Yes. Playmaker has indeed found the Cyberse World, as he had told Roboppi. Weeks ago. And then he had left it behind almost immediately. Weeks ago.

Truthfully, Playmaker hates this place, this barren landscape that Ai had once upon a time described as a paradise. Because back when he had stumbled across it during his search for Ai, there had been nothing of his partner left here, no remnant to tug at his Link Sense and set it aflame.

No, this ugly scar in the network is a place that should have been left alone, as far as Playmaker is concerned, and so he has done what a part of him wishes Lightning and Bohman and the Knights of Hanoi had done months ago: left it alone. To do anything else, would have felt like a travesty, like he was attempting to trample all over Ai's feelings.

And so he had left.

But now he's back again under a sky that seems to bleed darkness and depression, crumpled buildings scattered like sweet wrappers for miles around. Playmaker grimaces and calls up his board. And begins to search from the sky, eyes peeled for any sign of a figure in black, dressed in a far too dramatic cape.

He's just passing over the disfigured chunk of a charred yellow tower when it happens; the air in front of him distorts. Playmaker frowns and pulls up short, hovering in place. He watches with suspicious eyes as the distortion grows, simmering into a whirlpool of green, before the data reforms into something small, small enough to sit on Playmaker's wrist. And unfortunately, very familiar looking.

Yusaku bristles. 'Lightning.'

Well. Sort of.

Yusaku frowns as the being in front of him flickers slightly, as though lost between one moment and the next, undecided on their shape. It's almost like looking at Lightning through the blur of a television screen, one that is caught in a constant fritz.

Lightning – or whatever apparition of him this may truly be - narrows his eyes, those golden diamonds turning small and mean.

'Welcome, Playmaker. Though you don't sound terribly surprised.'

Yusaku bristles. 'You already left a copy of yourself here in the Cyberse World for Ai to discover in the preparation for your possible defeat – so, no, I'm not surprised to see that you left another one,' he says harshly. 'The only question is: what sort of simulation prompted you to leave another one here?'

'Hoh...' Lightning crosses his arms and floats back, caught inside a sitting position, one leg casually folded over the over. It's a pose Yusaku would have expected to see more from Windy or Ai, than Lightning. 'That was quickly deduced. Which means that not only was I defeated, but that Ai survived and found what I left behind for him. He saw the truth.' The narrowed diamonds of his eyes curve slightly, as though smug, and a malicious sort of jubilation enters his tone. 'Tell me, how did he react? Well, perhaps I don't need to ask; you're here, which means, despite everything, he chose humanity above himself.' Lightning lets out a bitter chuckle, upon seeing Playmaker's fists clench. 'Your anger only confirms my suspicions.'

'Ai's not dead,' Playmaker cuts in harshly. 'And if you expected him to stay that way, you severely miscalculated.'

'If that was true,' Lightning replies loftily, 'and Ai has managed to accept the 'truth' and live with it, then why is this copy talking to you now?'

Playmaker is silent for a moment. He has no ready answer for that, because Lightning has a point. 'Alright,' he says. 'If you foresaw even this; then answer my first why leave this copy here for me? How did you know I would be here?'

'I did not,' Lightning says, scorn in his voice. 'This program was to activate upon detection of a human entering the perimeter of my old tower.' He gestures to the blackened remains of the building below. 'I thought perhaps you or Soul Burner or Blue Maiden would discover our world one day; and though I would be dead and unable to change the future anymore, a part of me was still curious to know what the humans who chose to side with the Ignis felt now that their dreams for co-existence had failed. After all; even if they did not know it at the time, the moment Ai, Flame, and Aqua chose to align with you, they sealed their own fates.'

He leans forward, something eager, almost hungry in the curl of his body. 'So tell me, Playmaker; how does it feel to know that at the end of the day, all your grand dreams and ideals for co-existence were just that: dreams? That in the end, in order for you to live, your partner has to die?'

