In which Karma is being a pain in the butt (again), and for once, Heathcliff isn't the target of her chaos :)
A few other POVs in this one :P Thought it might be fun to look at how she interacts with the world outside their little bubble :D
what if we lost our minds, what if we let them fall behind, and they're never found? - Youth (Troye Sivan)
o0o0o
Metal screeches as Karma deflects the attack, pivoting out of the way nimbly while the attacker flails for balance, his momentum throwing him off balance. Meanwhile, green streaks fly down from the floating island overhead, quickly surrounding her.
"Woah," Karma laughs merrily, crossing her legs mid-air, sword braced across her knees, "you guys react fast."
The half dozen Sylphs surrounding her in the air are much less amused, weapons bristling defensively. Their leader, the one who attacked her, a pompous-looking male with long hair and what appears to be a permanent frown on his face, glares at her. Even in the dark, she can see the anger tinting his face bright red at his clumsy, failed sneak attack.
"What business does a lone Salamander have in Sylph territory?" he demands.
"Just dropping by Sylvain," she says, grinning as she absentmindedly thinks of various ways to dismantle this party.
A frisson of surprise runs through the entire group, and he scowls, aggressively lifting his sword a little higher. "Begone, Salamander. Your kind isn't welcome here, and we won't allow you to befoul our sacred capital city."
Karma wrinkles her nose. "You make it sound like I'm going to graffiti the city or something." Quieter, she adds, "Man, he sounds like Lind."
The Sylph's eyebrows draw together dangerously while Heathcliff rolls his eyes, and the former barks, "What was that?!"
"Nothing, nothing. Just that apparently, all numbskulls share the same three personality traits," she remarks. "At least that guy wasn't a cookie cutter roleplayer."
"I think I would've gone insane if he was," Heathcliff mutters to himself, making her laugh a little louder, clearly startling some of the Sylphs while only enraging the leader further.
"You're treading on thin ice here," he growls dangerously, holding his sword in a too tight grip that belies the lack of bite behind his bark, and she just can't help it.
"Thin ice, huh?" she snickers, uncrossing her legs and doing a neat somersault, her cloak billowing in the wind. "Guess you just can't take the heat!"
Heathcliff audibly sighs from somewhere behind her, making her cackle, and he's not the only one. One or two of the Sylphs groan quietly with an undercurrent of laughter, and another stifles a snort, hastily hiding a smile behind her hand when the leader's gaze swings over angrily.
"How dare you disrespect the leader of the Sylph combat forces?" he hisses at Karma. His avatar is doing a wonderful job of displaying his rage in colorfully diverse shades ranging from maroon to purple. She always wondered how the avatars did that in Aincrad too. "Do you even know who I am?"
"Um…" She makes a show of thinking about it and paints on a blank smile. "A jerk who thinks he's all that just because he knows one end of a sword from another?"
His eyes bulge. "That's it," he snaps, drawing back a little in preparation to charge, "get her!"
Magic words glow as two Sylphs begin chanting. In a flash of silver, Karma throws her sword straight up into the air. For a split second, everyone's eyes follow the blade as she flings her hands out, syllables flying from her lips with well-practiced speed, and a spherical shield of fire envelops her as the wind spells hit.
FWOOM!
The half dozen Sylphs are thrown back as she thrusts her hand up to catch her sword, easily parrying the leader's rage-fuelled, clumsy strike. Flicking her wrist smoothly, she lets his momentum fling him past her, adding in a kick to his behind for extra insult and distance. The smoke billows in clouds around her, and she breathes in deep, holding the acrid stench in her artificial lungs.
"You can be a real pain when you're not trying to be professional," Heathcliff remarks unconcernedly from his perch on the floating island above. Like her, he's obviously more amused than anything else.
"But they make it so easy!" she whines good-naturedly, teeth bared in a grin. "I'm offended if you really expected anything different."
