A/N: Okay, let's get this party started for real. A few things to note before we begin...

One, this story will not be as long as Shattered Fragment. I give it fifteen chapters, twenty at the most. Sorry if this comes as a disappointment, but there's just not as much of a story to cover as there was with the previous one- although to be fair, that was more or less two stories combined into one narrative (Aincrad arc + Hollow Fragment arc).

Two, the omake section at the end is being replaced with... something else. It's an idea I've toying with for some time, and I wanted to start it sooner, but I think it would have been weird to start a new closing format in the midst of an already-established pattern.

Three- and this is important, so pay attention- power scaling will be based mostly on the scales used in Jump Force. This means that a Kamehameha does not automatically have the power to blow up a planet! A Frost Demon could easily lose to a pirate! An alchemist might be able to beat a user of nen in a fistfight! There are likely quirks that seem OP but will be completely ineffective against a mage! Power scaling tends to be broken in Shonen manga/anime, and that's without the arguments of the fandom getting thrown in! ...Are we good? Cool.

Now, if you've decided to stick around, please read, review, and enjoy!

Black Moonlight

A castle, immeasurable in size and splendor, flew across the sky in an endless journey, the lands from which it had been borne existing as nothing but a long-forgotten memory. The only thing that kept the glorious structure company in its migration were the clouds and other, scattered islands that had once belonged to the same world as Aincrad. The magic that had taken them up into the heavens was but a mere shadow of what it had once been, and even so, its majesty persisted.

Long had I lived by the Law of the Sword. Long had I ruled as the undisputed master of the Hollow Area. Long had I been seen as the most hated being in that fantastic world.

That was fine with me. The people of the realm hated me for my decrees, as I equally despised them for spineless fools that they were, incapable of taking necessary action. Without me, none of them would have been able to sleep soundly in their beds at night, knowing that they were safe from all the monsters that stalked them from the shadows.

After all, there is always a monster that even the other monsters fear.

"And what monster do you fear?"

The sky around me darkened into a starless twilight, and I found myself in my home; La Ulpuera Gardens of the Hollow Area. As the sunlight faded, the flowers and trees around me began to wither and crumble into dust, even as the wind howled in my ears, trying to knock me down with nature's force of will.

I defied it, as I had defied everything, and stood strong against the onslaught, even as a shadowy figure emerged from a swirling cloud of dust left behind by the now-dead greenery and vicious windstorm. As they drew closer, it was easier to make out the maroon red cloak that swirled around their body, a vermilion sword at his hip. In spite of the howling wind, the figure did not raise his voice, but I could still hear him ask, "Do you fear the wrath of those that await you on the other side?" Even if the hood over his face hid him from view, I knew who it was who had come to challenge me.

I laughed derisively, even as the grass itself began to die under our feet. "I fear nothing and no one," I told my mirror image. "I have neither left to lose!"

"If that is so…" In spite of myself, I took a step back when Crimson threw back the cowl on his cloak to reveal hollow eye sockets and a mouth that spilled blood as he staggered forward and groaned out, "Why do you recoil from the sight of your own handiwork, Red Swordsman?"

"I… I didn't-!"

"You killed us." I turned around to see the crystal-clear pool that had once been fed by pristine waterfalls, now turned into a basin of scarlet, which had been filled by the bleeding corpses that were piled atop one another where the rivers used to end. I recognized every face that were in those mounds, many of them twisted in the agony of their final moments, while others smiled, as if to great the Grim Reaper as an old friend.

Out of the mire rose five shades, all of them pale and dripping with the lifeblood of the carnage around them. Four were men, three of which were covered in slash and stab marks, while the leader could barely walk, disfigured and mangled as his body was. The last figure staggered forward, a woman, would have been very beautiful if she weren't holding her stomach in place with a hand that had been ripped open to the bone.

"You killed us," they repeated as they began to stalk up the stairs toward me. "It should have been you."

"No!" I shouted back at them as I drew my sword, only to look down and realize that it was already coated in blood that had stained my palm and was dripping from my fingers. "Not you! I tried to save you!"

"And what about me, Brother?" I felt a chill run down my spine as I heard a familiar voice from just behind me. "Did you even try to save me?" The ground trembled and began to crack apart, even as an ominous rumble filled my ears, drowning out the screams of the wind through the garden.

I turned around to face Crimson, only to feel a terrible pain in my gut as his sword drove into my navel. His deathly visage gazed down at me as he mumbled through bloodied lips, "Live by the sword, die by the sword. Such is the fate of all who take up a blade… even us Red Swordsmen."

"Please… I didn't want to-!"

"You killed us, Mataras."

"NO!" I screamed as I shot upright in bed, sweat pouring down my body as I shook like a leaf. It took me few seconds to readjust to my surroundings, as they were so different from what I had been reliving but a moment ago.

I was tangled up in a soft blanket on top of a large bed that sat in a master bedroom on the second floor of a house in Kawagoe, Japan. It was a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and nothing in it suggested that my life was in immediate danger. Nevertheless, my heart pounded like a jackhammer against my ribcage as if it were an animal desperately trying to escape the slaughterhouse, and my lungs ached as they tried to refill themselves with fresh air, no matter how relieving each prior breath had been. My clothes clung to me like honey, and I shivered from an inner cold that defied my body temperature. I could taste salt on my lips that fell from my eyes while I brushed my damp hair out of my face.

None of these sensations were new to me, especially during the last few months following the events that had concluded Sword Art Online. It seemed like I woke up in this manner more often than not these days.

