Disclaimer: I don't own Sword Art Online, BlazBlue, or its characters.
Authors Note: I know I'm putting this chapter out kind of early, but I had some ideas for it, so I decided what the hell? I appreciate the encouragement I'm getting from you. Here are some responses to the reviews.
Sir MIDNIGHT The Fallen One: I'd have to work with Argo a lot in order to turn her into a full character, but maybe she can show up sometime in the later chapters. And for Silica dumping her team? I got a grin myself when I wrote it.
animeandgamerlover2: Glad to hear you liked the ending.
Black sun 123: They're all eighteen or nineteen. I'd always thought that Noel was twenty-one for some reason.
Speedking535: I wouldn't necessarily say he's getting the girls, but I can only imagine what Jin and Rachel would say. It would be gag reel worthy.
Cloud Narukami: I wasn't thinking that I would, but if enough people demand it, I'll consider it.
Guest: Indeed she is, and her new dragon helps too.
IdeaPerson1097: I don't think Beater is a menacing enough term to describe him. I'll have to come up with something else.
Blade III: Who's the Real Hero?
It was a week after Ragna had met Silica in the tournament. In most of those days, he'd spent his time teamed up with her and Agil, handling quests and attempting to level up with each other. Silica had grown into an intimidating fighter, even more so now that her pet dragon Pina had started using a support ability to heal Silica. Agil had been improving as well, and while his speed hadn't improved much his strength was staggering. Now it was extremely rare for an opponent not be taken down within two hits from his axe.
As for the Reaper, Ragna had been getting more used to the RPG world and how most of the system worked with him. He'd become an absolute master at combat, rarely ever needing to rely on his swords arts, and merely needing his overwhelming strength, speed, and skill. Sometimes all the Reaper really needed were his fists and the occasional roundhouse kick (Chuck Norris style), so he'd become a pretty powerful figure in the world.
Ragna was still trying to lay low after everything that had happened in the tournament. He hadn't wanted to draw attention to himself, but it turned out that people had started to take notice of him. Ragna knew the more people that wanted to team up with him, the more things could go wrong if he ever slipped and used one of his BlazBlue's abilities. He'd allowed himself to work with Agil, Klein, and Silica, but only because he fully trusted that they wouldn't blab on him.
Speaking of his BlazBlue, Ragna had managed to recover on his most essential techniques when he managed to reach level ten. He'd obtained his classic 'Carnage Scissors,' move and had tested it, realizing it had worked the same as last time (though he hadn't shown anyone the move). This turned out to be the only chance Ragna would have of regaining any health by use of his special moves present day. Fortunately, it was also his most powerful move as of right now. Ragna had obtained other special moves from the game and had worked with them, but he hadn't really needed to rely on them as much as he would have thought. The only thing he hadn't been improving was his equipment, but that was due to him being unable to find the materials.
Currently, today marked the day of two months since the beginning of Sword Art Online. Despite how hard Ragna and the others had been working, no one had been able to clear floor one or figure out where the boss room was. Some of the better players were hosting a meeting today to discuss a strategy for finishing the first floor.
The meeting was taking place in the auditorium where Ragna had fought in the tournament, so a few people recognized him when he walked to some open seats. Already there were people whispering things about him as he sat down towards the back. Silica and Agil were on their way and were going to meet up with him before the meeting started, but Klein was taking care of some quests with his guild and told them that he'd 'get the next boss.'
Ragna let out a yawn as he proceeded to lay on his bench and close his eyes. He'd been out late last night getting some late night solo work in. Despite forming something of a team, he still felt drawn to the idea of 'one against the world.' Maybe it was because he'd been doing it his entire life, but who could say for sure?
"Are you hogging the seats or saving them for us?" Ragna heard Agil ask with a chuckle. He slightly opened one of his eyes and saw the man looking down at him with Silica standing next to him.
"Feel free to sit anywhere, these spots are taken," Ragna said as he closed his eye.
"This is what you get for staying out so late," Agil told him as he sat a down in the row in front of Ragna with Silica doing the same. "So you think that we'll be able to come up with something today?"
"We'd better, we still have a hundred of these things right?" Ragna reminded. "If you don't want to get trapped here forever we'd better pick up the pace."
"Yeah, but chances are this is going to be a boss rush," Silica said before getting close to Ragna's face to whisper in his ear. "What if you end up have to use those odd moves that you never talk to us about?"
"Then I'll just have to deal with it," he told her as the Dragon tamer leaned back. "I'd rather beat the boss first chance I get, so if it makes sense, I may actually lead with that."
