Chapter 18: It's a Scary Word

Max Floor: 54 Level: NA

The stone walls, made perpetually damp by unseen water, echoed back Minnow's words in the uncomfortable silence. The flickering light of pale torches played over Red's face, casting unsteady shadows across his abnormally grim expression.

"Are you sure?" he asked in Russian, voice firm.

"Not certain, but very confident," nodded Minnow.

"But, murder…" muttered Able.

"He's right that there were people in here," said Rabid in English. "I only saw the two of them for a moment but, they looked to be decent level to me. At any rate, they were kitted out better than that poor guy."

Red ran his hands through his short, ashen brown, hair. Murder was a pretty hefty accusation, but it didn't exactly fly in the face of the evidence. They hadn't had the chance to think about the reason the low level player had been here initially: the giant three-headed monster was a pretty big distraction. Now with it dead and everyone up to full health, the question had to be asked: what was he doing here? Minnow's explanation was not a bad one at all. And while Red was trying not to show it, it scared him.

"Someone who didn't want to get marked as a red player brought him here, far above his level curve, to get killed by a mob he couldn't hope to fight," repeated Minnow, "all they would have to deal with is one of them going orange for a week from rooting him. If we hadn't been here no one would have known."

Red trained his gaze on the floor. That had actually been the first time Red had ever…seen someone go. In fact, he was pretty sure it was the first time anyone in his guild had. Players on the middling floors kept big safety margins, so deaths were rare. On the lower floors they were rarer still, to the point that more people on Floors 20 and lower died from PKs than mobs. And PKs weren't common.

Looking up Red glanced over his guildmates' faces. Everyone looked-at the very least-uncomfortable. Able almost looked like he was in shock. Wind was glowering, hands tightened into fists, eyes locked onto the far wall. It wasn't an expression Red was used to seeing from him; Wind was almost always laid back. Looking back at Minnow though, his face was different.

He didn't seem to be unsettled at all. Serious, angry maybe, but not disturbed. Almost as if the death itself didn't bother him, just the apparent motivation. This wasn't his first time seeing somebody bite it, clearly. But then, who had he seen die? Casualties on the mid-floors were a big deal, maybe he'd seen one but…

"We need to tell someone," said Red, shaking off his concerns about Minnow. He was probably imagining it. The rest of the Blood Dragoons murmured their agreement.

"Who though?" wondered Blizzard. His face was twisted awkwardly, like he felt sick. Perhaps he did.

"The Liberation Army?" suggested Able.

"Maybe," grunted Red. The Aincrad Liberation Army claimed to keep the peace over every floor, though in practice their authority only extended over the first twenty floors or so. Higher than that and people started to ignore them. Still, they were the closet thing they had to a police force in SAO. They were organised, and easily the largest guild in the game with over a hundred members. When compared to the 7000 or so inhabitants of Aincrad, they really were an army.

"What are you guys saying?" asked Minnow in Russian.

"We're trying to decide who to tell about this," explained Red.

"I was thinking, maybe the ALA," interjected Able.

Minnow sighed, and looked to be debating something with himself. His faced screwed up and his eyes wandered away from the other players. Red was just about to speak again, when Minnow turned back to him. "It would be better to contact a frontline guild," he said, "we're past the limits of the Liberation Army's power up here, and we don't know who's responsible for this."

Red raised an eyebrow, while Able scoffed outright. "Weren't you the one bad mouthing the frontliners just ten minutes ago?" he asked.

"Yeah, but it's like you said: they're pretty good at what they do," countered Minnow.

"So?" butted in Red, "What do you want me to do? Teleport up to Floor 50, knock on the door of the Knights of the Blood Oath and say, 'yo, Heathcliff, a player's been killed down on floor 38, and we think it might have been murder. You should like, send ten of your best players down here to deal with it.'"

Minnow looked taken aback. "I, I guess not," he stammered, "I hadn't really, I mean…" his voice trailed off. Red sighed and ran his hand over his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Let's, let's just go home," he decided. "I need to think about this some more, and we'll need to talk it through. Minnow, if you wanna go and talk to some top tier guild, you can go ahead and try, but don't hold your breath, k?"

"…Yeah."

Red turned back to his guild. "Come on guys," he said in English, "let's get the hell outta here."

People kept staring. Eltelm tried to pull his hood down further over his face, though of course that did nothing. People recognised him as much from his cloak as they did for anything else. He'd make sure to ditch it soon enough. Would he go cloakless, or just change the colour? He could try wearing a long coat of some kind, or a robe, or just not have any kind of over-garment. Options, options, options, he reflected, a little bitterly. He would have a lot of options, since, technically, he was actually quite rich. It was a weird notion, as in the real world his family had wavered constantly around the poverty line. He'd only gotten the NerveGear through a mixture of luck and swarms of odd jobs.

