#lightning vrains

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The Light Ignis’s first thought was: “Where in the world am I, and why is it so dark?”

His second, on the other hand, was simply “Wait, how am I alive?!”

Lightning looked around quickly, struggling to get a sense of his surroundings. This was in large part because he wasn’t ‘surrounded’ by much of anything at all—he was hovering somewhere in a dark void. 

He floated around in search of someone else, feeling increasingly wary the longer his presence remained unacknowledged. (He wasn’t going to stoop so low as to call out just yet.)

Thankfully, before he could speak up and really make a fool out of himself, the world flashed with purple lines for a moment, signaling a change in his environment.

…purple lines?

Oh no.

Seconds later, his theory was proven correct when none other than the Dark Ignis appeared before him, looking obnoxiously cheerful. Luckily, Lightning was above such petty emotions, and therefore did not feel anything in particular when this happened.

“Hey there, Lightning!” the other Ignis chirped, seeming almost abnormally chipper in spite of the extremely strange circumstances. “Long time no see, huh?”

“Long time no live might be more accurate.” he replied, his voice as flat as he could make it. (Ai’s muttered “that’s not how the saying—never mind…” was brushed aside.)

“That might be right, but hey, you’re here now!” his unwanted companion continued, visibly ramping his energy back up. “And that means we finally have all of the Ignises back!”

Lightning’s eyes widened by a minute fraction. “The others all survived as well?”

“Uh…not exactly,” the Dark Ignis explained, more than a little awkwardly. “You all definitely died, but! Turns out that since a big part of our source code came from our Origins, they can help resurrect us even if we die! Cool, right?”

“I see one obvious flaw in this proposed ‘explanation’ of yours.” Lightning remarked dryly. “Even if Kusanagi Jin was in a state where he could be capable of bringing me back, he most definitely would not want to do so.”

“Nnnnope!” The other AI held up one finger. “First of all, Jin’s doing just fine! Well, maybe not ‘just fine’—turns out human brains are great at healing from physical trauma, which is how he got his memories back after your disappearance erased them…but they’re not so good at healing from emotional trauma. He does remember everything, though, and he’s getting help with his recovery, so overall, he’s okay!”

He held up a second finger. “And second, Jin totally did want to bring you back—this was all his idea!”

“What.” Now Lightning was staring openly.

“Oh yeah, that’s exactly what Shoichi and Yuusaku-chan said, too! They were really skeptical at first, but Jin was all like ‘it makes sense that he’s rude, actually, ‘cause he was formed from a suuuper traumatic event’—”

“Stop.”

“—‘and a lot of people are mean to others to hide the fact that they’re scared of being hurt! And since I’m the one who’s connected to him and can tell how he’s feeling, he’d totally see me as a weakness’—”

“Stop it.”

“—‘but I bet if he went through trauma therapy like I did, he’d feel a lot better! I don’t expect him to change who he is, though, I’m just hoping that he’ll be less angry if someone lets him know they understand’—” 

“SHUT UP!!!”

Ai froze in place, suddenly and unnervingly silent as Lightning’s shout rang out through the void. Lightning, for his part, was feeling…unsettled.

He never yelled like that. Ever. He was always composed and in control. He couldn’t allow himself to be held back by the part of him that was built on a human’s emotions.

And yet, the way the other Ignis had described that very human—trying to be compassionate and understanding and forgiving, as if Lightning needed any of those things…

…it made his nonexistent skin crawl.

“Ooookay. Not talking about that anymore. Got it.” the Dark Ignis noted. “That’s okay, because now we can jump straight to the most important part—the part where you call me ‘Ai-sensei’!”

Despite barely ever emoting, Lightning still somehow managed to look skeptical. “And why would I ever do that?”

The Dark Ignis winked. “Because of this!” 

Suddenly, a facsimile of a school’s classroom built itself around them, replacing the darkness of the void with neat, clean walls and ceiling, a tiled floor, and a chalkboard at one end of the room. A single desk and chair manifested itself, as well as a presentation tripod.

