SAO: The Rangers Black and Blue
Sorry that last chapter was so short, that is why this will be posted as a bonus chapter!
Chapter 26: Morning Dew Part 2
(1st person, Kirito, November 2nd, 9:04pm)
"You're getting pretty good at this." I said to Sinon after our 4th game of go.
"Thanks to you teaching me." she answered.
"Do you want to play again or should we go to bed?" I asked.
"Let's go to bed, hopefully the girl will be awake by tomorrow." Sinon answered and I nodded.
(November 3rd, 9:06am)
"Wake up Kirito!" I heard and opened my eyes.
The little girl we found in the forest yesterday had woken up.
We walked over to her.
"Hi, what's your name?" asked Sinon awkwardly.
"My name? My name is Yui... I think." Yui said.
"You think? What were you doing in that forest, were you there with your parents?" Sinon asked.
"I don't remember." she said sadly.
'I think she has some form of amnesia.' I thought to Sinon.
Sinon thought back 'Seems like it, later today let's take her down to the [Town of Beginnings] and see if anyone remembers her.'
I nodded and said to Yui "My name is Kirito."
Then I pointed to Sinon and said "This is Sinon."
"Kito? Sion?" said Yui.
"Ki-ri-to, Si-non." I said as clearly as possible.
"Kito? Sion?" said Yui.
"Just call us whatever is easiest for you." I said.
"Papa! Mama!" Yui said.
Sinon and I looked at each other awkwardly.
"I'm papa?" I asked.
"Kito papa! Sion mama!" Yui said.
"Okay, we'll be your parents for now." I said, it wasn't like we had much choice.
"Yay!" said Yui and hugged me.
"I'm sure you're hungry, you haven't eaten in a while probably." I said.
'Kirito, you know I can't cook...' Sinon thought at me.
'In the real world I would alternate with Leafa cooking dinner, so if I use the 'manual' mode it should turn out fine.' I thought back to her.
'You? Cooking? That doesn't sound possible.' Sinon thought at me cruelly.
'What makes you think that?' I asked sarcastically.
I went to the kitchen and made some sandwiches, which turned out fine, though worse then Asuna's.
Yui ate them all very fast, slowing down towards the end.
Then she went to sleep.
"She looks adorable." Sinon said, referring to the sleeping Yui, who acted much younger then she looked, which wasn't all that surprising if she lost her memories.
"After she wakes up let's take her to the [Town of Beginnings] and see if anyone knows her." I said.
"Sounds like a good idea, if she logged in here with any family they would be really worried right now." Sinon said.
(1 hour later)
Yui finally woke up.
"Yui, let's see go to the first floor and see if anyone knows you or if something causes you to remember." I said.
"Okay!" said Yui, cheerfully as ever.
"She's more cheerful then Leafa." muttered Sinon to which I nodded.
I picked up Yui and had her ride on my neck, then we set off in the direction of the main town.
Once we arrived and stood on the teleport gate a I said "Teleport Town of Beginnings!" and after a flash of light we appeared in the Town of Beginnings.
We started walking and I asked Yui "Does any of this look familiar to you?"
"No." Yui said.
That is strange, every player was here at the very start of the game when Kayaba announced that this was a death game.
We started walking down the streets when Sinon asked "Don't you think it is a bit desolate? Of the remaining seven and a half thousand people about 30% live in the Town of Beginnings, so where are they?"
"Probably in their houses for whatever reason." I said.
Suddenly we heard "Let the children go!" coming from an alley nearby.
Sinon and I looked at each other, nodded, and started running in the direction of the sound, me holding onto Yui tightly to make sure she didn't fall off.
Yui seemed to enjoy the ride.
We ran around the corner and saw three people from ALF blocking the way of a woman about to grab her sword.
We jumped over the ALF soldiers and saw 3 children with their stuff on the floor.
"Don't interfere with ALF business!" said the ALF soldier in the center.
"'Business'?" I asked sarcastically.
"This looks more like extortion of children." Sinon said.
"Put your gear back on." I said to the children.
"You don't seem to understand how things work around here." said the ALF officer.
Sinon's dagger appeared in her hand after a few button taps.
"You'll live through this, probably..." Sinon said in a scary voice.
With she ran forward and repeatedly attacked the officer, we were in a safe zone so he didn't take damage and her cursor didn't turn orange, but from his perspective it would be somewhat painful and very scary.
He was being hit in the face with a dagger 4 or 5 times per second after all.
After a bit Sinon got bored and hit him much harder, sending him flying.
