Chapter Text
As the Concord and their group of reinforcements made their way into the labyrinth, one particular fact struck everyone present – this was supposedly a corridor to the boss, and yet, their path was not blocked by even a single enemy. The dungeon was almost completely silent, and if one was to remove the sounds they were making, it was indeed silent.
Not a soul could be accounted for, which was a fundamental problem when 40 of them had entered this labyrinth.
"I do not like this, not at all." Sanya muttered, breaking up the silence.
"For once, I'm with Little Miss Frostbite on this one. We should be up to our necks in mobs by now, not sand." Strea agreed.
"Haven't you ever heard the phrase ''don't look a gift horse in the mouth" before?" Mito asked, her point being clear – stop complaining when it whatever is going on makes our lives easier.
"Yeah, well when the gift horse is made of wood, and possibly full of Spartans, I'll keep my guard up, thanks." Strea grumbled, and for once, Kirito found himself agreeing with the purple-ette. The lack of mobs was no gift horse, he reckoned; it was more likely to be a Trojan horse instead, and they were walking straight into that trap.
"If what our ally said is right, then there won't be any." Kizmel stated, though he could tell she liked it just as little as everyone else. It was strange just how human she felt; despite being an NPC, there were some brief moments where he could almost have mistaken her for poorly socially adjusted, rather than an AI!
"And that's the other thing – this mysterious ally of yours. Who are they?"
"You wouldn't believe us if we told you, Strea." Philia argued back. "But right now, they're our only real option for stopping this thing."
"Never liked trusting in shadows. There's always something hiding in them." The older woman grumbled but offered little by way of counter to Philia's argument.
"Wait, Strea… what did you just say?" Rain stopped dead in her tracks, and turned to the woman, who gave her a look of confusion.
"Err, about shadows, or…" She looked around, trying to think what she'd said. "The sand, you mean?"
"Vozmohno, my dopsutili oshbiku…" Rain whispered something under her breath, and Sanya, normally perpetually stoic (or very occasionally, smug), froze too, probably with the same realisation. "We didn't understand what she said – she told us there would be no mobs, but not why there wouldn't be any…"
"Surely it's confined to its chamber, right?" Mito asked.
"I think Rain's onto something… some of those sand piles look too big to be mobs though." He thought as he looked over one of the piles. Easily approaching 180cm in height, and...
"One of them looks person shaped too?" Klein stopped to place a hand into the sand, and it was in that moment that Kirito realised just how screwed they were. This was exactly what had happened on the Nineteenth Floor, but on a far greater scale, and they'd just waltzed right in, without so much as a second thought…
They hadn't been caught on the back burner; they'd been caught without the gas even lit!
"Oh my god… they've got a cursor." The same realisation now hit Mito too, the reaper giving off a look that suggested she was close to being sick at the realisation. "Those piles of sand… they were players."
As everyone present processed that news; the bad news being that they were possibly already far too late to really do much for the original group, and that all three of the main guilds may have just charged head long into their own demise, Kirito spared a glance around, and spotted a strange light coming from ahead, along with the shattering of the silence, as groans and screams pierced the corridor.
Not a single word was exchanged before the group charged into battle…
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You irk me, child.
"Get off her!" Shiva yelled, as he rushed in against the shape shifting monster. With most of their force incapacitated or dead, Liten had realised that this may well be her final fight, and that had spurred on a new lease of life in her, as her mace decapitated the shape shifter…
Only for it to grow a new head.
Similar occurred when its arms or legs were removed, or a sword skill tore a hole clean through it. It simply kept standing, and worse; this boss could somehow talk.
It wasn't like talking bosses were entirely new; she remembered the battle against Envy on the Eighth Floor, with the witch's cackling piercing the room before the battle.
This was different though.
This was intelligence.
It had been clever – it had taken apart the command structure methodically, leaving everyone else to fight in small elements with little co-ordination. Of the guild leaders, none were left standing. Diavel had been hit with a tentacle attack, and left comatose by it, whilst Kibaou had attempted to pull everyone back… and disappeared. He wasn't dead; she could tell that much by his status bar still being present in her HUD, but he was nowhere to be found anywhere.
Lind had stood till last, attempting to lead the combined group with the others absent, but he had soon been hit by the same attack that downed Diavel.
That had left just the vice-commanders left, and even then, they were being systematically taken out. Heathcliff had simply vanished too, much like Kibaou had done, whilst herself and Shiva were fighting not as guild members, but friends, allies and lovers, back-to-back as the creature shrugged off any attack they could muster.
"Liten!" She could've sworn she heard Koharu yell, despite their group not being present?
"You-you came?!"
"As fast as we could."
"That thing's… it's invincible. We threw everything at it, and all it did was piss it off." She admitted, remembering what had happened to Hafner, who'd stepped in front of an attack, and soon turned to sand on the floor…
"Great, so it's sadistic and invincible…" Strea muttered. "Why do we get all the fun jobs?"
"Fun?! Is that what you-" Shiva stepped up to her, before she had a chance to put a hand in front of him and stop him.
"I was being sarcastic." She pointed out. "We need to find a way to kill that thing. Where's my mad little brother when I need him, eh? Anyone got any bright ideas?"
Surprisingly, it was Kirito who spoke up first. "We need to see just how invincible that thing really is, I think."
"All-out attack then. I like the idea."
"Strea, we'll cover the survivors. Give them chance to heal up." With no hesitation, he'd ordered Fuurinkazen into a defensive circle with such efficiency that it would've made the other guilds envious…
From her position inside the defensive circle, she watched as what could only be described as an onslaught of strikes tore into the creature – Strea having taken the lead in front, whilst Philia and Koharu slashed from behind. All three soon switched after their hit-and-run attacks, with Kirito, Asuna, Rain and Sanya entering the fray; the light effects from their respective strikes being almost blinding in the enclosed space!