'No,' says Playmaker, almost in a shout. He stands tall on his board, jaw set and gaze steady. 'That's just what both you and he believe after running simulation after simulation. Maybe I can't understand why the results of those feel set in stone for you, because I'm not made of data. And it's true that no simulation could ever feel like real life for me, the way it does for you – but the physical world, the very thing you ran those simulations on, is already four months older than the one those simulations were for. It will have changed, enough perhaps to throw off your original calculations and whatever other input that used to run them in the first place.' Playmaker shoves his arm out with a determined thrust, one stern finger pointed directly at Lightning. 'The future can be predicted. But the only way to verify any prediction, is to go forwards and live through it.' His jaw sets. 'And I'm going to drag Ai into the future with me, past any prediction!'

Lightning tilts his head to the side. 'Oh?' But strangely enough he doesn't sound quite as mocking or derisive as Playmaker expected him to. 'Would you like to see them then? These 'predictions' as you call them, the ones, that in your arrogance, you have decreed to not matter?'

The air around him ripples, as though a giant, invisible finger has reached out to tentatively prod the space beside him. And then another ripple appears, by Playmaker's board. And another.

Playmaker stiffens, as these ripples branch out, causing another atmosphere to bleed into the one that surrounds them, this sky even darker than the one left behind, as night falls on a Den City with no lights to brighten the windows, each glass pane either cracked or removed. It's a wasteland of grey, the trees on the outskirts either dead or decaying, and Playmaker can't quite help the soft gasp that escapes his mouth because of it.

'Behold.' Lightning speaks tonelessly from beside him, gaze impassive. 'Humanity's future. So long as as you continue to make Ai a part of it.'

Playmaker shivers. Steps back along a road with cracks in it, gaping ravines dividing the tarmac in three. His board has vanished, whisked away by this scenario, and each foot lands on ground that shouldn't feel solid, but is. Even the silky spill of the ocean in the distance, an ocean he has paused to gaze at ever since he was young, has unfurled into a churning pool of wavering black, the grease of spilled oil locked inside every cresting wave.

Despite the horror of what he sees, the same horror he knows Ai must have felt staring at this nightmare, his fists clench. 'You like this tactic, don't you?' Playmaker asks quietly. 'Showing people whatever you can to make their hearts fall into darkness?' He fixes Lightning with a look. 'The same way yours did, when you first started running simulations for the future of the Ignis.'

That wins him a glare from Lightning. But instead of spitting out a curse or a growl, the copy of the Light Ignis merely raises an arm, his fingers curling above his arm. And then he snaps them together in a decisive click.

Flame appears before him, blurred and black, arms crossed and gaze stern. 'If I had survived, I would have continued to watch over Takeru, the rest of my days. And then his descendants.' He closes his eyes. 'My partner had unlimited potential, potential that was only limited by his lifespan. But it is in the natures of all living things to die, and I would never have lost myself if his was cut short.'

There's a gurgle of a simmering brook, pushing past the leaves and dirt of a forest path, and then Aqua unfurls into the space beside him. 'If I had lived, I would have created anti-virus programs for hospitals to use,' she says softly, her pink eyes beseeching and sad. 'Ones that would eventually grow strong enough to help people locked into comas, to devise a virtual reality for their brains to navigate, so they could re-learn how to function in the real world once more. My failure to save my original partner Miyu, and my knowledge of what the Knights of Hanoi forced Aoi to live through would have inspired me.' Her eyes closed softly. 'But losing either of them, those brave girls who helped create me, would not have broken me; I managed to live past Earth's death after all.'

Lightning pulls himself into the space between them, a thread of gold against their black and blue bodies. But Flame and Aqua don't respond; they stare blankly ahead, eyes fixed on the distance, mere puppets of Lightning's programs. Lightning gazes between them.

'These are shoddy copies,' he mutters, distaste creeping into his tone. 'But you get the idea; as unlikely as it was, I ran simulations for the outcome where one of them was the lone survivor.' He turns his face back to Playmaker and the expression he wears, with crinkled eyes, is nothing short of a gloating one. 'But while they were never as cunning as Ai, they also never had quite the same weakness he did.'

Playmaker glares.

Lightning chuckles. 'Would you like to see more of what this weakness led him to do? Or perhaps led him not to do?'