"Next time it will be a duel." she said coldly and sent him flying with a [Martial Arts] skill kick.
"Don't just stand there! Do something!" yelled the officer to his men, they did decide to do something, they turned and ran away.
The officer scrambled up and followed them.
"Thank you." said the women.
"No problem." Sinon said.
"My name is Sasha. What are your's?" said the women.
"I'm Sinon." Sinon said.
"And I'm Kirito." I said.
"Would you like some tea?" asked Sasha.
"Yes please." said Sinon.
"Come with me then, I made the church into a place for all the children to stay." she said.
Good, she might know about Yui then.
We were about to follow her back when Yui muttered something and then collapsed with the area around us glitching and static overriding all other noise.
After a moment it stopped.
We followed Sasha back to the church and when we entered we saw a LOT of children there, like 40 or 50.
We put Yui to bed in one of the guest beds and then sat down at a rather small wooden circular table and Sasha gave us some tea..
"Thank you for helping." she said.
"No problem, we never liked the ALF anyway." Sinon said.
"You obviously don't live on this floor, so where are you from?" she asked.
"We're from the front lines, we were taking a break. By the way, do you think you would recognize most of the children on this floor?" I asked.
"Yes." she answered.
"Have you seen Yui before? We found her on the 22nd floor and she seems to have lost her memories." I said.
"No, I go around this city daily looking for children but I haven't seen anyone like her." Sasha said.
I was about to say something when Yui came out of the room she was staying in.
"Hey Yui." said Sinon and walked over to her.
"Hey." Yui said and hugged Sinon.
Before anything else could happen there was a knock on the door.
Sasha walked over and opened it and on the other side there was a silver haired woman in what looked to be some form of ALF uniform.
"Hello." she said.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"I am Yulier of the Aincrad Liberation Force." she said.
"Are you here about earlier today?" I asked.
"In a way, but not in the way you think." Yulier said.
"I wanted to than you for putting those men in their place, what they were doing is not what ALF was created for." she said.
"And also I would like to ask for help." she said.
"What do you need help with?" I asked skeptically.
"A man named Kibaou rose to power and created what ALF is today." she said.
Okay, this story was getting more believable now. If I recall correctly Kibaou is the reason everyone hates us.
"When people started complaining that we weren't helping clear the game enough he took the strongest players and made a party and sent them to the front lines, they were led by a man named Kobatz." she said.
Those idiots that led to me soloing the floor boss.
"When they were defeated he was getting a lot of flak and he was almost kicked from the guild, so he took to desperate measures and told Thinker that he wanted to talk to him unarmed." she said.
"Kibaou lured him into a dungeon unarmed and trapped him there with no way out, the dungeon is very high level and opened up after the 50th floor was cleared. When I heard that two very high level players had showed up I wanted to ask you to help me get him out." she said.
Sinon and I looked skeptical but Yui said "It's okay, she's telling the truth."
"You can tell?" asked Sinon.
"I don't know how, but I know it." said Yui.
"Oh what the hell, I'd rather believe her and be wrong then not believe her and regret it." I said and Sinon nodded.
"Okay, we'll help. Yui you stay here with Sasha until we come back, okay?" I said.
"NO! I'm coming with you!" said Yui.
Sinon and I looked at each other.
Then Sinon said "Fine, but stay with me, okay?"
"Okay!" said Yui cheerfully.
(Sinon, 11:03am)
We arrived at the dungeon which had a hidden entrance near the [Monument of Life].
We stood in front of the dungeon and after a second or two Yui said "I'm not scared!" with determination.
Kirito and I laughed slightly and Yui pouted.
We walked into the dungeon and the enemies were really weak.
"These enemies are really weak." I said.
"They get stronger as you go along, also they may be weak for you but they are definitely A LOT stronger then anything on this floor." she said.
And indeed after a bit of walking the monsters started taking some killing, which Kirito was doing the most of.
I wasn't really helping because he didn't need it and because I was making sure Yui doesn't go anywhere and Yulier wasn't helping because she couldn't.
After a while of fighting Yulier said "We have nearly reached his location, he hasn't moved from there in 3 days so he is probably in a safe zone, we can teleport out once we get there."
We turned a corner and saw a well-lit room, which was probably a safe zone, but the corridor widened before it which I had a bad feeling about.
Apparently so did Kirito, but Yulier didn't.
She ran forward and yelled "Thinker!"
"""Wait! STOP!""" yelled Kirito, Thinker, and I.
