It was nighttime when the trio of players arrived at the city at the foot of the World Tree, Arun. To Kirito and Jaymes, there was not an equivalent sight to the bright city illuminating the lower trunk of the magnificent tree. By far, it is larger than the largest towns of Aincrad, at least from the ground view. Yui's confirmation of never being to a city of Arun's size confirms that not even the Town of Beginnings was this enormous.

After the admin announcement that servers would be down for a few hours, Leafa proposes the group logs out for now. Kirito and Jaymes agreed, but the looks on their faces were jointly fixed on the World Tree. Whatever they're here for, whoever they're looking for, that thing or person is directly above them. Kirito then announced he had enough money for a cheap inn, while Jaymes proclaimed he'll find him and Strea a nice, pricey inn due to Strea's finances being kept up. Kirito tried to argue for Jaymes to share, but the Salamander was unmoved in his opinion.

"I haven't forgotten the rare rabbit meal you two had without me. Consider this payback."

Asuna

Her escape has been successful so far, with nothing impeding her path except for an oddly high-tech door. Asuna presses her hand against the touchpad, causing the door to open. Hiding quickly, she peeps around the circular entrance, seeing nothing but an empty, white corridor.

Something tells her she'll find something unpleasant within.

She slowly treks along the path, and after a while, begins to wonder just how long the hallway goes. Maybe she should have just jumped off the tree, falling wouldn't kill her (well…it's more of where she'll respawn). But what is the purpose of this place? She doesn't know much about this virtual world, but this part is too advanced technology-wise for a world of fairies.

She eventually comes across a map on a wall. scans the map as quickly as possible, looking for a place she can log out. However, her eyes land on a segment on the left side of the map labeled "10091- Experiment Hunger," gritting her teeth. Suguo already told her he managed to keep some players from logging out of SAO completely by capturing their signals and sending them here.

Asuna decides to find out what this experiment is.

Kazuto

"Morning, Sugu," Kazuto says as his little sister steps out of the house while he washes his face by an outside basin and faucet.

"Morning, Brother."

He pours water out of the basin and stands, looking at the yawning Suguha. "You look really sleepy. When did you get to bed last night?"

"Let's see… Four, I think?"

"A kid shouldn't stay up that late. What were you doing?"

"I guess I was on the Internet."

"...Don't spend too much time on it. Not that I should talk." He bends down and checks the water filling in the basin. A playful idea pops in his head as he smiles and looks up at Suguha. "Hey, Sugu. Turn around."

"Huh?"

"Just do it." Suguha turns and Kazuto stands up. Pulling her jacket collar back, he drops cold water down her back. She yelps and leaps back in reaction, much to Kazuto's enjoyment until a sharp hand bonks him on the head. That hand doesn't come from Suguha, who still is shaking off the chill of the water as she heads inside. Then who--

"Mistreating your little sister is not cool, buddy

Kazuto looks up and sighs at the sight of his best friend, Joshua. "You're here early, punk."

Minutes later, Suguha

"Brother, you should buy me a green tea shaved ice and a raspberry parfait to apologize. Be sure to, okay?"

"Sure."

"Okay, then. Then want to get it today?"

Kazuto hesitates on answering that. "I have to do something in the afternoon. And I'm planning to go to the hospital this morning. That's why Joshua is here, so we can go."

"Oh…" Suguha's excitement falls as she tears the lettuce leaf in her hands in half. She looks up to the other boy seated at the table. He hasn't said anything besides his name and relation to her brother, but that was the extent of their conversation. For as long as she can remember, Kazuto sucked in the social department. SAO must have changed him much in that department if he's inviting friends to his home and visiting them in hospitals.

"Hey, Brother… Could I come with you?"

"Oh, sure. I'm sure Asuna will be happy. Joshua, is that fine?"

The other boy turns around and nods. "Yeah. Then we can go get a little snack. Green tea shaved ice and a raspberry parfait, right?"

Kazuto frowns as Suguha's excitement returns. "Are you trying to get cozy with my little sister?"

"No. I just know what the ladies like. Took you forever to learn that. You were good at leav…" Joshua stops right in the middle of his sentence then drops his head as he turns back to the table. Suguha carries a bowl to the table in the middle of the conversation, so she gets a glance at Joshua's expression as she sets it down. He's crestfallen, maybe even beyond the definition of the word. Something about the conversation triggered him. Looking at Kazuto, he's looking down as well before he smiles at Suguha and nods to her.

Hopefully, food makes him feel better. "Alright, let's eat!"

Asuna reaches the area known as Experiment Hunger, and her eyes are greeted with tens of cylindrical machines humming in unison. As she walks through them, she notices the blue light coming out their top, a hologram of a brain.

