Author's Note: Chapter 38 is done! Amazing what you van accomplish with self-quarantine. Don't worry I'm still getting out and exercising and stuff.

Also I do not own SAO or Star Wars.


Chapter Thirty-Eight - It Works in Mysterious Ways


Kirito felt his body lying over a cold, hard surface as the room he was in shook softly back and forth. His eyes slowly opened revealing a dim amount of light in the room around him. He went to cover the shining light overhead that was piercing his weak eyes, but noticed as his right hand moved over his head, he had lost all the feeling in the skin.

This was probably because his hand was now robotic. A cybernetic appendage created in the world of Star Wars used to replace his maimed hand from the fight with Darth Rosario. The skin was removed, only revealing a skeletal prosthetic limb that moved its fingers just like a real hand.

Kirito studied the odd new addition to his arm under the light of the dark grey room, but stopped looking over his hand once a voice on the other side of the barracks spoke up.

"That was the first time I've helped someone apply a cyborg hand…I guess I'm pretty familiar with the feeling now." Asuna Yuuki sat on a stool a little ways from the medical bed that kept Kirito relaxed. She held out her gloved right hand, and removed the article of clothing that concealed her own metallic arm for him to see.

Kirito glanced at his hand, then at hers. Then, his eyes traveled across her body, and noticed she was now wearing a different styled outfit. Simple light grey robes, with slim black pants. A belt cinched her cotton tunic together, and the sleeves were absent, leaving her arms bare. Her boots were very small and black, and her auburn hair was tied up to her head, similar to how she used to wear it in GGO.

Her curved lightsaber hung from her waist, but that was only the second shiniest thing about her calm personality. Her eyes, her sweet brown eyes that he remembered looking into during his fight through Aincrad, were now wide and glossy as usual.

The Asuna he knew may have still been missing her mind and memories, but on the outside, she was back.

"Asuna." Kirito sat up, and slid backward to bring his sitting body to a right angle. He used his left hand to find the hole in his chest, but found it was now patched and bandaged all underneath his still grey combat outfit.

"Kirito…I…" Asuna turned away from her old friend, and looked at the ground. Her eyes looked dark, and her face seemed sorry. "Lucas destroyed Yui. I'm not sure what happened to her after that."

"She'll be fine…" Kirito pulled his legs over the side of the bed, and sat on the edge of the hard sheet of metal. "I'll reset her program on my home computer when we get out of this game. That should set her back to normal."

"When we get out…right." Asuna nodded, and brought one hand over to rub her right shoulder.

Kirito let a small smile take his face as he looked at the confused girl. "You look a lot better, Asuna. Your eyes are back to normal."

Asuna silently nodded, and beamed at her former ally. "I feel a lot better too…it's like a giant cloud just lifted itself out of my head and off of my shoulders. My breathing is a little weak, but I feel much calmer now."

He was happy to hear that. It was one step closer to the Asuna he met in SAO. "And your memories? Are they all back?"

She shook her head. "All of your Republic friends had their memories wiped but felt no mind control. I think it's safe to say that I'm in that boat now too. It's like a giant chunk of my brain is missing, but I'm a lot les angry at everything."

Kirito shuttered at that thought while he thought back to the incident with Ordinal Scale and the Augma not to long ago. Asuna had her memory stolen from SAO then too, only now it was a lot heavier than that.

He took the lightsaber sitting off the right side of his belt, and took it in his left hand. It immediately powered onto the mint-green blade. It was still the same lightsaber given to him by Amanda Lucas. He then located a newer, slicker weapon to his left belt, quickly grabbing it with his lead right hand. It powered on to show him the silky black and white-edge blade dropped by the defeated Luke Mathis after his confrontation with Asuna.

Kirito looked at the two colors again, and sighed with a smile. "Well that's pretty funny…they remind me of the Elucidator and Dark Repulser swords I used to wield in SAO. Same colors and everything."

Asuna had no idea what he was talking about, but she smiled for Kirito in support nonetheless. "And what about the sword I used in SAO? I heard I favored rapiers?"

Kirito answered. "Yea, your one-handed lightsaber handle is perfect for your combat style. Your sword wasn't red though, like a Sith lightsaber. It was plane silver with a green-ish hilt for a handle."

She nodded, but he was not done explaining. "Well, I guess the sheath for your sword was like a soft red, almost like a pink and red combined! Its name was Lambent Light, I think?"

"Lambent Light?" She repeated to herself, almost letting the words fly off her tongue and lift up her spirits. She smiled, and pulled out her curved-hilt saber, powering on the new soft magenta blade. Its color almost matched the description Kirito gave her, and with that she delivered an even brighter beaming smile than before.