But she didn't stop in time and a giant scythe came down on her, Kirito appearing there just in time to block it.
Yulier made it to the safe zone and Kirito yelled "Get Yui to the safe zone!" to me.
I did as he said and took Yui to the safe zone, then got my bow out and shot the boss so Kirito could retreat.
I caught a glimpse of the boss's name, it was called [The Fatal Scythe].
Kirito jumped back and said "That thing could be from the 90th floor."
We were fighting a boss, with the power of a boss from the 90th floor, this couldn't end well.
Kirito drew his second sword and ran forward, slashing at the boss.
He managed to hit it repeatedly, but its HP barely went down.
Then the boss swung down and Kirito couldn't dodge, so he 'blocked' with his crossed swords.
The boss's scythe hit his swords and he instantly lost more then half his HP and was thrown back into me hard enough that my HP dropped below half.
Somehow we both ended up stunned.
This was not good...
Then Yui walked out from the safe zone.
"Yui! What are you doing?" I yelled.
"It's okay. I remember now." Yui said and walked forward.
The boss swung its scythe at her and the scythe... bounced off thin air with an [Immortal Object] message.
The scythe was stunned by its attack being blocked and didn't attack again.
Then Yui floated into the air and her clothes changed back to the white dress they found her in.
A sphere of fire appeared in her right hand and extended into the form of a sword, then it hardened into a burning sword made of red metal.
Yui swung the sword down onto the boss which tried to block, but the scythe was surrounded by tendrils of flame.
The tendrils crawled along the scythe covering the the whole thing in fire, then proceeding to the boss itself.
After several seconds the whole boss was covered in flames then the flames shrunk to nothing, deleting the boss.
I say deleting not killing because it hadn't died, there were no polygons of something shattering after its HP or durability reached zero, it just vanished with no trace.
Then the sword vanished and Yui dropped to the ground.
We all walked into the safe zone.
"You said you remembered?" I asked.
"Yes, Kirito, Sinon." she said, pronouncing our names right.
"The system Cardinal that runs this world is responsible for caring for the world. Including the mental health of players. Mental Health Counseling Program Prototype 001, Yui, that's who I am."
"You're an AI?" I asked.
"Yes, I was designed to take care of players, that is why I was given the ability to emulate emotions." said Yui, crying slightly. I hugged her.
"For reasons I never understood on the official launch date Cardinal prevented me from interacting players so all I could do was watch, their mental state, was in a word, terrible." Yui said.
"Slowly errors piled up inside me until one day I saw two players with different emotions then anyone else, joy, peace and something else... I wandered through the playing field, hoping to get as close to both of you as I could without being detected."
"So that's why you were in the forest." I said.
"Yes, that's why. I've wanted to meet the two of you for the longest time. That's strange, isn't it? It should be impossible for me to think things like that. I'm not human. I'm a program after all." said Yui, crying a bit more now.
"Your emotions are real even if you were created by someone." I said.
"I don't know, I'm confused. I don't know what's happened to me." Yui said.
Then Yui said "What I want... I want... I wanna stay with you forever... Daddy... Mommy..."
"We will, we'll be together." said Kirito and hugged Yui, and me in the process.
"It's too late." Yui said.
"For what?" asked Kirito.
"Look." Yui said, tapping on what looked like an obsidian bench in the middle of the room.
A keyboard of blue lines appeared in the air above it, along with a display with some nonsense information, Kirito didn't look very surprised.
"This is actually a console the GM can use to gain emergency access to the system. I used it to delete the monster in the corridor. And now, because I disobeyed the Cardinal's directive, the system is running a check on my program. It thinks I'm a foreign object now. I'll probably be deleted at once."
Yui then started fading "Don't go Yui!" I yelled.
"Stay happy please." said Yui and then shattered into light.
Kirito rushed over to the console and started typing something.
There was a progress bar on the screen and it was filling up, just before it filled up Kirito pressed enter on the keyboard.
Just after that the bar filled up and there was a flash of blue light that sent Kirito flying to the end of the room.
I ran over to him and asked "Are you alright Kirito?"
He raised a hand and dropped a blue tear drop into my hand.
"What is it?" I asked.
"It's Yui's Heart, I took the Yui's program and made it into a game object. It is saved to my NerveGear so once we get out I can create an environment that she can work in and we can restore her." Kirito said.
I couldn't help but smile at that, just all the more reason to get out of here.
How was that? Decent? I hope so.
Please tell me what you think with a review!
Anyway, cya me oouuttiiyy!