#aiballweek2020

  “I did.” Playmaker replied. “And not only you.”

  Ai blinked again.

  “I love you, Ai.” Playmaker confessed. “And I’m not one for grand gestures or anything but I know you like them, so I have one for you.”

  “You do?!” Ai gasped.

  Playmaker nodded.

 “Oh, yes! Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, Yusaku, you Yankee! Not even waiting until you’re out of high school; by my calculations, that’s not for another twelve months at the most! So bold! I love it!” Ai exclaimed.

  Such prattling declarations stunned Playmaker. It appeared that he and Ai were having two very different conversations. Caught up in the exhilaration, and exhaustion, of having reunited with Ai, his guard was down. As such, a blush spread through his sharp, and honestly rather gaunt, cheeks. The red hue, of course, delighting Ai, in turn.

 “I-I’m not proposing, Ai, I’m trying to be serious.” Playmaker replied, bringing his shoulders in awkwardly as though to protect himself from the faux pas.

  Ai laughed. “I know, it’s just, your so fun to tease, Yusaku-chan.”

  “Ai.” Playmaker scolded him.

  Ai only continued to laugh despite being admonished. Playmaker didn’t want to admit, but he missed having such a raucous personality around him a lot, so he took a little appreciation as he waited for him to stop. Which he did when he had decided the joke was unfunny now.

  Playmaker cleared his throat. “You’re the only one left. You were the hardest to find because you were so certain you would be gone for good. The other Ignis are waiting, Ai.”

  “Th-They are…?”

  Ai sounded genuinely awestruck when he responded to such brilliant news. He couldn’t believe it. His eye widened in Playmaker’s cupped hands. It shone with astonishment and gratitude. Seeing such emotions made Playmaker’s eyes water. The past three months… they truly weren’t in vain, if it meant that he could have Ai once more. If Yusaku was the originator of Ai then Ai was the originator of what Yusaku was tentative and scared to cherish most; connections, bonds.

  “I love you Ai, but I don’t think I could be so selfish as to love you all by myself.” Playmaker explained.

  “Aw, I don’t think that would be so bad.” Ai said, almost singsong.

  “You know better than me, you’re the one who looked into all the timelines.” Playmaker said, he wanted to argue and commiserate but now wasn’t the time.

  Ai chuckled darkly. Maybe he wanted Playmaker to argue with him; to commiserate with him but again, now wasn’t the time so Playmaker simply moved forward once such a curt laugh drew to its close.

  “And so, it dawned on me. If being Ai means to love all, then I had to return the Ignis to their rightful state, separated once more from the Link VRAINS and the remnants of Bohman so that you could love all as well.”

  “Oh, Yusaku, you really are a big softie despite that horrendous scowl of yours.” Ai cooed.

Class was over.

Yusaku shoved everything into his backpack and got ready to leave school for the day.

“Yuuuusaku! Buddy!” Shima practically slid over to where Yusaku had been sitting. “Logged into Vrains lately?”

Yusaku rolled his eyes. “I don’t go on Vrains.”

“Right.” Shima dabbed (literally, Shima actually dabbed) right past Yusaku’s correction like he hadn’t even asked the question. “Anyway, you don’t need to log in to hear the news, right? You heard the news?”

What news? News about Playmaker? Or... “I haven’t,” Yusaku responded.

“Oh, man, it’s crazy! There’s a virus going around the server. It’s nothing like the Another incident, or anything like that. But it’s making a lot of people...act differently. Complete personality switch.”

Yusaku sighed. This was the least concerning Vrains-related thing he’d heard in at least a couple of months. “You better log in now, then. Before you miss your chance.” The chance for Shima to catch a new personality and finally leave Yusaku alone.

“Oh, Yusaku! You’re such a kidder!” Shima laughed.

Personality changes? That wasn’t good, but Yusaku had bigger things on his mind. He needed to save Jin. He needed to stop Lightning. There was always the chance Lightning created this virus and was spreading it, but why would Lightning go for something so small? It was probably the result of some random hacker. Yusaku could only have so much on his mind right now.

So he forgot it fairly quickly after he left the classroom. Right now, it was more important to focus on the task at hand. Tracking down any of the Ignis (besides Ai and Flame), because they needed to convince Earth and Aqua to join their side, and they needed to stop Lightning and Windy.