"Well I guess this will have to do! It's from the crystal I found on Ilum. I just had it changed after we left Kaas City."

Kirito wanted to celebrate her new lightsaber color, but just barely caught the last part of her words. "Wait hold on, we left Kaas City?"

Asuna nodded, and her smile quickly faded as Kirito started to stand from his bed. "Is that okay? Hold on, you'll fall if you're not careful!"

Kirito was find to stand, but he accepted her help anyway. They walked into the cockpit of the Sith Fury starship, and discovered the vessel was still soaring through Hyperspace.

Kirito's moth was agape with confusion, and his arm was hanging over Asuna's shoulders. Asuna tried to explain, and kept her arm underneath his arms at his waist. "We left Dromund Kaas right after I defeated the Emperor. I entered the space above the planet and the Republic had just finished taking out our Command Space Station and my old flagship…the Mother's Rosario was in flames by the time we passed by. I set a course for the Unknown Regions of space immediately before your friends mistook us for a fleeing enemy. I've never entered hyper drive calculations faster in my life!"

Kirito leaned back in the pilot's chair and let the autopilot continue its charter through space. Asuna sat up in the co-pilot's chair, and kept her hands softly on her knees. They sat in the quiet room for a short while making no noises, until the rogue Jedi spoke his mind.

"So what was Lusac's motive? Did he want total control of a Star Wars galaxy? Was he trying to make a mindless army of drones to serve him in the real world?"

Asuna tensed up, and fleet her knees buckle together as her head lowered slightly in confusion. She looked to the ground, and spoke.

"He wanted me. He said he made me his apprentice because he loved me."

Kirito sat and absorbed that fact, then rolled his eyes and smiled. "Again? Geesh, that's the second time in a year."

"Wha-!?" Asuna's face turned the same color as her new lightsaber, and she leaned back in her chair as Kirito turned to explain.

"Hold on, let me explain! I mean technically this is the second time that's happened. A guy from your father's company in the real world tried to brainwash you into becoming his fiancé. He used the game ALO to try and take control of your brain."

"Oh…" Asuna nodded. "Lusac did mention that as well...that makes me a little more uncomfortable hearing it like that though."

Kirito put his arms casually behind his head, and kicked his feet up as he shut his eyes. "Eh, you should probably take it as a compliment! All these game makers are trying to make you there's by kidnapping your mind, it'd be a little more romantic if it wasn't so creepy…"

"Exactly, you ass!" She clenched the armrests to her side, and kicked the back of his chair from her seat. "It's totally creepy! I'd prefer to have a say in when I become somebody's fiancé…"

She looked over at Kirito as he almost fell out of his seat, and her cheeks flushed with warm emotion. She settled back into the back of her chair, and sighed deeply.

"Kirito…is that what you tried doing to me…in that SAO game?"

"WHAT!?" Kirito spun his chair around, and shouted as loud as he could. "No-no! I-I never tried to force you to marry me! It was in no way near similar to that!" He tried to gather his thoughts to understand why she would ask that, and then he let out a sigh of his own.

"But I guess, from knowing that it happened to you twice, it would make sense if I did that too. Who knows…I could just be lying about it, and acting all angry to hide my real intentions?"

Asuna's eyebrow was sticking up, and then she smiled as her body leaned forward out of her chair. "Is that so? Then what am I supposed to expect when we finally get out of this game…hmm?"

Kirito leaned forward, and gave her a grin as he looked her right in the eyes. "That's something you'll have to find out. Maybe I already forced you to marry me in real life and there's nothing you can do about it."

Asuna leaned back, and closed her eyes with a bright smile, showing off the red in her cheeks and the cheer in her attitude. Kirito would never make fun of this situation with Asuna if she had her memories of her horrible past in with Suguo Nobuyuki, but in this little moment traveling between the endless void of space, he enjoyed just being playful with Asuna once again.

The young lovers were cut off once the hyperlane ended, and the blank abyss of space came into view on their windshield. They both spun around and faced the dashboard, while Asuna checked the radar at the center.

"This part of space is totally empty. Even Ilum is several parsecs away from this quadrant."

"The Unknown Regions…" Kirito felt his chest turning cold on the inside, and tried to comb the starry sky with his eyes as they scanned for any noticeable sign of life. "Asuna, what made you fly us all the way out here?"

Her eye closed, then opened as they slowly turned to face Kirito. "I wanted to find that hidden planet, Mortis. I wanted to find Peter Mathis for you, and help you defeat him in battle, and log everyone out of this wargame."