"If it's what it takes to win, right?" Agil questioned. The Reaper simply nodded. "You know that since the tournament some people have taken to calling you 'Ragna the Bloodedge?' Seems like a pretty intimidating name, but somehow a fitting one."
"And one that I haven't been able to avoid," Ragna said with a yawn.
"Huh?" Silica asked confused.
"Looks like the meetings started," Ragna told the others, avoiding questioning as a man with light blue hair in mid class armor came onto the stage.
"All right," the man addressed everyone. "Thank you all for coming to the meeting. My name is Diabel, and my job role is a knight!" Some of the other players jokingly called him out on it, causing Ragna to groan slightly because they were wasting time. "Anyways, I have bad news to start out with. As of right now, two thousand people have died in this game."
Well that shut everyone up. Ragna could feel the weight of what that meant. Not only were they dead, but they were also incapable in some way for clearing the game. He desperately hoped that they'd be able to start clearing the game at a quicker rate, otherwise they'd be out of players before they hit floor seventy.
"I know it's hard to hear," Diabel told them. "But I do have good news for all of you; we managed to find the boss room and judging what we found on the inside the guide that was produced by the beta testers was right."
A couple of people started murmuring to each other before Diabel started talking to them about strategy. Since they'd have minions to deal with when they faced down the boss, there would be half of the party attempting to slay the minions while the other group would engage the boss directly and focus on whittling down its health.
"So it seems like we have a strategy," Diabel told them. "Now we'll meet outside of the boss room at ten in the morning tomorrow. Any questions?"
"I've got something to say!" Everyone turned and saw a punk running down to the stage with strange orange hair that seemed to be styled as rounded spikes. "My name Kibaou, you got that?! I've got something to get off my chest about those Beta Tester! They act like they're trying to help us, but what did they do when this game first started!? They took all of the experience and quests for themselves while they left us newbies stumbling in the dust! They should have to pay for what they did to us! It's thanks to us that 2000 of us are dead!"
No one said anything for a while, as they mulled over Kibaou's words. Then Agil rose from his seat and walked down to the stage. "But they have been helping us," Agil said. "You haven't heard the news of several new players on the verge of death were saved by the Beta testers. You're calling them out, but the truth is that if they weren't helping us out, we've would've lost closer to 3000 players… So are they really at fault?"
"I…" Kibaou was at a loss for words. "Tch!" With that he turned his back on Agil and took his seat.
"Well now that we've gotten that out of the way this meetings dismissed. Everyone show up tomorrow in your groups and we'll show this game who runs it!" The crowd gave a small cheer as sort of a battle cry.
'Guess I'll be fighting with Agil and Silica tomorrow,' Ragna thought to himself. 'At least I have a group that I belong to.' As he opened his eyes, he noticed a girl in a red hood walking away by herself. 'Am I really doing this again? Curse you good consciousness!' "I'll be back in a second," Ragna said to Silica as he stood. "Tell Agil not to wait up for me."
"O-Okay," Silica said to him as Ragna walked off.
The Grim Reaper followed the girl as she made her way into the square. "Hey, wait up." She turned to him, and because of the hood he couldn't make out any details of her face, but that wasn't really what mattered now. "Don't you have a team?" She shook her head. "Why not?"
"I'm not here to make friends…" she said. "And I've been doing well by myself."
"Well so have I," Ragna told her. "But tomorrow's going to be a boss fight and there's no telling what's going to happen. Why don't you join my group, just for tomorrow? Then you can decide what you want to do."
The girl was silent for a moment before nodding. "Alright, I'll team up with you for tomorrow, what's your name?"
"Ragna," he told her as he touched his menu and sent the party request. She tapped the okay button and he saw her name appear just under Agil and Silica's. "So… your name's Asuna."
"How can you tell?" she asked him. Apparently she hadn't learned everything when she traveled alone.
"If you look in the top left you can see your name and health as well as the people who you've teamed up with. Currently I'm teamed up with two other people, so they should be there as well."
"Yeah, Agil and Silica," Asuna nodded. "So where are we going from here?"
"There's an inn a short ways away that we all stay at. The rooms come with two beds, so as long as you don't mind rooming with Silica we shouldn't have any reason to change accommodations."
"I can't say for certain now since I don't know her, but I should be fine with it," Asuna said to him. "Mind leading the way?"
"No problem," Ragna said as they headed out.
When Ragna and Asuna walked into the in later, most people stopped talking yet again. Ragna was starting to regret taking part in that little tournament of earlier, then he saw how happy she was Silica with Pina and he decided to just grin and bear it.
"So that's where you went," Agil said as Ragna and Asuna sat down. "I thought it was strange when a new party member showed up."