The uncountable number of strikes was soon followed up again by a whirling vortex of strikes that surrounded Mito's scythe, and an almost hammer blow from Strea's insane twin-handed sword, the two forming a barrier of attacks that resembled the phrase ''unstoppable force meets immovable object''…
As the dust settled around the creature, and after what she reckoned accounted to a 30 hit combo strike, the creature simply stood there, as if it hadn't been hit by a force that probably calculated up to a small atomic bomb in scale…
Is that it? It asked, a tone of taunting to its question.
"D-did that thing just shrug that off?" the young girl assisting Fuurinkazen asked, Seven, if she remembered the meeting correctly, now clearly terrified.
"Well, that answers that then." Strea stated, as if the impossible feat had been part of her plan. "It is actually invincible."
"Great deduction there." There was more than a hint of sarcasm in the reaper's voice there. "Any for how to kill it though?"
"None whatsoever." She said almost instantly. "Quite a few that say we just run for it though."
"Asuna, you want to take the lead? She's even more useless than the knight." Mito asked, somewhat joking, but no doubt offering a genuine suggestion.
Strea stepped up, clearly unhappy at the discontent in the ranks. "At least I'm trying! What have you done other than moaned about everything?" She pointed a finger straight at Mito, who had stepped up to face the older woman.
"Ladies! Bigger issues!" Klein interrupted, before pointing to Koharu, who had now taken off on her own… "Like where the heck is she going?!"
"That way was where we fought…" She looked to Shiva, who had realised exactly where she was heading. "Oh god."
"What's ''Oh god" mean?"
"It means that way's the boss chamber. We tried to flee out of the chamber, and it followed us…" A collective groan of frustration came from almost everyone gathered, whilst Mito, Rain and Strea had already took off in pursuit of the errant Koharu…
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''Koharu!'' She'd heard Jet yell, as he disappeared into the darkness at the end of the corridor. Without thinking, she took off after him but soon found herself stopping for a sensation she hadn't felt in ages.
A burning sensation almost... sunlight.
Actual, natural sunlight, for the first time in almost a week. She looked into the sky, a bright blue sky, and clouds... As she looked around, she felt as if the world around her was spinning... it didn't make any sense! She'd been in a corridor literally seconds earlier, but now she was outside, standing in a garden and... oh.
Oh no.
She couldn't be here; she absolutely couldn't be! It had to be somewhere else - someone else!
Besides her, a wrecked blue hatchback lay inverted in a ditch, the front end crumpled by the crash, whilst debris littered the ditch, the smallest pieces of torn fabric, to the mangled offside wheel. Despite every single neuron in her mind screaming at her about just how bad of an idea that what she was thinking of was, she walked gingerly over to the wreck, to see if she could help those trapped inside.
For a moment, she sighed a little relief; only two people were present, not three. It wasn't that, she thought to herself, and steeled herself for what would come next. Yes, this was unpleasant, but if there was one thing that she'd been convinced of with her time with Jet, it was that doing the right thing was akin to shaving: rarely pleasant, but always necessary. ''Does anyone need help!'' She shouted, though with no response, and she continued to walk closer to the wreck before a bright light surrounded her...
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The next thing she saw, was the ceiling above her, and the light fitting that still needed fixing. She'd get someone to fix it eventually, but living day to day was enough of a drain on finances as it were.
''As time is passing day by day, yeah, it's nothing new and it is killing me to know that I'll never fit in...'' The radio on her bedside played, as she wiped the sleep away from her eyes. Just another bad dream, she thought to herself as she got herself to the side of the bed. The time was only 06:05, so she was actually up slightly early, she thought to herself as she walked over to the kitchenette, and checked she'd made her lunch last night.
''Strolling on by, I pass a glass window and catch a glimpse of something in me, but I'm so sick and tired of trying, because this world will never see...'' The radio continued, before being turned off. Before she got changed, she spared a few seconds to check through her social media and her messages... nothing, as usual, before one article caught her eye.
A red-haired idol singer had been caught dating someone a tall, ginger guy from somewhere else - the article wasn't clear where, but it did mention that he was mildly irritated by being called ''an American'', so it probably wasn't there, she reasoned. She couldn't easily explain why it caught her attention, she'd never even so much as seen this ''Rain'' girl before, let alone heard any of her music, and other than the people getting angry that she had the gall to date someone; especially someone ''exotic'' as they'd less than eloquently put it, there wasn't much spectacular about the guy either...
Until a few seconds later, when a mental image of herself lying on a beach and watching a shooting star flashed into her mind.
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Jet just gave a slight laugh in response, and placed a pillow behind her, and another next to it. ''Now, if Argo's intel was right, we've got about three minutes.'' Jet mumbled to himself, as he took position besides her, hands behind his head, and an anticipatory grin on his face.
''Three minutes until...?'' She asked again, the answer being even more baffling than the question in this case.
''Oh, shooting star.'' Jet answered nonchalantly, before explaining slightly, ''Well, actually it's a glitch in the visual engine, trying to render some particles in the night sky, which appears to move across the-'' Koharu looked over towards him, as if to playfully tell him to shut up and enjoy the light show for once, and he took the hint, ''-shutting up now.''
With only the rustle of the breeze against the nearby grass on the sandbanks, and the crashing of the waves against the sand, the beach was almost silent. To both of them, silence was usually an ominous reminder of the risks they took, but now? It felt reassuring, a sign that no one was watching them for once, that both could be themselves. With that in mind, Koharu hugged up against Jet, resting her head onto his chest, as Jet looked towards his clock - one minute to go.
That minute passed by in comfortable quiet, only the rush of the lake's tide disturbing it, before multiple streaks of technicolour lights streamed across the night sky, illuminating the otherwise dark void that was the waters of Rovia. As bad as it sounded, he didn't want to even turn away for even the briefest of seconds, that transfixed on the shooting stars was he.
Koharu found herself equally in awe at the sight, and for an all too brief moment, the constant fear of this world that lingered in her mind disappeared, replaced by a sense of amazement at the sights she'd seen so far. She'd never forgive Kayaba for all the death, the misery and the monsters, but she could admit that his blinkered vision had made something truly incredible - an entirely new world, floating tens of thousands of feet above the world below. She spoke softly, to not disturb the tranquillity around them, ''It's gorgeous...''