"You do?" Kirito asked idiotically. Of course, she wanted to help, after all it was still Asuna. Kirito had defeated Amanda the Grand Jedi Master, and Asuna had eradicated Lucas the Dark Lord of the Sith. It only made sense that after both turning in their light and dark trappings for all-grey robes, only after they each brought balance to both side of the war. That they would find Mortis together and take out the neutral father, Peter Mathis, once and for all.

And then, after looking into each other's eyes with determined support, they both swiveled back to find a bizarrely dark red structure floating in space. It was etched with lines like a cybernetic device, but it stood on a point, and held eight flat surfaces along all its sides.

"It's an octahedron." Kirito had a mind for these kinds for things. "It's like a 3-D diamond."

"It's a monolith…" Asuna leaned forward to try and study the structure through the glass as they slowly floated toward the dark and sinister object. She had learned of things like these with Lusac during her training. "They're Easter eggs hidden throughout the game. A structure held together by an anchorite of the living Force. A person is living inside of that thing, holding it all together."

"How do you know that?" Kirito asked with a befuddled expression on his face.

Asuna never turned to face him, and drifted slowly back into her chair as she looked down at the ship's radar. "My training with the Sith… someone's just sent out a distress signal from the inside…they're trying to seek audience with another player in the game."

"It's him." Kirito's eyes narrowed in anger, and his brow folded to show his growing rage. "Peter Mathis. It has to be him."

"Kirito…" Asuna reached over and grabbed his robotic right hand with her human left one. "We have to be careful going near these things. Once they catch you in their gravitational pull, they…"

Too late. The Sith shuttle they had borrowed from the deceased Emperor Lusac was now trapped in a mysteriously powerful gravitational field. Kirito and Asuna held each other even tighter now, and soon, the Force-sensitive couple were both bathed in a radiant, blinding white light.


"Are you sure Silica and Lisbeth are both on their way back? I can't get a hold of anyone! No Kirito, no Agil, or the other leaders."

Chrysheight argued with the ace pilot, Klein, as the smuggler gunslinger casually strolled off the exit ramp from the Salamander. After the Republic victory over the Sith Empire, Admiral Chrysheight lost contact with several key players on his side of the field.

Klein shrugged, and turned to look out the great bay port looking over the blue and green planet, Dromund Kaas. "Relax. Agil's probably patrolling the wreckage for surviving Jedi, Silica is probably just bringing back that Bounty Hunter Lisbeth, and Kirito's probably just...I dunno, being Kirito?"

Chrysheight raised an eyebrow, and tried to understand how a Klein with no real memory of Kirito would still say that about his best friend. The wonders of their bonds still confused the Japanese Ministry agent to this moment. He then noticed a shuttle that was assigned to Agil's blue squadron land behind the Salamander, and turned to walk for the survivors.

"Just get back into the cockpit and see if you can reach Agil. Silica is probably on her way with the bounty hunter."

"Yea...I just said that." Klein went to turn back for the starship door. "Friggin' amateur..."

"Hands up, Sith! Hands where we can see 'em!"

Klein turned to look at Chrysheight, and both men ran around the Salamander to the very shuttle that just made its landing. When they arrived, the Jedi admiral had drawn his blue lightsaber, while Klein managed to pull two matching blaster pistols at two bizarre faces coming out of a Republic air craft."

"No way, Argo!? You're still alive?"

Argo stood with Sinon as they both had hands in their air. She tried to keep her eyes on the floor, while Sinon's looked out at the spinning blue marble of the planet down below.

Argo mumbled. "If you're going to kill me, just get it over with. I was really an Imperial player all along, so I technically didn't betray you guys."

Klein held a gun right for her head and frowned. "You can't take my satisfaction away by acting like your life no longer matters...I've been waiting to do this."

"Hold on." Chrysheight's reached over to lower Klein's arms downward, and his right hand held his lightsaber low to the ground as he looked to his lost acquaintance, Sinon. "Shino Asada. Where did you find this shuttle?"

Sinon still looked at them with sadness in her eyes, but her head turned sharply once she heard her real-world name come from his lips. "It was left by the Republic team who infiltrated our Space Station...no one survived on your team."

Klein remembered Agil was the one who led the assault, and now held his other gun to meet Sinon in the eyes. "My friend was on board that ship. Where is he?!"

"You killed him, ass." Argo's reply was snarky, and held no satisfaction other than seeing Klein's response. "When you shot me down...my ship crashed into the command bridge and crushed Master Agil."

Klein stumbled back a few feet, and his pistols almost fell out of his hands. "No...he couldn't have died from some random ship crash like that..."