"By expanding the brain's control regions, it's possible it could control thought, emotion, even memory."

"They're suffering," Asuna exclaims in shock. 300 brains all experiencing degrees of terror, pain, and shock. It's awful, cruel, and inhumane. Sugou cannot and will not get away with this if Asuna can do anything about it. Sugou already spoke too much about the experiment to her, and now she's seen it--What was that?"

"Now, how's it going?"

Asuna hides and peeps a pair of giant purple slugs analyzing a brain. "He's having another dream of Spica. The B-13 and B-14 fields are off the scale. Same with 16. High excitement."

"Sure it isn't a coincidence? It's only happened three times."

"No, it's due to the emotional inducement circuits. If it's happening at this rate, he's over the threshold."

"For now, we'll put him on the list for continuous monitoring…"

"Hey, Brother, what about school? Weren't you supposed to start high school last year?"

Kazuto shrugs as he looks out the window of the passenger seat in Jaymes' car. "Well… They said something about using one of the city schools that shut down as a special school for the students from SAO. You can get in without any exams, and if you graduate, they'll let you take the test for university."

"Oh, I see. That sounds like a good deal. But they'll be putting lots of different students together."

"Yeah," Joshua says. "We all spent two years trapped in a death game. We've experienced something no one else has, so they don't know what it did to our minds. Most of us were teenagers in school, so having one place for us to be educated and monitored is convenient."

"Seriously?"

"But if I wanted to attend a normal high school now, I'd have to spend the whole year at cram school. But if I wanted that, I'm sure I'd have the choice."

"I'm sure you'd do fine," Suguha says to uplift her brother. "Your grades are good."

"'Were.' Past tense. I haven't studied for two years."

"I could be your tutor!"

"Eh? Then maybe you'll help me with math and information processing." Suguha backs off at that point to the laughter of the boys. Kazuto leans up off the window and gestures to Joshua. "You should be good at them, right? Your family owns a technology company."

"Information processing is just a fancy word for stats, and there are programs for that. Math… Bleh. I bet Asuna is good at everything, though. If I remember correctly, she was pretty high in her class before SAO. I was too, after all. Bet that made a lot of people hate me, a foreign, rich transfer student from America."

Suguha gasps. "America? Woah."

"Heh, don't get too excited. Our food is as great as you think it is. Back to the point, the SAO school gives us a chance to recover our lives gradually, and possibly meet our friends again. For the most part, we all look the same as we do now… Though that might backfire if you and me are as popular at school as we were in the game."

"You were popular all the time, though. It took a while for me."

"Shouldn't have been an ass at the beginning, even if it was for the best."

As she tries to avoid detection and escape the room, Asuna comes across a familiar black box. It reminds her of the black command console in SAO when she and Kirito rescued Yui underneath the Town of Beginnings. An item used by admins to make in-game modifications. It helped in SAO with Yui. This is her (and the three hundred others) ticket out of here in ALO.

Making sure she hasn't been noticed, Asuna dashes to the console. She grabs the inserted card and swipes it down, activating the console's functions. She scans the various menu options until she comes to "Transport" and "Detach Virtual Laboratory". She gets a warning about service termination and reaches for the log-out button.

For once being the Lightning Flash of Sword Art Online, she's too slow to press the button before getting captured by the tubular limbs of the slugs. She lurched away from the console and hung upside down in front of one of them. In her head, she hears the unwanted voice of Jaymes saying something disgusting about her situation as she's interrogated. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

Oddly, the thought of Jaymes saying something angers her enough to give her determination. "Hey, put me down! I'm a friend of Sugou! He was letting me look around. I'm leaving now." Asuna thinks to herself to keep them talking. She may be able to reach the button with her foot if they're distracted enough.

"No one notified me about this. What about you?"

"Nothing. He wouldn't want outsiders seeing this anyway."

"Hmm… Wait a second. You're that girl Sugou keeps at the top of the World Tree."

"I've heard about that. It's so unfair that the boss gets to have all the fun with the cute girl." Asuna feels her ankles become entangled as she's hoisted higher in the air. "Come on, keep still."

"Stop it! Let me go, monster!"

"That's so mean. We're in the midst of an experiment on deep-sense mapping."

"You're scientists, aren't you? You aren't ashamed, participating in this illegal, unethical experiment?"

"I think it's more ethical than sticking electrical probes into an exposed animal brain. They're all just dreaming."

"That's right. Sometimes, we show them the most wonderful dreams. I wish I could have them."

"...You're insane."

"The boss is on a trip, right? Get back to the other side, and see what he wants us to do."

"Fine… Hey, don't have any fun while I'm gone."

