A/N asuna: oh no kirito baby this is gonna be hard

kriito: im scared

asuna: fear is good, the wheel has begun to turn. we have been deluded, pulled into this crucible, trapped in this doomed digital dungeon devised by deranged directors. this inescapable facsimile of a life given meaning through adventure. we fled to this haven. we seek to flee from this hell. the flesh outside rots, the mind struggles to choke out thoughts, its nutrients deprived while we waste away in these tombs of technology. wasting away, flesh and memory turning to rot, to shreds, to flakes, to ash. we have been punished for our gullibility and our arrogance, our trust in a system designed to maximize glut and minimize spirit leading us to don these thorned crowns. we were dragged into a false world by our own materialism and our unwillingness to fight for a new world. we bought the very chains that bind us.

kirito: pog

me: wow guys i love you all so much *starts consensually making out with all of them*

"Some of these alleys are PVP zones, so just keep your eyes open for, uh, shady types." After a silent second of walking, Kirito flushed red and profusely waved their hands. "N-not saying you couldn't take them! You're huge! And you've got that… No wait, I mean— you're not huge you're just super big like kreally strong like muscles an-and big biigg sword Imean im sure you could totally murder someonme if they jumped us but N-NOT LIKE MURDER IS COOL but uh you uh like…" Asuna laid her hand atop Kirito's head, its relatively huge size making it look like Shaq grabbing an apple.

"Hey, Kirito, it's okay." She whispered, her gravelly voice like a rocking cradel to Kirito's frantic mind. "I got it. Anyone comes for us, I hit 'em with the blicky." She shouldered her massive metal hunk of a blade, wincing and dropping it when the edge dug into her bare shoulder. "Owowowowowow oh my gosh wHY does that hurt so much! This is a video game! Holy pooooooooOOp aaaaaaah" She hissed.

Kirito winced. "Yeah, this game is kinda weirdly hardcore for being T-rated. I guess it makes the stakes for combat higher."

Asuna gripped her (really not that badly) sliced shoulder. "No I mean HOW? HOW does this hurt?" She hissed. "This isn't real!"

Kirito's mouth made an 'o'. "Well I mean this is more like a multiplayer dream than a true VR game, the headset kinda microwaves the senses into your brainmeat. Shouldn't hurt that much, though, they do dampen it. Hmmm…."

Asuna snapped to Kirito. "It microwaves my brain?"

Kirito nodded. "That's why I'm worried we've been in it on so long."

Asuna paled and opened her mouth to sleep, but just before she could start, a shady figure appeared in the alley they were traversing.

"Eeeeyyyyyyyyyyy hows it goin' kids." The figure enunciated, flipping a dagger in each hand. "Gimme ya gold or gimme ya life."

"Hey freak off butthead!" Asuna yelled, trying to hide the pain she was in. She bent down to grab her sword, but a knife stuck into the ground at her feet, making her jump back. "Woah!"

"Don''t touch that sword and everything will end up poggers, okay?" The bandit whispered as he started slinking towards them.

Kirito stepped in front of Asuna, their hand on the hilt of their rapier. "Back off, Duelist is a hard counter to Rogue and I've been grinding all day."

The thief eyed Kirito, their eyes suspicious.

Kirito smirked. "I'm a beta player."

The air grew tense as stone as the thief stopped flipping their remaining dagger. "A beta?"

Kirito stared, their eyes hard and challenging.

Suddenly, the thief started cackling. "MonkaS"

Kirito's shoulders dropped, and they frowned. Like a flash, they drew their rapier. The thief responded just as quickly, flicking out a wrist and throwing the other dagger. It flew as fast as an arrow, straight towards Kirito. Asuna reached forward, but recoiled when Kirito's rapier flicked out just as quickly, deflecting the knife. The short blade ricocheted back to the thief, narrowly missing his ear.

"Wut" the thief muttered, "imagine speccing into deflect"

Kirito's eyes rolled. Deflect is perfectly balanced B)

The thief leapt forward, drawing two more daggers from his waist. Kirito straightened their back, holding the rapier out and keeping a free hand at the side. The thief threw out the dagger in his left hand. Kirito sidestepped the flying knife and lunged forth, a blue trail following them, the tip of the blade piercing shallowly into his chest. The thief scrambled backwards, howling in pain as dark red wireframes poured from the wound and stained his gambeson.

Cords tearing through the shriek, he collapsed, clutching the bleeding hole. Kirito's eyes shot open with a look of horror. Holy shit, that's intense.

"Oh god, are you okay?" Kirito said as they hurriedly lay their hands on the guy's chest. "What the hell?"

He hissed through gritted teeth. "You fucking stabbed me! Holy fucking shiiiiiiiiiit that hurts!" The thief rolled around in pain, tensing into a fetal position.