"Dammit," I coughed. My throat was drier than a desert, so I moved to retrieve the water glass that I kept on my nightstand, only to find that it was empty. With a slight growl of frustration, I moved toward the bathroom sink, passing a clock that read '4:17 a.m.' on the way.

Mentally bracing myself, I clicked on the light and quickly filled my cup before rapidly emptying the cool liquid into my stomach. I made a point of using my barely-open eyes as an excuse to ignore the phantom in the mirror, as it would do nothing but remind me of my fallen comrade. Breathing heavily, I refilled the glass and shut off the light before stumbling in the dark back to my bed, using my hands to feel my way across the room so that I didn't slam into anything on accident. There was a new scar on my foot that had resulted from me dropping a glass on a similar midnight trip a few weeks back, and I was determined not to repeat that mistake again.

Once I had sat back down on my bed and put the glass where it belonged, I let out a long sigh that I didn't realize that I had been holding. "I cannot keep doing this…" I groaned as I held my head in my hands. My skin felt itchy from the sweat, a sensation that I was still becoming accustomed to, even after a few months of having been back in the real world. It also felt extra-sensitive for some reason, but I attributed that to having been so violently aroused from my slumber by my own subconscious' sense of imminent danger.

My ears picked up on a set of soft footsteps that preceded an equally soft voice asking, "Are you okay, Mataras?"

"Nope," I exhaled as I tried to make out my friend in the dark. "When you do all the stuff that I've done, turns out that you have to pay for it, in one form or another."

"You already paid your due, though," my friend said as she moved into the room to sit by me. "You set us all free. You've even given me a new home. Surely that's enough to ease your conscience?"

"Tell that to my conscience," I muttered tiredly. Turning slightly, I could just make out my guest next to me in the dark, as my eyes had not quite adjusted back yet. "I'm sorry I woke you, Sachi. You should go back to bed." Despite our best efforts to use each other's birth titles when we had returned to the real world, we and most of our friends still had a habit of calling each other by our old avatar names when we were in private.

"Are you going to?" she asked me quietly.

"Not after what I just saw," I admitted with a shudder. "That shouldn't keep you up, though. Go on, I'll be fine." She had come to live with me and my sister after learning that her father was dead and her mother was declared incompetent by a psychologist, with me as her legal guardian until she came of age. Having long established a master-student relationship from our old days in SAO, the adjustment was not a very hard one to make.

"I don't have school today, so I don't mind keeping you company," she insisted as she settled into a more comfortable sitting position on the mattress. "Besides, I don't sleep as well when Kirito isn't beside me, so…" I thought that she might have shrugged, but I couldn't be certain in the dark.

"I'm sorry that isn't an option for you two, yet," I told her with the ghost of a smile. Despite the fact that she and our guild leader had married each other in SAO, that marriage was not binding in the real world. Because Sachi lived with me, I had made it clear that they were to abide by the laws of whichever reality they were in, which meant no sleepovers on my watch. They had remarried in the VR world that we were exploring these days, but the new full-dive rigs had a function that automatically logged a player out ten minutes after they began their first REM cycle, so it wasn't exactly ideal for letting the couple take naps together.

"Hopefully it won't be long before Kirito and I finish school, and then we can get our life together started for real," the quiet girl said with a soft giggle. "You'll have to do the wedding again. That was a lot of fun."

"Sorry, that was a one-time deal," I chuckled. "There are plenty of good churches with capable holy men to do the job. Like I told you back then, I'm not ordained, and I wouldn't feel right becoming so after everything… After what I've done."

There was a long pause before Sayuri asked me, "Is that what you were dreaming about?"

"More or less."

"Something tells me it was more."

I chuckled at that and bumped shoulders with her. "You've been around Victoria and I too long," I told her. "But I would be lying if I said I wasn't glad to have you around this much."

"Me too," she answered with what sounded like a smile. "I have to say, I'm surprised that Saphira didn't come here, first. She's usually good about hearing us when we've had nightmares."

"She was losing too much sleep over helping us, so I made her wear noise-cancelling earbuds to sleep," I reminded her. "It's sweet of her, but I know she has her own demons that she wrestles with at night. She needs to rest just as much as we do."

"And yet here we are," Sayuri mused. "So, what woke you this time?"

I wrestled with whether or not to tell her what I had seen, but in the end I remembered that while she had not been a member of the Fifth Commandment, she had seen many terrible things in Sword Art Online. She was no shrinking violet; she could handle this.

I let out a long breath before I asked, "Do you know what the strangest thing was when I… killed people in SAO?"

"No," she murmured. "You don't really talk about those times anymore. I assumed it was because you don't want to relive that time of your life."

"It's more because I prefer to carry my burdens myself, but I suppose that's part of it," I admitted. "I don't want to burden anyone else with what I've done than I have to, but…" I still hesitated, in spite of my conviction.

"But what?" My old student's voice was patient, understanding. She wasn't like many of the other survivors that had cursed my name during our imprisonment- Sachi was my friend.

"But I need to do something differently, or I'm just going to keep spiraling downward," I said heavily. "Even so… it's your last chance to back out."

Sayuri said nothing, but I felt a warm pressure on my forearm that told me that she wasn't going anywhere. Taking that as a sign to continue, I said, "The strangest thing about SAO was that there was no blood, ever. At first I didn't really think about it, fighting monsters and all that, you know? They were imaginary creatures, and they died like them, without any mess on us. But… with people…"

"The people were real," she finished for me.