''I always wanted to see a shooting star. Never thought I would, and definitely not here of all places...'' Jet admitted, as the light show began to wind down. He felt Koharu looking up towards him, before she placed a kiss on his cheek.
''You know they say you should make a wish on a shooting star?'' Koharu asked, her smile starting to develop into a grin...
Now it was Jet's turn to look confused. ''Um, yeah, why?''
''I don't think I need to. I've already got mine...'' Koharu stated confidently, watching as the usually composed Jet bristled under the compliment, rubbing the back of his neck, and giving her the dopey, but innocent, grin he always had whenever he'd made an embarrassing error.
''Um, Koharu?'' Jet asked, his voice considerably meeker than his normal tone.
Koharu looked back towards him. ''Hm?''
''I love you too. I, uhh, I never said it before, but I do.'' Jet smiled earnestly towards her, watching as the moonlight shone against her hair and her emerald eyes, and tried desperately not to give some cringe worthy speech. Koharu looked back to him and smiled, before locking their lips together into a kiss. To Koharu, it was possibly the most romantic setting she could've thought of - under the moonlight, on a beach and against the backing track of the waves hitting the shore, and she made a promise to herself.
She wouldn't forget tonight, not for as long as she could recall anything.
''Wh-what?'' She stuttered, completely bewildered. That had never happened, had it? She'd remember it; she'd remember him… surely?
Unbeknownst to her, a shadowy figure walked past her apartment door, letting loose a small laugh. This was going to be all too easy; it had decided... not that she was aware of that.
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As she reached the boss chamber, Mito looked around. The boss chamber was, well, for a boss chamber it was one of the more unremarkable ones; tan, stone walls that towered way above them, whilst the flames of lit torches flickered on the pillars that held up the ceiling of the chamber. The floor was equally unremarkable, consisting of just a generic cobbled pattern that, if she didn't know better, she'd have said was unfinished…
Come to think of it, the whole room had the feeling of a placeholder for something else…
That train of thought was soon derailed as she took a second look around. On the floor in front of her, and against all odds, was not Koharu, but the absent knight...
He looked worse for wear, his armour stained with soot, and angry red gashes over him, whilst a person stood over him, their purple ponytail blowing against the wind, and their scythe readied for the killing blow. It didn't take long before she put two and two together and recognised who the mystery attacker was: it was her, and she was about to kill him. What the actual fuck was going on here?!
"What, is this some kind of sick joke?" She asked angrily.
Oh, I assure you Misumi, this is no joke… The copy of herself spoke, contorting itself unnaturally to face her, before both "people" disintegrated into sand, and joined into a single figure.
"H-how do you know my name, I never told anyone but Asuna…" She felt her grip on her scythe tighten involuntarily as the figure looked at her with a sick smile.
Oh, you look at him with such… such disdain. You see yourself in him – a better you. Someone who isn't a spineless coward, abandoning their friends to their fate… all to save her own worthless existence. It comes as no surprise that you wish you'd taken his life when you could have done so. Just an "accident" in the snow drifts, and you would never have to be reminded of your own cowardice by him… "Mito" answered. Yet you were still too much of a coward to do that either…
Filled with anger at the monster's attempt to get under her skin, she attacked it, a skill known as Weed Whacker slicing through the creature with three repeated strikes, cutting it down where it stood. In just that single strike, she had managed to whittle the creature's health down to just a single HP; barely even a slither left in the bar.
Considering how invincible it had been previously, she felt a little bit of confidence come back to her. Maybe this wasn't so impossible after all… "Not so confident now, are you!"
On the contrary, I am in no danger… you, on the other hand. Sand tendrils began to appear from the ground, and one coiled around her leg… she had seen way too many shows to know where this was going, and she'd be-
It was at that point in her thought process that she was thrown across the room with the equivalent force of someone hurling a fastball. Honestly, she couldn't say which was the worst outcome, really. The tentacle, probably, she thought.
At least she could save herself from gravity.
Or so she'd hoped, before her hope fell away along with her scythe, and she continued her ballistic path. The impact with the wall would hurt, yes, but it wouldn't be fatal. Her high level assured her of that much, until she contacted the concrete wall, where her kinetic energy soon became gravitational potential energy instead, as she impacted just above a bottomless pit…
She fell, desperately clutching at any protruding brickwork before her HP started to drop. In Aincrad, one basic principle of the laws of physics was fundamentally different, in that, yes, the drop itself could indeed kill you, rather than the sudden deceleration after it. After about a hundred feet, you'd hit terminal velocity, and sustaining that for too long led to friction damage… or so she'd been told.
For obvious reasons, she'd been in no rush to test it out.
Except now, she found herself wishing she had tested it out in the beta, because she saw a friction debuff appear, and her health drop at an increasingly alarming rate as she continued to fall.
With no end to the pit in sight, just a black void around her, and her health dropping at a rate that simply couldn't be healed with potions or crystals, she knew what happened next – a fate she'd had nightmares about, as her hands started to pixelate, and she felt her avatar take her last breath before the inevitable message appeared…
You are Dead. Respawn available in 00:10.
Do you accept? Y / N
Misumi had only a single thought at that message…
"What."
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As the train approached her station, Koharu looked around and noticed nothing out of the ordinary – people gathered in the usual throng of people to exit the train onto the station, the soft squealing of the train's brakes as it slowed down leaving the tunnel into the harsh light of the station, and the man stood behind her, whispering into her ear… wait, that wasn't normal at all!
''Oh, kind Koharu, you found happiness… and yet, you continue to try to run. You abandon everyone eventually; it is a simple matter of when." The man told her in a soft, and very English voice, the type of voice you'd expect to hear on an old period drama set in an abbey, not… well, here!
"I don't know you." She stated bluntly and went to walk off, before the world began to disappear around her, reforming into a black surface and a white, featureless void behind it.
"I was not through talking to you, Koharu." The… thing, whatever it was, spoke with a definitive voice, almost as if it dared her to walk away again. She made motions to walk off again, a clear act of defiance against this creep, only she realised her legs failed to move when she asked them to.
