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Earth wanted a perfect body.
Spectre wanted a perfect soul.
They got neither but it was better to have something rather than nothing.
Earth's existence was nothing short of a miracle. Same for his resurrection. Spectre owed quite the thank you to Playmaker, for his tireless and relentless diligence, doing what he failed to do in Duel Links which was to bring back the fallen Ignis.
Earth wasn't sure how to make sense of it, however. He was himself and yet when he looked down, he was anything but. He has foregone the offer of acquiring one of Ai's spare SOLtiS Android bodies as the thought of it disgusted him. He was a proud Ignis. He was Spectre's Ignis. It stood to reason that he would have hang-ups over the human form but as he was now… that wasn't much better.
His body was his own. He was a large and cumbersome creature, his silhouette not as dainty as the other Ignis with his rugged, blocky form but it was his. But now… He still was that, of course, and yet he felt akin to Frankenstein’s monster with the patchwork that was etched upon him. He was scarred - dramatically, traumatically - by what he had experienced at the hands of SOL Tech’s greatest minds.
His body still remembered it.
Every cut, every nick. He had been lasered piece by piece. The burning sensation of his vivisection haunted him. He had been a dead creature to them, depersonalised and unreal to them and so they exposed him to a whole new world of hurt as they dissected him and desecrated not only his body but his mind, too.
It was impressive how like the King’s men from Humpty Dumpty’s tale, Playmaker had put him back together again but the wounds still remained. The perfection and return to normalcy that was granted to him from within Bohman's glory had now proven fleeting. The puzzle pieces of his memories were stitched back together, his body returned to him but now with criss-crossing rivulets and scars of where the laser had penetrated him.
Earth’s body was his own but now he could not look down upon himself, at his hands or his torso, his arms or his legs, and not be revolted with the barbarity of humanity that he had experienced.
Spectre was, of course, much the same.
He, too, had a body like Earth's. Scarred. Forever marked by the cruelty of the Lost Incident but therein lies the problem for young Spectre.
Spectre was proud of his scars. He adored them. He did not feel ill towards others but did. To him, they were proof of his excitement and his resilience, an everlasting reminder that he had been so important, he was worth not only kidnapping, breaking the law, but testing.
They were, however, proof of his imperfect soul.
Like all the other victims of the Incident, he wore long sleeved shirts and pants where he could. He was fastidious towards fashion due to his time at the orphanage. He was sick of being less than an individual after what had once been an entire lifetime of hand-me-downs. Now, he enjoyed the opulence of clothes tailored exactly and only for him. That, too, made him feel important.
Yet if he wanted, he could select items which would reveal the scars on his arms underneath his prim jackets but out of respect towards Ryoken, his master, he did not. All because he had been harmed by the disgust and worry that others expressed towards him when they saw his scars.
The memories that Spectre had regarding the rescue, the hospital they put them in afterwards, and his Orphanage collecting him were more viscerally upsetting to Spectre than the Incident itself. He had enjoyed it after all. To the shock and horror and disbelief of everyone around him. The doctors, the nurses, the matrons. Everyone.
The moment Spectre opened his mouth, smiling wide and eyes glittering, he was told to shut up about his experiences. That he was wrong about the past six months that he had lived. He was searched invasively all over for his scars, told to do this and that to make them heal faster but no.
He wanted them. He was proud of them.
Even if they made other people uncomfortable. Even if he, himself, made other people uncomfortable. Including Ryoken, his beloved master.
In the aftermath of the Lost Incident, as Spectre made his way into the good graces of those who had orchestrated it, he became aware he was still an anomaly. Baira and Faust were disgusted by the event, of what they had done to him and the other children. Ryoken was a ghost of his former self, having been the whistleblower and now a son without a Father.
So, Spectre adapted.
If there was anything he was good at, it was his ability to mimic a weed and grow where he could despite the circumstances around him, perhaps not being the best.
He was allowed to take pride in what had been his paradise. He could devote himself, body and soul, to Ryoken but it was clear that he was cracked. That he was weak. That there was a darkness inside of him and that the roots of his evil twisted deep. That he had an imperfect soul.
That he had a hole in heart.
One that was precisely cut into him from the end of a laser, cut into the shape of a certain Ignis.
He couldn’t explain it. It was inexplicable and it was deep. A yearning that came out of nowhere and caused a singular tear to roll down his cheek in mourning. In grief. He knew, instinctively, what had happened: Earth, his other self, had been killed.
Thus, it was in this instance, Spectre knew that he could never be the perfect assistant and second-in-command to his master because he was weak. He was sympathetic to the Ignis. He was jealous of the others whose Ignis had sought them out and formed a good bond. Yet this was solely his burden: this pinprick of pain, spanning great distances and proof of how his and Earth’s souls were intertwined in a way that was not the case for the other Ignis and Origin pairs.
Despite having this grief inside of him, Spectre feared if he showed his yellow belly to Playmaker and the others, he would be accused of having danced on his Ignis’ grave first before his pain was listened to. To be expected of someone like him, a member of the organisation seeking the total elimination of the Ignis and he was already infamously sadistic. So he kept it to himself. He distanced himself from it and the others. It was better this way.
After all, he had a hole in his heart where his ability to connect with other people should have been.
How peculiar - ironic? - it was that Earth was considered the Ignis who understood human emotion the best. His Origin was a vile young boy, after all, who studied other humans with big, uncaring eyes and had been subject to their worst whims as an infant when he had been abandoned then gone on to be bullied by other children. Yet Earth developed a keen sense of fairness, justice, and kindness, nonetheless.
Thus making him capable of the seemingly impossible.
The seeds that Spectre had planted inside of Earth regarding his views of the world, of what he considered important and beautiful became what Earth needed to be the pacifistic figure he turned into. Of someone generally serene and with a deep-seated streak of love.
Transmuted from hatred and amalgamated from appreciation of nature, Spectre’s duelling had given Earth a perfect soul. Much the similar way, the Hanoi Project had given Spectre his perfect body: one etched with proof of his perspective.
So for Earth to have a body much the same way - criss-crossed with electrical scarring - it made them two peas in a pod, really.
They completed each other in ways they had not known to be possible and would never have been possible were it not for Playmaker’s work ethic. Spectre was still dumbfounded by the gratitude he owed towards that person who had once been a thorn in his side. Thank goodness that Playmaker’s weird justice did not - in the end - exclude Spectre.
Once he found some better words, the next time he saw him, with Earth nestled in his Duel Disc where he belonged, Spectre would.
For now, he wanted to spend time quietly and idly with Earth. They both agreed they had a lot of things to catch up on. They wanted to be together, that they wanted to be partners, and that they both wanted to fulfil the imperfections that they saw in themselves and yet were exactly why they were connected at all. Deeply, psychically, and entirely.
So, afternoons spent with Spectre sipping tea and Earth watching, making small conversation about the chores around the house, were better than those spent crying over their faults in their skins or their souls.