She shoots straight up, letting two incoming Sylphs slam straight into each other with a surprisingly realistic sounding WHUMP. With a few deft swings, she cuts a volley of blade-like spells out of the air before abruptly dropping her wings to dodge another clumsy attack. These kids are amateurs, she thinks to herself, laughing as she easily weaves in and out of their assault to the sound of friendly fire.
"Man, standards are falling," she remarks, holding off two sword wielders at once. "I remember back in my day, we only had one or two people per party who had two left feet!" Then again, she supposes they don't have such high stakes to whet their skills upon.
With a well-placed kick, she flings the flight controller—a crutch and a liability—out of one fairy's hand, causing him to immediately spiral out of control, screaming. A cry comes up from that girl that cracked a smile at Karma's joke, and she turns in time to block a downward katana swing.
"Hey, you're not bad," she compliments cheerfully as the blonde keeps swinging. Her attack patterns are varied and efficient, reminding her of the kendo videos she would look up when she still lived in the real world for practice. In a way, the determination in the girl's leaf green eyes reminds her a little bit of Asuna, but she still wouldn't hold a candle to the Lightning Flash's wild ferocity.
Their pride obviously is keeping them from retreating from a six to one fight against a Salamander, but it's not getting them anywhere either. If their teamwork and individual abilities were better, then she might be in trouble, but their teamwork (or lack thereof) is more a hindrance to them than to her, and in a game like this, with no assistance from the system, all they know of swordfighting is whatever they've made up.
From working with and sometimes against other fairies, Karma has realized that their fighting styles, regardless of race, are a lot less up close and personal than in Aincrad. The magic system is a part of that, but the most they hone their weaponry skills is to the extent of holding off enemies long enough to back away and use magic. Numbers are far more important to them, as more fairies means more firepower, but if there's one thing Karma has learned, it's that numbers mean nothing when they let her take the initiative—and also that as the difference grows larger, so does the chance for friendly fire.
"Aren't you going to finish them off?" comes the exasperated question.
"They'd just chase me if I flew off to Sylvain. I don't really feel like killing them either, and I've got time to mess with them a little." She flicks her sword slightly, a few small flames dancing along it. "Besides, in here, even if they die, they just respawn and lose a few stats. What's the harm?"
How wonderful it is, to live in a world where her actions have no real consequences if she doesn't want them to.
o0o0o
The sheer indignity of it has Leafa seething on the inside, although she has enough sense to keep at least one other player between her and Sigurd at all times. It's bad enough that their entire party got so completely curb-stomped by this one Salamander that they barely managed to touch, never mind the fact that she actually left them all within a literal inch of their lives to fly back to Sylvain in shame and humiliation.
And what were they going to do? They'd managed to whittle her down to half her HP, and that was with the MP and HP potions that they brought. It wasn't just the fact that she had a borderline ridiculous amount of HP; aside from the initial shield, she barely used magic at all and they still struggled to even touch her. Leafa hates to admit it, but that Salamander could've easily sent them all packing back to Sylvain the short way without batting an eye.
Speaking of said Salamander…
"Hey, your capital city actually looks really nice!" she exclaims, shading her eyes with a gleeful look. "I've never seen it before, of course."
Oh, and she decided to tag along with them. Go figure. Again, not much they could do about it.
"Man, the Salamanders really drew the short stick when it comes to the architecture," she comments wistfully. "All we have in Gattan is sandstone and mud bricks as far as the eye can see…"
Leafa subtly edges away from Sigurd a little more as he gnashes his teeth. Meanwhile, Recon drifts a little closer to Leafa.
"I think I've heard of her before," he whispers to Leafa, glancing nervously at the Salamander. "She's a solo mercenary, a really strong one who popped up recently. Um, what was her name…?"
