Hi everyone, SemiInsaneCentipede here with the twenty-first chapter of Player Killer Killer! I'll save my crap for the end of the chapter. I do not own SAO, I only own my OCs. Please enjoy!
Player Killer Killer
Chapter 21
In the afternoon of the third day after the drowning of Jassonack, my player marker faded from red back into green; I was free of the cage that I had restricted myself to. I open my menu and go to a particular part of it I've rarely exercised the use of: the friend list. It takes exactly zero seconds to locate Marine's name on the list of one and I check to see where she is. My map says she's on floor twenty-three, which is good, because that's where I am. I walk out to the road where I last farewelled her seven days ago and stroll down it without any fear of being seen. It'll be nice not to have to suffer my own cooking for a while.
A message notification makes a pinging noise and I open up my menu to see what it is. It's from Marine: Where are you? After staring at those three words for a few seconds, I type back my reply: I thought you said you could read a map. To this I receive no reply and I chuckle to myself. Ah, instant messaging in a fantasy game. The developers did so much to create a game around swords and monsters, yet still the twenty-first century managed to creep into it.
I arrive in a town as the sun starts to set and I check Marine's position, oh good, she's in the same town. I walk to the centre of town and do something that lets everyone in the vicinity know I'm waiting for someone: hide in a bush. It takes a couple of minutes, but Marine comes into view, head buried in her map. As she gets closer, I step out in front of her. "Hello." I greet quietly, but loud enough to be heard, however she doesn't look up from her map until it's too late. "Hm?" She asks as she barrels into me, sending me back into the bush's grasp. "Rin?" She queries, a little concerned.
"You walk with a lot of force." I mutter, struggling to get back on my feet.
"Are you okay?"
"Oh, everything's just leafy green." I respond dryly.
"So where are we going first?" Marine asks eagerly and I mentally chuckle to myself: she, a woman who is clearly my elder by a substantial margin, is pestering me, a teenage student, about things like a small child. Disregarding this thought, I open my inventory and go to the journal section, which contains all the notes I've taken.
Some time ago, Shino and I predicted that there would be a shortage of monsters to go around, disallowing everyone to level up at the same rate. Allow me to explain the importance of this: if we have, say, three players that are five levels above ten others, then the three have the advantage of being able to tackle higher level monsters with ease. Now, this sounds like a good thing, but once a substantial level gap is established between player and monster, the ten players who are on a lower level are suddenly risking their lives almost meaninglessly as they won't be able to effectively contribute to battles or be able to survive being hit. Shino and I purposely 'failed' to clear certain areas of boss mazes so that we could reap the experience later, it wouldn't be much, but it'd be something.
We teleported to floor seven and made our way to the boss tower. "Rin, I know I'm weak, but seriously, floor seven? I'm not that bad." Marine complains and I regard her disdainfully. "C'mon, don't look at me like that."
"You asked me to help." I state. "I'm helping, and my help requires you to be on floor seven."
"But everything on floor seven's weeeeeaaaaak!" She moans loudly and there is a long silence between us. "Are you being annoying because you actually think you're better than floor seven or because you're bored?" I ask wryly and she pouts.
"I'm bored." She admits. "Do me a favour and argue with me."
"No." I snap irritably.
We arrive at the boss tower and I follow my map through the maze to the location I'd marked more than a year ago. "Rin, are we lost?" Marine asks, I don't even bother to look up from my map.
"You might be, I'm not." I respond in a bored tone.
"I think you're lost."
"You thought wrong."
"C'mon, we've passed this wall three times." She complains.
"It's made with the same wall sprite as every other wall in this tower; it makes sense that it looks identical." I counter.
"Maybe, but you don't know that." She bickers.
"My dad designed how everything in this game looks." I tell her and she pouts.
"That doesn't mean he told you anything. Besides, that point proves nothing!"
"Correct, but I'd hoped it would shut you up." We glare at each other for a moment before Marine breaks off the small contest with a huff.
"Has anyone ever told you how insufferably rude you are?" Marine asks, shattering the silence into a million tiny shards and I sigh. "It has been heavily implied upon numerous occasions, why?"
"Are you like this to everyone?"
"Take a wild guess."
"Even to your father? Were you like this to Shiniki?" She questions rapidly.
"I make a point of not giving anyone any special treatment." I reply through grit teeth. How dare she use Shino's name like that! "God, you're an arsehole!" She exclaims.
"So I've been told."
"Well, we're here." I say unceremoniously as we turn a corner and, sure enough, there's a large group of monsters called gerebins. They're velociraptor-like things with three tails and lot of their attacks involve jumping and coming down on their target from above. There is an easy way to counter their jumping attacks that involves impaling them on your weapon as they come down and let their momentum do all the work. Of course, this won't work if you're using an axe or a brick-on- ahem, a mace. "Alright, you go kill them, I'll wait here." I say and Marine looks at me incredulously.
