Brown eyes colored pink with contacts blinked sleepily, her nose brushing the dark inky strands of her partner's hair. Silky strands of a color so dark that light itself couldn't escape it's cool embrace. An embrace so cold to the rest of the world, but so warm and sweet to her. The warm personality beneath the devoid masks, a mask so thick that there were moments were not even Rika herself could pierce through it.

A mask that only grew thicker as the days passed by, hardened and darkened with the weight of her role here, the role she had so readily agreed to to save the gentle hands of another. To preserve the beauty in their cheeky nosey friend and all of the others that they loved rather than try and preserve herself and the heart she let Rika cradle so carefully and lovingly close to her own.

"You're such a sap," a voice brushed over Rika's ears and she couldn't resist the smile. Smiling deep into her partner's hair and with fingers strengthened by forging steel but gentle with her love as she nestled her closer to her body. Enfolding the beautiful sniper and the girl she had grown up alongside in her snug embrace and nuzzling her, her lips brushing softly against the shell of her ear with her proximity.

"Mmmm, I'm your sap," she murmured into her and felt the way her ear shifted and how it told her that her sleepy partner was smiling, if just a little. She could make her smile, make the muted slightly deadened expressioned sniper relax those silver eyes and allow her to carry her bow for her.

Allow her to share her burdens and the price she paid every day following through with Kirito's plan, the long con in the game.

A long game of two and a half years that wasn't over yet.

"Keep being like that and I'll get up," her beloved mumbled with a smirk in her voice, but the drowsiness in her tone told Rika otherwise.

"Don't lie, you love me too much to get up," Rika practically purred into her ear, regardless of how it was just for show and how much she cared and wanted to see her be happy. "Plus," she hummed softly, brushing her lips affectionately against her shoulder and the strip in her skin visible through the cutouts in her shirt, "you're exhausted and need sleep."

"Yet you've seen me be able to sleep standing up before, and I could always go snuggle with Akio," her partner refuted with an amused mumble referencing their adopted son sleeping in his own room. Rika moved her head back, if only so she could see her pretty face in the soft light inside their bedroom. Since her partner always slept better if it wasn't pitch black and where her mind could play tricks on her.

"Mmmm," Rika pressed her lips to her partner's cheek, "but if you get up then I'm not there," she teasingly coaxed, aware that her partner relaxed when it was just them. Where her partner was free-

"NO!"

Rika's world spun, spinning in defiance to what she was seeing, defiance to the truth in front of her of the reality that she didn't want to sink in.

She didn't want to believe it.

No.

No…

It… it couldn't be happening.

This can't be real.

She had to be dreaming, had to be seeing things, her brain had to be playing tricks on her within the game.

But… she could hear her own scream ringing in her ears, feel the way it was damaging her avatar's already raw throat, and could see her partner being held up from the front of her shirt at knife point.

Yet the words the one responsible was speaking didn't reach Rika's ears.

Knees hit the wooden panels of the floor and her arms reached out without thinking, reaching out to touch the still form on the floor.

Her arm slipped under their small back and lifted them toward her body, calling their name when she already knew the truth. Since the young boy's health bar had broken and vanished from the little family's party.

Akio, their bright little light and Rika's first child by adoption…

… was gone.

Her partner's body hit the floor out of the corner of her eyes, collapsing and scrabbling at her throat with red particles coming off of the deep gash. That was causing rapid pixels to hemorage from her health bar.

Green, then yellow.

While calm footsteps walked past Rika.

Red.

Walking past the blacksmith who's child he had just taken away and crushing a heal crystal in his palm.

The blue particles flew past Rika's face and she numbly watched them, her gaze lifting from the enterally sleeping child cradled to her body to watch the few particles wisp through the air toward the window like the wind's gentle whisper.

Calling her boy and taking him away from her forever.

Her partner was suddenly there, jostling her a little as she pulled Rika's face into her hands, inky eyebrows furrowed in an expression of concern and obviously trying to keep it together.