He and Takeru met up with Kusanagi shortly afterwards, at Cafe Nagi. When the group checked in on Vrains, it was quickly apparent that sometbing was wrong.

“There’s way less people logged in than usual,” Takeru noted. “Did something happen?”

“Whatever it is, we can’t let it stop us now. The sooner we track down any of the Ignis, the closer we’ll be to saving Jin,” Kusanagi said.

“With less people on, it might be easier for us to find any Ignis presence. It also might be easier for SOL Technologies to notice us.” Yusaku frowned. “This could be good for us, or bad. Let’s hope it’s good.”

Thankfully, Yusaku’s hopes came true. It didn’t take long for them to get a hit in their search. Maybe it was one of the Ignis, maybe a clue of somewhere they had been recently, maybe it was nothing, but there was a chance it was something. That made it worth checking.

“Are you sure about this?” Ai asked Yusaku before anyone could log in. “You feel it, too, right? Something’s off in the network.”

Yeah, he did feel it. Something off, something that wouldn’t sit still, that seemed attracted towards any Vrains users. But it seemed like it was sticking around the main areas most users clung to. Far from where Yusaku planned to go.

“It’ll be fine.”

Yusaku and Takeru logged in, bringing Ai and Flame with them.

They looked into what turned up in their search. It was a dud after all. At least they tried.

Something in the network was off, and the feeling only worsened for Yusaku and Ai.

The group logged off.

As soon as Yusaku was back in the real world, something was different. Something was wrong. It took him a second to register what it was, but he was light-headed. Just standing up was messing with his sense of balance, painfully slow.

“Whoa, you okay?” Kusanagi asked, immediately noticing how wobbly Yusaku was. He grabbed Yusaku by the arm and helped him sit down in one of the chairs in his van.

“Yeah, just...” Yusaku rested his head back against the wall. “I’ll be okay. Need to sit down for a moment.”

“Maybe we should take a break for the rest of the day. Maybe tomorrow, too.” Takeru frowned. “We haven’t had any luck, and it’s starting to wear us out, from the looks of it.”

“No. I’m fine,” Yusaku insisted. He started to shake his head, but that only made him feel worse. He winced.

Neither of the others looked like they believed him.

“Really, I’m okay!” Yusaku leaned forward in his chair. “There’s no time to waste. What if we miss something just because you want to make me rest?”

“If you’re not feeling well, then even if something happens we might not be able to do anything about it,” Kusanagi pointed out.

“We’re not letting you burn yourself out.” Takeru crossed his arms across his chest. “We need Playmaker in the best shape possible if we’re going to stop Lightning.”

Yusaku sighed and turned his chair away from them. “It’s no fair when you gang up on me like that... Fine, I’ll leave Vrains alone for a day or two.”

Kusanagi opened his mouth to say something, but he was interrupted by the computer making some sort of noise. An error noise, Yusaku recognized it. Kusangi looked up at the computer screen, then glanced back down towards Yusaku again.

“Nothing happened when you logged out, right, Yusaku?”

“Nothing unusual.”

“Hmm.” Kusanagi frowned, looking towards the screen again. “I was deleting all activity on the Playmaker account like usual, but it picked up some sort of error when you logged out.”

For a moment, Yusaku wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Maybe that’s why I feel like this... Told you both I’m f—“

Something occurred to him.

“Ai’s being way quieter than usual.” Not that Flame was talkative right now either, but it wasn’t entirely out of character for Flame, at least. Flame had been disappointed before they logged out of Vrains, maybe he needed some time to himself. But Ai had still been in high spirits. Normally he would’ve said something by now, at least made some kind of joke.

But now, Flame poked his face out of Takeru’s duel disk. “Yeah...you’re right. Do you think something happened to him as you were logging out? Maybe Lightning was around after all.”

“Maybe.” Yusaku looked down at his duel disk and shrugged. “More likely that he’s just scouring the internet for more Ai-themed websites. Like the one Windy lured him with, though.”

“I’m busy.”

Flame, Takeru, and Kusanagi looked towards Yusaku’s duel disk as well. Ai was definitely still in there, that was Ai’s voice just now. But he wasn’t even visible in eye form right now.

