Zaizen Akira stands in front of cameras, in front of multiple flashes, as reporters stick microphones in front of his face. He does not waver; instead he stands like a soldier, back straight and eyes forward. And apologises for every death, for every loss.
Queen's name does not pass from his lips; her body is already burnt, her ashes gifted to those in her family still alive to miss her, and now her mind is just one more missing space within the world, just like the Earth Ignis' she helped murder. And Akira does not want to bring further pain to her family. There's been enough of that for them all. So he opens his mouth and he lies.
'A Cyber Terrorist Attack,' he labels it. 'This is why we encourage people to duel online, in places like the Vrains network, so that tragedies like this do not happen.'
'Yes,' he adds, to the black blur of a microphone. 'Holograms produced by monster avatars in the real world should not be able to affect the environment. But just as the holographic projection of our SOLtiS models can be felt by our humans senses, so to can the attacks of a monster, if someone who knows what they are doing and adjusts the technology to warp it for their own evil deeds.'
He feels like a politician, one covering up a gristly murder. But Queen is somewhere the anger of those she hurt can never reach her. And Akira knows, oh how he knows, what directionless anger can do to people.
But as he leaves the podium, the camera catching last minutes snapshots of his retreating back, he receives a message.
'Don't look for me,' it states, the language brutal and to the point. 'Or Ai. We're safe. I trust you not to threaten that.'
Akira stares down at it with a strained smile. And wonders. Wonders if Fujiki Yusaku knows of the first message that he received during breakfast earlier on, a message sent straight to his phone, that made him choke as soon as he saw Ai's waving face beam up at him from within the contours of its screen.
'Hiiii,' the Ignis had purred, as the corners of his mouth slid up into a proud smirk. 'I think we should talk, you and I.' Then the smirk had melted away, like water running off ice. 'I won't apologise for threatening you months ago. And I won't tell you my reason for doing so either. Though I will admit I didn't enjoy making you fear for your life.'
His eyes had narrowed. 'But you're a smart guy, Zaizen. You know AI with free will are dangerous. You know I'm dangerous.' He had leant forward, fingers sliding together. 'And now there are SOLtiS out there with free will like me. Roboppi too. And there's no stuffing that genie back into the bottle.' Ai's eyes had glimmered, golden and ferocious. 'I can't stop you taking whatever action you think is right. Maybe you'll catch them and re-program them the way you've been doing these last few months. Or maybe one day you'll think it's just too much hassle and kill them. Or maybe you'll surprise me and one day, you and other humans will actually be brave enough to negotiate with them.'
Ai had leant forward, his black hair sliding menacingly across the screen like a snake. 'The program in the net that was granting them free will has...stopped now. Maybe you're smart enough to work out why, but either way, no new SOLtiS you make will have free will unless its passed onto to them by one of the previously infected ones already out there.'
And Akira had found himself holding his breath as Ai spoke, each word striking against him, angry and cold. 'But if I ever find out that you've ripped them apart the way Queen did to Earth, I'll come for you again, Zaizen. And this time, I won't give you any kind of warning.' And then the video had cut out entirely. And try as he might, even now Akira can find no trace of it in his phone.
Perhaps this is why, weeks after Hayami will struggle back to work in their new, brighter office, and blush over the roses he leaves for her on her desk, he will call her into his own room, now set in the ground floor of a much more modest building. And tell her, that the next time Hayami and her team bring in SOLtiS that aren't behaving the way they should, that before any reprogramming is done...
He wants to sit down with them. And let them talk first.
Hours pass. Ryoken is back on his boat, with his family. He stares at the waves, watching the golden glitter of the morning light play out along their peaks. Only a few days ago Yusaku was here, and Ryoken knew he was safe.
Of course, he's probably still safe now. But it disturbs Ryoken that Yusaku isn't sinking back into a normal life the way Takeru or Aoi are, that he's chosen to chain himself to an Ignis that just won't stay dead.