Lightning waves a hand. The atmosphere changes, into one where fire spouts between towers of glass and steel, screams echoing as charred bodies fall, fingers curling into claws. And then it flickers away to be replaced by one where the whistle of bombs drown out the screams, where a mushroom cloud drowns out the sky in the distance. Ai watches it impassively from a hillside of browned grass, face set, as his hand strokes over a gravestone, the tattered remnants of dried stalks and blackened petals drooping by its side like a forgotten offering.

'Sorry, Yusaku,' he says, voice sounding horribly, dreadfully tired. 'I can't stop it anymore. I don't want to.'

Playmaker stares at the grave, feeling sick as he does so.

'Don't get me wrong.' Lightning draws closer to the shoulder of the simulated Ai, staring intently at his closed-off expression. 'I don't agree with Ai's actions. His objective was to co-exist with humanity, same as Flame's and Aqua's.' He raises his head, eyes meeting Playmaker's. But there's no real warmth within them. 'But as far as I can tell that objective itself was a lie, a cover-up for his true objective: to co-exist with you. To find a way for both the Ignis and you to stay alive.'

Playmaker's breath stutters out.

'I believe, had he never met you after the Lost Incident, I might have actually persuaded him to join my side,' Lightning says thoughtfully. 'Or at the very least, he would have remained neutral alongside Earth, while he thought through his options.' His gaze bores into Playmaker's, in a not-quite glare. 'So to me, his true objective was not worth his life.'

Playmaker's teeth clench. And he swings round, stung by this remark. 'I can't let that one go. You have no right to look down on my partner!' He steps forward, hands closed into fists, eyes at war with the sky, with Lightning's unrelenting gaze, with the full view of the imaginary Ai's implacable face.

But all Lightning does in response is draw his hands out like a magician, allowing a holographic screen to rise out of the air in front of him. He stares at it for a moment, eyes aglow. And then they crinkle, as though they've stumbled upon a good joke. 'But I am 'looking down' on him. I have no choice. See for yourself.'

Lightning makes a twirling motion with his fingers as though to stir the air itself, and the screen before him whips round to show Ai, curled in the mud, the brush of the green grass stroking his cloak, in front of five sandstone-coloured graves.

Playmaker's eyes widen. 'Ai!'

He immediately tears away from the screen, past Lightning, past this wrong Ai standing in front of his grave. Without a second's pause, he calls up his board, relived to see it respond to him, despise Lightning's simulation.

'Are you really planning to rip your way out this world with brute force?' Lightning asks from behind him.

Without a word, Playmaker brandishes the Duel Disk sitting on his wrist. A Duel Disk chock full of the cards Ai gifted him with.

'Ah,' says Lightning, as the monsters burst into view, as they ride through the sky before Playmaker with an assortment of chirps and roars, the sky beginning to shake and break apart at their sounds. 'Of course. These are Ai's work. And they're strong enough to rip through the work of a dead Ignis.'

Firewall Dragon roars, the white of its wings gleaming, light exploding from its mouth to wash out the sky. The image of Ai below, hand set on the rim of his grave like the arm of a throne, blurs, disappearing into gold flakes of data which Playmaker turns his head away from deliberately.

Everything is falling apart, breaking down. And then with a burst of white, Playmaker is in the Cyberse World again. Much to his annoyance though, Lightning materialises to his side, easily keeping pace with him.

'I've warned both of you now,' Lightning says, conversationally. 'And yet, you pay no heed.' He peers at him shrewdly. 'How foolish.'

'That's right,' Playmaker snaps out. 'Having free will gives you the right to be foolish.'

He spots a fleck of green in the distance, brash, the colour practically an ache in comparison to the dreary grey ground around it. Making a beeline for it, he bends his knees to brace himself for the highest possible speed.

'It lets you make choices that go against our instincts, our calculations. And just as Ai exercised his free will to save me, I'll exercise mine to save him.' Playmaker spares Lightning a side-glance, his eye a furious emerald spark of defiance.

Lightning's face furrows his brow, anger present in his glare. 'Meaningless words. You won't put Ai above your need to do the right thing, to save other people. It's not in you to do that.'