"Yeah, well she didn't have a partner," Ragna told them as he looked over his restaurant menu (it was set up as one of this holographic screens btw). "I mean we're going to need to stick together if we're going to get through tomorrow, yeah?" He then noticed the strange look Agil was giving him. "What?"
"Sorry, but who are you and what have you done with the brooding, mysterious, lone wolf that we called Ragna," he demanded.
"It's only for tomorrow," Ragna told him. "After that I'm going right back to being a solo player. You guys are great and all, but I work better by myself." It was then that he realized he hadn't introduced Asuna yet. "Oh sorry, guys this is Asuna."
"Agil, nice to meet you," Agil said as he shook Asuna's hand.
"My name's Silica and this is Pina!" Silica said as Pina let out a loud chirp. "Glad to be working with you!"
"Likewise," she told them, before noticing Ragna was still looking over the menu. "Trying to find something?"
"Beef teriyaki," Ragna told her. "I've been looking for some since I came to this world, but they don't have that, they don't have pho, and they don't even have curry." Ragna sighed as he finally selected the stew and the bowl appeared in front of him. "I mean don't get me wrong, adding in talking with a NPC waiter and waiting for your food is a great option, but you'd think you could find some better variety in the food."
"You could always try cooking," Silica told him. "I hear that they have an entire system dedicated to cooking."
"No thanks," Ragna said as he sipped the stew. "I don't want the system here to mess up what I know about cooking in the real world… plus I'm too busy level grinding."
"You cook?" Asuna asked curiously. Ragna gave Asuna a strange look before nodding.
"Yeah, I know my way around the kitchen. I was actually pretty good at it if you'll believe that," Ragna said with a chuckle. "What about you?"
"I can cook, a little," she told him. "But I'm not sure if I want to spend time on it."
"Well it's nice to have a hobby," Agil told her. "It also helps to have a skill you can fall back on for experience when you're not in the mood for combat. Of course for Ragna…"
"He's always in the mood for combat," everyone except Ragna said before laughing. Even Asuna let out a small giggle. The Reaper rolled his eyes, but betrayed himself with a smile. In a way, he felt like he was getting back his life that Terumi had taken from him in his childhood.
'But how long do I have to enjoy it?' he thought to himself. 'I guess that doesn't matter for right now, I'll just have to make the most of it and say goodbye if the time comes.'
*The Next Morning*
"So everyone's here?" Diabel asked, looking around. They were in front of the boss room awaiting for the time that they'd plan their first boss rush. "Then let's do this!"
The doors opened and the enemies appeared in front of them. First were a few kobolds wearing metal armor, they had high defense, but they could still be dealt with. Then appeared the true boss of the floor: Illfang the kobold king.
Ragna was working with Asuna while Agil and Silica fought together. Ragna knocked two of the kobolds away while Asuna went with her rapier and stabbed them both to finish them off. Her speed and precision impressed Ragna, the technique was flawless.
"Nice, but we need to keep this up!" Ragna said. "We're almost done here!"
"Right!" Asuna said as she stabbed another kobold. Once they were done with their opponents Ragna turned and saw that Illfang's health had dropped to the red zone. As expected, the monster changed weapons.
'Looks like we may be able to finish this after all,' Ragna thought to himself. 'Just so long as-"
"He's mine!" a lone soldier said as he stepped forwards. Ragna was about to curse the man out for being foolish before he noticed that it was Diabel. In that one moment of surprise Illfang brought his blade down and sent Diabel flying, knocking out almost all of his health.
"Diabel!" Ragna shouted as he noticed Illfang was wreaking havoc on the remaining players. Asuna ran to help defend them as their formation had been broken without Diabel giving orders out. "Idiot," Ragna said as he took a potion out of his pouch to stop the rapid decrease in Diabel's health.
"No…" Diabel wheezed out, in apparent pain. "It's my… fault… I put myself first…"
'He put himself first?' Ragna thought. 'Does that mean…'
Flashback
"Lucky you I guess," Ragna said as he looked through his own result screen. "It's not that I want it or anything, but any particular reason you got the item instead of me?"
"Probably because I got the last attack on that thing," Agil said. "Look, you were the deciding factor in this fight, you can have the weapon if you want it."
"You were after the last hit item," Ragna realized. "That's why you tried to take it yourself."
"They can't have someone like me of a hero…" Diabel rasped. "I'd just do this again… They need someone like you to lead them… Ragna, promise me…"
The Reaper was silent for only a moment. "…Diabel?"
"Yeah?" he asked before Ragna's potion was shoved into his mouth. Once the contents had been emptied and his health had been restored he let out a string of coughs. We he looked at Ragna the look he was giving him was menacing.