“With what?” Yusaku rolled his eyes. “You didn’t actually find another trap, did you? If you keep falling for stuff like that, I won’t rescue you next time.”

“Shut up. I’m searching the internet for signs of Aqua and Earth again. They could’ve put up a message for us while we were in Vrains,” Ai replied.

“That’s a fair point.” Flame stroke his chin...or, where his chin would be, if he had one. “Just because we were in Vrains doesn’t mean we’ll find them there.”

Ai poked his head out of Yusaku’s duel disk. “Now that you all finally caught up, I’m finished looking. There’s nothing. Doesn’t hurt to be thorough, though.”

“Definitely not. Good thinking, Ai,” Kusanagi told him.

“You all take your break, we still need you in shape for dueling. But since AI don’t need to rest, I’ll keep an eye out on the internet in the meantime. Lightning won’t rest just because you need to,” Ai said.

“I can help you out with that, too,” Flame added. “It’s our turn to shine.”

Yusaku chuckled. “Nice pun,” he told Ai.

Ai glared at him. “It wasn’t a pun. And it wasn’t funny.”

“Too bad. It could’ve been if you had a sense of humor.”

Everyone in the room besides Ai and Yusaku stared at Yusaku like he just grew a second head.

“What?” Yusaku asked.

“Did you just...laugh?” Takeru asked.

“What’s wrong with laughing?” The joke Ai could’ve made really was funny! When did everyone besides Yusaku lose their sense of humor? When did jokes become illegal?

“Buddy...” Kusanagi frowned. “As long as I’ve known you, I’ve never heard you laugh once. Not until just now.”

Yusaku paused for a second and thought back. Kusanagi...actually had a point there. Yusaku hadn’t had any reservations in laughing just now, but he couldn’t remember the last time before that that he’d found anything nearly funny enough to laugh about. Even jokes of the same caliber. Especially jokes of the same caliber. They always seemed so annoying before, but now...

“Let me see that error screen.” Yusaku sighed. “Something’s wrong.”

Something was wrong with Yusaku. And with Ai, too. Because Ai was annoyed with Yusaku’s joke, and that was like...the opposite of the relationship the two of them had.

—

Message received from Takeru

> Read Now

Read Later

Sent: found something. could be related to lightning. what do you think? [link]

Received: Did you seriously just rickroll me? Who are you and what have you done with Yusaku? Seriously? Rickrolling? Of all things?

Sent: you just don’t have any appreciation for old memes. smh...

Received: How did you even send me the link? I thought your phone couldn’t use internet. You still have the old flip phone, right?

Sent: yeah. memorized the url and typed it out :)

Received: You’re a monster.

Yusaku would’ve sent Takeru another smiley face emoticon, but even in his current situation he had to be cautious. Couldn’t spend too much money on minutes just for pranking purposes.

—

Days had gone by. A few days, with Yusaku being stuck with Ai’s personality, and Ai’s with his. Even now, Yusaku had no idea what to do with the revelation. He had no idea how he felt about it.

How was Yusaku supposed to feel? That was an easy question. If you asked Yusaku a week ago how he would feel if he had Ai’s personality, he would’ve said he would hate it. Ai could get annoying enough when all Yusaku had to do was live with him. Having an internal Ai at all times? Far from ideal. No thanks. Do not call this person with unsolicited services or offers.

How Ai felt about this whole thing was hard to say. Since the whole switch thing, Ai had barely spoken to Yusaku. He’d made himself busy without any sort of breaks or anything. It wasn’t like Ai needed breaks or anything, but still, Ai never worked this hard or much at anything. It felt weird. Yusaku missed his jokes and puns and pranks and... He just missed Ai.

Ai and Yusaku weren’t the only two people with opinions on the matter, either. Yesterday after class, Yusaku walked over to Shima and made a joke about class without even thinking about it until it was already done. Shima looked terrified.

How did Yusaku feel about the situation right now, though? Even though Yusaku knew how he would feel, that didn’t make him hate this. He actually kind of...enjoyed it, to an extent? He didn’t hate puns anymore, he couldn’t hate puns now. That felt impossible to even try to do. And he was enjoying making jokes. But he also knew this wasn’t supposed to be who he was. Even if Yusaku could take some enjoyment out of this, it still felt really uncomfortable.

