At around seven P.M. Kazuto locked the door of his apartment behind him taking with him a few changes of clothes. He didn't want to think yet how long he would be staying there. Probably days, weeks... As long as the man of the house hasn't arrived.
It was considerably more difficult for him to use the stairs now. The street people have returned to their sleeping places on the stairways and a few were sitting back against the railing, drunk. Worse yet, further down the stairs, all of the steps were completely occupied by vagrants.
He estimated the height from where he was down to the street, and decided he could jump. He took the railing and vaulted over, and a moment later he landed... on his toes, sending a shock of pain up his entire body, whereupon he fell down in a heap. It was a near-perfect jump from that height, but his skills from VR did not translate 100% to the real world.
He chose to take an obscure back alley where there were no vagabonds. This passage had once been covered by a chain-link gate that for some reason, perhaps a freak accident, got a major dent that afforded a gap only big enough for a single person to squeeze in. The space it afforded him was a refreshing reprieve from the crowding, allowing him to run and cutting down his travel time by about twenty minutes.
But someone's running after him as well.
A sense of dread immediately seized him at the unexpected turn of events. So someone has also found out about this alley? Maybe just now? They probably turning it into a hideout. Keep running, Kirito.
Yuuki poured out a fresh brew for her unexpected but welcome visitor. However, she wondered if she should have just given him something else to drink, seeing his shaking hands, and noticing those eyes that constantly averted hers and clung to the window, hiding his panic.
"Aren't you hungry?" she said. "Come on, man, you gotta eat."
"I'll be fine," he said nervously. "Get me anything. Even those cheap veggie bits."
She laughed. "You're still looking for that Soylent trash? You're exactly as cheap as you say they are."
He tensed up. It was easy when you just went through something. "It's easy for you to bluff about something I and a thousand thousand others absolutely die for everyday. In my world," throwing at her the contrast in the most sarcastic words he could spit out at the moment, "you don't turn down high-energy plankton just like that."
Chuckle. "My dear Kazuto," she said rubbing his head. "If a box of cereal advertises itself as made of soybeans and lentils, and, in the same box, plasters on something about being made from plankton, that should make you get your thinking cap for a moment, now, don't you think?"
"..."
"Hm? You still not cheered up at my pick-up line?"
"..."
"Heh. You got mugged. Right?"
"You're laughing about someone getting mugged?"
"Why shouldn't I? Everybody's used to that already. I would mind a lot if I were held up in the streets, but you, what can you give them?"
He was stung by that remark, but tried not to show it. "Well... I got... organs."
She now laughed openly and loudly. "You sure have a lot of confidence in your own filthy body, huh?" Kazuto felt like hitting her for a moment, but he was arrested by a sudden soft touch on his wrist. "Actually," she said in a somewhat deeper voice, "I like people with confidence. You don't find many guys like that these days. Bluffs, maybe. But not men who truly believe in their own worth."
"I should wonder if it's still worth believing in any sort of worth."
"All the more you should. If you have lost everything, then the only thing you have left is your own nerve to rely on yourself."
She once again took out the medicine and chugged own about four pills, with relish. She lay back on her couch and took out something else. A box. When flipped the top of it, Kazuto was stunned to see what she took out of it.
"You... You smoke?"
"Hm? You got an issue with that?" Cough. From the looks of it, she was quite new to the habit. "Oh yes, fairy fans like you wouldn't think the great master Zekken of elfland would smoke, now, do you?" Laugh. "Grow out of your bedtime stories, you."
Kazuto face hardened at this, and he turned away from her, hiding his anger at her belittling his game. She didn't mind, busy as she was getting the hang of her smoke, finally starting to feel some pleasure. If he didn't want to talk to her, it was his loss.
"Actually," he suddenly said. "One does not outgrow memories."
"Hm?" What is he blowing about this time? She kept reveling in the fresh draft of smoke filling her windpipe. Nothing mattered in the world to her right now. Some sentimental fellow getting dramatic was not worth her time. But then she finally regarded him, gazed at him, when he started to sob.
