"You know, we're only going to Kyoto for a night, Koharu. Why did you pack so much?"

My new girlfriend and longtime partner in crime glares at me with scrutiny as I open her velvet suitcase to see the contents inside. I've been told once before in another world that my eyes turned from brown to red when I'm angry, but Koharu Honda's green orbs are not filled with envy. "You wouldn't understand how much a girl needs to pack."

I hold up four separate colors and types of bras, which only adds to her annoyance. "Explain this then."

"Choices. I never know which one I'd want to wear. Put them back!"

"Okay..." I drop them back in the case and zip it up, but without adding my opinion. "I like the purple one. Purple suits you well." I reference her Alfheim Online avatar, an Imp (she chose them because two of their special abilities, running on walls and night vision, reminded her of the Acrobatic and Enhanced Vision skills she had in SAO) and also the purple t-shirt she wears now.

"Dummy." The black-haired girl rolls her eyes and pats the space on her bed beside her. I get up of the floor and jump on the bed. As I fall back, I grab Koharu by the waist and pull her down. She screams and laughs as she settles on top of me, connecting our foreheads and nose tips. "Hey. I can't wait to meet your father."

""Top 10 Things A Guy Doesn't Want To Her From His Girlfriend.' I think that ranks number two. Number one is inviting Kazuto and Asuna to come with us."

"C'mon, I said I was sorry, and I'm serious. I owe him a lot from helping Mr. Kikuoka wake me up. You do too."

She is right. My father and my family's company worked with Kikuoka and Rath during last summer on an operation codenamed Project Artificial Labile Intelligent Cybernated Existence--ALICE for short. That project's main function is the production of a bottom-up artificial intelligence, but the lieutenant colonel managed to use it for medicinal purposes. Koharu and our friend Kazuto Kirigaya were both helped by the Soul Translator units and being present in the Underworld. I don't know how much involvement my father had, because though I personally helped with Project ALICE once summer break began, I never encountered Koharu until she dived down with Asuna Yuuki into the Underworld during the Final Load Test, known as the War of Underworld to me.

It's been around a month since Kazuto, Asuna, myself, and the Fluctlight we saved, coincidently named Alice, last ventured to the Underworld. There, we met descendants of people we knew from two hundred years prior and some of our accomplishments in the two century timeframe we were stuck under maximum acceleration at the war's end. Since Rath is now under RoboTelligence's control, I do have some permission to return, and I have a great desire to do so, but two reasons keep me from doing so.

One, I don't want to go without Kazuto, Asuna, and Alice. In my mind, it's only fair they come with me.

The second, whenever I think of the Underworld, there's a deep feeling of regret in my heart, centered on one of my friends there. She's long dead at this point, I've met her descendant, yet there's something that continues to hit my soul whenever I see her red hair and blue eyes in my head. And when I think of her, I think of the other woman I met there and who still remains there today.

Her grey hair and red eyes make me feel more guilt, not the same source as the first girl. The second girl and I spent most if not the entire two hundred years together, but I have no memories of that time. When I met her again, even though nothing was ever said, I could tell she was searching for the person she spent those years with. I don't know exactly what happened, but I can infer because both women had feelings for me--well, the me that was there, and I do remember who I decided. I remember the exact wording.

"Jaymes."

"Hmm?"

"Are you...happy with your choice? With Medina?"

"It's the right one. For her, it is the one that's best."

"But...one day, you'll leave anyway. Shouldn't you...let her be happy with the life she has?"

"Even though I'll outlive her… I don't want to outlive her on such a basis. And quite frankly, she made things between us clear when we left the capital."

"If I'm going to forget, I rather forget whatever I do with her, knowing she'll be here to remind me, than forget you and your descendants with no one to tell me who I was."

Those words led me to staying two hundred years with the immortal Integrity Knight Eydis Synthesis Ten, who'd become the Abyssal Empress of the Dark Territory while I'll only know Medina Orthinanos for the rest of her natural life. What plagues me is not that I made the choice I made--to the version of me who, at the time, had spent six months in their world in their accelerated passage of time, it was logical--which means my lingering feelings are emotional.