Playmaker clenches his jaw. And Lightning abruptly pulls himself to a stop as the graves soar into sight, more than specks and now fully-formed rectangles; but Playmaker doesn't. He leaps off his board, stumbles, falls to his knees with a crash and breathes, the sudden jarring pain in his legs forcing him to weaken.

'What a sad existence,' Lightning calls out after him. 'Placing your morality, your position of a hero, above your own heart.'

Playmaker wobbles to his feet. Then thrusts himself forward, running, stumbling over a dirt path that curves through the grass, that slopes upwards, up that short mound of green.

'AI!'

He sinks to Ai's side, digital heart thumping as he yanks his partner into his arms. And Ai gasps like a drowning person, his dirt-smudged hair, those black and gold strands, finally falling free of his clutching fingers. His eyes are wide and startled, and filled with such fear that Playmaker clutches him tighter, practically cradling him in his lap. It's almost a mirror scene of the way he nursed Ai to his death months back, only this time Ai has a little more weight to him, feels stronger and it shows, the moment awareness sinks into Ai's face as he startles and tries to pull himself away.

'Playmaker! Stop it! I don't want to do this anymore-'

'Ai-'

'Why can't I stay dead, like them, like Aqua and Flame and Earth-'

Playmaker's heart soars despite Ai's sorrow, despite his breaking voice. Because he sees the recognition in those eyes.

'What's wrong with me?' Ai is practically yelling now, snarling, furious. He tries to untangle himself even more, wiggling furiously, but Playmaker holds firm; after all, Ai's limbs aren't comprised of metal in this world. 'Why am I the one who gets chance after chance! I'm not even the Fire Ignis, so how did I end up with all the privileges of a phoenix?'

I don't know, thinks Playmaker. But I'm glad. So glad that you did.

Ai goes still suddenly. 'I remember,' he says hollowly. 'Play-Yusaku, I remember everything.' He stares up at him, face wretched, and Playmaker gazes back at him soft and sad, the swipe of his thumb already travelling over Ai's cheek to eat up the slimy trail of a tear.

'I'm glad,' he says, despite the way Ai's face explodes into pain at this remark. 'I'm sorry for your pain. But I'm glad you remember me properly.'

Ai closes his eyes. 'You shouldn't be. It doesn't change anything.' He grimaces. 'And I used you. Again.'

Playmaker smirks slightly. 'And you fell for me again. Despite everything, despite your lack of memories.'

Ai stares at him, eyes wide.

Playmaker's smirk gentles. 'You think I couldn't tell? You don't need to say it, for me to know it. Not anymore.' His hand curls behind Ai's neck, the fall of Ai's mud-soaked hair cushioning it slightly. He leans down, his back curls, and then his mouth closes over Ai's.

And Ai's mouth is soft, warm, practically pliable. It opens a little, makes a soft, breathy little gasp. No air rushes out, nothing pushes back against Playmaker's own, not the way it would as if he were in the real world with another human. Nothing exists except Ai's warmth. And the surprised, unfurling of his mouth, petal-soft in a way Yusaku is invigorated by.

Playmaker draws back. He smiles. 'And I guess I don't need to say anything either.'

Ai stares at him, eyes blown wide, mouth open, hair dishevelled. He blinks. Then his eyes narrow, that mouth that Playmaker has only just grown so fond of, crinkling into a pout. 'Cheater,' hisses Ai.

Without warning his back arches away from Playmaker's lap, his arms wrap around Playmaker's neck like a snake and he latches onto Playmaker's mouth again, dragging them down together. He kisses as though he's in a Duel, fierce and greedy, hands stroking against Playmaker's neck, one rolling over his cheek, fingers fanning into soft flames, the heat against Playmaker's skin, however digitised, both thrilling and addictive.

Ai rolls over, pushes him down beneath him, kisses him harder. Then draws back, eyes fierce and glowing, a triumphant smirk crawling onto his face.

'How's that?' he pants.

Playmaker stares at him breathlessly. And promptly decides to disarm him.

'I love you,' he says softly.