"Yeah," I nodded somberly. "The people lived in both SAO and this world, and for some reason, it just felt… disjointed when I killed them. Like, because their lives were real, they should have weighed heavier on both my body and mind. In my mind, I didn't care, but my hands…" I held my arms up, just able to make out my fingers shaking in the dark. "There were no bloodstains on me, no smell of a body spilling its fluids, no sound of broken bones when I snapped them…!"

Mataras!" Sayuri said as she seized both of my hands and put them back on my legs. "Mataras, calm down… You're not in SAO. Remember that you've set us free."

I breathed heavily, not having realized how worked up I had been getting, trying to calm down my racing heart and trembling body. "Sorry," I told her. "I just… I was dreaming about what it would have looked like… if there was blood in that world. There was so much of it…" I shivered violently as I clutched at my stomach, trying not to be sick.

Sayuri said nothing for a long while, her only movements being to rub circles on my back to assuage my nausea until it finally calmed down enough for me to talk again. "Sorry," I panted again. "I got carried away."

"It's okay," she assured me. "Have you spoken to Rivka about any of this? I know that talking to Kirito always calms me down."

"Some," I nodded. "Not this, obviously, and I don't think I'm going to."

"Why not?"

"She's dealing with enough, just trying to readjust to this world, much less being with me," I replied a little wearily. "Besides, I don't want her to think that I'm unravelling again."

"Doing that will only upset her, in the end," Sayuri said with a negative shake of her head. "And if you feel like your mind is slipping, it would be better for you to have all of our support, and we can't do that if we don't know what's happening."

I let out a dry chuckle at that. "Why do you think I'm telling you now?" I asked her. "Somebody has to keep my head on straight, and it clearly isn't going to be me. I know I need an outside perspective if I'm going to stay on the right path."

"Yet you want to keep this a secret from the person you love?" Sayuri responded. "The person most likely to give you grace when most others wouldn't? That seems kind of counterintuitive."

"I don't know…" I groaned as I put my head in my hands. "Boy do I miss the days where I knew it all… No, wait, I only thought I did, and my solution was to just kill my problems. Scratch that, I don't miss it."

My words seemed to startle my friend, because she was quiet for a few moments before she asked, "Is it wrong that… in spite of everything there are times when I miss Aincrad?"

"How can we not?" I answered, which I think surprised her again. "We spent more than two years in there, creating a new way of life for ourselves. Of course we'd miss that once it was gone."

"Hmm." I felt Sayuri stir next to me before she asked, "Mataras? No offense, but maybe you should have a shower. You smell terrible."

"Ah, something that every guy wants to hear first thing in the morning," I sighed, though it made sense, considering.

"I'll make us some tea while you get cleaned off," she offered, which I accepted.

"See you downstairs in a bit," I told her as I moved off the bed again, this time moving a little more confidently in spite of the darkness. As Sayuri moved toward the doorway, I surreptitiously sniffed at my pajama shirt, nearly gagging when I detected the scent of sweat mixed with blood. "Eugh," I grunted.

"What's wrong?" I heard my friend ask from the door.

"I do smell, and I think I'm having some vivid afterimages from the dream," I muttered as I reached for the light switch. "I could have sworn I smelled- hot damn!" The curse was drawn out of me as I turned the bathroom light on again, this time having taken the time to pay more attention to my own reflection.

Last time, I had been focused solely on retrieving the water for my glass, and thus I had paid no attention to my own visage. I was pale and sweaty, of course, and there were dark purple bags under my eyes- nothing unexpected there. What I had not predicted, as it had never appeared before, were the ruptured capillaries in my face and various other parts of my body that had caused me to sweat blood.

Sayuri let out a startled gasp as she beheld my appearance, and she quickly moved to ask me something as she laid a hand on my back, but I was too disturbed by what was happening to pay any attention to her inquiry. I blinked a few times, trying to dispel the ghastly image from my ocular senses, but to no effect. "That's new."

"On your right!"

I ducked a powerful sword and immediately kicked the wielder in the stomach, sending them flying into a donut shop. "Thanks!" I shouted over my shoulder before I re-engaged with my original opponent, who was hurling kunai at me like candy from a piñata.

"Next time, thank me by not wrecking my favorite snack place!" my teammate grumbled. "There were doing a special on jelly donuts today!"

"It'll be fine!" I grunted as I caught one of the kunai, spun my body around in a three-sixty motion, and sent the dagger straight into the head of the person throwing it at me. "These shops always respawn after thirty minutes, max!" Stretching out my hand, I concentrated visualizing what I had been learning the last few weeks. Light gathered in front of my palm and shot forth, striking my enemy into the dirt and depleting the last of their health points, causing them to disintegrate.

The sight was still unnerving to witness in this world, but I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn't the death game. Whoever I had just defeated would soon respawn back at their home base, ready to head back out into the world. Sword Art Online was over, and now my friends and I were trying to get a handle on the hottest game on the market right now: Jump Force Online.

It helped us that we had been able to port over our character data from SAO, making us much more powerful than the average player in this game. Unfortunately, this game's battle mechanics were very different from the last reality we had been in. There were some sword skills, but they were nothing like they had been in SAO. This wasn't really a problem for me, since I had never been bound by them in Aincrad, but for my friends, who had come to rely on the powerful combos in their day-to-day lives, it was a difficult adjustment to make. That wasn't even taking into account that when a player first logged in, their powers were determined at random and assigned to their avatar. However, because we had so much time logged in on our player ID's already, we were each granted with some fairly rare abilities that helped to keep the scales tipped in our favor whenever we encountered a group of hostile players- like the ones we were fighting now.