"It's so hard to lose everyone you love," he said in tears. "Asuna..."
Yuuki's gaze began to show some interest. "She's your girl? You lost a girl?"
His fists hardened into knuckles as his expression turned sour. "She isn't just a girl! I love her!" He rubbed his arm in the face. "Have you not lost a family, also? Or is it alright for you to make light of someone's else's misfortune, grief which is not yours?
"Honey," she replied, "you know I'm not that kind of girl." Suddenly her hands shook, feebly at first, as if confused whether it should also curl into a fist or just go limp, and then finally she broke into tears herself. "Mama..." But she buried it in a frantic long draught, as if she was trying to fill herself with the pleasing gas, until she ended up in a rage of coughing and panting. She jammed her spent cigarette on the ashtray and put the pack back in her pocket. "I guess that would enough for now."
She stood up and ambled over to him, and slapped him behind the shoulder, so hard it jolted the sorrow out of him. "Watch it!" he complained suddenly mad.
Teasing laugh. "We're both pathetic, you know that?" She kissed him lightly on the lips, further startling him, and the shock of both the slap and the kiss made him completely forget that he was even crying just a moment ago. When she was through, she chuckled, he joined, and they both laughed.
She ended up leaning against him on the sofa, an arm of his around her as they listened to classical music, just relaxing, not minding anything, flushing out everything that plagued them with unhappiness until now. They needed a break.
And Kazuto wanted a little more... after that first light peck. He bent down and touched, then dug, into her lips and they made out for a short while, until she tired of it and pushed him gently away.
"H-Hey," he complained softly. "I thought you were used to that!"
She shook her head slowly. "I don't think you should get involved with a furniture girl."
He felt his anger surge in him. "I'm the man in the house right now!" he erupted.
"Look, you better listen..."
"You think I'm a simple boy to be told what to do?"
"Yes," she said, once again arresting him with a caress on his chest. He always felt something inadequate about his chest. What did she find there? Or was she making him believe she did? "You're a simple boy. 'Cause I'm a simple girl. We need each other." She teased his lips with a kiss which was something like skimming ice cream. "You must believe me when I say that your being here by my side is more than I can ever ask for."
Before he could protest she landed a few more gentle smooches on his lips, meant to soothe rather than arouse, whilst holding him in tantalizing gaze in order to stop him from having further ideas. When she has finished, making sure that Kazuto has completely settled, she lay against his side and caressed his hand tenderly.
"You can't imagine what it's like for me in here, all alone half of the time except with painful memories. Believe me, please, when I tell you you're the only man who came here looking for my exact name. You might not understand how flattering that is to a girl, much less a girl like me."
She took out an entire wad of medication from an inner breast pocket and flaunted it before Kazuto. "Before you came, I wouldn't have imagined living without these. You know, I thought for a bit if I could throw these away, just because I have you now, but..." She toyed around with the sheet before she opened her mouth again, and it took another few moments before she actually formed the words. "... Why do you have to leave?" she finally voiced to herself.
He was starting to doze off. Satisfied, she sat up and straightened his jacket, as well as his hair which has fallen out in sensuous locks and lent him such a fascinating rugged air that it held her in thrall for a bit. "Kazuto," she whispered, glad that she could talk to him when he was already too calmed to react, hoping that perhaps her words would reach him somehow. "I do wish we could keep doing this."
She wished she could take her kisses and caresses all the way, but she thought involving him in herself wouldn't work. It didn't really work with any of the men who have used her, so how could it with him?