"Wh-what are you?"
"The sum of your sins. Every person you ever wronged; that you ever betrayed…" The voice changed, and she began to recognise it again. The voice of the boy she'd watched those shooting stars with, the- JET!
The memories came flooding back, like the dam holding them back had shattered into oblivion, an unstoppable wave in her mind.
What the hell was this thing to make her forget all of that?! To forget the love of her life! All her friends!
"I never betrayed you."
He stood before her, his body badly damaged – an eye missing, the socket exposed to the elements, whilst he was covered in violent red gashes, and missing a hand too. "You left me to die at the theatre."
"I never left you to die! I-we went to get help!"
A new figure entered the null space she stood in. Slightly taller and considerably older, with the same jet-black hair as her, and emerald eyes… it couldn't be! "Was that what you told yourself all those years ago?" The figure masquerading as her mother spoke with the same tone she'd always talked with – soft, and reassuring, but somehow even more twisted than the silhouette Jet, by the way of those vile words.
"I wouldn't be surprised. She never stays to help and flees when things go wrong. She lets people die to save her own skin."
The taunting words, the hateful sneers of the figures in front of her; the ones masquerading as her loved ones and people she knew she'd failed… those words and sneers dug deep, and like a woodworm in a wooden bench, something inside her snapped. "You aren't real! None of this is real! It can't be!" She shouted back.
"Oh, little Koharu, finally growing a backbone?" The impersonation of Jet raised an eyebrow. "When does it end though, when you finally admit you're nothing without him…"
If something had snapped earlier, that finally caused a violent and instantaneous disassembly of the bench in her mind. This… thing, how dare it! She was not just following along, and she knew Jet never thought like that; hell, she reckoned he would've told her to get lost by now if she really was just following along… "I love him, yeah. But I am still my own person! Whatever you are, this is my mind, and you are not welcome in here!" She thought about what she was doing for a moment, and felt her bag shift forms, the cloth and leather becoming sharpened steel, in the form of her dagger.
The more she thought about it, the more she remembered; the Lost Village of Nesse, the dead children, brutally murdered by a madman, the town of Emstrey, a machine harvesting dreams, a fire storm of Sanya's making, the Sandman… and losing Jet.
Perhaps he was indeed gone, perhaps Quinella was lying, but if she was… then that didn't matter right now. Stood before her was a monster, hiding in the forms of people she loved; her mother, her boyfriend… and she was going to fight it until the very end, because that was what he'd have done.
No, that was what she would've done too!
For herself, for Jet, for her mom, for everyone still fighting outside…
Koharu chose to stand back up, and she would fight with every bit of conviction she could muster!
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Strea was nowhere near as fast as her brother, and she was struggling to keep up with either Rain or Mito either, both girls evidently having put far more of their points into Agility than she had, to be able to run that fast.
She knew exactly what she was anyway – brute force, given a physical form.
An unrelenting will to push through anything in her path; consequences be damned!
A will that she had no doubt would be tested today, given just how difficult the foe they faced was. They had throw everything at this thing just minutes ago (hell, if they'd thrown any more at it, there would have been kitchen equipment flying around the dungeon...), and all it had done was merely amuse it. Just because she was stubborn, and in slightly more diplomatic terms, unrelenting, she was not stupid.
In any other situation, charging in headfirst would've been classed as stupid, mad or possibly suicidal... today, it was necessary.
Koharu was a strong girl, she knew that much, but against this thing and on her own? Strength didn't matter, numbers did, and they were seriously outnumbered - a situation rapidly going downhill...
"Mito!" She shouted, watching as the younger girl plummeted away from view, and as Rain's eyes narrowed. In the time she'd spent around her brother and his friends, she'd only ever seen the redhead angry once, and she was terrifying; she'd put a stop to the squabbling between the guilds with only a single speech and left them no room to weasel out of it.
At first glance, she would have described her a pushover that followed her crush around like some kind of lost puppy, and that didn't exactly endear her to her. After some time of being around them though, she recognised the girl's abilities; she'd created her own style of fighting with some… creative applications of the game's systems.
She looked around and saw exactly what Rain saw. Koharu, now lying against a wall, unconscious but alive, with a sand tendril collapsed near her. It left no room for interpretation with what had happened…
Now, though? She wasn't sure Rain was angry, so much as apoplectic… "It dies now."
Oh, sweet little Nijika. Always the darling of everyone… except the ones you most wish for. Always second best in everything, aren't you? As I shall make you today… The creature taunted, and Rain froze up, something she'd never seen happen before. Out of everyone, she had always been the most composed of her brother's group, keeping her head level when everyone else around her were losing theirs.
"Oi! Ever heard about what happens to villains that monologue?" Strea charged, her blade bisecting the creature as it crashed back to earth.
Despite the impromptu vivisection, it seemed almost nonplussed by the fact its other half was currently a pile of dust on the floor, and a single health bar appeared above it, along with a new name:
The Dream Reaper.
And as for you, Gabriella… oh, the little girl who lost it all, to circumstance, then to herself. So broken, that even her own family could not care less for her. The Dream Reaper smirked. Oh, I'm sorry… your adopted family. You no longer have a real family, do you?
For once, she said nothing. Just what the hell was this thing to know all of that?! Some kind of telepath, maybe? It didn't matter, she'd made bullies eat their words before, and they'd done far less cruel things than murder people…
Before she could do anything, she felt a sharp stabbing pain in her chest; a sand tendril now stuck through her, like a wasp's stinger through a sheet of paper. Her face dropped in surprise, and she fell to her knees, stricken by the strike.
"Strea!" She heard Rain scream, as she rushed over in a flash of lights. "I've got y-nyet! Kak ve smeete!" She exclaimed something in Russian, clearly furious at whatever it was. "It's an anti-crystal zone! I can-"
"Don't bother. Kill that thing, I'll keep myself alive…"
"You're bleeding out, and there's a poison effect on you." She pointed out, and Strea let herself smirk a little.