"Die, punk!" a guttural voice shouted from behind me, belonging to a man with a wild, hairy appearance, and the muscles of an ape. Before he could swing an oversized fist at me, there was the sound of a gunshot, and a small hole appeared in his head, sending him falling over backwards before he too, broke into harmless pieces.

"Thanks, Sinon!" I called out toward a nearby rooftop, where a girl with cobalt blue hair waved back at me. It was good to know that the person that had watched my back for so long with stakes that were so much higher was still looking out for me.

The rifle in her hands glowed before disappearing, only to be replaced by an automatic rifle that sprayed bullets into the sky, taking down several flying players that were trying to get the jump on our other friend, Kiriha. Immediately afterward, that same player whirled around and unleashed a blast of wind powerful enough to cut the last of her pursuers in two, and the threat to her virtual health.

A feeling in my gut saw to me leaping upwards just in time for a trio of shuriken to whizz through the spot my body had been occupying only a moment prior. Spotting the culprit leaping toward our group from rooftop to rooftop, I put my hands by my side as soon as I landed on the ground and willed that same light that had been infused into my avatar to pool between my palms in a motion that I had seen many times as a child, and had always wanted to mimic, but knowing it would look ridiculous if I did.

Let's see how ridiculous it looks in a minute, I thought as my quarry suddenly stopped on the roof of a barber shop, her eyes widening as she recognized the oncoming threat. The red light between my hands blazed with the brilliance of a star as I roared, "KamehameHA!" I thrust my hands in front of me and sent the condensed energy outward as a shining beam of raw energy that struck my target dead-on and caused the entire building to explode, disintegrating their virtual body in the process.

Yeah, I thought with broad grin. That's not getting old any time soon. Glancing around our perimeter, I realized that we had just vanquished the last of our enemies. Out of habit, I moved my right hand to sheathe my sword, only to realize for the thousandth time that it wasn't there anymore.

And that's a good thing… I will never again swing a sword, I thought as I reflexively clenched my fist, remembering my earlier nightmare. I had killed many people with many weapons, but the sword was the one that I now despised the most, because with it, I had killed the one person that had deserved it the least.

"Mataras." A familiar voice snapped me out of my musings, causing me to turn and look at my sister, who was walking up alongside Yuuki and Philia, another two survivors and friends of ours' from SAO. All three of them were armed with ninja gear, having been given powers based from the 'Naruto' section of this amalgamation of the Shounen worlds. Saphira looked me up and down for a second before she said, "You were thinking about him again, weren't you?"

"Am I so easy to read?" I replied with a slight sigh.

"Only to us," another familiar voice said as its owner put their hand in mine. I turned my head to see Rivka dressed in green light armor with a dark red cape- another sight that reminded me of my departed friend. "Do you need to log off for the day?"

"No," I said quickly. "We should meet up with the others before I sign out. Argo said she has some Intel on the next big event, and my gut says that Shamrock will want to be a part of it."

"Shamrock, huh?" Philia muttered as she frowned and surveyed the wrecked city block that was a replicate of downtown San Francisco, though the massive statues of the past Kage standing beside the Golden Gate Bridge were a good reminder of the fact that this was not, in fact, the real place. "Weren't these jokers a part of that guild?"

"At least three of them were," Yuuki nodded, her eyes flashing red with a trio of black dots for just a second. "This Sharingan thing is amazing- so many details that I can pick up with just a glance!"

"How does your weird eye thing play into figuring out if these guys are from Seven's fan club?" Kiriha asked as her emerald wings buzzed in irritation. Jump Force had granted her a quirk that basically endowed her with the powers of Sylph Fairy from the old Nordic myths. There was actually a game based heavily on that lore, and if I recalled correctly, Sylphs were one of the playable races in that world. Maybe Kiriha missed her calling, I thought as my sister drew in a breath to answer Kirito's sister. She handled the quirk like a natural, as if she had been born into the realm of myths instead of this reality.

"We both saw the Shamrock emblem on the guys we fought," Saphira explained, her own blue orbs coloring crimson with two dots as she stared past me and Rivka. "And they've got more friends on the way, it seems." Her Sharingan were not as developed as Yuuki's for some reason, but she was still a capable user of the Dojutsu, regardless. We all turned around to see a group of five more players running at high speed toward us, none of them looking to be very happy.

"This is gonna be our whole day, isn't it?" Sinon grumbled as she conjured a high-powered rifle in her hands. Her ability was requip magic, specifically of the firearm variety. Because of the amount of hours she had logged in on her account, her arcane skills were treated as absurdly high, which allowed her to conjure powerful weapons with little cost to her energy reserves.

It still struck me as odd that, in spite of her traumatic past, she had no difficulty handling guns in the virtual world, though the mere sight of one in real life could trigger a severe panic attack. She had confided in me a couple of weeks back that she hoped that her continued use of the weapons in the virtual world would eventually lead to her being able to handle the visage of them in the true reality. That, to me, seemed as though she was unconsciously dissociating her virtual self from Shino, but I hadn't yet figured out how to broach the topic with her.

In the past, I would have flat-out told her that she was being foolish, but I was doing my best to turn over a new leaf and distance myself from my identity as the Red Swordsman. I suppose I'd be a hypocrite if I told her to stop, I had thought wryly. I'm doing the same thing, and I'm doing it on purpose.

