We will fight on

Chapter 1: Her fear

A/N: Hello every body! First story being published, and I must say I have NO CLUE how to do anything on this site... I spent half an hour trying to figure out how to get this story from a word document onto here, and then to write out that I have no clue how to do anything. All reviews explaining the need to know stuff will be very gratefully appreciated, and I shall give the people help me out a cash prize. The magnificent total ends up at $0.00. I know you're all racing for it! This is the first story I've written, so don't hate on me too bad please. Also, I am using the description of Sachi used from the first book, in which it was described that she knew none of the other players in her guild other than through the game, rather than the back story from the Anime and the second book in which they were all friends IRL beforehand. It fits a more with what I'm planning to do later on in the story ;)

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She sat at the end of the pipe, head down, being covered by the knees she hugged. A small sob escaped her lips every few seconds. He stood, watching, waiting for her to look up and notice him standing a mere five meters from her. As the girl continued to cry, he eventually made his presence known to her.

"Sachi."

The girl jumped, and her eyes shot from the floor into his own. At the sight of his midnight black irises, she seemed to calm. She stopped sobbing, instead only turning her head back in front of her, and saying "Oh. It's you, Kirito." The girl stopped, and the two of them stayed still and silent for several moments. His eyes were trained on her form, huddled into a defensive curl. Her dark blue hair, framing her face and falling just past her shoulders in the back, seemed to have been distressed in her desperate flee from her own guild. Her armor, normally a shining steel grey tinged in blue, was covered in the cloak that shielded her from the players looking for her on the map. As she sat in the drain, she looked as if she hoped no one would find her. It was only the swordsman's high Tracking skill that made it so her discovery was possible. She would have been in the drain until the end of the game otherwise.

"Don't just stand there. You sit down too." Startled at her suddenly speaking again, the boy dressed all in black took the place she indicated across from her in the pipe. It was such a small place that they were forced to entwine their legs to be able to fit with any comfort. She looked up into his eyes, and he again marveled at the depth within them. He looked, falling deeper and deeper into those pools of blue. The only way her eyes could be described were as the ocean past twilight, a dark and mystifying blue that only seemed to grow more different and varied as one looked longer. If he stayed staring into those eyes for too long, he swore he would become lost within them.

"I'm scared of dying." She said this, and he seemed shocked to hear the words. She continued, saying "I'm scared of losing myself to this world… to one that doesn't even truly exist except in the form of data made of 1s and 0s." She looked up further, at the top of the pipe they sat in. She then said the one phrase the swordsman never expected to hear. "Let's run away."

He responded in a gentle tone. "Run away? From what? And where?"

"From this city, from the Black Cats, from the monsters… from this game. Away from SAO." The fact that she was able to say those words seemed to relieve her, but they had the opposite effect on the swordsman.

"Run from the game… do you mean… killing ourselves? That's the only way out without continuing the fights."

She gave a small, low laugh. "Yea. That wouldn't be so horrible… no. No, that's not right. If I had the courage to die, than I wouldn't be hiding in this pipe… and I wouldn't be having this conversation with you. As she spoke, her eyes dropped lower and lower, until she was once again staring at the floor. "Hey… what do you think is the purpose of all this?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"This game. Trapping us here. Why do you think he did it? Why did he have to trap thousands of people… Kill, thousands of people, just so far, with still more than half of the levels to go, in this game? What reasoning could a man have that would drive him to create a game we can't leave?"

He stopped. He thought, his eyes trained on her shoes, as he tried to think of an answer she would accept. "I don't think there is a reason. At least, no reason an ordinary person like you and I would understand. I think he just wanted to feel like a god. That is what he said at the beginning, that he made this world so he could watch over it and play with it as he saw fit." A tone of disgust slowly filled his voice as he thought about the man he had once viewed as a hero. He looked out of the tunnel, towards the distant lights of the city that was the starting point of the 28th floor, the lights so small and bright they could be mistaken for stars.

A small smile graced his lips, as he thought back to the real world, and the only time that he really saw the stars. A trip out of his home town, to the countryside where his grandparents lived. He remembered that night so vividly, as he had sat outside, looking into the sky with wonder at the small pinpricks of light that filled the air. Normally, the sky was so clouded and polluted that he was lucky to see the brightest of stars.

His attention was brought back to the girl in the drain when he heard drips of water hitting the ground. When he found the source, he saw the rivers of tears coming off of her face. Flowing from her eyes, which looked like pools of sorrow. She tried to hide the tears when he noticed, but it didn't work. He reached over, and helped her wipe the salty streams away.

"You have every reason to be afraid." He began as he wiped off her tears. "I have days where I don't even want to go out and do it all… it is a lot. And there IS a weight to it. But think… what about the other side? Isn't there anyone there you want to see again?" At his words, the girl calmed a little bit, as she thought to the real world. The world outside of the game.

"I have my mother." After that she fell silent for a little bit, looking as if she was trying to come up with another. "She's all I really had in the real world. My father left us when I was too young to remember him. I've always been really shy too… I didn't have any close friends from school or anything. The only person on that side was Mom." The boy wasn't sure how to respond to her. She looked into his eyes once again, and her words continued to flow. "I honestly think that this world has been better to me than that one, even if I am more afraid here regularly. I have all the others from the Guild. Kaita, Sasamaru, Tetsuo, Ducker… they were with me from the very start, from when I first stepped out of the starting city. And also, there's you, showing up when we were in such a bad spot and saving us." She stopped and let out a small giggle as he started scratching the back of his head.

"A real laugh huh? Guess I can't be as bad with girls as I thought if I managed to get that." She laughed some more at his expense. "Are you feeling better now? Are you alright to head back to the guild?"

She opened her eyes, still smiling, and nodded.