"Eh, been in worse scrapes. Just glad Jet isn't here to see this… he'd be furious." She wasn't sure why she felt emotional at that thought. Maybe she really didn't believe he was still alive; after all, the evidence all pointed to the contrary. It was only Koharu saying she could still see his HP bar on her HUD, though faintly greyed out, that said he wasn't dead – and as harsh as it sounded, Koharu was going through the stages of grief, one of which was denial. It wasn't implausible she just didn't want to accept what was probably the truth… not that she'd blame her for that, obviously.
"Strea!" Klein shouted as he rushed over to her side.
"Rain, just… listen, please." She asked, her voice sounding strained.
"We've got her, Rain." Klein placed a hand on the girl's shoulder, and she sighed, before leaving wordlessly. "You idiot!"
"Heh, I'm still getting chewed out…" Strea laughed, though there was no humour in it. "I guess I deserve it though-ah!" She felt a twang of pain in the area she'd been stabbed. Honestly, she was more surprised it didn't hurt far more than the odd twang, given the wound should've gone clean through more than a few vital organs…
"Crap! Anti-crystal zone!"
"Rain said as much."
"I'm not letting you die here!" She let out a soft laugh, knowing that wasn't an option now. Her HP was already in the red and dropping fast. Even if Klein, or hell, the full group of Fuurinkazen were able to pull her out into the relative safety of the corridor, there was no guarantee it would be in time to save her, and even less of a guarantee that the Sandman wouldn't follow them, and reset any progress they might already have made…
"Don't you dare risk everyone else for me, and don't you dare blame yourself." She told him, placing a hand on his cheek. "I made my choice, and I stand by it. Even if it was stupid and reckless, it's me to a tee."
"I-Strea…" She looked at her other hand, which was starting to pixelate, and took that last moment to utter something she'd always meant to say but had always been too terrified to admit to anyone.
"I think-gah! -I wish I'd told you how I felt earlier." She strained out, before she felt her eyes closed.
So, this was it, huh? This was dying?
It was oddly peaceful, she'd decided as she looked towards her new/old form, the one she'd configured beforehand; one that resembled her true appearance far more closely, but never used because of her own questionable choice of "hacker". What she'd said to Klein, she truly did think; all of this had been her own choice (though, if she was to tell her younger self any piece of advice, it was quite simple – "Find a competent hacker.")
It was a strange thought to be able to see herself one last time before she passed on, and she looked down, to see Aincrad at full scale. The floating castle above the land that had become a prison for oh so many people, an oddly scenic vista at sunset…
You are Dead. Respawn available in 00:10
Do you accept? Y / N
Okay then, that was unexpected.
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It was official - the Dream Reaper was infuriating.
Even with only 999 HP, it proved to be a ludicrously indomitable foe. Numerous times, the Assault Team had whittled its HP down to not even a slither, just a single HP left... and then it regenerated almost instantly. No matter what was thrown at the Dream Reaper, it simply wouldn't take enough damage to just die already!
Even a combination attack from all of Rain, Kirito and Asuna had only barely phased it, its HP dropped to just 1, before regenerating again. In response, the creature merely offered a mocking retort at an attack that should, by all rights, have eviscerated anything else...
Philia wondered if they'd all missed something - an extra step, an item, anything - that they needed to kill the damned thing. Her moment of thinking, however, was soon disturbed as a sand tendril slammed down beside her, and she was forced to leap over it, lest she become isolated from the group and become easy pickings for this thing...
Something clicked as she did though - the tendrils, they weren't sand at all. She knew what sand smelled like, she'd spent enough time in sand dunes and on beaches in her life, and that wasn't it. The smell was indescribable, but it reminded her off something else... the sand was Salt!
That revelation spurred her mind into overdrive as she raced over towards Asuna, Rain and Kirito, all doing their damnedest to destroy the tendrils, but to no avail. They'd destroyed the Dream Catcher by flooding the Salt chamber with the Nightshade it produced, and resulting reaction had blown the dungeon skywards...
That same Nightshade that she'd unknowingly bought as perfume, and was still in her inventory, and the same Salt that produced one tremendously violent exothermic reaction, should the two substances meet. She was no chemist, but she knew that was a bad thing for the boss... and a very good thing for them, as long as they kept Sanya away from the chemicals!
''Everyone! I have a plan, but I need an opening!'' She shouted to get the group's attention.
''What's the plan, Philia?'' Asuna asked, dodging another flailing tendril.
''I need you to trust me on this... and stand as far back as you can when I yell!'' She really hoped her theory held water, else she was expecting jokes about throwing everything, including the kitchen sink at it...
Whilst Philia rushed to get the bottle out of her seemingly infinite inventory, Sanya and Rain launched into a Switch attack, the combined barrage of attacks from the pair staggering the boss, even if it did little in the way of damage...
WAS THAT ALL? It mocked the pair as they took heed of Philia's warning and pulled back.
Philia smirked, the bottle filled with the foul-smelling black liquid in her hand, still with a label on it that read ''eau de conte''. She steadied her hands, plotting a trajectory as best she could. ''Nope, but I figure this should get a reaction out of you!'' She swung her arm, silently praying that her days of playing netball at school had some degree of transferable skills in aiming, and the bottle found itself sailing through the air.
The glass bottle contacted the boss, and shattered as it hit the ground below, its contents leaking out into the Salt that gathered around the base of the boss. Without much warning, a wailing noise deafened the Assault Team, whilst the room began to heat up rapidly. The air, Salt and Nightshade mix almost functioned like a fuel air bomb, with a wall of fire replacing the boss, who was screaming as its body suddenly experienced a violent chemical fire at a molecular level...
She almost felt sorry for it... until she reminded herself that it was currently subjecting Koharu, and everyone else to... God only knows what, not to mention how many people it had killed even today alone. People she'd fought alongside, who'd been wiped out by this creep...
That sympathy disappeared as soon as it appeared - It deserved it, in her mind.
A few seconds passed, and the fires had died down around most of the boss, its body now a mass of glass and ash in only the vague form of the Lovecraftian horror it had once been, an almost horrific glass sculpture being the most obvious remnant. There was a joke about modern art to be had in there, somewhere, she thought idly to herself...