He growled quietly. All of the attention was making him feel hot under the collar. She was late. And the longer he was here, the more likely it was that one of Star Thegns would show up. It would take a little while for information to filter through to them but, they'd hear about him being here sooner or later. Eltelm wanted to be long gone by the time that happened.

"Wow, you look pissed," said a voice, all matter-of-fact.

They had not talked it through. Instead, upon reaching the guild house they all just sat around. The silence was nearly painful, but no one considered breaking it. Eventually, Blizzard went out and Able disappeared up to his room. As Rabid stared out of the window in silence, Wind got to his feet, and muttering something about the practice yard, slipped out the back door.

Red hated this: his head was swirling, his stomach churned, and he found himself constantly trying to not think too much about what had happened that afternoon. Try as he might the possibilities kept creeping in. Alternate explanations for the death-stuff that was not murder-kept offering themselves up. Each one he found unsatisfactory though.

True, Red had himself been trapped in an area much too high level for him not that long ago, and perhaps that guy's companions had just been dicks, or were too scared to think clearly. But then, how had they gotten inside of the room without he and the others seeing? The only way in could have been through teleportation, which would have required them to set a waypoint before. That meant it had to be premeditated. No accident could bring about such a particular set of circumstances.

And yet Red was desperate for it not to be…to be murder. Because it was like Minnow had said: if they hadn't been there, purely by coincidence, a one-in-a-thousand chance, no one would have the slightest idea. How many times had no one been there? It was frightening prospect, the idea that you could die, and that no one would ever know what had become of you. That you would be powerless to resist. It was also terrifying because now they were involved, whether they liked it or not. Red felt like there was a kind of, responsibility, on him now, as the guild's leader. The murderers couldn't be allowed to just get away with this. But it always came back to the same thing: who could Red tell? Who could he go to for help and actually expect to get it?

After a good while of this, Red hauled himself up, and without a word to Rabid left the guild-house in a hurry. His feet led him straight to the inn, where he dropped himself on a bar stool, bought ten rounds of beer and one shot of whisky. He drank that first, wincing a little as it burned its way down. He knew that by the time he finished the last of the alcohol he'd be out cold. That was, of course, the point.

Getting drunk in SAO was weird. It functioned like a de-buff that you picked up over time. One stack did nothing, two stacks started to create a motion-blur. At five stacks all mobs registered as being within 2 levels of your own. By the time you got to ten, it was nigh on impossible to tell where things actually were in relation to you. After that you passed out. The more pleasant aspects of getting drunk were much less substantial here than in the real world. You felt a bit more cheerful, and the stuff often tasted good, but that was about it. Right now, Red was more interested in just forgetting his problems.

He'd only gotten to the second beer though when somebody put a hand on his shoulder. Red looked round to see a girl, short, mixed-race and cute with (unnaturally bright) blonde hair. There were cartoon whiskers drawn on her face.

"Excuse me," she said, her English accented and concise, but clear enough, "I am looking for a friend of mine, and I was wondering if you'd seen him."

"What's he like?" asked Red, not really interested.

"He looks fourteen, white, dark hair and eyes, most likely wears a cloak," explained the girl, gesturing vaguely with her hands. "He might seem a little…jumpy?" she added, pausing for a few moments over the last word.

"You talking about Minnow?" Red asked, surprised.

"Yes!" confirmed the girl with a nod.

"Um, yeah we were partied up earlier today," said Red. This was, unexpected. Minnow had said he didn't have many friends, and the little Japanese he'd used made it sound like he was far from fluent. Why was this girl (whose main language seemed to be Japanese from her accent) looking for him?

"Really?" she asked, also looking surprised. Then she smiled, "that's nice."

"Um, sure." Over the last year Red had gotten used to talking to people who didn't know much English. They often said odd things, but with the day he'd had so far, and the fact that this girl was looking for someone who wasn't supposed to have any friends, this was all too bizarre.

"Do you know, where he is now?" asked the girl, pausing in the middle of her sentence to think.

"I mean, I can look him up on my friend's list," said Red, hesitantly. "But why do you want to find him?"

"Well," began the girl, making a lop-sided grin, "I want to check on him, but he deleted me."

Red presumed she meant Minnow had deleted her from his friends list. But why? This was all starting to seem suspicious. "How do you know him?" Red persisted.

"We, are friends," replied the girl.

"Then why aren't you in his friends list?" asked Red.

"Because…" the girl stopped for a second, then leaned in close to whisper, "he's hiding."

"From who?" Red suddenly had the feeling his day was about to get even more complicated.

"From me," said the girl, simply. "Actually," she corrected herself, "he is hiding from everyone."

"Who are you?" asked Red.

"Nobody special," she smiled, "Not to mid-levels, at least."