Bringing myself back to the present, I took note of the fighters that my sister had pointed out and readied myself for another round of combat. "Let's dust 'em," I muttered as I willed my powers to gather in each hand. "After this, let's have the portal ready. I feel like we've gotten enough practice today." Any party in this game with the funds to obtain them got their hands on a teleportation bot, but they were incredibly expensive. You could use real money to buy them as a DLC, but they were even more absurdly priced that way. Fortunately, our guild already possessed two such droids among our numbers.

"I'm thinking 'Scorched Earth'," I said.

"Overkill," Rivka replied as the enemy crossed the street two blocks away from us. "Tremoring Earth?" As she spoke, a large object materialized in her hands, glowing with a soft light.

"Fine with me." I raised my fists above my head, both of them glowing with a bloody red light, even as Rivka raised a war hammer over her head, almost comically large when compared to her slight frame. However, our opponents didn't take it so lightly when we swung our respective weapons down at the ground, splitting the earth in front of them into a yawning chasm that swallowed them up. One of them had some kind of power that let them fly, but before I could move to counter their resistance, Philia was already on the move.

She leaped onto the closest rooftop and immediately bounded off of the foothold, heading straight for her airborne opponent, a kunai in hand that was in the perfect position to stab them in the neck, a surely devastating strike. However, our pursuer wasn't about to taken down so easily as his friends. He cut off his power for a second, causing him to drop rapidly before he shot back up, seeking to deal an uppercut to Philia's abdomen. The instant the blow connected, however, something unexpected happened to the man- he became wreathed in electricity, causing him to let out a pained yowl, even as Philia's body disintegrated.

"What the-?!"

"Lightning Style: Shadow Clone!" Philia- the real Philia- smirked as she hurled a handful of shuriken at her opponent. The projectiles trailed more lightning as she imbued them with even more chakra, which practically set the man ablaze with electricity as soon as they all struck, reducing his avatar to a cloud of ash.

"Nice," I commented while Yuuki tapped her headpiece communicator to send a signal, which resulted in the opening of a purple-blue ring through which our home base could be seen. "But since when does a treasure hunter need to utilize two different chakra styles?"

"Since she needs to defend herself from second-hand cutpurses," the girl with the orange hair said dryly as she leaped through the portal. From the other side, she called, "Believe me, I would've much preferred a Rinnegan or even a Sharingan, but no dice. So, I'm working with what I got." It wasn't unheard of for a player with chakra to utilize two or more different styles of fighting, but it was incredibly difficult to truly master any one style when the person's skills were more widespread than focused. Still, it seemed to be working for the plucky treasure hunter.

"You only want one of the rarest Dojutsu in the world, is that it?" Saphira chuckled as she followed the other girl. "Last I heard, no one in the game has actually even gotten it yet."

"And if an SAO survivor hasn't obtained it, it's highly unlikely that anyone else would," Sinon commented as she followed my sister. Yuuki went next, followed by Rivka and I, after which the portal ring closed up.

"Tens of thousands of people play this game," I murmured as I folded my arms across my chest. "I'd be willing to bet that somebody has it, and they're smart enough to keep that fact hidden. Certain skills could potentially allow someone to steal it."

"So wait, it'd be possible for someone to steal my Sharingan?" Yuuki asked, looking a little bit worried at the prospect.

"Yeah, Yui was telling me about how a Kunoichi with a high enough skill level could use their powers to transplant someone's eye into a new host." We all turned to see our leader as he approached, dressed in his usual black getup, and a sword slung over his back. He actually practiced shadow magic in JFO, but it seemed that he wasn't completely ready to give up his old play style just yet. Kirito smiled at all of us as he asked, "How'd the trip go?"

"I wanted to get some deserts, but somebody blew up the shop," my sister groused as glared at me out of the corner of her eye. We were standing a virtual replica of Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home in Virginia, where Saphira and I were from. It would have been lunacy to buy it under normal circumstances, but fortunately, unlike most of our items from SAO, our money had carried over, no problem- and by this world's standards, we were loaded.

I held up a hand and addressed Saphira to say, "In my defense, I didn't start that fight."

"You did start that fight," Sinon countered.

"How?!"

"Mataras, those guys just wanted to know if you wanted go see a 'Seven' concert with them," Rivka sighed. "You could have just said 'no'."

"Isn't that what I did?"

"No, you said, and I quote," Kiriha began as she lowered her voice in what seemed to be an attempt to mimic/mock me. "Not all of us have time to waste on watching little kids play at American Idol."

The others laughed at that while I twisted my mouth into a wry expression and muttered, "Ha-ha. Where is everyone else?"

"Right here, Uncle!" I turned to see the rest of our guild approaching behind Yui and Sachi. Everyone looked almost exactly like they had in SAO, though they had undergone gear changes to suit their new abilities, even if their color themes were still mostly the same.

I was the exception to that rule, having wanted to distance myself from my old persona, so I no longer wore bright red clothes, or even a cloak to obscure my features. The only red I had on me were my wristbands and boots, and they were a darker shade of crimson than I used to sport. My shirt was blue, my pants were grey, and nothing about me looked all that special- save for the black monkey tail that I kept coiled around my waist like a belt.

"Hey, Mataras!" said Strea as she bounded up to give me one of her infamous, bone-crushing hugs. "How'd the field trip go?"

"Let me go… and I'll tell you!" I grunted as I tried to extricate myself from her grasp. Despite my wish that she would be a little more reserved in her approach to others, I was still happy to see her and Yui, both safe and sound in this new world.