If that part of me loved either Medina or Eydis, those feelings are vacant now. They were void the moment my memory was wiped, and thought I get some flashes of my time with Eydis, they don't raise up the feelings the former Crimson Emperor of the Dark Territory had for his queen. My heart is set on the girl above me, who seems pissed that I've ignored her while thinking of the other realm and pulls my ear gently. "Ouch... You say something?"

She rests her head now on my shoulder, but keeps our clothed body contact. She removes her hand from my ear and places it on my chest, letting her fingers dance there. "You have something on your mind?"

"...Do you want to hear it? I don't know how you'll react,"

"Mhm. You can tell me anything."

I turn my head to Koharu. She looks willing, though I don't know if telling her about other girls who aren't of this world (and though I wouldn't consider them human biologically, they're human in the soul). I figure, since we were not dating at the time, or I wasn't dating anyone in this world, it shouldn't piss her off... I hope. "Okay... I was thinking of the Underworld. Eydis and Medina, specifically."

As expected, she's quiet, though not as long as I thought she'd be. "Okay... Did you...you know?"

"With Eydis, most certainly. I mean, I spent two hundred years with her, and there's a good chance most of that reason was because I, or rather the me in there, loved her. There's a fine chance I could have had some feelings for Medina. But that's not the reason I'm thinking about them. I... I understand why I think about Eydis, there's two hundred years of missing history with her in my head, and when I saw her, remembering tidbits hurt. As for Medina, I feel a deeper regret. Did I do her wrong? If so, did I never fix it? The only person who really knows all that is me, the me who lived those two hundred years."

"You should find out," my oh-so-wise partner tells me. "You should resolve such regrets, especially when you see Eydis again. After all, I know you well. You don't handle sadness well. You actually handle it quite pathetically."

"Excuse me? Miss Honda, you disappeared from SAO in my arms, did you expect me to wake up the next day doing like nothing happened?"

"Mister Hardin, you didn't reach out to your childhood friend for a few weeks because you felt guilty about hiding the truth of your skills, only to risk your lives later on. And need I say how long you held on to your promise ot me that it put a ridge with Rika that's still present? Besides..." Koharu lifts her head and kisses me on the forehead, then looks down on me again. "They were important to you. It's only right you have the answers to your questions."

My partner speaks truth, and I hate she is right. Smiling, I take her head in my hands and kiss her properly. "What would I do without you?"

"You want the nice answer or the mean one?"

"The 'Koharu I know' answer, not the 'Koharu Honda I know' answer."

"You'll probably do it anyway, but not without the push I'm giving you."

"...Why couldn't you be that nice in real life?"

She smirks. "Who says that, eventually, Koharu Honda didn't merge with Koharu the Kindred Assassin? You do remember the first time you asked me on a date, right?"

"Uh huh."

After dinner and making sure Koharu is set on her packing, I made the short walk back to my home and headed straight to my room. By the time I make it to the second-story room, I realize that the artificial intelligence within my home hasn't greeted me. Considering how attached Rei is to me, so much that she engages in conflict with another AI, Strea, over who truly belongs to me, I'm shocked she hasn't said anything. She must be busy in GGO, which I should be too.

I'll let Sinon and Kureha get slightly ahead in our preparation for Battle of Bullets V. Tonight, I have a mission of my own.

On my desk, placed carelessly on the black keyboard. is a envelope containing a flashdrive. I opened it earlier after coming home from school to change clothes, knowing what it is. I didn't tell Koharu since there are some secrets I should keep from her and the others, including Kazuto and Asuna. I'm not even sure Alice, who works with Rath, is knowledgeable of the package Dr. Koujiro sent me at my request.

Well, my request was to speak to him, not to have him come to me. I believe she wants whatever information I'm told to be between me and...well, me.

I take the black flashdrive out the envelope and start up my desktop. Once the start-up is done, I insert the flashdrive into its port--in one try, haha--and wait for the files page to load up. To my surprise, there's only one file, a couple of gigabytes big. FLUCTLIGHT_JOSHUA_HARDIN_200. In those six gigs of data is the me who lived two hundred years after the War of Underworld ended. It's scary to have a part of you missing, it's scary to have missed years of your life, and I'm feeling both of those right now. I wonder how Kazuto and Asuna manage it, but I don't have the heart to ask them.

