Sword Art Online. How long has it been since we were trapped in it? A year or two? So much has happened since then, I've met so many people, made so many new friends, I've had so many great adventures and new experiences, and everyone's still fighting by me, sharing old memories and making new ones. If only I truly meant everyone…

"Kirito, is something bothering you?" a blue haired girl a year older then I spoke. We were at our cozy home on floor 22, located in new Aincrad. Everyone was here for Christmas, and were all getting ready for the new year.

"Nothing, just thinking about ld Aincrad," I replied calmly.

"Hey, wasn't it around this time of year we met up in SAO? We were after a revival item from the Christmas event, remember? I followed you with Furinkazan, and we were followed by the Divine Dragon Alliance?" spoke up a man with spiky red hair and a black bandanna who was dressed as a samurai.

I grimaced and faced down, a shadow covering my eyes. "Yeah… what about it?"

"I just realized that you never mentioned anything about what it was for. You were still a solo player at the time weren't you? And you can't use a revival item on yourself, so what was the deal man?"

Everybody in the room turned to look at me, unfamiliar to the story. Even Yui turned back into human form and stared up at me, eyes staring in curiosity. I looked back up, this time facing Asuna.

"Remember when I told you I avoided guilds because I felt responsible for the deaths of my last guild, the moonlit black cats?" Asuna nodded.

"We actually met while fighting monsters. I was out in the field trying to get as much exp as I could when I ran into them. They had only one member on offence, and everyone else on defense, and they needed help so they called out and I came running. I lied to them about my level because I didn't want them to find out I was a beater. Truth was that I actually wanted to fit in and to get along. We spent days and weeks working together, leveling up, training and saving up col. I became one of the offensive members, and helped trained a member, Sachi, to switch her fighting from a spear to a sword and shield. Amongst all the time we worked together, Sachi was always afraid of dying, and I made a promise to her, that I'd protect her, and that she'd live on to see the real world again. One night, our guild leader, Keita, announced that we saved up enough col to purchase our very own home, a base for the moonlit black cats. When he went out to make the purchase the next day, several other members thought we could impress Keita by going to a higher floor to grind for more col to purchase furniture for the house. At one point, we came across a trap, a room with a chest in it. Upon entering, the only exit was sealed and monsters started spawning. We couldn't teleport out. We found out the hard way it was an anti crystal zone. They died, one after the other. I did whatever I could to save Sachi, but… she never made it out…" A tear slipped down my face, and then another.

"When I heard about the Christmas Event Boss and the revival item, I trained 24/7 never stopping a single moment, and I utilized all the best grinding spots. After gathering info, I made my way to floor 22, preparing for the boss fight. That's when Klein and his guild showed up, and then the Divine Dragon Alliance. Klein and his guild held off the Divine Dragon Alliance, and told me to go on. I barely managed to defeat it, but the revival item was only good 10 seconds after a standard death phase. When I got back to my inn room I got an alert and a recording crystal from Sachi and… wait a minute… no…"

Everyone stared at me s I quickly opened up my menu and accessed my items. I kept scrolling down, faster and faster, hoping against all odds it was still there. "No… no no no no no! It has to be here somewhere!" after another minute of scrolling through my inventory, I gave up. The crystal was gone. I must have deleted it when I first entered ALO. I broke down, at this point tears were streaming down my cheeks. "Sachi…"

"Kirito…" Asuna spoke quietly.

A message alert sounded. I paused momentarily and checked the message. It was from Crhysheight, the man from Japan's internal affairs department.

"Kirito, you won't believe what my group found. We think one of the old SAO player's had their conscience somehow downloaded online. I need you to come down to the Town of Beginnings, ASAP! There's an area on floor one where her player ID was last recorded, a labyrinth underneath the iron palace. I'll meet you there. Ps, I think you may have mentioned this player ID to me during one of our interviews, but you may now this player. Her player is identified by the ID Sachi."

"No way, that's impossible!" I quickly stood up, grabbed my swords and flew out of the house as quickly as I could.

"Kirito wait!" shouted Asuna as she and Yui trailed close behind me. I reached the nearest teleport square and teleported straight down to the town of beginnings. Upon arriving, I flew at top speed straight to the iron palace. As I came to a halt, an Undine race man dressed in blue approached me as Asuna and Yui caught up.

"Ah, you got hear surprisingly quick! I expected you to take a little longer-"

"You said the labyrinth underneath hear?" I cut him off.

"Uh… yeah, in a small room at the end of it. It was apparently a GM console in the original SAO. Do you know where it is?"

Asuna threw a confused look at me, but then nodded as Yui and I nodded back.

"Currently I've had my people contact the GM's to extract any NPC monsters down there so you could check it out, but according to them there's an unregistered monster they can't seem to get rid of down there, and it happens to be guarding the very room Sachi's player ID was last online at."

"Thanks for everything Chrysheight, I owe you big time."

"No problem. Good luck, and be careful."

