I don't own ".Hack"

If you want to know Balmung's secret say "Aye!"
Too bad, I'm not telling! At least not for a while…

Chapter 8 "A Friend To The Rescue."

A huge bird, the size of a giant airplane soared over us. Maha kept pulling me away, but I couldn't leave Sasha here by herself.
"Sasha!" I called to her, "Come on, we have to get out of here."
"I bet I could get a lot of rare goodies from this thing" she just stood there looking up at the humongous bird. Then it elevated into the sky.

"Sasha, now is your chance, get out of there!"
"I can take it, don't worry…" She took her stance.
The bird faced the area where Sasha was standing, and raced towards the ground with incredible speed. I ran to her, but I was too late.

"Sir Balmung…" Magi walked up to Balmung who was standing on top of a building in Delta.
"What is it, Magi?" Balmung turned towards him.
"As you can see there are monsters attacking inside the towns… would you have anything to do with this?" Magi said fixing his hair.
"…"
"Sir, you can not just come up with different events, without telling anyone, I mean we already have 24 players-" Magi was cut off.
"It's not my fault they didn't read the BBS board."

Magi sighed, "Anyways… there is a problem" he was cut off again.
"Kid, who are you to lecture me on how I should run the game?"
"But sir…" Magi cleared his thought, "it's about… her."
"Aura? Has she awakened?"
"Not exactly… but she has killed one of the players."

Balmung looked away, "Tsukasa…"
"Huh?" Magi walked up to the rail of the roof and looked down, "So you know… who the chosen one is. You know about Kurumi…"

A cold shiver ran down Balmung's spine, and he teleported out not saying a word .

Monster defeated

"Kurumi…?" A familiar figure with a friendly voice stood over me and Sasha.
"Nn" I sat up rubbing my head, I must have fallen really hard for my vision to be so blurry. Then everything came into focus, "M-Murakami? What happened?"

He crouched down and put his hand on my shoulder. "You were attacked…" he said it so simply for it to be true.
Then I remembered a little, "The flying monster!" I looked at Sasha who was unconscious laying beside me. I looked around there was stone wall around me, "Am I in a cave?" Also, Maha was nowhere to be found.

Then all of my memory came back to me. 'Slap!' "Murakami, you betrayed me!" My eyes began to tear. He tried to calm me down, "No… it wasn't me! I can explain everything…"
"Like hell you can! I saw it, I saw it all!" I jumped up and my head hit on something cold and hard. I passed out.

"Thanks, but please take care of the other Wave Master."
"But, how can I trust you with Kurumi?" I was still unconscious, but I could hear voices, two of them. I could recognize one, it belonged to Murakami. Another one sounded somewhere in between a deep, mature man's voice and a voice of a boy in his late-teen years.

"Ok…" Murakami agreed. "Murakami, what are you agreeing to? Please don't leave me…" Then the voices became more distant, and I couldn't hear a thing. Once again I was floating in a lake, surrounded with bright light. Although this time it was different somehow… In the distance I saw a girl, she was wearing a light white dress. Her skin was pale, almost white, and her hair had an unusual color that was kind of hard to describe with words.

"Where am I?" Even though I was thinking to myself, everything I thought came out in words, "Who are you?"
The girl in white faced me, "I am Aura… don't worry Kurumi, you are not dead. And since you will awaken soon, know that we will meet again!"

"Aura!" I gasped waking up. Music played around me, and wind blew though my hair. I looked around. I was just outside of the Delta server, MacAnu. But I seemed to be floating in the air above water, then I realized that I was on a boat.

"So you are finally awake…"
I looked up, "B-Balmung?" He put me down, and smiled patting my head.
"You've slept for about two days now…" He chuckled.
"WHAT? You mean I missed my exams!" Right as the boat stopped, I ran onto the shore. "Whoa, whoa… I was only kidding, calm down." This was so unlike Balmung. "So then how long?" I used his favorite emotion. I typed in /lookhard> .

He walked off the boat, and led me towards a big clock tower. "There," He pointed up, "it's only 9:58 pm…" Then he started to walk away.
"You will be ok, right?" he turned around right as he reached the Chaos Gate, "If you need anything you'll find me in Lambda server, but you can go there only after you've reached level 20, so try not to get yourself killed."

I nodded, and he teleported through the gate. "Was this really the Balmung who I met before?" The clock stroke ten and I decided to log off and get some rest before my exam tomorrow. Still I couldn't shake off the feeling that today Balmung acted somewhat like Saigi.

I took off my FMD and became immersed in darkness. I looked to my roommate's side of the dorm. He was asleep on his bed with a history book and notes for tomorrow's exam. I walked up to him, and put away his notes. "What was I thinking? How could he possibly be Balmung? He was studying all night…"

"Okimi…" He mumbled my name as I pulled a blanket over him.
I smiled, and started walking towards my bed, when I noticed that his computer was on. Knowing Saigi, he wouldn't waste electricity, and would always turn off his computer, not just the monitor. I sat down at his desk, and turned on his monitor.

My heart was pounding loud. Saigi never would let me touch his computer, and right now I was scared that he would wake up while I am surfing his files. I heard a rustle behind me, and turned around.

I sighed in relief to find him still sleeping. I cautiously skimmed the files on his desktop, and came across an interesting file, "The World's secrets" I know that he has been playing the game, but I couldn't imagine why would someone have a folder specifically for the game, and why would it say secret if it really was a secret. Inside the folder it was like a labyrinth, on file led into another, and that one branched off into three separate files, and so on.

"Hey! What are you doing?" I heard Saigi's voice, and turned around.
Lucky for me he was still asleep. I never realized that he talked in his sleep. Still, I got off his computer, turned it off and went to catch some sleep before the history exam tomorrow.

Please review and tell me what you think! Pirre the Pharaoh of Nagging, they DO have phoenix down in .Hack! I looked it up! HA! IN YOUR FACE!