"What's up man? Looks like I beat you by a couple minutes," Klein greeted the younger man with a laugh and a grin. As they bumped fists and gave each other a couple slaps against each other's palms before ending it with a one armed hug.

Always brothers in arms, regardless of how boring their lives tend to be these days. Something that was still disorienting even now.

"Nothing much, besides you know, the whole, working with Caylee and Shino at RATH and the overly big deal about making up school. Man, you would not believe how much I wish I was Rika and Argo's age," Kirito groaned with a smile and shook the rain off of his hood-

"Ey! Blackie, this is a business, not your home young man," Agil's slightly amused but very serious voice caused Kirito to pause and give the man a quick sheepish look while being jostled around by his friend as the red head slung an arm around his shoulder.

"Relax Agil! The little man's hanging out with Rika and I, plus it's just water!"

Agil looked like he wanted to argue with him, but instead the bar tender simply put down the empty glass he had been wiping dry and sighed with a mild shake of his head. Likely knowing that the two were only going to caus more chaos unless he left them be and let the more controlled and more mature, keyword more, Rika keep them mostly in line.

"That's the spirit!" Klein laughed and looked over at Kirito with a cheeky grin, "whatcha want? Rika's paying for it so you know it's gonna be fun."

"I can't drink remember?" Kirito snorted and half wrestled Klein off as he gave him a noogie with a tease.

"Right, you're a baby of the group, little baby Blackie!"

"Cut it out man," Kirito complained as Klein lead the way toward a table where a brunette was sitting alone at the moment and looking out the window with a pocky stick poking out of her mouth. "Shino's younger than me by like a year and Silica's what, eighteen? Just cause everyone under Asuna's age can't drink doesn't make me the baby of the group."

"Shino practically acts like she's twenty-two like Rika," Klein laughed, "so it's just you and Silica as the babies of the group, man."

Kirito groaned.

Ugh.

Rika didn't really look like she was paying attention, or at least she hadn't been till Kirito sat down and spoke up, hoping that she'd be able to get Klein off of his back. Since she looked rather eager to get going judging by how she was bouncing one of her legs and tapping her digital pen against her tablet that had her latest blueprint design on it.

The girl probably wanted to get back home to make sure Shino was okay a feeling Kirito could understand as another person with a chronically injured significant other like Rika.

"Hey, what do you think about the idea of a hotspring trip with everyone?"


"A hotspring? Really Kirito?" Shino sighed and Kirito cringed and awkwardly rubbed at his nose after hearing the not so thrilled voice of his friend. Technically he had been trying to call Rika, but apparently the engineer wasn't around, so her groggy girlfriend and soulmate had reluctantly answered the phone. "Was that your grand idea that you were talking to Rika and Klein about yesterday?"

"Yeah, but hear me out!" Kirito defended himself quickly after Shino's silence and armed with the knowledge that she would gladly hang up and ignore him. "I figured everyone would like a break and time to just relax and have a bit of fun! I mean it's almost been a six months since we made it home and everything's finally settled down and everything."

"That's great and all," Shino drawled, "but Argo has a baby, Kirito."

"He's six months old!" Kirito defended himself again, almost able to feel the ravenette flicking him in the forehead through the screen even though he couldn't actually see her at the moment since she had the visuals disabled. "And I doubt Kuroshiro would mind babysitting him for a day or two."

Shino's camera finally flickered on, revealing the sniper in an unzipped hoodie of Rika's amongst her own clothes, sliding into a chair in the dining room of her and Rika's place. "Have you even asked him about it before planning all of this?" She asked and it made sense why her voice had been a bit distorted this whole time, seeing how she had a nasal tube across her nose.

She must've had a rough morning with her breathing.

"No, but only because Caylee and Argo would be better at asking him, not us. Since we don't know him as well as they do."

Shino sighed and took off her glasses to rub at the lenses with the soft cloth of her shirt, "and you dragged Rika into this before you even had anything confirmed? Why does this not surprise me, Kirigaya."