Did that mean that she was not a mid-level? What did a high-level want with Minnow? "I, don't think I should tell you," said Red, visibly cautious. His mind was unwittingly flitting back to an hour ago.

The girl folded her arms and huffed. She muttered something in Japanese, suddenly speaking at around three times the speed. The two of them were both dragged roughly out of their confrontation by a voice that sounded more than a little annoyed.

"What are you doing here?!" it demanded in accented English from the inn's doorway. The other patrons all looked up at the noise. It had come from a short figure in a green cloak, framed in the door way. He was scowling in the girl's direction.

Completely unheeding of how obviously angry Minnow was, the girl called out a friendly greeting in Japanese and scampered over. She started to rattle something off to him in the same language, but he gave her a pointed look, and she stopped. The girl laughed awkwardly and rubbed the back of her neck, looking apologetic. That didn't last long though, as her grin returned and-holding him by the arm-dragged Minnow outside. It didn't seem like Minnow had noticed Red, not too surprising, as the kid had only ever seen red in his armour, and after returning home he had switched equipment sets to some casuals.

Red's head was spinning now. Minnow did know the girl, or certainly seemed too. He hadn't seemed pleased to see her, but she brushed it off, like she was teasing him. And what had she meant by hiding? The idea crept into his head to go out and follow them. Then again, it wasn't any of Red's business was it? Was it?

There was almost nothing about the current situation that Red understood, and he didn't like it all. He felt that he had two options: he could either bury everything that happened today into the back of his mind (if the others would let him) and hope nothing came of it, or he could step up and put both feet in it.

Grumbling both to and about himself, Red hastily sold his remaining drinks back to the NPC bartender and slipped quietly outside. At first it looked like Minnow and the girl had vanished; the grey paved square outside was empty, apart from three guys in different coloured robes that walked by, heading from and too somewhere Red didn't care about. But Red had a high tracking skill and could see things that other people couldn't. He followed two lines of glowing footprints from where they veered sharply to the left and down an alley.

He went cautiously, listening keenly. The tracks led to a dead end by a low wall that connected the two buildings and marked the boundary of the safe-zone. Red paused for a moment, before making a guess and scrambling over the wall. He allowed himself a satisfied smile when that the footprints resumed on the other side. It looked as if they didn't want to be followed.

Now that he was outside of the safe-zone, Red made sure to pause and reequip his armour and weapons. He tried not to think about the fact that as a high-level the girl could probably make mince-meat of him if she wanted to. At the least the armour made him feel better.

The tracks led out into the fields, which on this floor happened to be actual fields. Hedges and simple timber fences divided them up. Most were filled with ragged, uncut grass, but some had crops growing in them like wheat and barley. The occasional copse of trees broke it up, along with a large wood that hid the looming form of the dungeon from view of the town. It was all very much the classic image of Medieval Europe.

Red only had to follow the tracks across one field before he heard voices. It seemed like the two of them hadn't gone far. He crept low to keep out of sight, stopping under the line of a hedge. Right now, Minnow was talking, and he seemed agitated. Red couldn't tell exactly what was said though, since it was in Japanese.

Hang on, he thought, didn't Minnow say he only really spoke Russian?

The girl replied in a dismissive tone. Minnow grumbled. Then he sighed and continued on, tone more level. Red could only understand a handful of words due to the pace of their conversation. It sounded like something was troubling Minnow, and he wanted the girl to take it seriously. It seemed to work rather well as her response was decidedly subdued compared to before. Their back and forth continued for a while, the tone now clearly dialled down. Red wondered if Minnow was telling her about the death. For the first time a very unpleasant idea occurred to him. That Minnow (or whoever he was) might have had something to do with it. But that wouldn't make sense, would it?

Suddenly, Red realised that he'd stopped listening. It had gone quiet. Quick as a flash, Red grasped at one of his concealed pouches for a teleport crystal. But he was too slow.

A hand gripped him by the back of the neck and in a single motion hauled him over the hedge. He landed roughly on the ground, having been thrown a couple of metres. Red sat up to find Minnow and the girl standing over him.

"Uh, hey guys?"

Afraid I wasn't super quick getting this one out, but hey, it was faster than the two years it took me last time! Although, perhaps that's not a very good benchmark to use. Still, new cover art, so that's nice. I felt the story deserved something better than my best from three years ago. Hopefully I can get the next chapter out a little quicker. Also, I just discovered after using this site for three years that you can update chapters you've already written. Yes I know; I'm a moron. So, I'm going to try and push myself to overhaul every chapter up to probably number 16. In the later chapters it'll mostly be edits, but there's some questionably choices I made two years ago that I'd very much like to un-make, if I can find a way that doesn't upset the story's cannon, such as it is.

And to those reading around the time I put this up:
Merry Christmas!