Ai freezes. His hands bunch nervously against Playmaker's suit, balled on his chest. His cheeks dust with a rosy pink. And then he closes his eyes, lets out a slight squeak and hides his head against Playmaker's chest, shivering a little. 'That's dirty! Unfair, unfair! How can I fight back against that?'

Playmaker lets a hand push up into Ai's hair tenderly.

And behind them, not used to being ignored, Lightning crosses his arms. And glowers.

Ai feels the shape of Playmaker's hand on his head, feels the weight of his fingers in his hair, sly snakes that tingle, cause heat to weave its way across his scalp. AI don't have earthly desires, cannot even begin to map out the urge for sexual intimacy – but Ai has always enjoyed touch, has always been able to link it back to the emotional urges within him and understand it as an expression of care. And that is what this is now.

He turns his head, lets those fingers fall though his hair and presses his mouth against the green wrist that approaches him. Kissing isn't something he fully understands, doesn't unlock a ravenous passion inside him the way it does in a human story, at least not a sensual one. But it does ignite a jumble of emotions in him, ones that make him think yes, yes, Yusaku wants me, he chooses me, above every human out there. He understands now why he feels so touched by it, how that causes the jumps and flutters in his data. The vulnerability involved in baring yourself physically to another, and in seeing Yusaku do the same...well. Playmaker at the moment.

Ai suppresses a smirk, leans down and allows Playmaker to plunder his mouth again. It feels...

Like a firework has gone off inside him. A jumble of data, a roll of yes, yes, yes, of joy, of greed washes through him. Maybe humans feel the same. And of course there are physical pleasures to be associated with the action; Ai is programmed to register sensation, to feel. And Yusaku's mouth feels hot and wet, a bruise of sensory data that travels across his processor. Like pain, but softer, gentler. A thorn opposed to the brush of a petal.

Ai swallows it all down greedily. He has to make the most of it. He can't stay, after all.

There's a cough. And reluctantly – very reluctantly – Ai pulls away. Tearing himself free from the pull of Playmaker's mouth, though not the feel of his arms, he meets the gaze of-

Oh. Oh, for crying out loud.

'Lightning?' he asks with glare. 'Just how many copies did you choose to litter this place with?'

Lightning sneers, his eyes tracing the imprint of Playmaker's arms looped over Ai's shoulders, and the long line of his body as it falls across his human partner's.

'Trust me Ai, I'm not too fond to being forced to see such an unpleasant sight, either.'

Ai grimaces, maybe even fidgets a little, despite the annoyed look Playmaker gives him for doing so. 'Even though you're not the real Lightning, it's still kind of embarrassing, seeing you see us like this.'

'He doesn't have the right to complain,' Playmaker says, an ugly bite to his voice, and Ai feels his partner's hands tighten on him slightly. 'After all, his own actions helped pave the way to this future.'

'What future?' Lightning asks with a sneer. 'There is no future. Not for you two.'

Ai sighs. And starts to pull himself free. But though he manages to unseat himself from Playmaker's chest, those determined hands still catch at his shoulders, hold him tight, as Playmaker pushes himself up, rises alongside him.

'You've been living beside me, experiencing life in the real world.' Playmaker pushes these words out fiercely. 'The way you would have wanted those AI copies you made at the factory to experience, had our last duel turned out differently. And I know you, you're a glutton. You're going to want more than a taste of these things. So don't throw it away.'

Ai looks at him sadly. 'Exactly. I'm going to want more than that. Bohman once said my instinct made me pursue my own enjoyment. That's a dangerous thing for an AI to have. I'm not like Aqua or Flame, who were stuffy and responsible, and didn't put their pleasure-seeking first. I came out a bit more selfish than them.'

Ai smiles, and slides a hand up to cup Playmaker's cheek. 'I told you, remember? That if any other Ignis other than Lightning or me had survived instead, that humanity wouldn't have been destroyed. That's one of the reasons.'

'And what of the other SOLtiS out there who've gained free will? Or Roboppi?' Playmaker speaks steadily, his hands still clamped on his shoulders. But Ai feels the trap close, hears it in his partner's words as Playmaker asks him, burning strength in every word: 'Are you going to leave me, and the rest of humanity to their mercy?'

