Coffin Smashing Part 1

(Zero Hour Plus 6 Hours)

It was just another long day on the job for Kikuoka Seijirou as he began to look around the warehouse that had so recently been home to the IRL Death Game held by [Laughing Coffin].

He knew that the only reason that he had been called in was due to his work in the Cyber Crimes Division, Special Branch. If thirteen of the dead bodies in the warehouse had not belonged to one of the organizations from SAO that he had been keeping an eye on, the first he would have heard about this disturbing incident would have been through the news. As it was, he had been ordered to keep things quiet, something he already knew was going to be impossible.

41 identifiable bodies and one survivor did tend to make discretion rather less possible, especially when two of them were the grandsons of Tono-gumi. Adding the organized crime angle to this was going to play utter hell with the investigation. Even now, he spotted the lab teams for the OC Taskforce collecting evidence, snapping photos and taping everything in this warehouse from hell studiously.

He walked past one group, noticing immediately how much warmer the air around him became as he entered one of the so-called Kill Rooms, the one he had been asked to look over, the room where Laughing Coffin's corpses had been found. Walking over the catwalk, the investigator was glad that there were handrails on it, otherwise he might have fallen into the now mostly-cooled oil in the industrial-sized fryer below.

His gaze slid left, to the thirteen reminders of the end of Laughing Coffin. Swinging on chains that ended on meat hooks, the remnants of the Red Guild looked on at nothing. Each had been ended with a single bullet through the head, that much was obvious, but their killers apparently wanted to leave a message.

Beyond the corpses was some graffiti in brownish-red, a circle with a skull in it. He shuddered as he looked upon that creepy, stylized red-eyed skull, finding himself oddly hoping that it was done in paint, instead of the other liquid of that color that immediately came to mind. Around that glyph was written in passable English, 'And Thus Laughing Coffin Shall Sin On No More.' The words on the top of the circle seemed to run into each other.

Taking his notebook, Kikuoka began transcribed everything written that he had seen in there. Several of the other investigators were doing likewise, including one who mis-transcribed 'Sin On' as 'Sinon'.

Shaking his head, the agent thought to his real plans, those that had been marred when Alfheim Online's players disappeared with so many of the players stuck in SAO. That had been a massive body blow to the project, most importantly with the loss of one Kirigaya Kazuto, alias Kirito. That teenager's natural skill would have allowed the project to evolve so much further forward.

After the disappearance, Kikuoka had begun looking for the SAO survivors with some kind of killing instinct, something he could use to push the project into combat readiness. To his dismay, he picked up on the Alfheim Liberation Front, the reason for so many of SAO's frontliners disappearing into thin air.

It was then he realized that extraordinary measures were required if he wanted to show any kind of advancement beyond what little he had already achieved. For that, he needed someone who could induce chaos onto an orderly society.

Before today, he had the potential for thirteen someones in the form of [Laughing Coffin]. Through carefully concealed connections, he had attempted to arrange for its members to end up on a server of his own devising, to use them to prepare for the [ALICIzation] Project through the crime lord related to one of their members. Oh, sure, by using Sugou Nobuyuki's attempt to turn them into useful members of society, he'd be doing the world a favor by removing thirteen deadly criminals without prison.

Lieutenant Colonel Kikuoka's main concern, though, was that Japan would have the artificial intelligence capabilities to defend their country in the possible turbulent times ahead. Any purely charitable benefice from Sugou's (certainly highly illegal) behavior modifications meant nothing compared to that absolute requirement. Now that plan had been killed rather effectively. He needed to find a replacement for what would have become his pet psychopaths. On the plus side, if he could find out who [Sinon] was, maybe he would be able to kill two birds with one stone.

(Zero Hour Plus 7 Hours)

Tono Issei was having a very bad day.

Eight hours ago, he was informed by the head of the Tono Syndicate's Unpleasant Realities division that his feed from the murder game put on by one of the less-stable members of his family had cut out suddenly. The connection was still there, it simply wasn't transmitting anything. It was almost as if the one who had said that he could bring income to the Tono Group was trying to hide something from him, never a good thing in the best of times.

That news was worsened an hour later, when the connection died altogether. Now, not knowing if the Death Game was still running or not, he had his snuff group's director try to contact the members of [Laughing Coffin], first via encrypted email that bounced right back, and then to cellphones, which apparently were not turned on. It had been a worrying sign of things to come.

Attempts to force the phones on via hacking were tried six hours ago. This proved somewhat more useful, in that it at least provided the Yakuza family leader definitive proof that the Death Game had suddenly gone sour in a bad, bad way. All thirteen of the main phones (and the contact phone for Laughing Coffin's point man for the snuff film group) were in the middle of one of Sasebo's harbors; aside from one of the water-resistant phones, they failed had all failed, but the GPS was working.

At this point certain that the Death Game had been ended, Tono-domo sent two dozen of his men to the warehouse. It would take them four hours to get there through the uncharacteristically bad traffic; during that time the police arrived, and the first driver there had to make some rapid explanations which were not entirely believed, but were quick enough that the driver was able to fast-talk his way out of further trouble.

Meanwhile, Tono had called his son-in-law, Shinkawa Daisuke, trying to ascertain the whereabouts of his grandson, not his favorite Kyoji but the black sheep Souichi AKA [Xaxa of the Red Eyes]. When he found out that neither had returned home, he was nearly fit to be tied; he told Souichi that his brother was to be left alone, never to know about the Death Game. In a suddenly tired voice, Tono Issei asked that if Daisuke, a successful doctor, heard from either of his sons to call him immediately.

About three hours ago, he received a call from one Kikuoka Seijirou, an agent in Japan's anti cyber-crime division. By that point, he was almost certain that Souichi had involved himself far beyond the SAOvivor's ability to deal with, and had somehow managed to cause Kyoji's involvement as well. Swearing that if one hair on Kyoji's head was out of place, that Souichi had better have passed onto the Great Beyond himself already, Tono-dono began making preparations of his own, including a call to a favored retainer of his, useful in bleak times such as this.

Two hours ago, Tono heard back from his men at the warehouse. His pet assassin received a second call, informing him that if Souichi was still alive, five figures American would be his payment to change that state. He then called his mole in the Organized Crime Division, respectfully requesting (see also: demanding upon pain of being revealed) all the information he had on what was going on at the warehouse.

One hour ago, his worst fears were far exceeded. Kyoji lied dead in the morgue, the victim of an air embolism delivered through the carotid artery, apparently a casualty of the Death Game. As for Souichi, he (and all his fellow ne'er do wells in Laughing Coffin) had been ended in a fashion that suggested they had pissed off a Player in the Great Game, each of them dead to a bullet in the head. The fashion it was done in suggested a professional hit job done by one man; the fact that the bodies were then hung from meat hooks swinging over a flaming pit seemed to show the hit was a violent response, a declaration of war. The fact that there was a survivor, maimed horrifically but very much alive, seemed to add calculated insult to injury.

Now, Tono-domo called his assassin and soldiers back. The Tono Syndicate was in a state of war. The assassin was to hunt down the enigmatic slayer Sinon and return with his head. His soldiers and spymasters were to find out who had hired that man, so that they might avenge the spilled blood of their master's family.