Remembering Koharu's words, I swallow my hesitation and click on the file. Thirty seconds later, a black screen appears with a blue speherical object floating in the center. My name appears in the upper left corner, and other information appears in the lower right. This is the second time I'm seeing my own fluctlight--I had one taken from a test dive, that guy couldn't handle the concept that I am the true Jaymes, or that we both exist--so seeing this one partially scares me. What if it collapses on me? What do I do then except go to Eydis for answers? No, I can't do that, this is my only chance to resolve my issues myself.

"So are we just going to stare at each other, or are you going to start asking questions?"

Never mind, he can collapse and die. If this is how Asuna thinks I act, I no longer blame her for the hostile half of our friendship. I shake my head and glare at the computer. "That's rude, even for me. You can say 'Hello, Real Joshua' and be done with it."

"Heh. Being scolded by me is not good for my health, or yours. It's better if you refer to me as something other than either of your names, but nothing degrading."

"Oh, I was going to ask Asuna for tips. Never mind then... Okay, Mr. Mage Knight, it is true, I do have a question to ask you. Maybe more than one, to be honest."

"As expected, but can I ask one first?"

"Sure."

"You chose Koharu, right?" I see what team he's on, which means that I made my decision between moving onwards with Koharu or going back with Rika in the Underworld. I guess there was a reason I made the choice (with some personal turmoil, again) as quickly as I did. I nod, and the fluctlight...sighs? "I don't want to sound cruel to Rika or anyone else, but... It was always Koharu. But I bet things are not too good with Rika, huh?"

I feel sweat forming on my forehead. "I'm not sure I appreciate you knowing everything, even if you're me."

"Sorry."

"Anyway... It's my turn. My question...is about Medina."

"...Medina, huh? That's...hard for me to answer, as you can expect. To answer that... Do you consider us the same person living two variable lives or two different versions of the same person?"

In English: Is who I am now the same person as on the computer screen, just products of our environment and circumstance? Or is Joshua Hardin and the Crimson Emperor, despite sharing the same soul, two different people? My answer comes bubbling out before I realize it. "Maybe, at one point, we were the same, but I consider us two separate people."

"I do too, nowadays. I'd say that, as time passed, I became somewhat different from you. But at the beginning, we were still one. Things began to change after you became Emperor, but you were nothing more but a holder of a title at the moment. I could tell you what happened between you and Medina that both of us feel some guilt, and not just that... I even questioned my feelings about Eydis, who I still love dearly. But to fully understand what began that change, it is best I tell you everything, from beginning to end."

I feel this is not going to be a short, happy story. Considering the luck I have, this might be Kazuto's fault. "Well, what did Kazuto do that Asuna and I had to help him clean up?"

"Actually, it wasn't Kirito's fault, or yours. If it was anyone's it's the original four employees of Rath who raised the fluctlights or, more directly, Administrator's."

"Oh."

"if the War of Underworld, or the Otherworlder War, gave rise to who'd become the Swordsmen Delegates and Swordswoman Subdelegate, the War for Underworld birthed the Star King, Star Queen, and the Crimson Emperor. For me and you, it was the death of the Crimson Warrior once and for all, and the birth of someone new. It takes place during the passing cold of February, HEC 384, a year and three months after the defeat of PoH and Subtilizer..."

Welcome to Underworld: The Ancient Apostles, the first of a two-part story.

While this chapter takes place shortly before the end of Abyss of the Shrine Maiden, the main story a follow-up to War of Underworld. It is part original plot, part Moon Cradle Arc, and part Alicization Lycoris DLC story. Somehow, I managed to sequence the two sources and original content together, so there are some changes from the original material and this story to fit in the original storyline, but for the most part, Moon Cradle is more or less follows its events, and the DLCs just have character changes.

Besides a extension of the next chapter and a continuous lookover of the following twenty, this story is complete. Updates will be once a week at least, mostly depending on how much I work on the second part (60-70% complete). If anything, I hope to upload twice a week and both stories should be uploaded completely by summer.

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you all in the next chapter!