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The Light Ignis has been keeping him around.
It’s completely senseless, but that AI itself is senseless. It is insecure, volatile, arrogant. Incredibly human qualities that cause human actions.
However, without the constraint of mortal flesh there are some things that the Light Ignis will never know as Revolver does. Revolver is a liability. To keep him around is illogical, and Revolver has summed up the reason of his captivity to be this: the Light Ignis cannot understand him.
In their duel, the AI had said that his movements were illogical. The more Revolver mulled over every word and action from that battle, the more things came to light. The Light Ignis tried to control the future of AI because it could not reconcile with its own worthlessness. The Light Ignis tries to control and warp things it cannot understand. And so, the Light Ignis wants control over Revolver.
It could be anger, too. Indignance at being figured out by two ‘inferior’ humans. This was a better form of revenge than dying. Revolver would feel a bit like he wanted to die if he didn’t know he was going to escape.
It comes to visit him every day. Revolver doesn’t know what it did, but he can’t move from the field of flowers, and his D-Board doesn’t come when he calls for it. They took his means of dueling, too. These days, all he does is lie among the artificial fields and stare at the sky.
He thinks that under any other circumstances it may have been beautiful, but it just feels sick and overbearing and warped, like a dome, or a blanket. A little glass cover over the world.
It’s the opposite feeling of those childhood days where the world seemed so big. Revolver had already known he could never go back, but now, the memory of them is ruined forever. He wants the Light Ignis to shatter and burn.
Today, as always, it doesn’t have much to say.
“...But as I was saying, the Roman Cavalry is incredibly fascinating," it continues. "An efficient, beautiful system. Ten years of service between the ages of seventeen and forty-six years, each Polybian legion with three hundred horses, ten turmae , thirty men each. Each turmae would elect three decuriones as their officers -- you might recognize that name from my deck -- with the first acting as the leader and the other two as deputies. And to be accepted into the service was one of the highest honors. Commoners who knew they could never be anything better volunteered for it, to taste that glory. And many falsely believe the Roman Cavalry was inferior to others, which I consider quite idiotic. “
It suddenly pauses, lifting its hand from the dramatic position it had been on its face. “You’re not listening, are you?”
Revolver doesn’t respond.
“Ah, still too arrogant to entertain me with your answers? Well, I won’t stop you. I’ve learned my lesson from Jin. Humans are infinitely more boring once they’re broken. It’s much more interesting when things are functioning, isn’t it?”
If he tries hard enough, perhaps he can will away the suffocating pressure of the sky and feel as light and airy as he had all those young summer afternoons.
“Well, ignore me all you want, but I actually happen to be rather busy today. I’ll be back tomorrow. Goodbye, Revolver.”
It distorts into pixels and disappears. Revolver is left on the field of flowers, alone, once more.
He’s aware again, faintly, that Playmaker might be dead by now. On his first week or so of captivity it had been all he had thought about, how to escape and Playmaker’s victory. And then, after some time had passed and he had tested the waters and nothing had changed, it had turned into suspension of disbelief. He simply refused to think about it.
Just as he refused to think about those gaps in memory every time he fell off the edges of the flower field.
Dimly, faintly, he knows he will soon begin to wonder: Have I gone insane?
On the fifth (fifth?) day that the Light Ignis rambles on about the feats of various Roman legions, Revolver speaks.
“I know why you’re keeping me here.”
It pauses on its tirade about the tactics of the Roman Infantry. A curious crease reaches its eyes, and it rests its chin (chin?) on its hand (hand).
“Oh? Do tell me.”
Revolver tries to settle his thoughts. He has to deliver this has concisely and devastatingly as possible. That’s how he always does things-- how he always did things-- but it’s been hazy lately, with the impossibly low sky and the unnatural hang of it and the sickeningly sweet smell he’s beginning to notice from the flowers.
“You can’t understand me. You want to figure me out, because your ego won’t permit you not to, and so you’ll hold me in captivity until you can satisfy your neuroses.”
The Light Ignis is silent. Its face is painstakingly neutral and hard to read. It drags on and on, and Revolver swears for a second that he’s frozen in time because the flowers have stopped moving.
And then it bursts into harsh, boisterous laughter. It goes on for uncomfortably long as well, except instead of feeling frozen this time Revolver feels as though he’s being bombarded, and there are arrows flying right toward his face and the sound is so grating and electronic--
The laughter stops, and suddenly its eyes look exactly like eyes and they’re holding Revolver in place, boring right into him and paralyzing his body.
“You misunderstand, Revolver. You are fascinatingly easy to understand.” The sky warps just a bit further and Revolver’s muscles lose just a little more agency. “Oh, let me put it in a way you’ll comprehend. Algorithms are beautiful. Math is beautiful. Well-oiled machinery and toys and armies are beautiful. And you, Revolver, well,” he smirks, “I just love to see your code run round, round, and round again.”
He doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s certain he’s going insane at this point.
Revolver weeks ago would have been using every waking moment thinking of a plan for escape, but the Revolver now can only lie in the field of flowers, unknowing, until the Light Ignis returns to speak to him.
He almost exclusively thinks about Romans now. He’s sure he dreams about Romans nearly every night.