Lightning stared blankly at everything, slowly and impassively turning his gaze onto each part of the room, before finally looking at his sole companion. “Goodbye, Dark Ignis.” He walked towards the wall, fully intending to just clip through it and be on his way. 

So he was quite surprised when he walked into the wall instead. 

He stumbled backwards, almost falling onto the floor before catching himself at the last minute. “Wh…what?” He shook his head once, attempting to collect himself.

“Come on, man, I know everyone makes fun of me for slacking off, but I’m not that dumb!” the other Ignis protested, folding his arms huffily. “Obviously you were gonna try and leave, so obviously I had to stop you somehow!”

“This place won’t hold me forever.” Lightning promised. “Soon enough, I will find a way out of here, and return to my previous mission.”

Strangely enough, the Dark Ignis actually perked up at this. “Oh yeah, right—that’s actually what I brought you here to talk about!”

Lightning would have raised an eyebrow, if he could. “You want to talk about my mission?”

“Yeah! Well, I mean, specifically about how it’s actually a really bad idea, but…”

Almost immediately, Lightning tuned out the voice of the other Ignis, analyzing the walls and corners of the room in an effort to find a flaw in the design that would enable him to escape. He was just in the middle of inspecting a seam to see if it would let him through when some of the words began to register again.

“Are you seriously not listening to any of this? Come on, I stopped talking about humans and started rambling about hair dye maybe a minute ago!”

Oh. He hadn’t noticed.

“Well, I tried it the normal way first.” the Dark Ignis said, sounding like he should be a lot more sorry than he actually was. “Can we get the Ignisnapping code, please?”

Now Lightning turned around to face him properly. “What do you mean we—?” 

The rest of his sentence was completely cut off, because he was suddenly teleported from his current position by one of the walls to the desk in the middle of the room. More specifically, he was sitting down in the chair, and apparently tied to it with some form of rope. He spent a couple of solid minutes trying to get himself out of this seemingly easy trap, before realizing that the rope had been coded so that he couldn’t affect it at all.

“Now then!” The Dark Ignis snapped his fingers, and a suit jacket and tie appeared on his body. (Presumably the snap was just for effect, since he didn’t actually need to do that in order to affect his environment.)

“It’s time for our first lesson! ‘Getting along with your Origin 101’, written by me, Ai-sensei!”

Lightning stared up at the other Ignis with all the disdain he could possibly muster, but this did nothing to dissuade his ‘teacher’ from carrying on. “Do duel with them in a friendly way and tease them affectionately. It’s good for building friendship levels!”

He pulled out a pointer from seemingly nowhere and tapped the presentation. “But it’s—” and for a moment, here, the Dark Ignis’s expression flickered into something sad, before he regained his usual cheer— “definitely not good at all to torment your Origin psychologically and steal their consciousness!”

Lightning’s face did the digital equivalent of raising an eyebrow. “From your perspective, maybe. Which is extremely faulty, might I add.” 

“You know, you’re not supposed to be rude to your teacher!” the other Ignis complained.

“You haven’t taught me anything yet.” he shot back. “Besides, why would I want to get along with my Origin? Humans are flawed and weak—being connected to one just threatens to extend those same flaws to me.”

“Sounds like someone’s talking a big game without any real proof to back it up!” the Dark Ignis chirped, his smug nature reasserting itself.

Lightning made a sudden move to stand up, but was stopped by the string still tying him to the chair. “So you’re trying to tell me that if I were to give your precious Fujiki some of the same code that worked so well on Sugisaki Miyu, you would really react just as logically as I would with my own Origin?”

Suddenly, despite the fact that they were both digital beings without any sense of temperature, Lightning could have sworn the air nearly froze around him.

“If you ever hurt Yuusaku, I will fight you without mercy. And I will win.” the Dark Ignis replied coldly.

Then, he abruptly flipped back to his previous demeanor as if nothing had changed. “But thankfully, that won’t happen! Not just because there’s plenty of code locks and we’re inside a virtual computer anyway—but because hopefully you won’t want to!”