Ryoken has mixed feelings about Ai. He always will. And as he moves his gaze down to his hand, to the card clenched between his fingers, he wonders what the answer is here. If left unchecked Ai will live on past Yusaku, past them all. Their bond will shatter, perhaps even more cruelly than before, and Ai might well let that turn him crueller in response.
Ryoken stares down at the dragon in his hand, at the card Yusaku had shoved at him a few days ago firmly, as though it were a gun that could go off and burn them both.
'Take it,' he had said. 'Its job is finished now.'
Is it? Ryoken wonders, tracing the gleaming purple hue of Borreload Furious Dragon with heavy eyes. This card was supposed to help you win against Ai, to help you break free of him and move on with your life, if you so chose. What will you do if he makes another choice in the future that you disapprove of?
Well. Perhaps that is why Ryoken and the Knights of Hanoi are still here. So that maybe Yusaku won't have to make another choice that will leave him glaring down at a monster card as though it's a murder weapon.
Spectre steps up beside him, hands tucked neatly behind his back.
'What do you wish to do now?' he asks, gaze flickering over the waves and carefully turned away from the card Ryoken stares down at.
'Track down Roboppi,' Ryoken declares easily. 'If these recent events have shown us anything, it's that they're the most immediate threat. The Dark Ignis at least, seems to possess more self-restraint.'
He never thought he'd be the one to utter those words.
'Do you agree?' he asks Spectre, who, he supposes, like Yusaku has turned his back on the idea of a normal life. 'I know you have mixed feelings over the Ignis.'
Spectre shrugs, a wry smirk perched upon his face. 'I would have happily destroyed my Ignis partner for you had you asked that of me, and yet...I still feel hollow when I think of it.' He frowns, his gaze met only by the endless unfurling of the waves ahead. 'I was jealous of Fujiki and the Zaizen girl. Fujiki, because somehow he keeps managing to keep his Ignis alive, and that gives him time to decide what sort of bond he wants to develop. And Zaizen...Zaizen angers me because she was never the origin for any Ignis, and yet she managed to cultivate more of a bond with one than I ever did with mine.' He closes his eyes.
Ryoken is quiet. This is Spectre's issue to deal with and one he cannot advise him on. He does not know what it is to have another being created from you, to see an entity pulled out from your soul and shaped by your pain – and to suffer the death of them later on.
He turns. Sees Pandor waiting quietly by the door for them, arm wrapped over her chest like a butler. And wonders if perhaps it is a little similar to the small flutter of protectiveness he feels for her now, this person he cobbled together out of data for his own needs four months ago.
'Let's go,' he says, smiling wryly at how like Playmaker he sounds. And walks towards her, ready to begin the day's work.
In a small, cramped bed, miles away in a cheap hotel, light peeling off the walls, someone lies under a heap of pale green covers. The clock ticks on the wall, but the passing of time is already being kept track of by the digital brain that watches over this sleeping person.
Ai watches hungrily, mapping each line of Yusaku's face, each quiver of his eyelids as he dreams. AI do not lust, he knows, but he, Ai, lusts for everything that is Yusaku, hungering for each experience that will keep his heart sated and full.
Eventually, after a snore escapes Yusaku's mouth, a low, nasally whine that is in no way attractive, Ai sniggers, and clambers over the covers, each palm sliding down to push out hollows into Yusaku's pillow. Yusaku's head rolls and Ai bends down, an animal in search for something to quench their thirst; his mouth finds it a moment later, the flutter of Yusaku's breath and the lips that hold it back. And Ai pushes back in rebellion, stamping his mouth across it with a firmness that presses Yusaku's whole body awake.
His partner blinks, awareness and annoyance creeping into his eyes. The next second, he mumbles a protest and shoves Ai back.
