Argo tapped her tablet and looked up at them all. "Kazuto Kirigaya, yer Kirito da Black Swordsman of SAO."

The tailor, Ashley, picked up a full grey and black clothing bundle from the back in a separate pile, with a mild-mannered smile and offered the bundle to him alongside a small bag of four pins. Which made Kazuto shuffle forward if just a little. Since he shot a glance back at his sister, worried about leaving her behind.

Not that he needed to since Argo seemed to sense his intent and the small blonde relayed Sugu's name.

"Suguha Kirigaya, yer Leafa, of ALO."

Sugu trotted after him and Kazuto shuffled obediently down till, he was in front of the Lisbeth girl. Now that he was closer to her, he could see the way her left eye, the one that looked mostly blue through the blue tinted glass of her eyepiece, looked blind, the pupil being faded and a grey rather than a dark black. Yet she was looking right at him, so clearly, she could see him and see him very well, she just looked blind in that eye.

She had the faintest scar across her nose and her eye looked damaged, almost like something had happened to her-

The shriek of agony made Kirito's blood run cold and he was running, abandoning his position and racing down the hall toward where he could see one his friends on the ground.

It was Liz.

The brunette was on the ground, their tank, the one who could and had withstood bullets to the head with just a headache, was lying on the ground, kicking and holding her hand to her face, specifically her eye.

"Get off of me!" The panicked tank roared and threw the other players trying to help her off of her, blindly scrambling to her feet and leaving thick smears of her blood from her hand as she got to her feet and stumbled, slamming straight into a wall, not that it seemed to do anything other than make her more panicked.

"Liz! Liz it's me!" He tried to speak over the panicked hyperventilating and howls of agony, "Calm down, it's just us! You have to stop moving, you're going to break down the walls!"

Dust was already being shaken free by the thunder like blind panic of the girl could smash through concrete with just a fist and no injuries.

The panicked warrior merely gave another howl of pure agony and panic before she bumped into another wall, confused, disorientated and streaking blood all over the now damaged walls.

Why wasn't she recognizing them? They worked with her all the time, so why…

"Rika!"

Asuna was here.

"Agil, restrain her! Someone get Shino and that sniper better have been taken out!" Asuna directed briskly while she rushed over toward Kirito, "Kirito-kun, what happened?!"

"I don't know!" Kirito responded quickly, watching as Agil struggled to just get to the panicking girl, "she just started-"

"She's been shot in the eye!" one of the members of Liz's squad babbled and Kirito felt his heart drop to his stomach.

No…

But the proof was right in front of him as Agil got the thrashing tank in a headlock and Liz sobbed in pain, clawing at Agil's arm before giving another scream of pain. Her fingers covering her eye and that side of her face was drenched in her blood, further evidence of the claim that Liz had been shot straight in the eye.

A gun clattered to the ground and Shino went running past him, running straight for Liz, "oh my god, Rika!"

At her voice and the girl's hands going to her blood face, Liz stopped thrashing and simply cried, struggling to breathe and cope and function. "I-I can't see," she heaved, blubbering the words through her pain, "K-Kill me, please!" She all but begged the other girl, spitting out blood and scrabbled at Agil's arm again as another bout of pain hit her and penetrated through her heavy tank abilities. "I don't… I don't want to l-live like this!" She cried out, blubbering and trying to fight even though if what her squad had said, she had to be in utter agony.

"I will if you want," Shino showed some of that hidden gentle side as she soothed her panicking in game wife with words that Liz would've wanted to hear right now while her mind was so addled from pain and carefully tried to pry her fingers from her face. "Try to hold still, okay?" she coaxed while Liz's lip split in multiple places from biting it so hard to keep from screaming again, "it'll be okay…"

Her ability to mask emotional certainly came in handy here. Since unlike Asuna and Kirito who both inhaled sharply, Shino didn't even twitch while a couple of the others threw up.

Liz had indeed been shot straight on, through the eye. With only her odd tank abilities saving her life.

Kazuto narrowly avoided losing his balance at the pain in his head, he… he had just seen something, something horrific from the churning in his stomach even if he couldn't remember what he had just seen. He knew it had to do with the blacksmith in front of him and something about her eye…

Had he been there when Lisbeth's eye had been damaged?

The mentioned blacksmith looked startled to see him. Flickers of hazy recognition showed up in her pink eyes, even if her eyebrows furrowed in an expression of confusion like she couldn't tell exactly where she knew him from, but she did know him from somewhere.

So, he had to have been there when her eye had become the way it was, damaged from some kind of injury, a really bad one if he had to judge via the nauseating churning in his stomach.

"Hey, you, okay? Memory smack you in the face?" Lisbeth asked him in a rather sympathetic manner, "my best friend has them all the time, a lot more than I do, though I beat her in the number of migraines I have."

"Migraines huh?" Kazuto winced as he held his arms out for her to give him the weapons she was holding, namely a twin pair of one-handed swords. "Ouch, I'd rather have memory spikes than migraines all the time."

"Eh, you get used to it," Lisbeth chuckled and carefully placed the twin swords across his arms. "Be careful with those," she directed, "they need to be sharpened before you use them, and here's the way you wear them." She picked up a netaly folded pile of leather and laid it on top of the two swords, "come see me once you've changed and I'll help you put it on so you don't look like an idiot in front of our commander," she teased, and Kazuto rolled his eyes.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Lizzbeth-" he then stopped speaking abruptly and blinked, unsure why he had just done that.

Lisbeth faltered for a moment and the brunette with pink highlights would've collapsed were it not for the way she caught herself on the table, fingers going up to her head. "That's where I recognized you from!" She snorted with amusement and Kazuto looked at her, confused.

"What?"

"The way you said my name," Lisbeth explained with a smirk around the obvious pain in her pink eyes, "you're totally the guy who smashed the hell out of one of my best swords and I had been doing you a favor at the time too."

"Oh, really? I don't remember that," Kazuto admittedly sheepishly and would've scratched his cheek if he hadn't had an armful of equipment.

"It's fine," Lisbeth blew off his inability to remember the event with a bit of a laugh, "I'll tell you the story at some point-"

"Liz, this is why I prefer to be present for these kinds of things, you can never stay professional and on task," a feminine voice from behind Lisbeth spoke up with amusement and Lisbeth froze before she groaned.

"Aw, come on Asuna, don't blame me this time, okay? He's the guy who smashed one of my swords back in the game," Lisbeth pouted while the other person walked around her, "plus he's your sub commander, so it's not like I'm talking to some rando you know."

"Oh, so Kirito finally made it?" Asuna, evidently, asked curiously and finally came into his view.

His breath caught in his throat.

Asuna was beautiful.