"YOU IDIOT!" he shouted. "So you're just going to give up and die here! You screwed up once, so what!? THESE PEOPLE NEED YOU!"
It was then that Ragna heard a massive roar coming from Illfang. There were several downed party members in front of him, no one was dead, but they'd taken enough damage to reach critical. The monster had his sword raised to finish off the entire group at once.
"HELL'S FANG!" Ragna roared as he lunged and socked Illfang right in the gut sending the monster flying into the wall. All of the other fighters gasped as the saw the move. Even after Ragna's attack was complete there were still traces of dark aura on him. "Well that secret's out," Ragna said plainly as he grabbed Blood-Scythe. "Silica, make sure everyone's alright. I'll take this freak."
Illfang's eyes became a glare as he focused on his new target; The Grim Reaper. The two roared as their blades clashed. Ragna forced Illfang's blade off of him and smashed his fist into the monsters gut sending him flying back. Ragna roared as he lunged forward again, narrowly dodging Illfang's sword slash by leaping into the air and kicking the monster back. As Ragna landed he poured energy into his Azure Grimoire to finish the fight.
"CARNAGE-!" he shouted as he lunged forward and performed a lunge over Illfang's entire body. "SCISSORS!" There was an explosion of dark energy that slammed into Illfang, causing the monster to roar is it was completely encompassed in the darkness before shattering. Parts of the light blue shards were absorbed into Ragna's right arm, healing him of the one hit he'd gotten from the kobold knights.
There was silence for a moment, before a small message appeared. 'CONGRATULATIONS!' The crowd let out a cheer as Ragna said nothing. He simply put his sword back and started to make his way towards the newly opened door that would take him to the second floor.
"Hold on a minute you!" a voice demanded. It was Kibaou of course who else. "What was that power you just used!?"
"It's a power that only I can use apparently," Ragna told him, not hiding anything. "If I knew how to obtain it, I'd have told someone by now."
"Only for you huh!?" Kibaou mocked. "You must be some sort of hacker to pull that off!"
"Yeah, well I'm not," Ragna told him. "If you got a complaint bring it up with the developers. I got no time to argue with pricks like you."
"You think you're better than us, is that it? Just because you have a special power doesn't mean we'll follow you!"
"Who says I wanted you to?" Ragna said before turning his back on him. "You're all competent enough one your own. If you get stronger, I doubt you'll need someone like me."
Ragna made his way up the stairs, heading for the next level and the next string of enemies. "Hey wait!" It was Diabel. "Why didn't you let me die there? I would've had everyone dead if it wasn't for you."
"I know," Ragna said as he touched a few buttons on his scree. "That's why I'm giving this to you as a reminder."
A screen appeared in front of Diabel, letting him know he was getting an item. "Coat of Midnight? Why are you giving me this?"
"This was the reward for the last hit bonus. I don't need it, but let this be a reminder for what could happen when you put yourself above the team. Lead a guild, clear bosses on your own, help inexperienced players, I don't care. But remember that you're trying to save everyone, not just make yourself look good."
Diabel was silent for a moment before he equipped the coat. The coat was long and black with grey studs and had an insignia of a crescent moon on it. "What about you?" he asked.
"I'm a solo player," he said as he saw his friends behind Diabel, looking at him expectantly. He gave them a sad shake of his head. "You're place is the leader, I'm a lone wolf, but we're both after the same thing. Remember that."
Ragna clicked his menu and left his team. His friends looked at their notifications as he made his way past Diabel over to them. "I guess this is it," Ragna told them. "Take care of yourselves and stay alive yeah?"
"Don't say it like this is goodbye," Silica told the Reaper. "We'll met up again soon, and when we do we'll be strong enough to take this game with just us!"
"The kid's got enthusiasm," Agil commented with a laugh. "If you're really set on being a solo player I'm not going to stop you, just remember you've got people to call when you get into trouble."
"Please," Ragna scoffed. "How the hell am I going to be the one to get in trouble? If anything I'll call you because I'm bored."
"You just keep telling yourself that," Agil said with a smirk.
Ragna then turned to address Asuna. "Teaming up with others isn't so bad, is it?"
"I guess not," she admitted to him. "You guys made it easier for me and… I had fun with it."
"In that case think about joining a guild," Ragna told her. "Any group out there would kick some serious ass with you in it."
"Hypocrite," she said to Ragna with a small chuckle. "But I'll consider it. You know for a lone wolf you seem to help a lot more people out than you let on."
"I guess I do," Ragna said as he turned and started walking to the next floor, ready for whatever the future would hold for him. "I'll see you guys around." Ragna was ready to get back to the fighting, fighting for his new friends, the people who were trapped in this games, and because fighting was the only thing he knew.