As if by magic, the Salamander turns, like she heard them talking about her. Grinning, she zips up to fly next to them, and Recon meeps, nearly dropping his flight controller again. Leafa swallows down the urge to edge away. There'd be no point anyways; if the Salamander wanted to kill them all, she could probably still do it before they got to the safe zone of Sylvain. She'd demonstrated that quite succinctly with a flock of flying raptors on the way, decimating a dozen in about as many hits by the time the Sylphs formed up.
"I go by Catherine, by the way," she says, and Leafa is seriously starting to wonder if she's even human. "Leafa and Recon, right?"
Leafa scrutinizes her warily. "Yeah…" Something that's been nagging at her since the beginning of the fight—if it can even be called that—resurfaces, and she figures it can't hurt to ask. "You're pretty new to the game, right?"
"Kinda, yeah."
"Well, you fly really well. Is it some sort of item or buff?"
Sigurd flashes her a warning look, but she ignores him. Catherine seems surprised and a little flattered.
"Just practice," she answers cheerfully, ruby eyes sparkling. "It's all mental, really. It's not like you have actual muscles controlling your wings, so it just takes a bit of willpower. And you fly with your whole body, not just your wings, if that helps."
Mind over matter. After over a decade of kendo, Leafa thinks she can manage that.
"You must travel a lot," Leafa says aloud. "Where to?"
"Everywhere," she answers simply, and envy wrapped up in longing swells in Leafa's chest.
Everything about her is strength. It's not just in her combat prowess either; she's confident and unafraid to make it clear. Leafa has barely left Sylph territory (and the few times she does, it's to their neighbors, the Cait Siths) since after she joined Sigurd's party. Before then, she hadn't had the guts to venture outside the territory's bounds alone. There is plenty at home to keep her occupied, she rationalized, but some part of her has always wanted to know what was beyond those borders.
"Must be nice to be free," she murmurs, but evidently not quiet enough.
Catherine just smiles ruefully, with a dead look of resignation swimming underneath.
"Only from some things," she says, wistful eyes like glassy blood.
When the safe zone effect of Sylvain ripples over them all, Sigurd looks very much like he wants to draw his sword on Catherine, and Catherine looks very much like she's daring him to try. If he does, Leafa won't be the one to help him—not out of disloyalty so much as futility. She has a strange, irrational feeling that even within Sylvain's boundaries, they won't be able to lay a hand on her.
They watch the Salamander leave, striding confidently through the enemy city, seeming for all intents and purposes untouchable despite the laws of this game.
o0o0o
After donning a plain, long brown cloak and pulling the hood up, Karma slinks around the city of Sylvain quietly. A fairy's wings give away one's race instantly, so she sticks to the ground, careful to hide whatever traces of red are on her, and ready to take flight at the drop of a hat.
She finds her destination after a few dead ends; after all, she couldn't very well walk up to a Sylph to ask for directions.
Ding. The bell above the door tinkles as she walks into the currently empty place, and the Sylph smith looks up with a customer service smile. "Hi, how can I help-"
He chokes on nothing—literally nothing, since avatars don't even breathe—as he gets a better look at her face, and the color of her eyes, and his hand instantly drops to a short sword at his hip.
"Oh, relax," she snorts, rolling her eyes and opening her menu. "I'm just dropping your raw materials off. Little bird over in Freesia sent me."
As a trade invitation pops up in front of him, he keeps looking back and forth between it and her in blatant suspicion. "I didn't think...it was super last minute…"
"Yep, sure was. You could at least say thanks?" she suggests, ignoring the quiet snort over from where Heathcliff is poking around the store.
The smith doesn't seem completely sold. "They sent a Salamander to Sylvain?"
"I'm a fast flier, and they paid well. Speaking of which…" She gestures pointedly at the trade window.
He appears to give up on trying to make sense of this and coughs up the yuld in exchange for the materials. "Thanks...I think."
"You're welcome, I think," she parrots, preparing to leave.