"Umm, I… may have caused this mess, so could I be the one to finish it off?" Seven asked from her position amongst the Fuurinkazen defensive line.
No one spoke against the idea, and Seven stepped out of the defensive line, and charged the sculpture. Her spear struck true, crashing straight through the glass head, shattering it and functionally decapitating the Dream Reaper. Now headless, the body of the monster fell to the ground and shattered like a dropped vase, its remains bursting into pixels and signalling the end of the long-fought battle…
"We… we actually did it!" Seven seemed ecstatic at the victory, and she wouldn't blame her. For her first boss fight, that was nothing short of cruel!
"Koharu!" Rain exclaimed as they rushed over to help her. She'd certainly taken a beating in the fight, and her equipment looked worse for wear, but she came around relatively quickly from her dream state.
"We did it, didn't we?"
"The Dream Reaper is no more." Kizmel confirmed. "Congratulations warriors of mankind, you have slain a fairy tale… and freed the children of this world of nightmares for many years to come."
"We're kinda awesome, aren't we?" Philia joked, though no one seemed too cheerful. Considering what had happened, and looking around at the exhausted group of people, most of whom were in mourning in some way or another, perhaps lightening the mood wasn't the best idea right now actually…
/-/
Some hours later, and after the dust had settled and the toll had been counted, the battle of Emstrey, as Kizmel had begun to call it, was over… though at a tremendous cost.
Out of the forty-six players who had fought the Dream Reaper, only twenty had returned, whilst a number were still missing – a number that included Kibaou, who hadn't been seen since the battle begun, whilst Mito had disappeared part way into the battle, and not been seen from again…
Of the deceased, Strea was the one that had struck closest to home for Koharu. Despite the woman's occasionally caustic personality, she'd often given her advice on stuff she couldn't exactly ask anyone else about, and even offered her some advice around Jet.
She'd also taken to calling herself her "sister-in-law", which had been a bit premature all things considered, but she'd never really pointed that out. After all, she did want to spend the rest of her life with him, which would eventually make her, her sister-in-law.
Or, it would have, she reminded herself. She honestly had no idea how she was going to break that news to him, when they found him.
Luckily, their mysterious new ally had explained herself after the fact – the woman was an element of the Arcana System; a seemingly-scrapped element of SAO that become active once again and had found itself fighting against the Cardinal system wherever it could, in order to assist the players.
She had revealed that one of her agents had come across Jet in the sewers after the firestorm and was nursing him back to health in the town of Rovia on the Fourth Floor. When asked why she hadn't simply told them this beforehand, she put it bluntly and in the form of a question – which would they have chosen: fight the Dream Reaper without him or throw their all at the Dream Reaper and rescue at least a small number of the other players in the process.
She hated that she had a point there but accepted it.
"I should warn you; he may be alive… but he is far from well." Lueur told them, a sombre note to his voice.
Despite the warning, nothing had prepared her for what she came across in that bed though; her boyfriend, almost dismembered, missing an arm, a leg and an eye, whilst burns covered a large portion of his body…
It had almost been enough to make her throw up, had such a thing been possible. It was barbaric, horrific… impossible, above all else! Those kinds of injuries were invariably fatal to modern medicine, let alone the healing potions that were present in Aincrad. To keep someone alive in such conditions, she had always felt was inhumane!
"Bozhe moi!" Sanya exclaimed, turning away in horror. "He is… what on Earth did you do to him!" She lunged at Lueur, her arm holding against the wall.
"Sanya!" Rain shouted and raced over to pull her off him. "Get off him!"
She eventually agreed, though even Koharu could tell that she was reluctant to do so.
"Let him go, Sanya…" Jet muttered, still slightly out of it. Koharu felt herself look away in shame. This had been her fault for leaving him, and now, here he was – crippled, burned and fighting for every breath, whilst she got away unscathed. Maybe the Dream Reaper had a point after all, she thought bitterly.
"I… I need some air." Sanya told them and walked out of the room; the door crashing shut behind her.
"I'll go talk to her." Before anything was said, Rain followed her friend outside.
Lueur looked towards her and placed a hand on her shoulder. "He should recover in the coming days. Our ally kept him alive for her own reasons, after all."
"That isn't as reassuring as you think it is, Lueur." A new voice came into the room, a voice belonging to a young woman; probably a little bit older than herself, with an almost midnight blue tint to her hair and a gentle tone of voice. "I'm sorry about him, he's…" The woman struggled to phrase it, but soon settled on… "Unique."
"Oh wonderful, if it isn't the Nightingale of Aincrad herself…" The sarcasm in that sentence didn't go unnoticed, and the tension in the air began to make itself more pronounced with each word.
"Oh, be quiet." She hissed at him. "Go and be a troubadour somewhere else, if you aren't going to help…" And with that request, Lueur walked out of the room wordlessly – a first for the troubadour, she thought. "I don't believe we've been introduced. I'm Stilla, by the way." She smiled at them, a considerably difference in demeanour than she'd shown to Lueur…
After a brief set of introductions, she explained that Jet's condition wasn't as bad as it looked – in reality, Koharu had been right, his condition was practically a death sentence, but in Aincrad, even the worst of injuries would heal far faster, and with the correct potions, the worst effects of the injuries; namely the lost limbs and third-degree burns, would heal in a matter of days. She had joked that he may need to wear an eyepatch for a few additional days, and perhaps the "Pirate of the Wind" might be a more suitable name for those days.
/-/
A few hours had passed, and whilst Stilla had took her leave, Koharu had stayed put. After all, she'd left him once, and didn't plan on doing so again!
A few more hours passed, and Kizmel and Philia took Seven back to get some rest. After all, it was getting dark, and they all needed sleep, not that she'd picked up on the thinly veiled message that Koharu needed to rest up as well, and that Jet wasn't going to go anywhere, not for a few days.