Kirito stood before Thrym, the King of the Frost Giants, smiling very broadly, putting out the most insultingly confident expression he could flaunt before the enemy. The giant's façade of ferocity seemed to chipped off a bit as confusion crept in his eyes. With Kirito was whole team: Klein, the samurai, holding on to his custom blade. Lizbeth, sporting a smug lopsided grin and holding a huge mace with a sharp point. Silica, arms raised wide off to the sides as with a falcon ready to fight, dagger in hand, Pina also stretching his dragon wings and staring at the enemy with killer instincts. Leafa, holding a sword nearly as large as his Elucidator. Asuna, hands outstretched, wielding a mage's staff, glowing with fields of aura preparing to cast a very powerful spell.
Excalibur's blade glowed in his grip, reflecting Asuna's brightness.
The undine will be the first to act, projecting an effect that will paralyze the giant whilst endowing the party with greater striking power. This could well be the most critical element in their attack.
For only a very short moment he stole a glance at her, and then he could not look away anymore. She was standing within a shining sphere, bathing her in a brilliance that lighted her rich, flowing mane with a golden halo, gleaming off her flawless bare skin of her supple figure.
Asuna herself was shimmering.
Kirito was overawed by the beauty of his girl. His feelings for her so overpowered him his grip shook, and his throat was caught. Perhaps, this battle would be over for him before it could start. Her magic was so strong it paralyzed him.
So much so, he completely lost track of everything around him. He did not see the faces of his teammates slowly being overshadowed with dread as they stared in growing fear at the frost king. Only when Asuna's aura started to falter did he snap out of it and turned round. He saw the giant, its face massively bloated by something it was building up.
Suddenly Thrym released a powerful surge of icy blast like the breaking of a dam. The flash flood of wind caught the team before they could even think of lifting their feet, but Kirito had enough presence of mind to duck under his jacket. The garment was completely frozen over. When he doffed it off, with considerable effort, it fell hard on the floor and split in two. He saw all of his teammates turned into pillars of bluish crystalline ice. And Asuna…
"Asuna!"
The giant blew another strong icy wind, this time shattering all of his teammates into fragments of ice and shining pixels, carrying all of them away to an open window of the boss room, out into the bleak, unforgiving sky of Jothunheimr. His entire world whirled around wildly in a confusion of ice, pixels, his own anguished screams as the snowstorm flung him farther and farther away, faster and faster. Without the elephant-creature Tonkii, he cannot fly in this height and so he will plummet to his death on the icy ground of the realm of deathly cold.
Kazuto was caught on the sofa with a blanket, in a fit of moaning and tears. When he finally opened his eyes, he groped around his head for the NerveGear, only to find that there was none. Seeing this, he lashed out in a howl of pain as he clutched the naked head bereft of any means to go back to that world where his team was.
He spent the rest of the night awake and gazing after an absent Asuna on the ceiling, in an agony of burning, raging emptiness. A man could only tolerate so much, so he dragged himself off the sofa, and towards the master's bedroom.
The hallway was drenched in a thick shadow of darkness, lightened only by a row of dim lamps lining the corridor, lending only enough light for him to make out the outlines of walls and doors. It seemed like about half an hour for him to traverse the whole length of the way, whether from the size of the house or the illusion played out on his eyes by the succession of lamps he wasn't sure. But when he saw a certain door, larger than the rest, he was certain.
It wasn't locked.
The door opened smoothly without any noise. The room was lit by the same dim brightness that illuminated the hallway, and at first he could not see her in the near-darkness shading the bed. But when he came closer, he spied full womanly curves accentuating the silken blankets.
The sheets slid off smoothly as he carefully pulled it off the bed. He was stunned by what was revealed. Yuuki wore no underwear beneath the nightgown. Full breasts were covered, but not hidden by the furs, and her cleavage was inviting. Her legs were exposed, revealing a milky-white complexion up to the thighs. If he can't be with Asuna anymore…
He first touched those thighs. Working his way up with his fingers, he woke her up and made her stir feebly. When he heard her rouse, he lay himself full-length onto the bed beside her and took a piece of her neck into his sucking mouth. Yuuki stared down at the man and watched with a sort of detached interest, as though it was just an interesting erotic video, as Kazuto explored her inch by inch up to her cheeks.