Ding. The bell tinkles again, revealing a tall Sylph woman dressed in a forest green yukata, her dark, straight hair falling to her ankles. Her wooden sandals click lightly on the matching floor with every step, and her katana, while still sheathed, is tipped forward casually, ready to draw in an instant. A pair of Sylph warriors flank her, confirming her status.
"I told you this wasn't a great idea," Heathcliff mumbles.
"Shut up," she mumbles back out of the side of her mouth.
"So, Sigurd wasn't telling tall tales after all," Lady Sakuya remarks coolly, arching a brow at Karma, who raises her eyebrows in turn.
"Aww, did I make the big bad Sylph warrior go crying to his mommy after I was mean to him on the playground?" she says sarcastically with a wry smirk, resisting the urge to draw her blade; her position is precarious enough as it is.
Sakuya blinks slowly, her face blank. "Wow. That's an image I didn't need in my head. Please never say that ever again," she states flatly.
Karma raises her hands in mock surrender, barking out a laugh. "My bad. In my defense, it didn't take much to set him off."
The Sylph leader looks as though she's caught between rolling her eyes and not doing so in favor of maintaining decorum, and settles for a small twist of her lips conveying resigned agreement. She turns to her guards.
"Go on ahead. I'll meet you there."
They balk, askance. "Lady Sakuya, she's a Salamander."
"Yes. One Salamander, in our very own capital city," Sakuya agrees, her tone as dry as the Salamander deserts. "I highly doubt she came here just to pick a fight she would lose."
After another hesitant moment, they leave, shooting Karma suspicious looks on their way out. Karma blinks back at them, doing her best to look innocent. Heathcliff would probably have something to say about that.
"So what is a lone Salamander doing here in the capital of the Sylphs?"
"Delivery." Karma jerks her head at the smith trying to be inconspicuous in the background. "Someone in Freesia paid me to drop some rare items off for him."
Sakuya glances past her at the smith, who nods nervously in confirmation. "It's for the upgrades you ordered for the mage squad, Lady Sakuya. I'll be able to finish them on time now."
Surprise flickers over the leader's face as she returns her attention to Karma, who shrugs cheerfully.
"Well, it seems you've done us a favor today," Sakuya comments, looking as if she still doesn't quite believe it. "Why?"
"I got paid well," she answers honestly. "Gotta find ways to earn some cash if I want to be able to eat something other than free stale bread all the time." And if she wants to be able to support both her and Heathcliff's coffee addiction.
At Sakuya's continued expression of skepticism, she adds, "Look, I don't care about this war going on. I'm just here for the virtual life. Maybe you don't believe me, but I don't want any trouble. I'll be leaving soon anyways."
The regal Sylph's calculating gaze remains fixed on Karma. "...Catherine, is it?"
Mildly surprised, Karma grins and dips her head with a little swirly hand gesture. "Hey, look, I'm famous."
Heathcliff coughs; she hears what sounds suspiciously like "more like infamous." She ignores him.
Amusement flashes across the Sylph's face. "Leafa told me your name," she says dryly, and Heathcliff coughs out another quiet laugh, to Karma's annoyance. "But I've heard rumors from some of my other players as well. Seems as though you're just as bold as they say, if you have the guts to wander into the capital city of the race that yours is at war with."
"Yeah, well, whether or not you try to kill me will decide if it was worth what I got paid for it," she declares with a blithe smile, tilting her head. Hopefully, Sakuya is sensible enough to let her leave without a pointless fight.
While not entirely bad, it's a bit of a strange feeling, being in the heart of so-called enemy territory while knowing there's no actual harm to be done. Everyone's just playing pretend here, as Heathcliff so eloquently put it some time ago. These faction divisions are little more than an extra layer to the fantasy, and an irritation at worst—Karma still remembers the days when the narrow minded squabbles and petty rivalries between the front line guilds would legitimately get in the way of doing what needed to be done in a time of life and death. As a more or less detached solo unit, it irked her to no end.