"I'm sorry!" Kirito cried, "I didn't know it would hurt! This game is supposed to dampen pain a lot!" Kirito's menu flashed as they rifled through their items. Kirito scrolled, becoming increasingly frustrated as they had to look over each individual item. Unfortunately, being a "full immersion experience" means that players had to manage and organize their own inventories. Kirito had only just acquired enough items that there was a burgeoning problem. Tutorial items were splattered across their inventory space like scrambled desktop shortcuts, quest items were distractingly green, always drawing the eye away from its focus.

Asuna approached cautiously, pointing at the downed thief before hissing and clutching her sliced arm.. "See! It does hurt!"

Kirito panicked, sweating and shaking as they rushed through their inventory. "Fucking hurry up!" The thief cried.

Kirito made a strange noise and reached through the screen, causing a red potion to apparate in their grasp. "Yes!" They shouted before realizing this was a moment of panic, then hurriedly thrusted the potion into the thief's face.

He reached out, crying and cringing as the wound was strained. He barely managed to grasp the bottle. Drops of the healing tincture sloshed and splashed around as he gulped it down with remarkable speed."ooooooooooooooooohhhhh thank fuck" he moaned as purple light began to ring the puncture wound and form a lattice across the wounded tissue.

"Sumimasen!" Kirito repeated again and again as they performed a panicked dogeza.

"Please shut up!" He yelled, wincing. The pain wasn't completely gone. "Or speak English, at least."

Kirito froze, their panicked breathing rushing harder. Anxiety seeping in, adrenaline wearing, they shook. Kirito choked the breaths in and out. They almost killed thi—

Asuna's big warm hand gently landed on Kirito's back. "It's okay." She whispered, her voice like a soft cello.

The thief grimaced. "Hey, chill out, jeez. I'm the one who almost died."

Kirito's breathing slowed. "Sorry." They whispered.

He rolled his eyes. "Will you chill the fuck out if I forgive you? Christ."

Kirito remained silent, muscles tensed and shaking.

"Okay, god! You healed me so it's fine! Fuck me, will you be a normal person now?"

The harbinger of death appeared in Asuna's glare, causing the thief to rapidly lose his remaining color. The moment of terror was broken when Kirito sighed, their body slumping. "Are you okay?" They asked.

He sat up, slowly opening his player menu. "No, I am not okay, I just got stabbed!" Kirito winced again, and he muttered a quick apology.

"So what do we do now?" Asuna asked after an awkward pause. Kirito's head slowly pivoted back towards her, and they sat back up on their knees.

Kirito's mouth opened to spoke, but a notification dinged from everyone's menu. They all gave the same bewildered look and began cautiously scrolling through it, a little fear seeping into each of them.

There was a single notification, reading:

Players and loyal customers,

As we are sure you are all aware, there is currently no means of exit from the game. There has been a great deal of panic surrounding this incident, but there is no need to worry. This is nothing more than a hardware bug. The necessary development crunch caused us to make a slight oversight, one which can be easily repaired and should be fixed in the next update, which is slated to release in a little less than a week. For the inconvenience, we have decided to compensate our loyal players with 3 uncommon loot boxes! The boxes can be claimed at your nearest player bank, and the keys are available for purchase at a 30% discount in the cash shop; We dearly hope that our amazing players will take this opportunity to game non-stop— show the world how much progress we can make in a week!

With our love and appreciation,

Sincerely,

Makoto from the Argus DevTeam.

PS, do not worry about your bodies outside, the claims of NerveGear causing "a complete and devastating deformation of the neuroglial cells after prolonged sessions of play" have not been scientifically proven in unbiased and peer reviewed studies. Even if this were an issue, which wouldn't really be that bad for your brain, your virtual forms should not be affected.

PPS, any relatives, friends, or other attendants to your lively body will surely care for you and, should you have need for a hospital, Argus will be willing to negotiate with your hospital and/or insurance company to ensure the best level of care. To confirm your consent to our customer care, please contact customer service on our official website.

Kirito's eyes panned to the rest of the alley's occupants. Neither had finished reading yet, seeing as Kirito's supreme intellect gave them a reading speed of 750 WPM, so they had the opportunity to watch Asuna's and the thief's face pale. The latter began to visibly sweat, another gross mechanic added by the 'full immersion VRMMO' idea. Kirito felt frozen, muscles tensed like a cornered animal, too shocked to move, words lodged deep in the lungs. In the span of a few moments, Kirito's racing heart grew both apprehension and, for the first time in their life, true determination. Fear, absolutely, but the knowledge that Kirito was easily one of the most prepared people for this challenge made a sense of resolute duty rise in their heart, which rapidly flopped between dread and excitement.

The other two, however, were frozen in a state of abject horror. Asuna's mother would be home soon, she knew, she had hopped in VR yesterday when she knew mom was on a business trip, a relatively short one at that. Fury could not hope to grasp the sense of her mother's inevitable rage, both at Asuna and at Argus. And her father…

All the new feelings Kirito was being assailed with rapidly halted as Asuna choked out a rumbling sob, her deep voice thrumming through Kirito's chest and stirring a sense of dread into the churning cauldron of emotions that was their stomach. The raven-haired protagonist began to look visibly ill as Asuna, their rock and love, looked as if she was witnessing the second coming of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and learned that she would be left behind in the eternal war-torn limbo of post-rapture Earth. The thief hardly looked better as he brought his hand to his mouth and began anxiously chewing his fingernails. He was obviously trying to hide his fear in front of the people he had just attempted to rob at knifepoint, but his charisma skill was obviously far too low to maintain a convincing guise.