"Hey-" Kirito tried to argue but was cut off by the sound of someone jogging up some steps and he saw a bit of curly hair before out emerged the curly haired Rika Shinozaki. The person he had met to call and have answered the phone, not her girlfriend.

"I thought I heard my girlfriend's beautiful voice," Rika teased flirtily as she trotted toward her and thereby the screen that they could see him on if Rika turned slightly to face it. "Who're you talking to at ten in the morning? You're nocturnal, it's against the laws of nature for you to be awake right now."

"Shut it, you," Shino rolled her eyes, "you left your Ring Phone in the bedroom and Kirito woke me up via insistent ringing of your obnoxious ring tone."

Rika promptly patted down her many pockets, looking for the bracelet like deceive that created a horizontal holographic display through air and had replaced phones prior to ALS. "Damn," she muttered, evidently not finding the device where she thought it was, namely on her person. "I could've sworn I had it with me," she twisted around a bit and jogged toward the back of the room, namely her kitchen.

The motion gave Kirito access to the sight of the slim specialized exoseketon that supported the engineer's bad leg and kept the chisel like metal piece buried into her bone and artetiery in her calf from snapping her femur every time she took a step.

"You certainly do not have it on you," Shino snorted and tossed the device behind her without looking, since she was rubbing at her eyes a bit, like she had a headache. "Now it's your turn to talk to the idiot wanting to go to a hotspring with everyone."

Rika caught the device without looking at her either, swiping an apple from a bowl of fruit with her free hand. "Morning Kirito, how's Asuna?"

"Much better than you, judging by your hair. What even happened to cause that?" Kirito snorted and gestured toward the brunette's very frizzy messy hair, which probably had to do with some kind of electricity, knowing her.

"Huh?" Rika blinked as she turned around and headed for the table with her plate and apple, "oh!" She tucked her Ring Phone into a zipping pocket of her combat style knee long shorts and gave Kirito a cheeky smirk, "well wouldn't you like to know, Mr. Leader?" and wiggled her eyebrows to add to the mischief in her response.

Uh…

He looked to Shino, asking the sniper for confirmation on what exactly actually happened to make Rika's curly hair sticking up so much but also being extremely frizzy. Almost as bad as when he and Klein had tackled her at school and rubbed a balloon over every inch of her fluffy brown hair.

However, Shino didn't bother commenting. Looking at Kirito with a muted bored expression he had seen over a million times over the past five and a half years. Which told him that she wasn't in the mood to give him anything, even just a response to what actually happened to Rika's hair. She really wasn't going to be any help in figuring out what caused Rika's crazy hair style.

Whatever, he could wonder about this later.

"I'm not going to ask," he eventually settled on sighing, reluctantly admitting defeat and giving Rika the win as she dropped down into a chair beside Shino. "So can we just talk about the whole hotsprings idea?"

"Of course," Rika smirked and Kirito wasn't sure he had the energy to deal with Rika being this bright and playful right now. Normally she was very low energy in the morning hours, working on various projects while Shino, the night owl that spent her nights wide awake in VR was sleeping. Just like how Argo and Caylee were simultaneously the two most night owl people Kirito knew alongside Rika and Shino.

Rika snagged a switchblade out of her girlfriend's pocket, which didn't even faze Shino, who seemed to be tired and just done with the world. She extended the beautifully crafted feather steel blade, which she had made herself, and brought it to the apple she was holding with her other hand. "Whatcha ya got, blackie?"

Kirito disregarded the nickname and gave a quick glance to his side to make sure Asuna hadn't been disturbed yet before he replied. "I had a handful of places that could work, but I'd want to check them out in person before making an actual decision, which is where you come in, Rika."