It's disappointing that the fairies choose conflict instead of cooperation, but then again, it's not like their lives hinge on them working together. The seriousness with which they take their wars is honestly kind of amusing when it's not a pain in the backside, and she figures there's no harm in poking some fun at their expense, at least a little. She has to admit, it's sort of nice not having to take things so seriously for once.
Sakuya laughs, like a fleeting wind, prone to turn sharp and cold at a moment's notice. "Not today, no. Although I've half a mind to, for riling up Sigurd enough for him to come to me to complain...but no. It doesn't seem worth the trouble."
Karma flashes a thumbs up. "Glad we're on the same page."
"I do have some questions for you, however."
With a dramatic, long-suffering sigh, Karma affects a resigned shrug, palms up. "Of course you do. Fire away, I suppose."
The blacksmith has retreated to a side room, presumably the forge, leaving the two women in the main room.
"You really don't care, do you?" Sakuya remarks, with a tone of grudging admiration.
"No," Karma agrees mildly. "Honestly, I think it's kind of weird."
Sakuya huffs a small, dry laugh. "Perhaps. Although it's necessary, for many of us who…" She draws in a short breath through her nose. "...need to be someone else, sometimes. At the end of the day, it's mostly all fun and games anyways…"
Karma keeps a small blank smile pasted on. Perhaps that's why she doesn't really get it, because this is her 'someone else'. There is no one else worth being.
"I admire that," Sakuya admits, idly resting a hand on her katana, but her posture speaks more of thoughtfulness than hostility. "Feeling completely free of these divisions, that is."
"Oh, I mean, it gives me my fair share of trouble still."
"I don't doubt it. Even so, I sometimes wish I didn't have to care."
Karma just shrugs blithely, settling her hip against a waist-high glass display case. "Who says you do? It's your VR life, you get to live it how you choose. Isn't that the point?" Especially since in here, one's real life doesn't depend on virtual choices.
Sakuya smiles with a resigned edge to it. "I wish it were so simple, but the couple thousand players that voted me leader say I do indeed have to care. Which leads me to ask you...how?" At Karma's confused look, she elaborates, "How do you remain entirely neutral? Surely you have become entangled in debts and favors through your acts as a wandering mercenary."
Karma laughs. "Lady, y'all are random people on the Internet. I don't owe anyone anything if I don't want to," she declares with a flippant smile. "I am free to live my life how I want to, here and nowhere else, and I'm going to make the most of it."
While it lasts, a tiny malicious voice whispers in the back of her head; she pushes it down, down, down, out of sight and out of mind.
Beneath a calm exterior, contemplation brews in leaf green eyes. "That's an interesting perspective, I suppose...to live without any such tethers." She gives a brief flicker of a rueful smile. "Many of us choose those tethers in this world, and cling to them, as a way to give our virtual lives meaning. So yes, in answer to your earlier question, of course I suppose I could just not care. But we all need something to care about, in this world or the other, if we want our existence to mean something."
Karma gives a cheerful 'I see' hum, still smiling. How many of those tethers were severed when she left Aincrad, and how many did she then cut herself?
It doesn't matter. She knows which one she cares for, which one she needs; it is enough (perhaps too much?).
"Then I'll choose to do what I think is right," she says with a shrug. "Instead of what everyone else says I should do...And fun. What I think is fun."
Sakuya's eyes glitter with amusement. "Somehow, I'm not surprised...Either way, I'm afraid I must be going." She purses her lips in mild irritation. "Even though I have no wish to hear my party members continue to gossip and exchange conspiracy theories…"
"Conspiracy theories?" Karma echoes, just on the slight chance…
Sakuya shrugs one shoulder, trying to appear as though she doesn't care, and not quite succeeding entirely. "About the girl who returned to Sword Art Online."
Oh, look at that, it is about her. Turns out she is more famous than expected.
"Is that where they think she is?" she asks, disguising her amusement in a vaguely interested smile.
