us both Ryoken, there's only room for one of us in your mind and heart." The fake Shing whispers into his ear.
Upon hearing this Ryoken knows that Avalon is telling the truth, he knows that Shing would never make him choose between her and his childhood friend. With this realization the pain that had subsided returns making him cry out again.
"It worked!" Ai cries out. "He sees that voice for the fake that it is, but that doesn't mean he's out of the woods just yet."
The woman who's activated the fail-safe isn't too happy, when she looks at her screen to see that Ryoken is once again fighting to stay in control of himself. "My my. I wonder, what lengths will you go to stay free Subject 7 64?" She says to herself and types on the computer for a few minutes before pressing the "Enter" key.
Just as quickly as the pain returned it disappears as well as the fake voice of Shing, and Ryoken is left unconscious as he falls into the arms of his childhood friend.
"This can't be good." Ai says, feeling the code that was once surging through Ryoken to reduce his pain subsiding into another new strange code.
This is the last chapter that I have for this story at the moment as I am stuck, and I can't think/decide where I want this story to go. if you have any ideas they would be greatly appreciated.