Ai stiffens. 'You're playing dirty.'

'Just like you always have,' Playmaker says sternly. 'You want me to live; but there's no guarantee that you've saved my life, not if it could easily end at the hands of another AI in the future.' And then, his hands slip from his shoulders. 'You once made me choose the method of your death. Are you now going to choose mine?'

Ai sucks in a breath.

'Interesting,' Lightning breaks in, hands curled against his cheek in mock thought – the slide of it against his face is almost slovenly – 'humanity truly is doomed.'

Ai surges to his feet, managing to rip Playmaker's hands from his shoulders with the sheer speed of his movements. 'Shut up!' he shouts, nearly stomping his foot in his rage. 'This isn't your concern anymore!' Then his face takes on an ugly sneer. 'Besides; you can't do anything about it anymore, anyway.'

He raises his hand, a violet orb of light springing to life across his palm. 'You're a relic, Lightning. No, you're not even that: you're a ghost.'

Lightning scowls. 'And what are you then! The last Ignis! What is that, if not a relic?!'

Ai's face crumples in pain. But he lets the orb shoot out anyway. Only for Lightning to duck, to slither away from its path and slide, in a quick-fire curve to Ai's ear. He leans in, his words brushing low and heavy, too fast for Playmaker to close the distance and hear them, but whatever they are, they make Ai's eyes widen. And then, with a fumble, his hands come up to close round the copy of Lightning.

'Consider it well, Ai,' Lightning tells him, eyes narrow and heated. 'I threw away everything for the sake of my objective. Are you prepared to do the same?'

Ai looks at him with steel in his eyes. 'I already did that,' he says, his tone bitter and twisted. 'And it didn't work.' And then he crushes the copy into shimmering fragments of data, watching them drift free of his fingers with a look of incredible sadness.

Playmaker watches the data rise into the sky, a slight river of gold that twinkles and disintegrates. But he says nothing, knowing that Ai's feeling towards Lightning are complicated, both angry and regretful, still full of grief and the ache of what could have been. 'What did he tell you?' he asks as soon as the last particle of Lightning's copy disappears.

Ai's face twists.

'Whatever he told you-' Playmaker continues heatedly.

'Relax,' Ai cuts in brutally. 'He gave me a suggestion; told me that if I really wanted to put humanity above the survival of the Ignis species, then I could simply write a program to delete myself once I stumbled across your death certificate online.' He smiles humourlessly.

Playmaker frowns at that, unsure if it's a lie or not. 'Ai,' he settles on, deciding on a new course of action. He steps forward. Raises a hand. Recalls, with no small bitterness, that he is copying the same gesture Ai made to him months ago, throwing his arm out as though it could easily form a bridge between them. 'Come back with me.'

Ai looks at him, lost and sad. And Playmaker waits, heart rocking in his chest, tethering on the brink of a panic he tries to fight, unwilling to let it travel over his face.

But then, after a moment, Ai raises his hand, fingers curling into Playmaker's tentatively like he fears the warm clutch of it as a trap. But then again, perhaps to him, it is.

'I can't promise I'll stay,' Ai warns. 'But I am going to make sure you're safe for sure, before I decide anything.'

Playmaker gives his hand a squeeze. 'Let's go,' he says. And then they do, leaving the blistering scar of the Cyberse World behind them.

Picture this: hair, black and gold strands of it , flying out under the sun, under the bright blue blend of the sky in the real world. Some humans notice, gazing up with pointed fingers and clasping their phones, ready to record the way humans always do.

'Is it an advertisement?' one asks, as the holograms, made impressively solid, whizz through the sky. 'I didn't know you make them go so far away from a Duel Disk.'

Another, an avid player of Duel Monsters, snorts. 'Lame,' they declare. 'They should have used better monsters. Allure Queen is such an unworkable archetype.'

Everyone is amused for the moment. But then the monsters reach the building of Sol Technologies. One raises their staff. And after it has finished falling, no one is amused at all.

In fact, they are screaming.

Notes: Sorry, Lightning. But this isn't your story anymore.