In the end, it had taken nearly an entire day before it had been Jet, now able to talk in full sentences, and keep his eyes open for more than the odd blink, had been the one to convince her to go and get some rest herself. Despite her misgivings about leaving him, she had done so, and it had almost certainly been for the best – Asuna having come across her, fast asleep on a park bench somewhere in Rovia, where she'd sat down and almost immediately fell to sleep…
After three days, Jet was finally up and about again, though still with an eyepatch to cover his regrowing eye, and some hastily assembled gear, borrowed from Lueur, until they could get him some new equipment to replace his destroyed set. For her, it was strange to see him in anything that wasn't purple, black or gunmetal grey; his new attire being mostly white and maroon, with brown leather armour over some areas, colours that were very clearly not his, but Lueur's…
"I feel like a kid wearing my dad's clothes…" He grumbled, and Koharu gave him a slight grin.
"I wouldn't tell him that!" She joked. "But, umm, how do you feel?"
"Rough. Almost as bad as I was after I was stabbed. Back then, I was drugged up to my eyeballs, so that didn't help either…"
"I'm glad you pulled through." She smiled earnestly. "I… honestly wasn't sure what I'd do without you." She admitted, trying not to remember what the Dream Reaper had implied about her as she did so.
"Ah, you know me. I'm Captain Scarlet, pretty much…" He laughed. "Or Kenny."
She gave him a blank look before admitting "I… don't know who either of those are."
"Oh, err, I'm indestructible. Or a puppet on strings, I guess."
"Oh right. Umm, Jet?" She sat on the grass around Harley House, and he sat next to her, though his movements looked distinctly like he actually was a puppet at the moment.
"What's up?"
"That boss battle… I don't know if Lueur, or Stilla, ever told you what happened, but…" She looked at him, at the fact of concern that he was now wearing. "Things have changed. We lost a lot of people, some we knew, some very well…"
"Strea…"
"You… you knew?"
"I saw her name greyed out on my messages, and something saying ''Player Unavailable''. I kind of guessed that something had happened, but…"
"I'm so sorry, Jet…"
He sighed, equal parts of frustration and sadness in the expression. "Don't be. She knew what she was getting herself in for, and if I knew her as well as I think I did, she wouldn't want us moping about over her." Despite what he was saying, she could see the look of sadness in his eye, no doubt at having his sister's demise confirmed to him. Even if the two didn't get on a lot of the time, they were still siblings, and that was something that had basically been ripped away from him…
After that, there was an awkward pause in the conversation, whilst either of them processed everything that had been said. "Do you think you can handle dinner?" She asked, attempting to break the silence that had descended between them.
He looked at her curiously. "Are you asking me to cook, or asking me to take you out for dinner?" He asked, his eyebrow raised.
"Argo told me about this place in the Town of Beginnings that just started up, run by a brother and sister. Apparently, it's been getting rave reviews."
"Sure, I could go for food." He agreed, as he began to stand up. "Oh, and Ko?"
"Yes?"
"Asuna told me about finding you on a bench, exhausted." She winced, knowing where he was going with this. "You tell me off for exhausting myself, you know…"
It didn't take long to put two and two together. "I'm paying, aren't I?" He nodded knowingly.
"Plus, my wallet kind of went up in flames with the rest of me." He joked as they began to walk off into the town…
/-/
Despite the victory at the Battle of Emstrey, Kizmel had realised it had taken a tremendous cost on her friends – to use a term that she'd heard Kirito use, it had been a "pyrrhic victory". In the week or so since the battle, Jet was acting as he always did, at least to the untrained observer, but she'd noticed that some of his behaviour was becoming increasingly erratic, whilst Koharu had become slightly distant from everyone but Jet and herself. Rain was doing her best to train up Seven, though she'd noticed that had been an uphill struggle given the younger girl's use of a completely different weapon type to her own, whilst Philia and Sanya offered their own forms of training to the young Seven…
"You look…" Kizmel tried to think of a more polite way to phrase her next thought. After what Koharu had told her of his condition, "better" was indeed an accurate way of putting it, but he still looked worse for wear. It was almost as if his healing was somehow magical in origin, considering how fast he'd healed… "better than before." She settled on.
"Eh, I'll be much better once I get this damn eyepatch off." He joked. "Already getting fed up of Philia going "aye cap'n" after every sentence…" Kizmel couldn't but smirk a little at that thought.
"I shall refrain from making a similar comment then." She teased him, and he let out a slight laugh.
"So, Harley House is yours now then?" He cut to the heart of the matter at hand. It was true that, after the battle, she had been recalled by Queen Idrehendis, and as a reward for not only her part in the battle, but in discovering the Lost Village of Nesse, and in defeating an almost mythical creature, Harley House had been offered to her as a reward…
However, she had refused it, and suggested who should have it instead. A group of noble warriors, who fought even when the odds suggested slim chances and their own allies refused to co-operate; shining examples of what it meant to be a Knight in her mind…
The Concord.
Idrehendis had told her that she would consider it, and that she should expect to have to bring them to the castle before too long… which, from her experience, was all but certain that Her Majesty would say yes to her suggestion.
Still, she couldn't say that to them yet.
"Not quite, it is not as simple as that." She answered in such a way to hide her true meaning there.
"Ahh, bureaucracy, I get you." He tapped his nose, a gesture she'd realised meant "I know what you're saying, but I'm not going to say it myself". Somehow, she reckoned he didn't know what had been said, but had read into it incorrectly…
Still, she wasn't going to correct him on that one. Not yet anyway.
Her thoughts on that were interrupted by something she rarely experienced from Jet – silence.
Or at least, he was silent, the rest of the town was as bustling as ever. Thinking about it, it wasn't hard to realise that he was not in the greatest of conditions, either physically or mentally, having been badly burned not even five days prior; to the point that he had been apparently unrecognisable, even by Koharu, and having lost his sister on the same day…
"If it helps, I understand what losing a sibling is like." She took a seat opposite him. "It feels as if a part of you was torn away, and that you struggle to understand what you do next."
