AN: Read a Youtube comment, got inspired. In which the real reason Kayaba trapped players in his game is because no one would play it otherwise. Poor Asuna.

Disclaimer: Bloodborne belongs to its creators, SAO belongs to its creators, I'm not making any money off this, etc. Also, I've never actually played Bloodborne, so feel free to let me know if I get something gratuitously wrong.

When Asuna opens her eyes, she's not in her bedroom anymore. She's lying on what seems like a gurney in a dim room draped in the stench of old blood. She tries to move, but her limbs feel heavy and sluggish, so she only watches and listens as the strange old man leans over her and speaks.

There's a... brief tug at her mind. Later, much later, she will realize this is the first sign that things are not as they should be. He says, "Good. All signed and sealed," and laughs, the sound desperate and empty of any vestige of humor. Then he's gone. A beast rises from a pool of blood, skin dripping and eyes wild, and screams as it burns. Horrors climb over her, little white monsters with gaping mouths and eyes sockets, skin stretched too tightly over their bones. A woman speaks, but, as in a dream, the words flicker out of her memory before she can grasp them.

And then she can move. Her limbs jerk, sending her tumbling over the side of the gurney. It hurts when she hits the floor. She sits up on her knees, breaths coming quickly, and hurriedly opens the menu. Her fingers are shaking as they flick through the options, searching for the Quit Game button. There is rust under her nails from the gurney. She can hear muffled sounds from somewhere behind the door with light shining through its windows. She heard her brother talking about the game trailers and the beta testers' experiences, so she had an idea of what to expect, but this is... too much.

It takes several minutes before she accepts that it's too well hidden for her to find. A crash of wood startles her, and the scuffling she'd heard behind the door is suddenly too close. Asuna swipes away the options and checks her inventory. She has the clothes she's already wearing and nothing else. Aren't video games supposed to give players weapons? Armor? Anything?

And then the beast stalks through the doorway. Asuna screams as it leaps, scrambling back in time for it to land in front of her, close enough for the blood clinging to its fur to speckle her face. It turns. Its fevered breaths burn on her skin. The wet noises from its throat don't belong to any animal, and its appearance doesn't fit anything she knows. She wonders, with a mind made bright and wild with terror, what it's supposed to be based on.

Then the dark liquid on its claws gleams—

There is bone glaring up at her. Her own bone. It hurts, it hurts—

It doesn't. Her eyes are closed. She opens them to moonlight.

There's no blood. She smells something she can't name, familiar and alien at once, but it isn't blood, and for the moment that's all that matters. She doesn't know how long she spends there. When she finally rubs the tears and snot away and picks herself up, the light hasn't changed and the moon still hangs low in the sky.

She still can't find the Quit Game button.

She's in a graveyard. She must have died, earlier. She wonders if one if the graves is her own, but when she reads the inscription on the first one, she doesn't find a name.

1st Floor Sickroom.

She thinks of claws and foul heat on her skin.

The little white monsters live in the graveyard, clusters of them rising from the paths. They gurgle and beckon when she walks near. They still look terrifying, to the point she can't bring herself to touch them, but passing by them is the only way to make it up the stairs to the house on the hill. She tries to go past them, but they block her way. They're holding weapons, three blades and two guns, that they offer up to her.

The thin, delicate cane makes her remember the beast towering over her. With the saw, she imagines the teeth catching in the beast's scraggly fur. She takes the axe.

The guns give her pause. She's never seen a firearm before, knows nothing about them aside from their deadliness. She settles on the longer one, which the description in the inventory informs her is a blunderbuss.

Then they give her a notebook with a pen attached. It doesn't look like a weapon.

It isn't.

How do I quit the game? she writes. She tears off the sheet and pases it to the cluster that gave her the notebook. The creatures sink into the ground.

She sits on the steps and searches the menu again as she waits for an answer. She finds something in her inventory that she didn't put there: a Hunter's Mark. She doesn't know what the description means, its references to blood echoes, but it seems like it's meant to be helpful, and... when she thinks about it, this might be the way to quit. ...awakes afresh, as if it were all just a bad dream. If anything can qualify as a bad dream, this stupidly edgy game is it. She focuses on the design, feeling a little silly. When nothing happens, she closes her eyes and tries again.

She hears claws on wood.