Weeks Ago…

I opened my eyes and breathed in the scent of the new virtual world that I had been sent in to investigate. It felt more realistic to my five senses than SAO had, but it was still very distinguishable from the real world. I had appeared on a beach in California, one of the starting points that one could choose to begin at in JFO, and the spot where our guild had agreed to meet after logging in for the first time. The sun was shining, the sound of the ocean echoed in my ears, and I could smell salt in the air. Not bad, I was forced to concede.

A quick examination of myself and the menu told me what I needed to know about my new body to get started in this place. A Saiyan, huh? I thought, bemused. Thank you, 20,000-plus hours of game time. Saiyan avatars were nearly impossible to get ahold of, apparently. In my research of the game leading up to my full dive, I found out that out of the many thousands of people that played, there were only a dozen people that had lucked out with such an identity, maybe twenty at the most. Now I can count myself among that number… Nice.

Saiyans were the envy of any fighting-type player. They were fast, strong, capable of flight, overwhelming energy, and best of all, any time their health dipped into the red zone, they would recover with increases in power and stamina, whether they were killed or not. The biggest drawback to playing as one, however, was that most people couldn't keep up with the elevated physical abilities. After a certain point, the avatar could become too powerful for the player to handle, and their minds became overstimulated, resulting in forced logouts to prevent their brains from becoming overstressed. One of the first players to get his hands on the power wound up creating a new account because he just couldn't handle his avatar's mental demands.

On top of all that, only one person in the entire game had managed to go Super Saiyan and keep up with the increased speed and reflexes that the virtual body supplied. It wasn't a fifty-times speed and strength multiplier like in the anime, but it was a significant difference. Regardless, whoever the guy was, he'd have to be made of some stern stuff, and have an excellent mental discipline.

"Hundred bucks says Yuuki tries to fight them," I said with little grin.

"You rang?"

"Gah!" I whirled around to see a familiar figure looking me up and down with a hand on her hip and an impish smile. Her dark purple hair and bright red eyes immediately told me who she was. "Yuuki, you know I don't like being snuck up on," I said as I relaxed my posture and walked closer to my friend. "How've you been?"

"Good, but now I'm gonna be great!" she laughed as she gave me a tight hug as soon as I was in range. It wasn't as crushing as Strea's embraces were, but the girl was strong. "ALO is fun and all, but I've missed hanging out with you guys!"

I returned the hug for a brief second before I stepped back while asking, "You mentioned that you had made some other friends in there, right?"

"Yeah, they're other patients in the hospital where I live," she answered me. "We formed a guild called the 'Sleeping Knights', and apparently I got nominated as leader. So, yay me!" Yuuki smiled brightly, her eyes sparking with a happiness that I once thought impossible to possess in the midst of SAO, much less during the aftermath. "Don't worry, though. I'm a Black Cat all the way. Whatever is happening in this world takes priority, big time."

"Now, wait a sec," I told her with a slight frown. "Just because Kirito and I have to work, that doesn't mean it should interfere with whatever you have going on."

"Dude, after everything we went through together in SAO, there's no way I'm not giving our guild a hundred-and-ten-percent," Yuuki snickered. "I got you guys. Don't forget, I'm in VR 24/7, so balancing this kinda social life shouldn't be too hard."

I shrugged at that, knowing that it was really her decision as to how she would spend her time. "All right, then," I said as I took another look at our surroundings. "Have you been in touch with Argo since the party?"

"She said she'd meet us later tonight," my friend nodded. "What about everyone else?"

"They should be along in ten minutes or so," I replied as I gazed at the Golden Gate Bridge, which was bordered by giant statues of great shinobi from the Naruto comics. "School should have just let out, so they'll be customizing their appearances and transferring accounts, all that fun stuff."

"I think the only person that's changing his look up is you," said the voice of my long-time partner as I turned around to see her approaching us.

"Sinon!" Yuuki cheered, though when she attempted to give the other girl a hug, she was stiff-armed. "Hey, why the cold shoulder?!"

"I don't do hugs, except for special occasions," Sinon replied as she kept a pair of ice blue eyes on me. "What's with the do-over, Mataras?" She looked almost exactly like she did in the real world, minus the glasses and the fact that her hair now matched her new eye color.

I looked over at a window on reflex, seeing my new reflection therein. My stature was little more muscular than it had been in SAO, and my skin was several shades tanner. My eyes had also been changed, now appearing more like Yuuki's bright red orbs, as opposed to the nearly-black brown that they had once been. My hair hadn't changed much, though it was now shaggier and more wild in appearance than I had once chosen it to be.

In short, I only bore a trace resemblance to the man that had both terrorized and saved the population of Aincrad. "I figured that it might be better for me to avoid appearing as the Red Swordsman."

"Uh…? Aren't you, though?" Yuuki questioned as she gave up on trying to embrace our friend.

"I was," I nodded. "I don't want to be, not anymore. A new world is a good place to start over, don't you think?"

"Doesn't Kikuoka need the Red Swordsman?" Sinon pointed out. "And there are more than a few SAO survivors that will show up in this world, I'm sure. Are you worried that one of them will recognize you?"

"Not so much worried as apprehensive of the headaches that will undoubtedly follow such a revelation," I responded with a small amount of resignation. "I'd rather have my feet under me before I start to deal with that particular problem. Besides, no one can see my name unless they're in a party with me, so that should help keep things quiet."

"Well, maybe we should call on a friend that specializes in our variety of headaches," Sinon said as she opened her menu and began to scroll through it, bringing a smile to both Yuuki and my face. "Let's see… Kirito said that the new 'Seed' system doesn't like most of our items, since they come from SAO, but a program should- Heh. Got her." She extracted what looked like an amethyst teardrop from her inventory and tapped it with her pointer finger, producing a brilliant flash of light that temporarily blinded us.

