A/N: Hello, ladies and gentlemen!

This is my first fanfic that me and a couple of my friends are co-authoring. I came up with the idea for this while re-watching Sword Art Online, and it was S1E11 *hint?*

This is set after Mother's Rosario but before Alicization. It is set up in a way that does not interfere with the cannon and is practically a side story.

Kudos, and enjoy.

Disclamer: Vertycoxe does not own Sword Art Online. This is a fan parody.

Prologue

Kirito was having a dream. A nightmare, rather.

He saw people getting killed by monsters, dissipating into hundreds of polygons, and calling his name. As the fragments hit the ground, they rang like thousands of tiny little bells and looked like leaves that got scattered by the autumn wind.

Kirito woke up with a start and flung his covers off, instinctively reaching for the Elucidator perched on his back. It wasn't there. He was in his room, and the sun was already shedding some of its light, still below the horizon. Kirito shuddered, and slowly looked around his barely lit room. His eyes travelled from the clock on the wall next to the door (reading 05:34), to the bookcase, his eyes falling on the grey helmet. The NerveGear, he thought, why does it still give me nightmares?

As he slowly woke up, he began to notice that the ringing from his dream could still be heard. He looked around, remembering the players dying, but quickly realized it was his phone. He reached for it, wondering who it could be so early, Asuna? Is something wrong!? As he glanced down, he realized it was not Asuna, but the person that was calling, especially at this hour, made him worry even more.

"H-hello?" Kirito squeezed out, surprised at how raspy and high pitched his own voice sounded.

"Hello Kirigaya-kun." said the voice on the other end, sounding anxious but assertive. "Sorry to wake you up so early, but we have a rather urgent development in the Argus case."

Kirito knew that voice well. It was Kikuoka Seijirou, the investigator that asked him to go into Gun Gale Online and find Death Gun. If Kikuoka had called him, that means something major had happened.

"Would you be able to come meet me at the Salon de café? It opens at 7. This is urgent."

Two Days Earlier:

In one of the busier streets in the downtown area, there is a gray skyscraper standing tall but deserted. It used to belong to Argus, the company who made SAO, Kurosawa Kogoro thought as he made his way past the crews lifting heavy furniture and waited for the elevator. Kogoro worked for a moving and storage company as an electrician, and they have been hired by the new tenants to clear the building. It has been more than a year since the SAO and ALO incidents, and the investigation was over, the case was closed. Argus filed for bankruptcy and sold the building to another company.

Kogoro sighed.

This place triggered unpleasant memories. His brother was trapped in the world of swords along with 10,000 people, but died only 2 days before the game was cleared. He chuckled. Kogoro knew that he couldn't really blame the company for what had happened, but it still felt good to tear down what was left of it with his own hands.

He stepped into the large utility lift and pressed the button that was the farthest down. Floor B5.

The elevator screeched and slowly made its way down.

Kogoro was in charge of dismantling the old SAO servers. They had already been swept clean by the investigators, of course, but the now lifeless towers had never actually been moved because they were bolted to the ground. There wasn't a reason to do so until now. Nevertheless, the servers were extremely high grade and very expensive, so naturally they were to be dismantled and taken apart.

He stepped out of the elevator and greeted the crew already assembled there. The unscrewing, disassembling, and all the commotion were almost second nature to him. So, his mind pondered about the world that was gone. About how so many people perished, and for what?

"That is the last of them," he told his team.

They nodded. The final server was wheeled onto the elevator and the doors closed.

Kogoro stayed back to pick up the tools. As he was picking up the wrenches he noticed something strange out of the corner of his eye. Where the last server had been, there was something shiny embedded in the floor.

Intrigued, Kogoro walked over and bent down. It was a small, rectangular plate, about 3 inches wide and 5 inches long, and was covered in dust except for a small Ethernet port located on the bottom left hand corner of the steel cover, which appeared to be part of the floor. He wiped it off with a rag.

What could this be? This is a weird place to put the internet cable, if that is what this is, he thought.

Something wasn't right. There were internet cables strung from the floors above to the servers already, and it seemed odd that a second port would be implemented, especially if it was embedded into the concrete floor.

Kogoro pulled out his laptop and plugged it in. He was getting uneasy, but was still very curious about what this actually was. As the laptop booted up, he opened up his file explorer (what a silly name, he thought) and looked for an Ethernet connection.

After about 5 minutes and coming up dry, the disappointed Kogoro was about to close and unplug the laptop when something caught his eye.

It was an external drive? And it was huge. As the laptop kept reaching and scanning more and more of this new entity, Kogoro got more and more alarmed. By the time Kogoro reached for his phone, the size of it was more than a petabyte, and was still increasing.

Thank you for reading!

What do you think is in the mysterious hidden storage?
Why did Kikuoka call Kirito in?

Leave your comments down below!
I will try to upload often.

{Both of us have finals in a week, however, Chapter 1 will definitely be uploaded before then. (maybe even Ch. 2)
The rest after the 28th, and boy do we have a plotline for you guys ;)} - that was me, 2 months ago thinking I wouldn't procrastinate this summer :/. -7/19/15

Almost done with new chapter, sorry for the wait guys.

-Vertycoxe 5/17/15