"Sorry, can't break you out of fort nox this time, Shi-Shi and Asuna would kill me," Rika hummed casually, referring to his aunt and cousin Sugu's place. Since he had gotten Rika into some serious trouble with both her best friend and her girlfriend for breaking him out since they couldn't exactly just say aloud that they had been out picking up the engagement ring for Asuna. The ring of which Rika had finished crafting and sent to her father for finishing touches. The brunette shifted the knife to the same hand as the apple. Before she took the bit of the apple she had carved off of it before she offered it warmly to the rather grumpy Shino. Even if the look Rika gave her suggested that ignoring it wasn't an option.

"I know," Kirito sighed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose, "that was a mess."

"At least it still went well," Rika pointed out while Shino shot Kirito a glare like she wasn't comfortable with her girlfriend all but feeding her when Kirito was watching them through a screen.

Kirito gave her an apologetic look in response. Since there wasn't much he could do about it right now with Asuna still sleeping and Rika stubbornly refusing to let Shino ignore her while she and Kirito conversed.

"If I can't break you out, then what do you need?" Rika asked the boy nonchalantly like her girlfriend's cheeks weren't tinted pink and she was reluctantly letting her do whatever she wanted regarding making sure she got her blood sugar up. "My bike?" More like motorcycle.

"Well, and you, since you can drive it and I can't," Kirito responded and winced when he realized that Rika could and would take it out of context to tease the hell out of him.

Rika's brown eyes twinkled like she knew exactly what he was thinking, though amazingly enough, she let it go as she used her sleeve to brush against the corner of Shino's mouth. Making the sniper mock try to bite her to make her back off, her face turning redder at the affection. "I meant to take it out this week anyway," she admitted and popped a piece of the apple into her mouth, "though it's gonna be pretty hard to get our schedules to align with Asuna's cold and Shi-Shi's breathing procedure tomorrow."

Kirito winced at the reminder of the procedure Shino had tomorrow that involved breaking up the scarring in her throat and lungs from inhaling lit gunpowder out in the hell that they had escaped from six months ago. She had to get them every other month for about a year, just like Asuna had various appointments and new medications for her own for her own injuries.

"Damn, I forgot it was tomorrow," he admitted a bit sheepishly and was thankful that Shino wasn't looking at him, evidently too tired to do anything but tune his presence out since Rika was determined to care for her despite him being there. "So there goes the idea of tomorrow being the day to visit them all."

"Hmm…" Rika tapped the blunt end of her blade against her lip, namely the scarred split that she seemed to always have splitting open for some unknown reason, even if her being clumsy from time to time was enough reason. "I mean, I could probably get Shi-Shi to pilot the new micro camera drone today at some point, but it's still a prototype."

He could pilot it too if he wanted to, but he had enough experience with the duo who had been a team on drone building competitions before the game, so he knew that the only one to pilot the drone would be Shino, at least till it was made public at some point.

"I mean it's either that of a video call with you slowly walking around," Kirito pointed out sheepishly, "plus this way the drone would get field experience, right?"

"True, true, sounds like a plan then." Rika agreed and flicked the apple juice off of the blade of the knife, habits from back then. When they'd have to flick animal blood from hunts off of their blades to keep them mostly clean till they could actually wash them.

"Just give me a call when you guys are at each place and I'll watch the drone's feed and get an idea of how everything looks," Kirito confirmed just as there was a bit of rustling behind him.

Asuna was awake.

"See you later Rika, feel better, Shino," he told them as he glanced behind him to look at Asuna, who was stirring and likely wouldn't be very happy to be awake when she actually regained consciousness.

"Tell Asuna we'll come see her," Shino told him in response while Rika just nodded, busy looking amused and slightly off in her thoughts. SHe was probably thinking about that drone-

"Accidentally fired an uncalibrated stun ring prototype" Rika suddenly stated and Kirito blinked.

"Say what now?"

Shino sighed and brought up the screen on her ring phone, her fingers hovering near the end call button. "Goodbye Kirito."

"Hey! Don't give me that kind of cliff hanger bullshit!" Kirito complained, but Rika only laughed before Shino smirked and promptly ended the call.

Damn, he really wanted to know what firing an uncalibrated stun ring prototype had to do with anything…