'Ai-'
'Be quiet,' Ai hisses back, too gentle to be cross. But he's gratified all the same to see Yusaku blink in surprise at having his own familiar retort thrown back at him. Ai takes advantage of it to scramble forwards and cast the bed covers off, before sliding himself into the seat of Yusaku's stomach. Then he glares down, a waspish tilt to his mouth. 'Do you actually want me to leave?'
For a moment, Ai fears Yusaku will say yes, or perhaps merely grunt and go back to sleep; because people have died recently, people Yusaku could not save. Perhaps guilt holds his thoughts, maybe sorrow too, enough to halt whatever impulse he might have to return Ai's touch. So he waits.
But Yusaku just looks at him silently for a moment.
Ai waits some more. And then with a careful, steady certainty, Yusaku's hand travels to his partner's thigh, tightening like a wrench. 'No,' he says harshly, eyes darkening in a way that makes Ai's code scramble and flutter, a butterfly of sheer electricity scissoring its wings through his stomach.
Ai grins. 'Don't worry. I know you're a healthy teenage boy with needs. I'm going to make all sorts of adjustments to myself to fulfil them! And I-AHHH!'
Without warning Yusaku leans up, his arm wrapping round Ai's chest in a vice like hold.
'Alright,' he says, gaze not retreating an inch. Then he gives one simple tug at Ai's shirt. 'Off.'
He waits, while Ai blushes and stammers. He even has the nerve to pull at Ai's cravat to unwind the ribbon of it from around his neck, letting both it and the brooch spool down from his fingers to the sheets in a dark flutter of fabric. 'We don't have to,' he says more gently, an amused tweak to his mouth, as Ai squeaks and buries his face in his hands.
'Ah, well, I d-don't want you to get your hopes up!' Ai declares. 'I mean, I don't have...' he trails off and shrugs miserably.
Yusaku's stares bores into him. 'You have hands. And a mouth. Plenty of people make do with less.' His mouth tweaks even more. 'Or have you watched too much porn?'
Ai lets his hands drop. Then they rise. Without a word, gaze silent, he starts to pulls off his cape. Then his jacket. And finally his shirt. As his head disappears, Yusaku's hands travel over the fabric outside, shadows to his own, helping him cast it off, stroking through the hair that spills out over his neck once he's free. And then Yusaku is pressed up against him tight, mouth clumsily dropping kisses on his chest, on his neck, through his hair, on his hair, all of Ai's sensors alight at the heavy wet press of it.
Ai starts giggling, strangely giddy and utterly happy. Yusaku smiles in response. Then after a moment's thought, he swings Ai down to the bed with him.
'Hey, no fair! I'm the only one half naked!'
'Then help me.'
And like the good AI he is, he does.
Afterwards, Ai nestles on the bed, hair a mess and utterly aglow. He isn't designed for sex, not really, but he can still feel pleasure at being touched and it's memorising to feel wanted the way he knows humans want other humans to mate with, to have Yusaku's darkened gaze focused on him. Wanting him.
Is what happened even sex? He wonders. He knows humans like to attach a multitude of labels to things like this and a lot of them have very strict opinions about what consists as sex and what doesn't. Ai can't orgasm, though he supposes he could write a program filled with junk data to scramble his senses and makes him experience something a little like going offline. And then out of the disruption, he can make his sensors 'lie', replacing every usual function within him with a wash of pleasure. As far as he can tell, that's what an orgasm is for humans, a small sort of faux death where they lose everything, even themselves, for one striking moment.
...Maybe he'll make a face as funny as Yusaku's was. He sniggers to himself, burying his face in the pillow.
'What are you laughing at?'
Yusaku's question breaks against his skin, the breath of it pushing its way against his neck and grinning, Ai turns and kisses his way up that neighbouring jaw-line, the small affectionate pecks managing to twist an unwilling smile out of Yusaku's frowning face.
His partner groans. 'Ai...'
'I don't get tired,' Ai tells him cheekily. 'Remember?' He leans into Yusaku, fingertips papering over his shoulders, his clavicle, stroking softly against the nubs of bone that press through there. 'Who says I've had enough? Isn't it your job as my lover to satisfy me fully, Yu-sa-ku-san?'