Sakuya's gaze slides to her in a mixture of skepticism and interest. "Where else would she be? Rumor has it that she was Kayaba Akihiko's right hand in the game."
Her smile wavers, a hairline fissure threatening to split wide open; for a split second her hatred seethes, sputtering droplets of acid and molten steel.
Not Kayaba's right hand. Never his.
"I miss Heathcliff."
"I do too."
They were different, everything was different, she didn't know-
But of course, no one else cares enough to know the difference.
"You're a race leader, aren't you?" she asks lightly, affecting a guileless expression; the bitterness and brimstone stay hidden as she forces it back, slams the gates shut. Out of sight, out of mind. "Leaders are never unanimously adored. There will always be dissent, and those who would seek to undermine you. Shouldn't you know better than to listen to baseless rumor?"
A hint of dry amusement flickers on her face as she shrugs again. "You have a point. But as it doesn't really concern me, I see no harm in indulging in a little speculation." She narrows her eyes at Karma. "What do you think about it?"
Heathcliff shoots her a 'careful' look in her periphery; she blinks slowly at him in acknowledgement. She has no intention of giving herself away, nor is she sure that Sakuya would even believe her anyways. It is admittedly a little weird to speculate about herself in the third person, but she can have some fun with it.
"I think," she says slowly, unable to keep a smirk from her face, "that people are asking the wrong questions. It matters less where she is, than why she left."
o0o0o
While waiting for the others to join the Zoom, Uzala trudges mindlessly through Twitter posts, exhausted. So many conspiracy theories—some of them stupid, some disparaging, some outright offensive—but he can't stop scrolling regardless.
Kili was the one who notified them when it happened, spamming the group chat in a full blown panic for them to check whatever social media they had. They tried to calm him down, asking what the everloving hell he was talking about; he couldn't give them a straight answer (Uzala went slightly mad watching 'Kili is typing' appear and reappear a dozen times). When Uzala finally got a break in the middle of his shift to pull up the Twitter link Kili had sent, he couldn't breathe.
She was gone, and they didn't know where she went, why she left, what happened, nor did they have the faintest idea of where to start to find her.
(Or if she would even want to come back, but he tries not to think about that.)
[Am I a good person?]
The words loom on his phone screen, and Uzala rubs his tired eyes, tearing his gaze away and half-heartedly typing a few more words on his laptop.
Static suddenly buzzes from his speakers, startling his dog next to him on the couch, before Kili's voice says, "Hey," sounding as tired as Uzala feels.
"Hey," he replies, ruffling his dog's head and earning a sleepy whine. "How's it going?"
"Oh, y'know," Kili sighs, and doesn't elaborate. Uzala nods absentmindedly. "Hey, Sanza."
"Yo."
One by one, the others join; they all sound tired, which is nothing new, ever since…
[What if I hurt someone on purpose?]
He still can't figure it out. They've thrown out dozens of ideas, some of them stupidly far fetched, others resembling conspiracy theories more than anything. But nothing they've come up with even comes close to explaining those words.
"So," he says in a short breath, drumming his fingers lightly on his keyboard. "Kili, Muldar, any luck?"
"Nothing," comes the defeated reply from Muldar. "No Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram...just, nothing."
"I even got my friend in on it, and she's a seasoned social media stalker," Kili agrees, dejected. "There's nothing on the internet about Karma or Akane Natsuki."
Uzala withholds a frustrated sigh, limiting it to a grimace, and deletes the words 'social media' from the ideas list on their shared document.
"She never really mentioned having friends outside of us," mutters Fultz. "Or a life."
She really didn't. How did they not notice? It's the million yen question, really.
He supposes they were so caught up in having each other that they just saw her; they didn't see the absence, the void around her that she quietly lived in with a smile on her face. She so intently listened and asked about their real lives, their real families and friends, and bounced their questions back at them seamlessly; the deflection tactics that had let her play her cards so close to her chest in Aincrad proved equally flawless in real life, even on them, her closest friends.