"You're not going to help?"
"Hadn't planned on it."
"But... why?"
"You doubted my sense of direction and called me rude – however true it may be – but mainly because I'm not the one who has to level up quickly." I explain.
"I guess that makes sense... but aren't you going to fight alongside me and give me tips?"
"You want tips? I believe there's a tutorial for that, but okay. Hit the monsters with your sword, don't let them hit you, and don't die. There, I gave you three. Feel like you're getting value for money?"
"Not particularly."
"Too bad, so sad. Now hurry up, we're on a schedule here at Rin's Tours of Death, customer irritation guaranteed."
"I hate you."
"Have you started yet?"
Marine stalks off angrily to fight the gerebins, drawing her sword in the process. As she gets close, they notice her presence and turn on her as one. There are twenty-three of them, and they're all around level twenty-five, with a leader at twenty-seven. "Oh crap." I hear Marine curse as the gerebins collectively angrily hiss at her.
"Congratulations, you're not dead." I tell Marine as she walks back to me on level thirty-nine and on low health. "Shut up." She snaps rudely.
"You're in an awfully bad mood for someone who just levelled up twice in fifteen minutes." I reply a little teasingly and she glares at me. "Shaddup, I will hurt you."
"Said the level thirty-nine to the level seventy-seven." I reply smoothly. Ooh, now I've done it, she's really mad now. This is why Shino was my only friend; he rarely got pissed off at anything, least of all me. Hmm. Maybe I'm being just a little bit too harsh. Maybe a little praise is in order.
"Look, Marine, you did a good job. I didn't help because I had confidence in you succeeding." I say. Those words taste strange flicking over my tongue. Marine's scowl softens. "Really? You mean that?"
"Y-yeah... until you- ahem, nothing." I start, but halt my words before they can do unintentional damage. "Until what?" She asks suspiciously. I think I can hear her scowl coming back.
"Nothing." I lie, pokerfaced.
"Rin." Oh, she's mad again. But what I was going to say would only serve to anger her further. "Tell me." She says forcefully. Oh well, she literally asked for it. "I had total confidence in you until you swung your sword." I say honestly, accepting whatever fate may come.
Marine grabs me by the shoulders and pins me to a wall. "What do you mean?" Yep, that's a lethal glare alright. If I explain myself, it'll only throw kerosene onto an already-raging inferno. Oh well, I do have the occasional arsonistic tendency. "Honestly, you're not a very good swordsman, well, swordswoman. Woeful, in fact."
Do bombs go off silently? Because Marine's been quiet for a good ten seconds now. "How can I get better?" She asks abruptly.
"What?" I ask, very surprised that I haven't yet received an uppercut to the jaw.
"I asked you how I can get better."
"Well... training, I guess. Lots of it." I suggest.
"How will I know when I'm better?"
"Um... your moves will flow into each other more, you won't have so many blocky movements, yeah, that sounds about right." I tell her quickly. Is she going to hit me or not? If she's angry, I'd prefer that the hit me, I understand pain better than things like 'the silent treatment' or whatever. That's something I've learnt about myself over the years.
"Will you train me?" She asks intensely and she's not kidding, I can tell by the look in her eyes. I never really understood how people got messages by looking into the eyes of others, and I still don't. Maybe I'm imagining things. Her gaze is unblinking and unwavering, she's being sincere and- how can I say no to a face like that? ...God, I'm an arsehole. "No." I tell her with finality. I'm not sure whether I said that because I meant it or to give my mind the middle finger. She lets go of me and I drop to the ground, only now do I realise that she had been holding me up off of my feet. "Well, if you say so..." She mutters, more disappointed than angry now. Crap, now I feel bad. I need an excuse to make everything better ASAP. "Marine, it's not that I don't want to, I would train you, but we use different weapons. I couldn't help you anyway. I'm sorry." I say to her, mentally ignoring the similarities between the sword and rapier, including the fact that a rapier is a class of sword. "Yeah, I guess you're right." She sighs and walks away dejectedly. I hurry to follow her, I'm the map guy, after all.
Urgh, I feel even crappier now.
In all honesty, this wasn't the way that I had initially planned on this chapter going and ending it like this depresses me a little. But hey, you guy are the important ones here, what did you think? I've got various other plot points set in stone already, it's just this part in the story that I'm sort of pulling out of thin air, that's why my updates are taking a while. That and human laziness. Also, please let me know if you think the quality of my writing is dropping, I've been trying to maintain a good standard at the least, but I feel that I may have unintentionally started to let go with the current haphazardness of this point in the story. Well, goodbye, I hope to see you all next chapter (whenever it comes to exist).