Deep down, he always knew that. He was just an observer. The one looking in. But it had become a lot easier as of late.
The creation of the Ignis had been traumatic for Ryoken to witness. It was treated like a school trip, an excursion. A fun little romp in science and ethics: history was being made in secrecy here.
History just so happened to sound like the screams of electrocuted children and how the Ignis were created either. That wasn’t pretty, either. To see the melding of the organic and inorganic, created from the inside out and from top to bottom. It was all very disturbing and it all haunted Ryoken’s nightmares.
He was a child. What was he doing in that laboratory? What were any of them doing in that laboratory? Either him or the children they were experimenting on. His Father… His Father, Ryoken had come to accept, was not a good man and he was not a man that he had to obey anymore.
Perhaps the most important decree that his Father had made that Ryoken no longer had to adhere to anymore was his rit that the Ignis were to be destroyed.
The very creatures that he had violated ethics and ruined lives for, unsurprisingly from such origins it did seem like they would be bound for destruction. They would kill their very creators and wreak havoc on the world around them, causing armageddon or various other catastrophes that would end humanity.
Knowing that, it did seem noble to destroy what had been created but they had allies. They had people who fought for them and their true nature was revealed.
They were more like the children they had studied from, they just wanted to be hugged and loved and nurtured. Not put into little tanks with only themselves and agony. They wanted to grow up well, not remain stagnant or menial.
Ryoken could see now the bonds that the Origins and the Ignis had between each other. It was psychic. It was soulful. It was powerful and it was all consuming. He was just glad that, although it had taken more than ten years, they were finally at peace with themselves and humanity. Protected and sheltered in the network, flitting between here and their own Cyberse World. Caring not for the world at large, just for what was closest to them.
He got to see that most obviously in the platonic pair-bonds of Ai and Yusaku as well as Earth and Spectre.
He was their lover and the Ignis were their attachments.
Ryoken was never going to quite get it. Why they were so bonded and why it went so deep that when one was hurt, so was the other or what it was about this partnership which did not remain with the usual constraints of a defined relationship. He had no Ignis of his own. He had merely watched and he was going to continually watch but now, it brought a joy to his heart to see the recovery and the healing. That meant a lot to them all, himself and his Knights included.
Ai and Yusaku were of course the template. They were the tried and tested, put through everything and they came out the other side of it. Even death. They wanted to prove that the Ignis and the humans could get along and so, they were partners. They defied the digital fate of the simulations and they changed the world.
Or maybe just their world. Their little world which was always going to be tied back to the Lost Incident but it was the centrepoint for many important bonds. Even if they were, at times, painful.
Just look at Earth and Spectre.
Earth did not take kindly to learning that his Origin was a Knight of Hanoi and had been plotting his and his kin’s downfall. Spectre did not take kindly to the chance of being rejected. There was a hole in his heart, a tear in his cheek: both because of Earth. He simply could not risk that he would incur Earth’s wrath and there was some.
The Earth Ignis did not have a way with words but he did have a way with glares and stubbornness. Only softening up, like mud, when Ai managed to mould him into something a bit more open to the idea of change. As things had changed. It was no longer us versus them but unsurprisingly, the cuts ran deep. He was right to have a mistrust of humans given what he had been put through and his own Origin had not exactly filled him with sunshine and rainbows on that front either during the Incident.
It was hard to believe that such a fiend as Spectre had turned over a new leaf but he had. Ryoken would vouch for that. Although, his word was not trustworthy to Earth but eventually, he came around. He believed in the trustworthiness of Yusaku and if Yusaku said that only good things could come from concepts of reconciliation and the like, then he would give it a try.
With a little time, Earth and Spectre were able to cultivate a bond that just as deep and unique as the other Igis and Origin pairs, sewn in forgiveness and that made the others happy to see. Ai and Yusaku especially. It had taken a lot of work but it really did seem like peace in paradise, even beyond what Ryoken kept a close eye on with regard to Windy and hs Origin as well as Jin with Lightning.
He tried to look at it all but Ryoken did often find himself coming in closest to him, both physically and emotionally. He shouldn’t have favourites of the Incident and yet he did. It couldn’t be helped. Yusaku was the boy he had honeypotted beforehand and Spectre was the boy he had brought home afterwards.
They both wanted him and what was best for him. Though they disagreed on methods and morals, Ryoken could say that he liked where it had ended up. It had ended in the Kogami Mansion but no longer was it a mausoleum to his Father and his sins. It was now a place he enjoyed, where the colours on the walls were not solely because of the orange sunsets that it attracted or the blue nights and so on and so forth. But rather, because there was genuine joy in the household.
It all seemed impossible to Ryoken, and yet it was not and for that, he was thankful. He dreamed enough nightmares when he slept from what he had observed as a child, he did not need his life to be a waking hell either. Not anymore, not that Playmaker had finally unshackled him from being a prisoner of his past.
He would never have believed that he would be able to observe such domestic and idyllic bliss between his own right hand man and his previous arch-nemesis and yet. He did. He had breakfast, lunch, and dinner with them, cups of tea and coffee in between, and went to bed with them.
Best of all, Ryoken could see them in what was a highly unnatural habitat for them given their previous containment of being inside of little, white boxes but this, he so much more preferred. He liked to see them smile and bicker, to be happy and annoyed.
He liked to see them with their Ignis, too.
Ryoken liked to catch Yusaku and Ai out the corner of his eye. They liked to do schoolwork together and Ai often made Yusaku watch his soaps and Yusaku would be a good sport about it. He liked to overhear how Spectre and Earth made plans to garden, what was and was not in season and the like. It was much more heartening to him to be witness to this over the screams and sobbing.
Ryoken was never going to understand the specific bond between Ignis and Origin but at least he had the privilege of watching them in far more agreeable circumstances than where they had come from as children.
Rosy and I recently replayed Pokemon LeafGreen, and we got to the part where Bill whisks the player away on a thinly-veiled romantic retreat to a remote island... that is, until we walk into the Pokemon Center and Bill sees Celio elbow-deep in the server farm. That’s just too hot for Bill, and the player is unceremoniously dumped so that the two nerds can go make out inside the server. They get rid of us by telling us to go, um, deliver this rock. Seriously.