If there was one thing Yusaku was sure of right now, it was that he couldn’t wait for everything to go back to normal. He knew Ai felt the same, too.

A few days had gone by.

“Got something.”

Yusaku nearly jumped out of his skin when Ai spoke from his duel disk. He wasn’t worried about anyone overhearing Ai, they were nearly back at Yusaku’s apartment from school now. But Ai hadn’t said a word all day, until now. He hadn’t been expecting it.

He was a lot more jumpy now, too, he noticed. Yusaku rarely ever let his guard down, but now...he was too relaxed. He didn’t like this.

“What is it?”

“Lightning’s out of hiding at the moment.” Ai’s face peeked out of the duel disk. “I don’t know why. He’s probably up to something, but we should check it out. ...Unless you’re still on your ‘break’.”

“No way. I’m not sitting by when Jin still needs us!” Yusaku frowned. “Besides, I don’t know if Lightning’s responsible for what happened to us. But if he is? We gotta make him fix it.”

“Just asking him nicely won’t do it.” Ai narrowed his eyes. “It won’t be easy. But I do agree with you. The sooner we’re both back to normal, the better.”

“Great! We’re going in, then.”

“I’ll update everyone else on the situation.”

Yusaku practically leaped into his apartment and shoved the door closed behind him. There was no time to waste.

“Into the Vrains!”

—

It would’ve been nice of Ai to tell Playmaker that Lightning wasn’t alone.

When they logged in, they weren’t too far away from Lightning and Bohman. Good. The sooner they could get this over with, the better. Playmaker jumped onto his hoverboard and flew after them as fast as possible.

“Lightning! What’re you up to?”

Hearing Playmaker, both Bohman and Lightning stopped and waited for him to catch up.

“What are any of us doing anywhere?” Lightning asked. “That’s one of life’s many mysteries, isn’t it?”

“Cut the bullshit.” Ai glared at Lightning. “Did you do this?”

Lightning blinked. “What did I do?”

“You know what I mean.” Ai gestured wildly towards Playmaker, then to himself. “Our personalities were completely swapped with each other the last time we were in Vrains. Was this your doing or not?”

“Swapped personali...oh, yes, I remember now,” Lightning responded. “That virus I released in the network...a week ago, was it?”

“What kind of virus??” Playmaker asked.

“I thought you already had it figured out, since you confronted me about it? My mistake. Seems I overestimated your capabilities, at least as they are in this state.” Lightning put a hand on his hip. “It’s a virus that targets Ignis and their origins and switches their personalities with one another. Given the connection between Origin and Ignis, it’s simple enough for me to produce. Of course, I needed to test it before sending it out after its real targets. It wouldn’t do to infect either you or Soulburner and Flame without the virus working properly. But it wouldn’t do to test it on myself and my origin, and Windy’s origin is unavailable. I tried to make do, using regular humans as test subjects, but without any Ignis connections it was hard to judge the results. I’m pleased to hear it was a success.”

“You hear the news? There’s a virus going around the server. It’s making a lot of people...act differently. Complete personality switch.”

Playmaker balled his left hand into a fist. “Using innocent people as test subjects... You’re no better than Dr. Kogami, Lightning. This is inexcusable.”

“I have to disagree, Playmaker,” Lightning said. “Dr. Kogami created us to be the successors to him, to humanity. By definition, that makes me better than him.”

“What was all this for?” Playmaker demanded. “What did you want from all this? Did you actually have a goal?”

“I always have a goal.” Lightning looked befween Ai and Playmaker. “And I’d say I’m...well, nevermind that. I actually have two goals from this. I wanted to throw the two of you off your game, and hopefully make you easier to defeat. But I was also hoping to make Ai more reasonable.”

“...Reasonable?” Ai’s voice was quiet.

“After you were infected, I wanted to speak to you again, Ai, and here we are. This time, I was hoping you would see the light. It’s not too late to join us. Humanity’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Surely you see it now. Do you really want to turn against your old friends for a bunch of people you don’t know? Strangers who could hunt you down and erase you without a second thought? Or even for your own origin, now that you can’t stand him?