Now with greater interest, she reached out weakly and started to grope him, as well. She admired the muscles that were starting to define his back. They weren't tough like the older men's, to be sure, but the fresh quality of it that promised robust growth was a delightful change.
When he turned to her chest, however, she only gazed absently after him. His face, and his tongue, was slithering down the base of her neck…
She took his arms and gently pushed him off of her.
"What…?" he whispered, not quite understanding the sudden change.
"That… would do… dear… We gotta rest."
"…"
"Come on, now. You can sleep at my feet if want to. Come on, let's get a nice shut-eye."
He muttered something garbled by the muffling of his mouth against her skin, but it didn't sound too happy.
"Let's have some lovely dreams together, shall we now?"
All of a sudden he grabbed her arms and clamped down on them with a grip that wanted to tear into her skin. "Hey!" she cried out. "What's your problem?"
"Dreams!" yelled Kazuto with rage in his eyes, frightening Yuuki. "I don't want any more of such painful illusions! I want you. I want this world. I want to be happy in this world! I want real happiness in the real world!"
When the fear on her face started to contort into anger, his bravado broke down into bawling. "Why can't you love me?" he demanded. "You took me this far, is it fair of you to throw me away like that!"
For only a moment a glint of regret graced her hard stare, but then she knew the two of them could never be. "Let me tell you, pretty boy," she said with a smirk. "You're quite scrawny for my taste. You would have been somewhat OK if I haven't tasted men, but…"
He let out a forceful slap that sent her head off to the side, but she sent it back even more forcefully. And her expression was even more maddening. "You should have known better than for a sixteen year old to go after an experienced woman much older than him."
"I don't care if I'm immature for you! You only think of good bodies to play with… But I can love faithfully. Abidingly. Passionately! You would never give me a chance!"
"Oh? So a lover as faithful as you actually deserve a chance?"
"What—" He was thrown off.
"You have completely given up on Asuna, haven't you?"
A shock slowly dawned on his face. "H-How did you know?" He shook her violently. "Tell me! Why did you eavesdrop on my privacy? How?"
"How? Have you forgotten I am a hacker? I surmised from the very moment you showed up that you might be wanting information. Why else would a total outsider come to this place looking exactly for me? For Zekken? So I did some homework in advance."
His jaw was starting to quiver.
"But I was really flattered, above all, that you should even look for me by name. Even if I know you'll only be using me, too." A soft chuckle. "As a database, anyway. And I was truly interested in you."
"Then love me! Love me! I will stay with you for the rest of my life. I am yours forever."
"It's a bit strange to talk about a lifetime for someone who haven't spent much of a length of time with his girl."
"Asuna and I were in a relationship for two years."
"Versus ten? Twenty? Sixty? You just said you can love for the rest of your life. Unless you're ending it in divorce. Heh. It's the rule with all the rich people, so why not?
"See, what we have here in this world are pastimes. Not relationships."
"Asuna was taken from me. You don't understand."
"Then look for her!" Her eyes started to well up. "Do everything for her! How can you be her man until you prove to yourself that you can carry her for the rest of your life in this sick, hard world? Love her before you have her!"
He grabbed a sedative pill from a drawer to make her go limp, and tried to force it on her, prying her mouth open with one hand while he struggled to get the thing in with the other. Yuuki's growing weakness was helping him. But she had one last gambit.
She reached for something under her pillow and took it out. A NerveGear. She brought the big, hard thing down on his head.
"Ow!"
But someone as mad as him is not to be deterred by a simple whack. He returned to force-feeding her the pill, this time much more forcibly.
"Eahhhh!"
Kazuto jerked back instantly and very nearly fell off the bed. He was astonished to see Yuuki, panting heavily, aim the inside of the Gear directly at him, as if some laser blast could fire out of it.
Or could it? What was that that had jolted me just now?
"Look, pretty boy. I can hack hardware, too. Step one inch closer..."