When it faded, there was Strea, whole and alive, looking none the worse for the months that she'd spent in standby. Her gear had been set to the default of JFO, so she didn't have her giant sword and battledress, but there was no mistaking my old Mental Healthcare Program ally. "Hey, Strea," I said as I stepped toward her, while her eyes blinked open. "Remember us?"

"You sound like- Mataras?!" she gasped as she rushed at me, and I realized that I had made a terrible mistake.

"Strea, hold o-! Gack!" For the second time since I had entered the new world, I found myself enveloped in a crushing bear hug. Only this one was much, much tighter than Yuuki's. "Pu… me… down!"

"No!" the peppy girl replied. "I've been without hugs since you guys logged out of SAO! I need to catch up!"

"If that's… the case…" I managed to get out as I awkwardly pointed one of my few free fingers at Sinon, then adding, "She hasn't… let anyone hug… her… since we… got out!"

"What?!" Strea gaped as she dropped me on the street, relieving my virtual body of the uncomfortable pressure. "Sinon, you know how important hugs are to the human mind!"

"Dammit, Mataras!" the archer girl shouted as she started to edge away from our enthusiastic friend. "That's a lie, we hugged when we first met up IRL!"

This was true, but now I was starting to have fun, and I knew that Strea needed someone to vent all of her unused hugs on. "No idea what she's talking about," I said as I got to my feet, with Yuuki's help. "She has been totally hug-free since Aincrad."

"I can fix that!"

"Strea, no!"

"Strea, yes!"

Yuuki wound up receiving the majority of Strea's pent-up 'hug energy', while the others logged in to find Sinon using me as target practice for her new gun magic. It was actually a really good first day back in the virtual realm.

Present Day…

"Sounds like these Shamrock guys are really sensitive about anybody that disses on Seven," Kirito commented once we had finished recounting our adventures of the afternoon.

"Honestly, it's kinda gross," Saphira said as she made a face. "A lot of her fans are twice her age, if not more, and they practically drool whenever her name comes up."

"Good thing that they're pushovers," Kiriha snickered. "It's so easy to beat these jokers up that it almost makes me feel like that kid that bullies the little guy out of his lunch money."

"What, you mean like Nagata?" Kirito snickered, immediately dodging a slap from his sister.

"Shut up, Kazuto!"

"How did Litrosh handle today?" Yui asked me as a small red robot hovered in the air in front of her and me.

"Dependable as always," I chuckled as I patted the droid's head affectionately. "Thanks for lending him to us today. It's good to have him watching my back every now and again, right pal?" The little droid nodded its head a few times in an apparent agreement. He had once been my dragon familiar 'Litrosh' in SAO, just as Silica now had a little blue portal droid that she called 'Pina', with similar origins.

"What'd Argo have for us?" Rain asked as the two Kirigaya siblings began to bicker, folding her arms as she did so.

Out of all of us, she seemed the most anxious in JFO, which puzzled me. She had been through some harrowing times in SAO, but she had seemed to deal with it just fine. Even when we were reunited in the real world, she had seemed well-adjusted to me, but ever since we began playing in the virtual world again, she had seemed out of sorts. It worried me, but I also knew that it wasn't exactly my place to approach her on it, given her previously amorous approach to me due to my saving her life as the Red Swordsman, and my current relationship with Rivka.

Maybe Yuuki or Philia can figure out what's going on, I hoped. She wasn't particularly close to the other two girls, but they had worked together very well during the last twenty-five floors of SAO. I knew from experience that even if you normally wouldn't socialize with someone like your battle partner off of the field, there was still an unbreakable bond forged in the fires of war. That, and I can't keep passing off my problems to Victoria, I mused as Sachi moved to answer our friend's question.

"She says that she has Intel on the next big game event, and that there's a quest we might be interested in," Kirito's wife informed us.

"How much competition will we have for the quest in question?" Philia asked, her eyes brightening as she spoke. It was clear that she was hoping for a rare item quest, probably something from the lore of 'One Piece' or 'Fairy Tail.'

"Interestin' choice a words," a familiar voice said as the owner walked into our midst with a cheery grin. "What I got for ya is all about competition."

"Hey there, Argo," Kirito said as he held his sister at arm's length while she tried to smack him. "You didn't mention anything about a quest to me."

"You don' ask as nicely as yer wife," the mousy girl snickered. "Plus, she already paid me for everythin' in advance, so I'm feelin' nice today."

"You always feel nice whenever someone pays in advance," I grumbled, remembering several occasions where Argo had lightened my wallet considerably. "Especially when it's one of us Cats."

"Don' hate the player," Argo snickered as she turned to jab me in the shoulder. "An you know I always deliver, don' I? So let's get to it- the big event that's about to go down in a few weeks? It's a tournament."

"A tournament?" Kirito repeated, the more competitive among us looking intrigued by the announcement. It was a Shounen game, so it stood to reason that such an event would happen, especially given how much competition there was between different guilds and factions. Still, plenty of games had plenty of tournaments- this had to be something really special, or else Argo wouldn't have sold us the information so that we could stay ahead of the curve.

"Not jus' any tournament," Argo said as she waggled a finger at our leader. "It's gonna be the first world-wide tournament in all of VR history. Ya know how there're servers spread out across each continent, keepin' 'em all linked together?"