It was so familiar, seeing her animated hand gestures and hearing her chipper tone, that they just assumed everything would be fine like it was in Aincrad; why didn't they realize that she was still hurting? He was always there to catch her when she stumbled; they should've been there to catch her when he let her drop.
"I wish Asuna was here," Segro admits softly, and Uzala closes his eyes.
"I think we all do," he whispers.
Along with Godfree, Uzala and Asuna were of the same rank in name, leading directly under the commander himself; despite this, fierce, bold, brave Lightning Flash Asuna guided them perhaps even more than Heathcliff did. She would know what to do, wouldn't she?
Right now, Uzala is the highest ranking member left of the KoB in the real world, but he feels about as far from a leader right now as possible—he has the answers just as much as the rest of them do.
"Do you think maybe Karma figured out where Asuna is?" Sanza asks hopefully. "And that's why she left? To go find her?"
"Why wouldn't she tell us if that was the case?" Kili mutters, still sounding dejected.
"She always worked by herself...force of habit, maybe?"
"It's been over a week already," Segro argues. "She wouldn't leave us in the dark for that long if it was something that important."
"Well, what if she's stuck? What if something happened to her and she can't get back to us? It's not impossible."
Uzala slouches further down in his seat, drawing a hand tiredly through his ponytail. He's not sure what's worse—Karma being trapped against her will somewhere they can't reach her, or her deliberately leaving and staying somewhere they can't reach her.
"I'll throw it on the list," he says, doing just that quickly. "Maybe it would help if we knew more about her real life."
"Shouldn't we be focusing on where she is right now?" Muldar asks, frowning.
"Yeah, maybe, but if we knew what happened to her, I'm sure that would help us figure out why she left, and maybe that would give us a better idea of where she left to."
Maybe maybe maybe maybe
"I think she mentioned once something about a childhood friend," Segro mumbles, "but I don't think she said much about them, or even their name…"
There's so little to go off of, barely scraps for them to collect like grains of rice from the cold ground. She just had to disappear from somewhere so far out of his reach-
Just like Godfree had.
After another more or less fruitless Zoom session, Uzala closes his laptop and buries his face in his hands. He's so sick and tired of it, of the people he loves just vanishing off the face of the earth from so far away; he's sick and tired of finding out hours after the fact that not only are they gone, but also that he did and could do absolutely nothing in the moment that they were taken; he's sick and tired of this mostly irrational in hindsight feeling, of looking back and hating himself for doing nothing when it was needed the most.
He's sick and tired of losing people and he thought it was over when they left that steel castle-
But he supposes that for some—for all of them, really—the steel castle never left.
o0o0o
when I close my eyes, I want only to stay where the farthest you are is a heartbeat away - Bring Me the Night (KHS, Sam Tsui, Kina Grannis)
you and I, survivors of the same kind, but we're the only ones dancing on the sun - Ignite (K-391, Alan Walker)
Hi, Leafa! You have no idea who Karma really is, and it's going to be great when you find out! :D
This chapter actually changed a lot from the first draft XD For example, the whole conversation with Sakuya was basically a spontaneous decision (thanks deadnoble for the idea of Karma speculating about herself in third person :)). I think the first quarter of the chapter stayed more or less the same, and then everything else is new :D The real world part wasn't in my first drafts either, but I originally just had some meaningless filler (of Karma being her usual self and freaking out some other players XD) that I sort of wanted to replace anyways, and y'all seem to want to know what's happening on the other side. The answer is not much XD Just a whole lot of confusion and angst. So, y'know, the usual :) Honestly, I almost feel worse for hurting the KoB (especially Uzala T.T) than I do when I hurt Karma or Heathcliff :P They didn't do anything to deserve this! They just want to help! T.T (I know I'm preaching to the choir and all here, but still)