I nodded as Asuna, Yui and I took off for the room. We raced down dark and creepy halls and corridors. Under regular circumstances there should've been all sorts of monsters here, remembering a majority of them being toads. Hall after hall, room after room, closer and even closer yet still…

A room finally appeared, a long yet tall one, and as we entered it the walls began to glow a dark blue color. Yui looked around it, slightly frightened at the memories of the room from when we were trying to save Yui.

A loud screech occurred.

A shadow slowly started to form into a big black robe as red gleaming eyes started to glow under the hood of the robe. Suddenly the entity's being brightened as white bony hands appeared from the sleeves of the dark robe while the face began to appear more clearly, also taking the form of a large skull. A scythe appeared in it's right hand as five full HP bars appeared to the left of the massive entity, a label appearing naming it the Fatal Scythe. I paused stunned as Asuna took a small step back. I tightened my grip on the two swords, Excalibur in my right and a custom sword in my left. I turned to face Asuna.

"You don't have to do this Asuna. This is my fight, not yours. You should take Yui and get out of here."

She shook her head. "No, we're staying, and we'll fight to the very end, and we'll either succeed or be defeated." I nodded. "Thank you Asuna, I owe you."

"No you don't, I am you're wife after all." She flashed a brief smile at me with a slight blush on her face. I blushed a little too, but smiled back.

Yui landed on my head and perked up. "We're in this together!"

"Right!" we both said. I gripped my sword tighter. "This is for all the players of Aincrad, for all of those who didn't survive. This is for the ones we lost, for the Moonlit Black Cats, for Sachi!" I yelled as I charged the Fatal Scythe. Both my swords started to glow as I prepared an old SAO attack. "Locus Hexedra!" I yelled. The 8 hit combo landed, taking off a chunk of it's first HP bar.

"Incoming slash attack!" Yui yelled. I jumped out of the way of it's first slash, then parried the second slash. "Switch!" I yelled. Asuna came running up, throwing a barrage of quick attacks, slowly but eventually fully bringing down it's first HP bar. I jumped back and prepared another sword skill as well as Asuna.

By about 10 minutes after the start of our battle, the Fatal Scythe was down to the mid yellow zone of it's last HP bar. Asuna and I were also down to the yellow zones of our HP and we were all out of HP restoring items and manna for healing spells.

"We have to defeat it!" I yelled. Asuna's sword began to blow. "Mother's Rosario!" she yelled as she launched her final barrage of attacks before falling back to the room entrance. I smiled. I guess even Yuuki helped me. The monster's Hp bar fell into it's early red zone from Asuna's last attack. "That's all I can do, I'm out of SP so I can't use anymore sword skills," she said apologetically. I nodded.

"You've done more then enough. It's time for me to finish this." It swung it's scythe at me. I moved to the right, then jumped up onto the scythe's blade and ran up along the staff part of the scythe. As I began charging up my original sword skill, I leaped onto it's arm and ran up, jumped, then landed on it's head. "Starburst Stream!" A barrage of light exploded above it's head as I moved the familiar movements I've practiced so often in old Aincrad. As the final hit landed, it's HP bare finally fell to zero. The entity let out one final screech before exploding into hundreds of blue shards the way monsters would back in SAO. "I did it…"

I resheathed my swords on my back and turned around to Asuna. She had a smile on her face. "You did it!" she yelled as she ran up to me and planted a kiss on my lips. She pulled back, blushing furiously. I smiled with a slight red tint on my own face. "No, we did it," I said. We both smiled as Yui landed on my shoulder and exclaimed "Well done daddy!" I turned to face the room and began walking towards it as a bright light filtered through it. I stopped midway and turned around. "Asuna, Yui, aren't you coming?"

Asuna shook her head. "Whatever is in there is for you alone to find out. This is about you Kirito, and it's about your past. We'll wait out here for you." I smiled back at them.

"Ok then, I'll see you again soon," I said as I turned around. I began walking back into the bright room as I was engulfed in a bright, pure, blinding light.

"It's good to see you again Kirito," a deep, matured yet kind voice spoke. I turned around. A tall man in a white lab coat stood before me in the now black room.

"Kayaba?" I asked. He smiled slightly.

"I had the feeling you'd come here."

"Were you the one who put that monster outside?"

He paused. "Yes, I placed it there so that only you would get pass it, and nobody else. You must be wondering about the popped up player ID?"

I nodded, grimacing at the memory of Sachi.

"You see, whenever a player died, I saved his or her player ID and attempted to download the players conscience onto the web. I decided that whoever was lucky enough would survive SAO, but to an extent. Among all the players I attempted to download amongst the 4,000 killed players, only 2 downloads were successful."

"You're one of them?" I asked.

He nodded. "And the other player was an ID named Sachi. When I found out about the single other success, I used what resources I had left to come into contact with her, but she wouldn't respond to me. All she would say was 'Kirito', over and over again."