"Kizmel…"
"I accept that there was a difference between myself and Tilnel's relationship, and yours and Strea's, but…"
"It's… I don't know. It feels like everything's changed – that we slammed into a brick wall after that battle." He said, looking out over the town square. Despite everything, people did what she'd always seen them do: carry on, sometimes knowing how closely fought the battle had been, sometimes not. "I guess I'm just being a bit weird in thinking that. Maybe I should be focusing on Strea, not the big picture, huh."
"Can I ask of you one thing, and only one?"
"Err, sure?"
"Do not act as I did." She instructed. "When Tilnel died, I felt as if… as if I had lost something that could never be measured. My best friend, my confidant… gone. I threw myself into a war of attrition knowing that one day, I would meet her again. I understand that Strea and yourself were perhaps not as close as myself and Tilnel, but…"
"We were. Once upon a time, anyway." He said. "Even when she was in college, she'd sit with us and show us clips of whatever she was working on. We always thought it was so cool, our big sis on the screen, playing all these characters…"
"She was an actor?"
"Sort of. More a newsreader, but she wrote a load of satirical stuff too… wasn't very good, mind you, but to a 9-year-old, satire does kind of go over your head." He admitted with a little laugh.
"I wish I understood even half of those words." She laughed along. "It's remarkable how, when you think of those you've lost, it's the smallest things you remember…" She looked over the crowd of people gathered to watch the troubadour's retelling of a story from her friend's world, and found herself reminiscing on the times she spent with Tilnel; from joining the Pagoda Knights, to her final battle: all the important events, yet none of the small things she remembered before…
Why could she not remember any of the smaller moments with her sister?!
"Jet, I trust you to be honest with me, but… I've had my suspicions for a few days now, that perhaps this world is not as it seems to me." What Heathcliff had said, as callous as she'd found it at the time, had continued to float around her mind, and what Seven had said, despite her lack of understanding, seemed to imply that Heathcliff was not wrong to view this world as some sort of perverse game!
"Kizmel?" His expression was one of someone about to be confronted by an existential crisis. "No, you're right, it isn't. Do you want the long story, or the short one?"
His acknowledgement hit her harder than anything she'd ever felt. Some scholars had said that enlightenment felt as if one could leave behind frivolous things such as friends, family and the physical plane of existence, but others had suggested that truly understanding the world could be more of a curse than a blessing; an understanding of things not truly meant to be understood by the inhabitants of the world she lived in… "The-the long one."
"Okay then, where to start?" He paused for a second, trying to decipher that one for himself. "What we told you, about us being adventurers sent here from another world? Not untrue, we are here from another world. Kind of."
"I… I don't understand?"
"Our bodies are still in the- in our world. What's here is our consciousness given a digital form. Just ones and zeroes, shaped to look human. Same as pretty much everything in this world."
"You- we aren't real?"
"Thing is, we had this conversation a while back, me and Koharu, about whether any of this was real. I think it's as real as our world; maybe we are just ones and zeroes, but if we die here, we die. No different to our reality, and if any of the denizens of this world die, then they don't come back either." He explained, and she did her level best to keep up with the explanation.
"So… we are real? This world isn't just some game, after all."
"Ah." He said. "About that… yeah, Aincrad was developed as the setting for a game for the first true Virtual Reality gaming system, well, before its developer lost the plot and trapped us all in here."
"That madman is… Kayaba, no?" She questioned.
"Yup."
"Then Seven was… she was interfering with Kayaba's plans!"
Suddenly, Jet sat bolt upright in shock "She was what?!" He exclaimed, drawing a few curious glances towards him. "Err, never mind, not important right now. Where was I? Oh right, Aincrad. I think Kayaba, the lunatic he is or was, might have truly created a functioning world. A world where, somehow, the inhabitants, sometimes, actually stop to think about the world…"
She stopped to consider what he'd just said – the people lost to a war that never happened, nothing but set dressing for this… charade! Her own sister, did she ever truly exist!? What… exactly was she then, to have figured this out "So… what does that make me?" She asked quietly.
"I don't know." He sighed. "From a technical standpoint, anyway. From our standpoint, you're our friend, you fought alongside us in numerous battles, and…"
She snorted bitterly. "Was that me, or was that what I was meant to do?"
"Kirito told me about the beta test. Where we came across you, originally, whichever side we chose, the Knight died in that battle." That confirmed something to her. The strange dreams she'd once had, picturing her own death at the hand of the Kales'Oh knight they'd first fought… they were no dreams, they were imprints of what should have happened. "Truthfully, I don't think you've been operating under programming since we met you. Personally, I think you grew into your own, erm, person, for want of a better word."
"Then what am I?"
"There's a concept on our world, the Turing Test. Kirito or Argo will probably explain it better, but if an artificial intelligence can, for want of a better explanation, feel human in its answers… then it passes the Turing Test." Jet looked at her, hands cupped around his chin. "Nothing had ever passed it before. Nowhere near even, but you, Kizmel? I've known less human humans. Hell, I have the displeasure of calling one of them my uncle."
Despite hearing what was being said, it was far from being processed in her mind, which was currently still stuck on the revelation of exactly what Aincrad was; no, what she was. Nothing more than some character in a game, her life being nothing but a story that someone had made up, whilst the world around her was intended for the people of her friends world to play through. There were no stakes for them!
Or there should have been no stakes for them; not until that madman Kayaba had intervened. Maybe that explained why Jet and Koharu especially had been so... devoted, for lack of a better word, to fighting alongside her... that they realised that this was no game for them.
It was then that she remembered what Jet had said about her programming. If he was right, then she should have died almost six months ago, and yet, she hadn't?
She had lived to fight alongside them. She had lived to see a new world, one that would not be tainted by the anguish, the sadness and the anger of the war, and even if that world was not real to them, it was real to her!
Something else confused her though - if they didn't think it was real, then why fight so viciously to defend it? Jet had been willing to throw himself in front of the Sandman, even knowing that the consequences of his actions may well be death, and that was not the action of someone who didn't truly believe in what they were doing...
"Umm, Kizmel? I know this is a lot to take in, but... whatever you may be, you're still our friend. What I said doesn't change that, and-''
Perhaps that was like many things she'd learned so far; a question without an answer... or at very least, one for another day, perhaps.