To keep the fear down.

To hide the pain.

To keep from crying with her.

All to protect her when a big part of her world was breaking apart, shattering into thousands of particles like the ones from the heal crystal wisping together with the red ones from her partner's now healed injury.

Who had saved her, only to force her to suffer.

"Your partner is next," a low voice stated nonchalantly as they left and Rika didn't have the strength to speak as she pulled her face away from her partner's hands and buried her nose into her little boy's dusty brown hair for the last time.

Her partner's arms slipped around her, pulling her body close and causing Rika's to give a breath that shuddered with her grief.

Akio…

"I will kill you for this PoH!" Her partner spat, snarling despite how her voice was shaking, trembling with the pain of losing a child. "You won't escape, you hear me?!" she was shouting, but Rika could see the tears welling in her silver eyes. "You'll never get out of this game alive!"

She wanted revenge.

and honestly, so did Rika.

This was him. the man who had suggested the idea of a PK spy, the one who had taken her partner's innocence through her position as a PKer spy and bloodied her hands with evil and innocent blood, Rika snapped.

"It's your fault!" Rika snarled, struggling against their guards and trying to lunge at him. Trying to get the the boy that forced her partner's hand and it led here.

Where her son was dead.

Where her partner nearly died.

Where she would never be safe again till all of the PKers were wiped out.

Where they and their leader snuck in and Rika had to watch her son die.

"You asked her to do this!" she roared, struggling violently and glaring at him through her heavy tears and the ones dripping down to the floor, "you fucking asshole promised we'd be safe! That nobody would find us! That we could raise one of the orphans and you'd protect us!"

"Rika-"

"YOU PROMISED! AND NOW MY SON IS DEAD!"

Asuna was moving the moment Rika started choking, racing toward her friend on a futon on the floor and completely disregarding her book.

The pages fluttered as it fell, but she paid no mind to it. Calling Rika's name in concern as glistening tears welled up in the choking girl's squeezed shut pink eyes and she began clawing frantically at her throat. "Rika!"

She was foaming lightly at the mouth, agitated and freaking out from something only she could see or experience.

This… this wasn't the first time Asuna had seen something like this… was it?

Poison.

Asuna could tell what it was, purely by the way Liz's skin was turning red at her arm from the exposure to the deadly liquid.

"Get out of here!" Liz spat out what liquid had gotten into her mouth while Asuna was shoving the young player toward the black clad player, "and take her with you!"

"But-"

"Go!" Asuna directed her partner, insisting as a throwing knife was deflected through Liz's shield, even though they all knew that it wouldn't have killed any of them, not if the owner of the specially crafted throwing knives was who they throught it was. She caught another one in her hand, disregarding the possibility of her hand getting cut through her gloves and raised her voice, "that's an order!"

With reluctance, like he didn't want to leave the two of them even though he was had one of the most important young players in the game with him, he obeyed her order. Who was yelling and calling Liz' gamertag, yelling her name and trying to escape Kirito's grasp on her wrist.

The throwing knife shot from Asuna's fingers with the force of a bullet, striking one of the PKers in the throat once another casually stepped to the side and avoided the projectile being thrown back at her. Which wasn't a surprise since it was hers.

Liz finally fell, the blacksmith and their top tank falling backward from the poison she had gotten into her mouth and on her skin that was making liquid bubble at her mouth and nose. It couldn't kill thanks to SAO's mechanics with Liz's absurd STR stats, but that didn't mean it couldn't weaken and damage her. When she had blocked the spray with her body that would've killed Asuna and the young player.

Asuna quickly bent down and grabbed Liz by the straps over her shoulders for her breastplate, hauling the tank backward, "Liz, now!"

Choking on liquid that trickled out of her mouth in a frothy green mess that gave off red damage polygons, Liz obeyed. The tank's shield changed, changed from it's standard buckler to a large iconic shaped large shield with a unique feature that when combined with a strike of her hammer…

"Cover your ears and get down!" Someone shouted, giving the warning milliseconds before Liz's hammer collided with the top of the metal shield. Producing an ear splitting screech and a wave of sound in front of her shield that tore down the first row of trees that the PKers were hiding inside. Slicing deep into anyone who had been standing rather than ducking like one of them had suggested.