"He didn't..." Sinon wanted to explain the whole situation before Argo took any more satisfaction from the grieving Republic players. "He probably could have lifted the rubble off his body if he focused on himself...but instead he chose to rescue Argo and me with his last bit of life."

"He saved you?" Chrysheight looked shocked. "He let you escape off the ship?"

Sinon's hands lowered, and fell to her side with very little energy left in her body. "He was quite the Jedi Knight..."

"Admiral!" A command officer shouted over the intercom system inside the hanger and alerted the entire group. "Enemy shuttle has been spotted! It appears to have the same tags as the one Emperor Lusac used on Ilum."

"Asuna!" Sinon turned for the large bay opening that connected the void of space to the hanger station aboard the Rath. The entire group follow her, but the Republic players including Klein and Chrysheight let her run past as she stopped at the edge of the protective blast shield.

She had no idea what was coming over, some feeling that had tickled her brain ever since she entered the world of Star Wars with her friends Lisbeth and Asuna. She had chosen the path of an Imperial Officer, with a specialty in sniping, but deep down...she held a sensitivity that most gun-wielding players did not possess in this game.

"That's not Lusac, it's Asuna." Sinon blurted out to the others as they joined her in the hanger. The group stopped running, and stopped to gaze at the fleeing Sith Fury shuttle heading for open space. Klein looked around rapidly, and tried to gather who was all left in the hanger.

"Well should we send a crew to investigate!? It might be the Emperor fleeing the scene!"

"Why do you say it's Asuna, Sinon?" Chrysheight gave her his full attention, and watched as her eyes continued to track the flying aircraft even as it soared farther into the black void.

"I...I can just feel something...a connection. Asuna's on board...and somebody's with her."

"Don't shoot it!" Another voice yelled from a swarm of landing transports. At the center of the new mess was the smuggler ship Pina, and running t the group on the edge of the docking back was Lisbeth and Silica with their arms waving in air.

"Kirito's on that ship! He's going to go find Peter Mathis!" Silica tried to catch her breath as they made it to the group, but found her palms grabbing onto her knees in exhaustion.

"Peter Mathis?" Chrysheight reappeared. "How do you know all of this?"

Lisbeth took over, standing equally as warn out as Silica. "We decided to leave the Shock Drum, and ran out to find Kirito and the Emperor. That's where we found Asuna loading him into Lusac's private shuttle. They're going off into deep space to see if he'll find them, or something."

Sinon's eyes grew wide, and turned to look at the Republic admiral she apparently once knew in the real world. "We can no longer help them from our position, but we can at least let them pass and give them a fighting chance."

Chrysheight found the Force to work in mysterious ways. The same being that apparently lifted Kirito and Asuna over Emperor Lusac had to be responsible for forcing Lisbeth and Silica to stop working on the Shock Drum. And if that were true, then it no doubt led Sinon toward him to halt his command to blast that fleeing Imperial Shuttle out of the sky.

"Alright then." The voice of Seijirou Kikuoka left the lips of the Chrysheight avatar as it looked out to the horizon of deep, open space. "Then all we have left is faith...Those two are our last hope."


Kirito and Asuna both woke up in the two lead chairs of the Sith Fury-class star ship. Their eyes were hazy, and their heads were heavy as they both moaned themselves awake, and stumbled to their wavering feet.

"Ugh…Kirito, are you okay?" Asuna asked with a hand over her head.

Kirito almost fell over, but caught himself barely. "I'm fine, Asuna…did we…did we just crash?"

"No, I don't think so…" Asuna gained her footing, and looked around the structure of the ship. "I don't smell any smoke, or see any fire. It looks like we landed judging by the view outside."

"Did you land the ship?" Kirito asked with a finger scratching his head. "I haven't flown a ship since I crash-landed on Korriban."

"No, I was in the co-pilot's chair…and I haven't flown since I crash-landed the Blood Oath over Ilum."

Both warriors blinked, then twiddled their thumbs as Kirito decided to break the ice.

"Yea, maybe it's a good thing neither of us were flying the ship."

"Oh, stop it, we were both shot down in those situations!" Asuna pressed the bottom to open the door out of the cockpit. "Come on, let's study the surface of the planet."

Kirito followed, but remained very hesitant as he lingered his way through the blast door. "Okay…but that red monolith didn't really look like a planet to me…"

They wondered through the lush, colorful rain forest sitting outside their starship that was somehow standing in perfect condition. Large green and blue jungle trees towered over the soft, bright brown soil scattered across the landscape, each area covered by vibrant bushes and shrubbery now and again. Kirito and Asuna could hear bizarre creatures sounding off in the great distance, but both were masters of the everlasting Force now, and felt no fear when walking along this uncharted region.