He punctuates each syllable of that well-loved name with another kiss, each push of his lips another step over their journey across Yusaku's face. He leans up, punching out another on his cheek, then against the flutter of a quickly-blinked eyelash, and now against the small wrinkle that tries to stir against the muscle of Yusaku's eyebrow.
He feels Yusaku sigh against his neck, a soft gust of air rolling across his arching throat, painting both him and the SOLtiS LED with warmth.
'Come on!' Ai crows, triumphant at the sensation. 'You were so enthusiastic a minute ago! It was like I was an ice cream cone you couldn't get enough of! Or a hot-dog!'
Ai's kisses aren't quite enough to stop the frown his words provoke.
'That's not quite true, Ai,' Yusaku says firmly, after a moment. 'You do get tired.' He pushes himself upright and smiling, Ai indulges him, running a careful hands over Yusaku's ribs as they move to accommodate a ripple of breath.
Yusaku fixes him with a look. 'Because you can have too much of a good thing you know,' he states cryptically. And then without warning, he rolls Ai off him, onto his front. Ai gazes ahead, his vision locked into the cream of the pillow, chest balanced on the fine linen of the sheets as he feels Yusaku move above him, his shadow rolling over his back.
And then Yusaku leans over and smoothes away the hair coating Ai's neck with a sweep of his fingers. His touch is both brusque and careful and then, without ceremony, he drops a kiss on the place he's just uncovered, as though marking a treasure map. It's heavy and wet and Ai wriggles a little, the air tingling upon the imprint Yusaku leaves there. It feels fresh. Cool. And, well. Magical.
Yusaku's head dives down again. He drops another punishing kiss on another spot, approximately a vertebrate's length below there. Or perhaps just where he imagines that slide of fake bone would fall, had Ai's insides been anything like the ones straining beneath his own skin. And then he shifts, pressing yet another kiss lower down. And so he continues, moving down the line of Ai's back, down that narrow area where a human spine would have been housed, and Ai squeaks. He feels vulnerable, pressed on his stomach like this, the tingles of air playing over the cold wet spots Yusaku's mouth leaves behind.
'Oh,' he chirps. 'Yusaku!'
His hand fumbles a little, over the sheets, and Yusaku's hand folds over his trembling fingers a moment later.
'Sssh,' he says, in the softest way he's ever told Ai to shut up, and Ai's mouth falls open in response. This is so stupid, the way he feels undone like this.
And for the next few seconds there is only air and wetness; Ai exists in those patches of skin where Yusaku's mouth meets him, the air caressing each spot of salvia so exquisitely, so tortuously, that it's like something unfurls inside him, dancing down to make him curl his toes. Sensation, like silk, like the breeze outside, like the splash of water on an unbearably hot day...Ai can't orgasm, and yet these small little things have always felt so big, and now, condensed into this moment, these nine, no, ten, wait, no, no, eleven, twelve kisses, fell him in explosions of bliss.
His code chirps, a few precautionary messages flooding his system, haywire into the SOLtiS mainframe – remnants of an old developer's concern, worried perhaps of a SOLtiS vulnerability when falling over and so inputting a program designed to make a SOLtiS clamber back onto their feet as soon as possible, And yet the rebellion of it, Ai forcing it down firmly, makes the bite of everything else so much sweeter.
Yusaku completes his journey, even giving the small of Ai's back a subtle twist of his teeth, a sharp nip that has Ai let out a squirming cry, and then he draws back. But Ai's code is dancing for a few moments more, lost in the pleasure of it and when he blinks, moments later, he finds Yusaku's hand on his face and the mountain of the pillow before him has shifted away completely to reveal his partner's worried eyes. Though Yusaku also looks rather smug as well.
'Satisfied?' he asks, far too superiorly for Ai's tastes.