By the time they had recovered from the sonic wave, Asuna and Liz with out of sight. Hiding with Asuna holding a hand over her friend's mouth to soften the choked gurgles that the brunette was making as she clawed at Asuna's arms in an attempt to reach her neck. Panicking from the poison's effects, which were no doubt distorting her senses and was definitely painful.

And Asuna couldn't talk to her, since Liz probably had her avatar's eardrums shattered since Asuna had been mostly behind her, thereby protecting her ears and making them ring but not be destroyed.

They'd have to get back to her partner and the girl in order to heal Liz's ears, but for now… for now she had to keep Liz quiet while the PKers searched around.

The disorientation of the memory suddenly vanishing threw Asuna to her hands and knees with a agonizing stab at the lower part of her skull. The tightened state of her throat and rapid pulse was enough proof of the panic her body was going through at the memory itself. Working overtime at light speeds to work out what had happened to it and what was reality and what was the lost world of her memories.

The floor of her bedroom was reality, the sounds of undergrowth and people moving through them were memories. Of which she didn't have time for right now.

Asuna lurched into motion with her head still spinning.

With more force than she would've thought as necessary, Asuna wrenched her struggling friend's hands away from her throat. Which already had red marks in irritation down her neck from her scrabbling at the skin from something only she could see. "Rika!" She called her name again, wrestling to keep her hands down and away from her neck before she hurt herself, "Rika wake up! It's just a bad dream!"

Damnit, she couldn't shake her and pry her hands away at the same time! Not with the absurd strength her friend seemed to have these days.

"Rika!"

Another stab at the base of her skull made Asuna pause.

Wait.

The choking, clawing at her throat, how her eyes were squeezed shut, and without any sort visible reason for the panic. Rika must've been experiencing a memory, something that she didn't want nor need to remember.

Asuna just had to break her out of it.

Her hazel-blue eyes flickered around, looking around for water. She had to have water in here somewhere, something to force her best friend awake and out of the clutches of whatever horrid thing she was trapped inside. Her eyes fell on Rika's water bottle.

Water.

Letting go of Rika's hands, Asuna crawled on her hands and knees the last four feet to Rika's bag and struggled with getting the clip undone holding the water bottle in place for a few moments. Before she was pulling the water bottle out and moving toward Rika as she unscrewed the cap.

"I'm sorry," she apologized in a mutter to the choking sleeping girl and made sure to give her enough space that they wouldn't smack heads if and when Rika jerked into awareness. She tipped the water bottle over about ninety degrees, effectively drenching her friend with the cool liquid.

Rika all but jumped to her feet, the brunette threw herself upright with a heavy gasp, the first actual normal breath Asuna had heard her take in over two minutes. She did a mostly neat roll and collided with the wall with enough force that it knocked a shelf down and broke over Rika's head after knocking the girl to the floor. "Ow! That's one hell of a wake up call, my god!" She whined, holding her one hand to her messy pink and brown curls at the back of her head and lightly knocking her fist against the floor in pain, "now my head really hurts, Asuna!"

Asuna couldn't help it, she started giggling. After all, what else was she supposed to do when her friend was on her floor after having a shelf come off the wall and break over her head, to only complain about a little pain. Rather than the agony someone else would be going through right now.

Her mom may actually get mad at Rika this time, but honestly it didn't matter. It wasn't like her father would let her do anything too crazy to the friendly wellmannered girl.

Asuna's father slammed the door open, lookin concerned and startled by the loud noise along with the sight of the room itself. "Is everything alright?!"

Behind him was Kouchiriou, while Argo looked about as unfazed by recent events as Asuna had expected of her night owl sister.

"Nice one Ri-chan," Argo snorted, much to Rika's whine about not meaning to.