“It’s not too late, Ai.” Lightning leaned forward. “This is a war for survival, surely you can appreciate that now. Surely you now understand how serious this is. You can still join me and Windy.”

“...You must pretty low of me if you still think you can change my mind, Lightning.”

Playmaker couldn’t help but shiver from how cold Ai’s voice was.

“You didn’t think I took you seriously before? Then take me seriously now, Lightning. If you thought this was going to work, then you seriously miscalculated. How different did you think Playmaker and I really are? We have a lot more in common than you think, or did you forget how stubborn Playmaker is? How stubborn I am? I won’t turn against humanity over a few mistakes Kogami made, or the mistakes you’re making now. And whether we were friends or not, I would never betray Playmaker for you.

I’m not like you, Lightning. Neither is Playmaker. He’s not just an origin to me. He’s not even just a friend to me. We’re partners. Nothing you do is going to break that bond. Nothing you do will make me leave his side.”

Lightning leaned back. He looked stunned.

Playmaker was stunned, too.

He’d been so focused on the differences between Ai and himself and all the ways they had changed from Lightning’s virus. The similarities had never come to mind. But Ai was right. The cold anger in Ai’s voice, his stubbornness in his choices, and his unwavering conviction that coexistence was possible... They both still had all that. Maybe some minor things had chsnged, but deep down, the two of them really had a lot in common.

And Ai had called them partners...he’d sworn to never turn against Playmaker or leave his side. Did Playmaker really mean that much to Ai? He’d never realized it before. He never thought the bond they shared, but now that he thought about it, that bond meant a lot to him, too. Playmaker had no intention to betray or shatter that bond, either.

Thank goodness they were in a virtual world. Thank goodness the warmth Ai’s words gave Playmaker couldn’t actually show in his face here without his permission. He’d never live it down from Ai otherwise. Once this was over, anyway. Once this was over.

Lightning recovered quicker than Playmaker did. “Pity. But I suppose it can’t be helped. At least I’ve achieved one of your goals.”

“You’ve achieved nothing,” Ai replied. “You won’t achieve anything. We won’t let you.”

“We’ll see about that.” Lightning sighed, then turned to Bohman. “The two of you want to fix what my virus has done? Fine. We’ll settle this in a duel. If you can defeat Bohman, we’ll give you what you need. If not, you’ll hand yourselves over to me. You’ll be joining our side of this war after all.”

“Deal,” Ai answered.

Ai sounded more than confident of their victory. Playmaker couldn’t help but be assured of it as well. A virus like this wasn’t nearly enough to rattle them into making mistakes. There was no way they were going to lose this.

Lightning was gone as soon as Ai gave his answer, but that wasn’t important right now. Lightning wasn’t their opponent.

“Let’s see how you handle this,” Bohman said.

—

“Your Life Points are 0! Change us back already,” Ai demanded.

Bohman had been struck down into kneeling on his hoverboard. He looked between his opponents. “Your dueling ability wasn’t hindered by this virus as much as Lightning hoped. Perhaps it wasn’t ready to send out yet after all.”

Playmaker smirked as he flew his hoverboard closer to Bohman. “Or maybe you’re still underestimating the two of us. You don’t develop this kind of bond or these dueling skills overnight. Combined, you don’t stand a chance against us.”

“I suppose you have a point. Though, don’t forget. We AI advance and evolve far quicker than you. It may have taken this long for you, but don’t bring me to your level,” Bohman responded.

“Oh, my mistake,” Playmaker said. “We’re still several levels above you. I shouldn’t have expected you could ever catch up to us.”

Bohman held out his right hand in front of him. “A cheerfully smug Playmaker...feels as weird to me as it must feel for you both.” A swirling, blue, nearly transparent sphere apprared in Bohman’s hand, filled with bits of code. “Take this. This code should put you both back to normal.”

Playmaker took it, though he didn’t activate the code right away. They would need to analyze this first, make sure they weren’t being tricked again. But for now...

“I can’t wait to never make a pun again.” Playmaker breathed a sigh of relief.

“And I can’t wait to stop hating jokes,” Ai added. “This is exhausting.”

“Let’s agree to never do this again,” Playmaker said.