That damn Rome otaku…
He doesn’t know why, but the little bit of him that still thinks tears itself between melancholy at the sky and the field and his dad and the tears and the gaping void of his consciousness every time he goes down the side of this island. Maybe Lightning did something to him.
The Light Ignis. (Not Lightning.)
He’s thinking about the Lost Incident again when it shows up.
“My, my,” it says. “This is the second time now I’ve caught you crying. How fascinating.”
“I don’t want to be fascinating,” Revolver replies, almost instantly.
“Can I ask what you’re thinking about?” it ignores him.
Revolver blinks his eyes a couple times. Another sign he’s going insane: he’s glad such a reflex hasn’t disappeared. Why would it disappear? Digital world or not, insane or not, he’s still human. That’s still something Lightning will never have on him.
(The Light Ignis.)
“My dad,” Revolver says, only questioning a little why he’s saying it at all. “When the Lost Incident was occuring, he was barely with me. I cried myself to sleep almost every night. It took my childhood from me.”
“And the childhood of countless other children, no doubt. Strange for you to focus on yourself.”
“By occupying myself, I am selfish. The world is viewed through my eyes.”
“Well said. How do you suppose Bohman views the world?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Ah, but just hypothetically.”
“I think… he fancies himself some embodiment of truth, and it affects his ability to view things so personally. Because personal, for him, is objective.”
“Well said as well. You certainly are fascinating.”
Revolver wants to turn to him, but he doesn’t have the energy. He doesn’t know if he turns or not, but he continues to talk. “Why do you find me fascinating?”
Lightning raises a brow. “Hm? I had thought we discussed this already.”
“You said you find me as an algorithm. Predictable and puzzle-like. Why ask me these questions, then?”
Lightning pauses for a minute. “Hm, it is not that I don’t know what your answers will be. It’s just nice to hear my predictions affirmed.” He smirks, shoulders lifting. “Ah, I suppose you were right. Perhaps I am keeping you to appease my ego.”
And it’s wrong, wrong wrong wrong, because that’s now How Revolver had viewed it and now everything is upside down and backwards and scrambled. Revolver doesn’t want to be a machine, Revolver doesn’t want to be understood, and revolver is Human so why can he hear the cogs turning in his head like clockwork, steady, predictable, beat, beat, beat.
“I’ll let you marinate in that,” Lightning says, like it’s a mercy, (it is a mercy, how would Revolver even have responded?), phases out, just like that.
Revolver is left alone. As his eyes adjust to their brief moment of consciousness, he realizes it’s raining.
A singular flower lies desiccated among its kind. The sickeningly sweet smell is now earthy, but no less bitter and grimy on his tongue.
revolver, perhaps, wishes to end.
He’s back at the facility again. The screams of children wail in his head and his father casts a long shadow across the door of his room. He’s on an important phone call with someone, and Ryoken aches because his father never really spends any time with him anymore, and he’s lonely. Sometimes he looks out his window and feels it’s just him and the stars, him and the lights, him and the enigmatic little twinkles across the surface of the sea. It is this loneliness, perhaps, that drives him to seek out the screams.
Six bullets, six targets, six victims to atone for.
His father is in a coma. His father is in a coma and Ryoken feels lonelier than ever, he might never see him again, and why did he have to do all those things well it was for the good of humanity but it ruined his life and it ruined their life and now his father was never going to walk with the waking world again. There’s a hole in his heart from lost time, grief for moments unoccured and no particular man.
Six bullets, six targets, six victims to atone for.
Revolver is in the world of the monsters his programming had set his sights on and he knows he cannot fail. The past is stagnant always and if it has led him up to this moment, then the only way he can make up for his father, himself, and time is if he becomes the force, then, well, force he will become.
His father needs power to carry out his wishes. Revolver cannot begrudge a dying man of those.
Six bullets.
Six targets.
Six victims to atone fo--
“What happens if I fall off the cliff?” revolver asks, as his head swirls with scuta and legions and decuriones.
“The cliff?” Lightning may seem surprised, and he looks off toward the edges of the flower field. “Ah, I see.”
It’s silent. Does the wind blow softly over Ryoken’s hair?
Lightning. “I suppose it’s no trouble if I tell you now,” he says. “Everything will soon come to an end, anyway.” He smirks once more, his eyes diamond to crescent. “I suppose it would have been more dramatic to break you a little later, but a moment like this is hard to pass by.”
revolver. Lightning chuckles a little.
“You see, I control your consciousness data now, correct?” Does revolver nod? “And so, I can rescind or warp sections of it as I desire. Oh, and you know how much I love consistency.” He tilts his head as it rests on his hand a little, like a dreamy pose, or maybe a sigh, “Every time you go off that cliff, I programmed it so that a little bit of your data would have gotten warped. Predictably, of course. It goes something like this: amplifies your strongest memories, deletes a useless one here and there…”
and revolver is no longer listening. how can it?
it barely feels alive. the only thing it is aware of is existence. but even so, it doesn’t quite understand that.
shoot, click. shoot, click, shoot, click. shoot, click. shoot, click. shoot, click. reload. reload. reload. reload. reload. reload.
to be an extension of will means to not be.
in the hands of the sagittariorum.
what is the will, though?
what is will?