"No. It's impossible!"
"Not with the mighty Zekken. This NerveGear has a nasty little thing the devs hid from everyone else. They should have known that the backup battery's hyperamp storage wasn't really meant to ride out a week-long outage.
"The NerveGear circuits were set up in a way that circles around the head exactly like the helmet of an electric chair, and has points that lie directly over key nodes in the brain. The same points that transmit data across the interface are also very ideal entry gates for electrical pulses.
"I just discovered that the pulses can be adjusted, as well. All I did was tweak it a bit so more current could shoot out. So this NerveGear can tickle, shock, paralyze, or outright kill."
Kill?
So that means my team…
Is that why that voice told me never to die in a Tournament?
"You lie!" yelled Kazuto. "Why would a game dev try to kill their customers?"
Why indeed?
But he was instantly troubled by a few random recollections. The radio ad did blare out an offer of free NerveGears. What game company would give away consoles like that?
"You don't realize," said Yuuki. "There are more than enough people to sell to. So much people, they would profit even if they aren't paid!"
How are they going to profit if they have no money income? All this cryptic talk was getting on his nerves so he grabbed Yuuki by the leg and tried to yank her off the bed. In the ensuing struggle, she lost her grip on the NerveGear, making it roll onto the edge of the bed. He was quick to dive after it, and then aim it at the suddenly terrified lady.
"Y-You don't know which button to press!" she managed trying to bluff.
"It won't hurt to try." He chanced upon a red switch he hasn't seen before on any NerveGear; obviously, it was crafted by Yuuki herself. When he pressed it, powerful sparks burst forth from within the Gear. Even he was amazed at how much power the helmet actually had. She was already paling in fright.
"Well, now," said Kazuto. "I have a lot to ask you."
"I-I know nothing!" she pleaded desperately. "You have to believe me!"
"You know that this thing can kill and yet you don't bother to find out if your former teammates are being murdered? Are you that rotten now?"
"It's been two years since I left Alfheim! Please!"
"Are they really murdering people?" he demanded. "How many? Why do they want to?"
Yuuki's face hardened with bitterness. "You live everyday with cursed scoops picking up man and child without regard and now rant about people getting killed in a game?"
He forced the Gear onto her head and bound her hands behind her even as she trembled. "Well, I think we must find out. Maybe your sugardaddy knows."
"What does he care?" she wailed, half-sobbing.
"Come on," he said making her get off the bed in her nightgown. "We have a little poking around to do."
Out here in the streets, a lady walking around in a silken bedroom dress graced with fine and lovely prints is a staggering sight. Indeed, much more unusual than the fact that she is being held hostage. The few vagrants still awake gagged when they saw the sumptuously-dressed girl, and secretly wanted to get a hold on her themselves.
"How far is it from here?" said Kazuto.
"I'm not sure," she said, still nervous. "About two hours on foot. Maybe."
"So," he sneered. "We will probably have to use the tram."
"I do wish, if only there's still a coach running at this hour."
"Shut up!" he yelled. "I don't want any sassy rich-girl complaints from you. You're in my world!"
And clam up she did, all the way down the streets for about half an hour. By the end of it, he allowed her to sit for a while on a pipe while he surveyed the avenue fronting them. It was wide, but a lot of run-down cars were parked everywhere along the whole length of the road. He wouldn't want any nasty surprises from anyone who might be lurking from behind or inside one of those.
"Hey. Ojou. Isn't there another way to that warehouse you're talking about?"
"I don't know anyplace else. I went with Kuzuki once, and this is the only route I remember."
"If we run into any grunts out here," he bluffed, "I'll leave you behind and look for that shack myself." Not that he really meant it. The lady took him in, after all, and to abandon her would be to act in very bad faith.
His ears picked a faint noise from somewhere. He turned left and saw a little boy crying, still leashed to something on the ground, which turned out to be his dead mother. He looked on with only a small curiosity in how the woman was killed. Starvation, probably. Someone so poor couldn't have been mugged, and if she is sickly or already gaunt from hunger there might not be much of a motive to rape her.