"Got it, got it. Get going." Pervert Immoral Slug #2 logs out, leaving Asuna alone with #1, and she's sure to heaven and hell that his promise means absolutely nothing. She begs him to release her, but he denies her. "I can't! The boss would kill me! Just forget it. Why don't we share the same electro-drugs? I'm sick of dolls." Asuna grimaces as more tentacles slide across her face and abdomen. If this was SAO, she's sure this creep would most likely be killed by the Black Swordsman or Crimson Warrior. Kirito might be talked out of it, but Jaymes doesn't mind turning orange and going that far as he did for Koharu and Lisbeth… But neither are here now, so Asuna takes the matter into her own hands by biting down hard on the tentacle over her mouth.

Pervert Immoral Slug #1 finally agrees to mostly release her on the basis he forgot to turn on the pain observer. That's when #2 returns.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing. What did the boss say?"

"He was pissed. He said to return her to the birdcage above the lab, change the pass, and keep an eye on her 24/7."

"And I was just about to have some fun… Let's at least walk her back instead of teleporting her. I want to enjoy this feeling a little more." Feeling her entrapment returning, Asuna glances at the console, seeing the rotating cube turn to the side with the card inserting. She makes the move to grab it, successful, but earning the irritation of her captures as they walk her back to the birdcage.

"Yuuki Asuna. Her character shared her real name. Not many people do that."

"You know a lot about it… Asuna's one of two people we've known to do that."

"There was another?"

"Yeah," Joshua answers. "Just like Asuna, she was new to games, didn't know the ins and outs of choosing a different name for yourself online. Not that it matters, I guess. She was one of us." Suguha takes note of the verb usage. He didn't say 'is' but 'was', and he spoke it in what sounds like pain and grief. Whoever this person was, they must have died in SAO. Suguha, of course, is speechless as Kazuto opens the door and follows the boys inside to the girl asleep in the bed.

"I'll introduce you. This is Asuna. Vice Commander of the Knights of the Blood Oath, Lightning Flash Asuna. I was never able to match her sword speed or accuracy."

"She was so quick that even I had a hard time with her. I think only Ko matched her speed with her agility."

"Yeah… Asuna, this is my sister, Suguha."

"N-Nice to meet you, Asuna." The trio takes off their jackets and gets comfortable in the room, yet Suguha can't take her eyes off Asuna. She's so pretty that's it's a shame she's still asleep. Silently stepping away, she grabs a pot of flowers and walks around the curtain to the sink. Her feelings about her brother, whatever they are, are still mixed up. She thought meeting Asuna would help, yet they make things even murkier. She doesn't have any sort of forbidden feelings towards Kazuto, she knows where that part of her belongs, even if she won't admit that. All she knows is that she wants to be a good sister.

Hearing footsteps behind her, she turns away from the sink and sees Joshua walking out the room, hands in pocket. Sensing he may be down, Suguha abandons the flower vase and walks out after him. He doesn't go far, just stands outside the room, phone in hand. She steps out and stands beside him, fidgeting with her fingers. "J-Joshua."

"Hm?"

"The other person...were they a girl?"

"Yeah. As a matter of fact, you look just like her a lot. If you had green eyes and...a little less there, you'd be her perfect clone. That's why I find it hard to look at you because I see Ko as well."

Suguha bows her head. "Sorry."

"Not your fault. Take it as a compliment, you're just as cute as she was… Tell me, is Asuna the first girl Kazuto ever loved?"

"That I know of, yes. I'm sure of it."

"Ko was the second. There was another girl when I was younger named Momiji. She was the only real friend I had, and we spent years of our childhood together. But about five years ago, she moved to Japan. Kyoto since her older sister was going there for school and such. Three years ago, I was preparing to move to Japan myself as my dad came back to the company headquarters. But I… I didn't make contact with her back then, and I still haven't. I… I don't if she even remembers me. I don't even know if I want to seek her out. But what I do know is that one day I'll have to." He signs and turns to Suguha. "I can tell there's a wall between you and Kazuto, but knowing him, either he's too dumb to notice or too idiotic to speak on it."

"What do I do, then?"

Joshua shrugs. "Talk about how you feel. Sometimes it is that easy. I should take my advice. Even if you have to live with a broken heart, it is better for it to be knowingly broken than trying to hold the pieces together desperately. That's how I lived without Momiji and Ko." Joshua reaches over and pats Suguha on the head. "Yeah, we're gonna need that shaved ice. We could ditch Kazuto."

Despite the gaping pain in her heart, Suguha giggles. "Would he be mad you took his sister out for shaved ice?"

"He owes me...for something, but I'm sure you're right."