"H-hey…" Kirito said, their voice squeaking out inaudibly. No one reacted. "Hey!" Kirito spoke up, making the other two jump. "Uh, we gotta… y'know, uh— oh, jeez this is really bad—"

"Just fucking speak up!" The thief shouted, a single wet trail visible under his left eye. "Jesus just say it! We're FUCKED! Our brains are gonna get fucking BAKED, HOLY SHIT!" He screamed and thrashed his arms wildly, crying out as he pulled at the wound that had just begun to heal, dropping his health bar as the healing duration effect reset. "I— AAagh— I got a fucking kid, man! My brain's gonna turn into fucking ground meat and my kid's gonna have a vegetable dad! What the FUCK!"

Asuna stuttered, her faltering confidence causing more fear in Kirito than anything else. "M-maybe they'll fix the bug? Games get patched all the time" she muttered with a horribly faked smile.

The thief threw his knife into a wall, lodging it in a wooden beam. "The beta test was SIX YEARS LONG! THEY BARELY PATCHED ANYTHNG! ALL THE DEV TIME WENT INTO TH AI!"

Kirito shook. Six years of beta testing in an unbearably buggy mess, reading each patch, at least 75% of them being about improving the AI of the tutorial monsters on the first floor. This problem would never be fixed.

"W-well at least they'll pay for us to be taken care of!" Asuna quickly said with a shuddering voice, false hope like bitter ash in her mouth. "All we gotta do is contact customer service!"

Kirito slowly shook their head. "There's no way to search the web from inside the game…"

"W-what?" Asuna squeaked, the last drop of her spirit squeezed into the abyss like a towel that somebody had used to clean up a very unsavory case of spilled liquid being wrung out into a Ruvati 33-inch Workstation Ledge 60/40 Double Bowl Undermount 16 Gauge Stainless Steel Kitchen Sink. "W… wha… hoooooooo-ho-hooooooooow" she sobbed, putting her head in her hands.

Kirito stiffly made it over to their partner and laid a shaky hand on her back. "W-we'll figure it out. I think we can… maybe find a way to escape? I'm a pretty proficient coder, and I've had access to the source code of this game since the leak in August of '22. I know most of the bugs, too, which they probably haven't patched, so maybe we can poke around and try to break the system? I dunno… i can… i think i can figure something..." Kirito's voice slowly petered out into whispered rambling.

"We're gonna die… Joan is gonna grow up without her daddy… or worse" The thief was now openly crying, all pretext of emotional repression having been thrown out the window. "Oh Christ almighty... " He sobbed, burying his leaking eyes in his cloth-wrapped hands.

"H-hey, look, dude" Kirito said after a long moment of silence, their tears having been wiped away and a look of anxiously grim resolution on their face. "I can… get us out. I think. I'm gonna try my HARdest" their voice cracked, belying the more confident facade, "to get you to Joan again."

The thief's head shot up with enough speed and force to give him whiplash. "Don't put her name in your mouth! Don't get me false hope, you fucking elitist beta shitass."

Kirito was taken aback, but a rare spark of anger rang out. "I'm gonna do it! I will!" Kirito stood up suddenly, their jaw set forward and brows creased. "I was one of the top 8 players in the beta! I know this game inside and fucking out!"

The thief bit back a retort, his face turning serious but angry. "Don't you fucking dare give me false hope…" He got up and stood chest-to-chest with Kirito, easily towering over them by more than a head. "But if you can do it, I will find some way to repay you. I will get you anything by any means if you can get me back to her."

Kirito opened their mouth, but a dagger found its way to their throat.

"If you don't, though, I am gonna show you the limits of this game's altered pain dampening system." The thief seethed.

Kirito gulped. "O-okay."

The thief just stared them down until Kirito backed off and slowly walked to Asuna and wrapped their arm around hers. "H-hey, it's alright."

"It is not alright!" Asuna lashed out "It's not alright…" She immediately returned to crying, collapsing on the spooked Kirito.

"C'mon, Asuna, l-let's keep moving to the town square, i bet people are gathering there to make a plan.

Asuna kept sobbing and didn't respond verbally, but slowly got up as Kirito gently pulled her arm. "Okay…" She whispered.

Kirito supported her for once, tightly holding on to Asuna's walked forward, the thief trailing them by a few yards.

Forward unto their new nightmare.

A/N WILL OUR HEROES FIND ANSWERS IN THE CITY? WILL LOVE HOLD OUT AGAINST THIS NEW CRUSHING REALITY? WHEN WILL I START GIVING KIRITO SHE/HER PRONOUNS? FIND OUT NEXT TIME!

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