"Poor thing," said Yuuki. The words held a genuine compassion he never thought he would hear from a pampered furniture ojou. But... she did say something about living with her family in poverty before, didn't she?
Whatever. "Let's go," he said.
Another half-hour passed rather uneventfully. Only a few bad-mouthing drunks emerged from a few cars, and none of them tried to accost someone holding a hostage, thinking Kazuto to be another toughie to be evaded.
Yuuki was heavily panting and now loudly sighing.
"Hey." He was getting irritated. "Don't put on a show like that. I know you can't stand the odors of the real world, but at least don't make it obvious."
"Pills," she managed to blurt. "Pills..."
"What? You even want to have a drug cocktail out here? You're being very insulting now, you know that?"
But then, he saw her jaw quivering in pain. He was at a loss. Has she become so used to luxury even her very body was affected by grit? Soon, however, the girl simply collapsed, having fainted from the exertion.
Yuuki was still in agony when he she became conscious again a short while later. Kazuto had laid her out on a makeshift cot of a hollowed-out fridge stuffed with some Styrofoam. She was panting in short, faint breaths and could only utter about pills. It became obvious to him now that she really needed the stuff.
"Come on, girl," he said trying to hide the worry in his voice. "You got to go on. You gotta live without that stuff for only part of one night! And your sugardad's got a lot; we'll get you some when we get there."
"Listen..." she gasped. Cough. "I have to... tell you this... now."
"Quit nagging already!"
"Please!" The voice with which she said that one word was filled with so much pain and earnest it caught him cold. She devolved into a spell of coughing, panting, and combinations of both. "It's been almost... two... hours now... since I had... my... pills..."
"OK, OK!" he finally said. "I'll run back to your place. Just hang on and stay in place. I'll hide you from those drunks."
"I'm sure... Kuzuki knows... far more... of the information you want... though I barely have... an idea... myself. Look here... I'm his favorite... girl... Hostage me in front of him... He'll give you a lead... if you ask... the right questions. Then, if you have what you're looking for... hand me over... And, then... maybe... I'll have my pills."
He resolved to speak no further. If he makes it hard on her and she faints before she could become useful, he has only endangered himself coming out in the open.
He carried her for the rest of the way while she gave directions. It was much faster this way, and before the next half-hour expired, he found himself in front of a dimly-lit building the size of a hangar. Yellow Box. He recognized it from the newspapers as one of the distribution hoards of Soylent Greens and a number of other merchandise.
Yuuki took out a small key she had been hiding in her hair and used it to open a small personnel door by the main gate. They are now in.
Once inside, Kazuto resumed binding Yuuki's hands and urging her on, only gentler this time. She was also able to speak better now, having rested some while on his back, but she will be needing a pill pretty soon.
She directed him onto a stairway, then across a high metal walkway. He was barely able to see anything back on the floor in the dark, but the lights of an office up ahead lent some illumination which enabled him to see those bulldozers, the scoops, arrayed in a line far below. Whoever is behind this place is heavily involved in the giveout of Soylent to the public.
They finally reached the door of the office. She told him to be discreet as he negotiated with the man, all the while never letting go of her until he receives the info. To emphasize her point, she reached out and inserted that same key into the locked door.
And opened it very lightly.
She was about to open the door halfway when Kazuto stopped her, taking hold of her wrist. He could see a man standing with his back to them, talking on the phone in a loud fit of laughing and conversation. Maybe, even here, he could already glean enough intel to begin with.
"Well, sir, the delivery statement should be at your doorstep within the week."
The phone was at a loudspeaker mode. The other end's voice rang clearly across the still night air. "The clients from Austria and Wales are very skittish. They want at least a sampling tomorrow afternoon."
Kayaba!
He tried mightily not even to yelp. This is it. Chancing upon the game master himself. There's no better place to start.