The beast paces upstairs, its steps steady. It doesn't know she's there. There's a small lantern behind Asuna with a group of the white creatures staring up at her from its base, and she's hardly thinking before she's grabbing for the light. The sickroom fades away to moonlight.

Her heart is beating too fast. She draws the massive axe at her waist and examines the edge of the blade. She can't imagine fur and flesh standing up to it. Hesitantly, she swings it—it should be far too heavy for her, but she holds it easily even with one hand. Feeling a little more confident, she swings again. The gun doesn't have bullets, so it's useless to her, but she experiments with aiming and pulling the trigger.

She explores the rest of the graveyard, reading the notes from other players that the little creatures offer to her. They worry her.

The house on the hill is unlocked. Gehrman explains things, after a fashion.

"Are you... a real person?" Asuna asks.

"No less real than this dream," the old man in the wheelchair answers. "As to how real that may be... well, you'll see, one way or another."

"How do I wake up?"

"This hunter's dream exists as a home to hunters," says Gehrman. "It will end when it loses its purpose. You will find a way, I expect. You hunters... generally do."

No option to end the game. No way to wake up from the dream. The other players' messages. There's an inkling growing in her mind, but she shreds it before she can think it. She remembers too clearly the glimpse of her own bone.

She bows slightly. "I'm Asuna. Please take care of me."

"Hunter... Asuna," Gehrman says quietly. "In this workshop, hunters used blood to enhance their weapons and flesh. We don't have as many tools as we once did, but... you're welcome to use whatever you find. The messengers will aid you, and I will advise as you require." Dropping his voice even further: "...Even the doll is at your disposal, should it please you."

"The one by the fountain?"

Gehrman only nods.

The doll hasn't moved. She leaves it to head for the gravestone with the inscription. She looks at it for a while, tracing the lines of the letters.

The notes around the graveyard have changed, but not as much as she would have wished. In the garden behind the workshop, she sits amidst silver flowers. The moon looms in the sky. She wonders how long it's been since she put on the headset. Will her mom unplug the console if Asuna doesn't go back soon? She has to.

She doesn't.

Asuna returns to the grave. She lays her hand over the words.

Claws on wood. She takes a breath to steady herself, hands reaching for the axe. It's only a beast. It has teeth and claws, but she has a weapon this time, and... she doesn't want to hurt again. She won't let it hurt her again.

She moves silently up the stairs and edges around the doorway. The beast has its head turned away from her. She slides in quietly, pulse quickening, fingers whitening around the axe's handle. The beast's ears twitch, a snarl bubbles from its throat, and she swings before she can hesitate. She catches it as it's turning, the weapon sinks into its shoulder—

She hesitates. Just for an instant. She wasn't expecting it to feel so real. She's hurting something alive, something made of flesh and blood as she is, and its wounded, guttural screech only makes her feel it more keenly. She knows this is a video game and that this monster is only a monster, but just for an instant she believes otherwise, and that instant is enough for her grip to slacken. When the beast springs away from her, it tears the axe from her hands.

It charges her, and she acts purely on fear, throwing herself out of its path, but not fast enough. It turns, too quickly, and swipes at her before putting distance between them again. Asuna staggers with a choked scream, warm blood crawling down her back.

It's coming at her again. It's going to hurt her again. She still has her gun, her blunderbuss—useless without bullets, she thinks, but she grabs it off her hip and smashes it into the beast's head with all her strength before it can touch her. The beast staggers, dazed, and she takes the chance to hit it again, and again, and again, and again, and even when it's fallen to the ground it's still twitching so she keeps going—

It isn't moving. The blunderbuss slips from her hands. Blood splashes onto her shoes when it hits the floor. She falls to her knees, pressing a wet hand to her shoulder blade as tears blur her vision.

She doesn't know why, but her flesh begins to knit back together. The pain fades quickly. When she can take a breath without sniffling, she wipes the tears away on her sleeve, replacing water with blood, picks up her blunderbuss, and tugs her axe out of the beast's corpse.

The stench is overwhelming. She can't stay here any longer, so she heads down to the lantern room. The room after it is larger, filled with gurneys, with what might have been a person once spread out across the floor. It's impossible to walk through the room without stepping in puddles, so she doesn't try. Her outfit, she notes, is not very good at keeping liquid from soaking through.

Another set of stairs later, she's allowed her first sight of Yharnam.

Fittingly, it's a graveyard.