This was good, because the bushes to the far left of the pathway started rumbling with great force. The warriors drew their weapons, but waited to ignite the blades of their lightsabers until they were able to confirm the mysterious predator.

Their arms went up, but when a small rodent like creature passed into the dirt-lined path, and scurried off into the section of plants to its front, the in sync warriors let out giant gasps of air, and let their shoulders sink with relief.

"We can beat an entire family of video game makers…" Kirito let out some air as he stepped forward on the road. "But we can't stand tall against some tiny little mouse-thing…"

Soon after he finished, a large ball of green and white light whizzed through the opening in the trees and grabbed Asuna by two clawed feet as it dangled her in the air on its ascent. She screamed and flailed for it to let her go, and Kirito drew his blade to try and stop in from below.

"KIRITO!" Asuna tried to reach her lightsaber, but it was trapped under the toe of the large flying beast that had her by the waist. "STOP THIS FLYING BAT-THING RIGHT NOW!"

"What are you talking about, Asuna?!" Kirito launched his black lightsaber like a boomerang buzz saw as it hacked away the top of a very tall tree, but just missed the flying bird that was leaving his sights. "It's not a bat! It's like a white griffin with an eagle's head!"

"No, it most certainly isn't! It's some creep looking black bat thing with red eyes and I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!" Asuna sent a volt of red Sith lightning through her hands, and shocked the flying beast so hard it dropped her into the soft tree tops below her feet. She dangled for a short while, the slipped to the forest floor to re-join her companion. Both drew their remaining lightsabers, and now stood back to back as they each scanned part of the sky for the eventual return of the malicious predator.

"Ahhahhh…hold on, you saw a giant bat? It looks like a white griffon from my point of view."

"Maybe…ahhahaa…" She exhaled and exhausted breath. "Maybe, it's some kind of glitch in the system?"

Kirito saw the bird coming around, and while Asuna instead saw the vicious black monster high-tailing it her way, the black-haired boy's vision narrowed in on the now very familiar beast taking them into its sights.

"I had to fight one of these things before. It changes between forms depending on the time of day, or sometimes the opponent. It's some type of old creature that represents a guardian of the Force."

"It must be a sort of test for you and me to stay here…a white bird for the Light Side philosophy you had to challenge all this time, and a black demon symbolizing the Dark Side and the Sith Order for me. Both of the obstacles we each had to conquer to make it here."

"That's a pretty good guess to me…" Kirito saw it approaching with a quickening speed, and lowered his center of gravity as he held both sabers down at his side.

Asuna stood with tension in her arms, and glanced over at her oddly framed partner with the side of her eyes. "So how did you beat this thing last time? Any tips?"

"Well…" Kirito gave his two sabers a twirl, and smiled plainly as he waited for the creature to making its swooping descent. "I didn't have real lightsabers before, but I killed it by doing this…!"

He jumped high in the air, almost fifty feet into the sky and a good distance above even the tallest set of trees. The beast was too distracted with Asuna that it went in to take her out, but the valiant female warrior held up her saber, and blocked its attack with a single slash upward. The monster rolled away, but as he jumped back over to take her out, Kirito slammed it from the sky, and stuck his two lightsabers deeply into its neck. Asuna slashed upward again, and took off the bottom of its loose neck now, as the head firmly ripped apart from the rest of the body, and scattered into a bloody mess into the trees.

Asuna sighed, and looked around to see if any more would come near. Then she looked at Kirito with little impression left on her from the trick move. "That was graceful, but the landing was a bit off…I don't understand what this place is. It's…"

"Unlike any other. A conduit through which the entire Force of the universe flows." Kirito put his weapons back on his belt, and looked forward through the trees at a now clear object looming in the distance. "It's the home of the natural Force, and the system's most-powerful wielder…Mortis."

The object that Kirito finally saw standing in the rather close distance over a fading hill of lush greens and glowing blue plants when hid in the shadows, was pearly white, and towered clear past the cloud line and into the great heavens beyond their view.

Hiding in the glossy, chromed-out palace standing in the sky, was an elderly man with a healthy head of white and grey hair. His handsome short beard matched his scalp, and his eyes were piercing blue as he looked over and out the bay window of his beautiful planet, and into a mysterious forest painting the spotted white ground below.

"Kirito has arrived." Peter Mathis could feel a great disturbance in the Force. The epic duel of his time in his very own virtual world, was quickly drawing nigh. "And this time he's brought a friend to help him."


So we're back on Mortis, and the final battle is upon us. Tune in tomorrow to see the results!

Until then!