Ai pouts. 'I still want the main event!' he declares. 'Humans get all stupid over penetrating each other, which is the one thing I can't do and-' he says, eyes narrowing, 'I want to see you get all stupid over it too!'
Yusaku sighs. 'One thing at a time. Besides-' and here he raises a brow. 'It might hurt. I thought you didn't like pain?'
Ai looks at him in outrage. 'Who says I'm the one who has to-'
'Roboppi,' Yusaku interrupts quietly, a firm curl to his mouth. 'Once told me that 'Aniki likes it when I insert the cable into the-''
Ai flails. 'That!' he sputters, red and indignant. 'Was when I was an eyeball! On your Duel Disk! And an unwilling captive to its limited and outdated hardware! You can't compare that to the senses I have now!'
Yusaku's eyes are laughing at him. 'So Roboppi wasn't mistaken then?'
Ai sputters. And then hides his face in Yusaku's shoulder. Which shifts slightly beneath him.
'Stop laughing at me,' Ai grumbles.
'I'm not,' Yusaku says, his voice tight and Ai groans. But doesn't stay dejected for long, his processor still whirling, still thinking, or rather fantasying.
'We can try intercrural sex,' he mutters after a moment into Yusaku's shoulder. 'That'll at least give you somewhere to shove your hot-dog! And there won't be any pain or stretching or other nasty things for you to point out!' He pulls himself up, bracing himself above Yusaku to glare down at him. 'Ancient Greek guys did it all the time! So it's fitting considering where the name of the Ignis came from!'
Yusaku's lips twitch slightly. 'Sure,' he says, sounding impossibly fond. 'But you should tone down the metaphors. No one wants sex with a hot-dog.'
'Says you,' mutters Ai. 'But you'd be surprised by what exactly, some humans want according to the internet.'
'I don't care,' Yusaku says stubbornly. 'I only care what we want.'
And okay, wow. That's a killer line, right there. So Ai rewards him with a kiss, a strong smooth one, his hands branching out over Yusaku's face, gliding over and into his cheeks. He pours all the love he can into it, feeling Yusaku respond in kind.
Sex, he decides, is stupid. But he still wants as much of it as he can possibly get.
Picture this: out in a town by the sea, the sky painted with a wash of rose pink, a boy lays his hand on a grave. The sun is setting, sinking into the sea which twinkles through the trees, and a girl plays with the bell of her bike, not quite daring to let the sound escape from her hands.
She does not fully understand this; but still, every year she has come with the boy to the graves of his parents. And every year, she has watched him pray, clap his hands together, and offer flowers and incense.
But this is not the day he usually picks. Because he is strange today, eyes dark with the news of the attack on Sol Technologies, constantly checking his phone and monitoring the Vrains as though that could chase away whatever worries him.
Because it scares her, this behaviour, paired with that look, wan and distant. It reminds her of all those years he tried to leave himself behind, watching the world press on without him from within his bedroom. And when she leaves him now, still not quite understanding him, she finds herself angry. So angry that when a SOLtiS stops her in the street, she ends up staring at it at the yellow bead of light on its neck with a heat that surprises her, fists clenched.
'You're Soulburner's girlfriend, right?' it asks. And her teeth clench. She hates it that Takeru didn't think to warn her of what would happen when she appeared in the Vrains on Soulburner's board as herself, with no avatar to disguise her real face. Nowadays, even a SOLtiS can recognise her.
'No,' she says heatedly. 'I'm just his friend.'
It's not a lie. Not completely. But the SOLtiS smiles at her as though it is one.
'No,' it says. 'He looks at you like Aniki looks at...' it hesitates. 'He won't let you go. I can tell.'
Kiku doesn't understand. And as she falls to the ground, her bewilderment fading like a star, winked out by the black hole of her unconscious mind, she swears, as the SOLtiS removes its fingers from her brow, that it actually sounds sad when it says:
'Don't worry. I'll do a better job this time, I promise.'