I gasped. "So Sachi's still alive?!" I asked.

"Only to an extent, and only for so long. Apparently the download was never fully complete, and her ID is deteriorating the way an AI would after over-usage for too long. She's alive to only an extent, and she doesn't have much time before she disappears for good."

I grimaced. "Take me to her, please." He nodded, and a bright light engulfed me once more.

When the light faded, I was once again in a room. It was black, yet somehow was still bright. My gear felt different. I held up my arms and realized I was dressed in my SAO gear. I looked back up. "Sachi?! Sachi! It's me Kirito, remember me?!" Where are you?!"

I turned around. A girl dressed in light blue stood before me, staring the other way. She had deep blue hair, a blue skirt linked to a blue top, and slightly darker blue armor over her chest. Her skin was pale and she stood slightly shorter then me. I approached her slowly. "Sachi? Is that you?" I spoke, almost in a pleading voice.

She turned around. She smiled at me as she slowly walked up to me. A soft, almost shy voice spoke up. "Kirito… it's been so long. It's good to see you again."

I gasped, mouth open, as tears began falling down my eyes. "Sachi…" I ran up to her and embraced her, hugging her so hard as if she'd disappear if I let go even a little bit. She returned the embrace, her arms softly stretched around the back of my neck. After what felt for about an hour, we finally let go, bringing the embrace to an end.

"Kirito…"

"S-sachi, I'm so sorry for letting you die-" Tears were now furiously falling. "I swore I'd protect you, that you'd live to see the real world again, that you'd survive until the very end… b-but I failed you, and now you're… you're…" I broke out into a full cry.

"Kirito, you did what you could. I told you not to blame yourself, and now you're doing just that."

"But it's true! It's my fault you never made it out! It's because of me!"

"No, it's not your fault. I didn't have the trust that I'd survive that long. Kirito, you need to let go and forgive yourself. None of this was your fault. Kirito, I trusted in you to do the absolute best you could to protect me and survive. You did exactly that, and you did the best you could. And I want to say thank you!"

I stopped crying and looked up at her.

"You protected me the best you could, and you thought me, helped me fight, helped me survive as long as I did! And you comforted me every night, saying that I'd survive. You did so much for me and you gave it your all! I couldn't have asked for anymore of you," she said holding my hands firmly. "And thank you, for coming back, for finding me and seeing me one last time before I go…"

"No, I won't let you go, I don't want to lose you again! There has to be some way to save you!" I said exasperated, hoping against all odds that I could save her.

"It's too late Kirito… What's done is already done, and we can't change that. I was able to record this entire conversation in this crystal, and I want you to hold onto this, to keep this to remember what we've been through together." A recording crystal appeared in her right hand as she gave it to me. It was like the last recording crystal, but dark blue instead. "Kirito, I want you to make the most out of your life. Live it to the fullest and make every single day, every hour, every minute, make it all count, and I'll be waiting for you on the other side. Live your life to the absolute fullest, and live it the best you can without regrets to the very end, and one day, we'll see each other again!"

I nodded, once again in tears. "I'll never forget you Sachi, and I'll be ready to see you again when I make it to the other side."

"Take as much time as possible," she smiled as a tear began to form in her eyes. We embraced one more time, hugging the life out of each other. It felt warm, caring, loving, as if our entire lives were poured into this moment. We finally pulled away.

"I have to go now Kirito, I promise I'll see you soon. Take care."

I nodded as she began to grow brighter. "I'll always remember you Kirito, and I can't wait to see you again. Goodbye Kirito, I love you." She grew brighter and brighter to the point where I couldn't look, and then there was darkness, there was absolutely nothing but the now empty black room. I fell to my knees, my hair covering my eyes as I began to let my tears fall freely again. "I'll never forget you Sachi… I promise to make the most out of this life… and… I love you too, I whispered.

After about 20 minutes, I got back to our little home in the forest on floor 22 with Asuna and Yui. I explained everything that happened to them, until Liz suddenly spoke up.

"Hey guys, I know this isn't exactly a happy moment but, we shouldn't be sad for the lives we've lost, but we should rejoice in the lives that have lived and for the moments in our life. It's new year's eve for crying out loud, we should be rejoicing, the countdown's even begun!"

And with that we counted down to the New Year, celebrating the lives that we've all lived in the process. "Happy New Year everyone!" exclaimed Asuna at the end of the countdown. She walked up to me while everyone was greeting happy New Year to each other. "Happy New Year Kirito!" she smiled as she drew me in for a kiss. As we parted lips, we blushed as I said "Happy New Year! Here's to hoping this year will be better then the last!" She smiled as I excused myself to step outside for a breath of fresh air.

As I walked out of the house, I looked straight up into the night sky. I smiled faintly, feeling as if a heavy weight had been lifted off of my shoulders recently. "Thank you Sachi… and wherever you are… Happy New Year," I spoke quietly, smiling to the stars above me.