"Yeah, the ones in Asia keep us on this server, while the ones out in the US keep the players in North America," Sinon nodded. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"I was getting' ta that," Argo chided the other girl. "See, this tournament has an entry fee, and there's only gonna be only fourteen teams allowed to compete. Once all the teams 'ave been submitted, all the servers are gonna set up a special event that connects the entire world into one big net. Until then, though, only two or three tickets are gonna be for the takin' per server."

"So how do we pay the fee?" I asked as I folded my arms with a frown, knowing that Kirito and his sister would be itching for a chance to compete. I would rather avoid such spectacles, but I would abide by my commander's decision. I did have to admit that I was at least intrigued at the prospect of watching such battles for myself.

"You don't gotta pay nothin'," Argo replied. "You gotta find yer ticket in." A curious grin spread across her whiskered face as she added, "Entry fee's a dragon ball, ladies and gents. Ya gotta either find and beat a boss that'll have a traditional dragon ball, or ya gotta get yer hands on a quest from a Namekian Elder ta give ya one of theirs'. Tournament's in a month, dragon balls all gotta be submitted in two weeks."

"Please tell me that our guild paid you enough to know where one of those quests are gonna pop up," Rivka sighed.

"Hey, it's me," Argo snickered. "Gotcha covered, Mrs. Red. There's a four-star dragon ball somewhere in New York City on this server. It'll be guarded by a boss, but my Intel didn't say which one. Yer goin' in blind on this one."

"New York City?" Saphira and I cringed at that as she spoke. "Do you have any idea how long it would take to find one boss in all of that?"

"Better than us having to search the entire coastline," Strea pointed out as she put her chin in her hand- a habit that she seemed to have picked up from Crimson and me over the course of our misadventures. She was in analytical mode right now, so all of her usual charm and cheer were only just present. "Normally an event boss wouldn't be hard to find, but something tells me that this event will be anything but standard."

"There ain't a lotta slots open, so the devs had ta make it hard to find, and even harder ta beat," Argo shrugged. "Yer in for a tough fight, kitties. 'Fore I wish ya good luck, I'm kinda obligated ta tell ya the rest of the info I dug up. Any takers?"

"What else do you have for us?" Kiriha asked.

"Prize info," the 'Rat' smirked. "Three top prizes fer the folks that fight the hardest. Since it'll be a bracket tournament, there'll be a first place, second, and two bronze winners. Third place teams each get a wish granted by Shenron, within the limits of the game, a course. Second placers get to chat it up with Porunga, get three wishes for their group. First place gets a wish from Super Shenron, which can be just about anythin' in the virtual world."

"Anything?" Silica repeated.

"Anythin'," Argo confirmed.

"That beggars belief," I argued, the cynic in me unwilling to accept such a declaration as fact. "For example, what if I wished for an entirely new VRMMO of my design? There's no way the dragon could grant that- it'd be out of the developers' hands."

"Actually, Mataras, you probably could wish for that, and it would be granted," Strea said, stunning me instantly.

"…What?"

"Strea and I have been doing a lot of research in our spare time, and we've found out some surprising things about the next generation of VRMMO's," Yui said as she skipped over to stand next to her tall sister. "The entirety of the new network exists on a stripped-down version of the Cardinal System, initially called 'the Seed.' Without it, players would not be able to transfer their character data between games so casually."

"Wait, since when did game developers make cross-compatibility so… easy to access?" I asked them. "A few years ago, you couldn't have gotten Sony and Microsoft to share a server even if you held a gun to the heads of their CEO's and board members."

"Ever since it became the most cost-effective way to create a new game," Strea answered me. "No one really knows where the Seed came from, only that it saved the virtual world after the disaster that was SAO. It just kind of showed up on the net last November."

"Wait, you said it was simplified version of the Cardinal System," Kirito said with a frown. "But the only one who knew enough about the mind of SAO to make a replica, even one lesser in quality would be-"

"Kayaba," I growled as I clenched my fist on reflex. "That's gotta be one of the reasons Kikuoka wants us to investigate this world- it's the most heavily populated one operating on the Seed program."

"Even a simplified version of the Cardinal System would be able to generate a new game if given the right prompt and authority by the developers," Strea said now. "From what it sounds like, Super Shenron will be given that type of authority for this instance."

"It makes sense to go big, given that this'll be the first event like this in the virtual realm, at least on this scale," Philia mused.

"How does that tie in to Seven, though?" Rivka asked me with a curious look. "I thought your job was to keep an eye on her?"

"No idea- yet," I muttered. "I still don't really know why Kikuoka is interested in her in the first place. For now, let's get that dragon ball. I'll contact Kikuoka once we log out and ask him if this event pertains to our surveillance duties. And I'll definitely be asking him about this 'Seed', too."

"I'll make the call with him, don't worry," Kirito said before my sister could get a word in.

I narrowed my eyes at him before I asked, "What? Don't trust me to talk to the boss without you?"

"Not without getting into a two-hour argument, I don't," he replied flatly. "We clearly don't have a lot of time to find that dragon ball, so we need every spare minute we can get."

"…Fine."

I blinked a few times to get my eyes used to taking input from the reflected light around them as opposed to the simulated images that had been projected directly into my mind. Once I had done that, I removed the Amusphere rig from my head and set it on my dresser as I stood up and began to head for the door. I opened my door and was startled to see Victoria already standing in front of me with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face.

"Sachi told me about last night," she said with a disapproving tone of voice. "Why didn't you say anything to me or Rivka?"

I frowned before shouting down the hallway, "Sachi, you traitor!"

"She tricked me!"

"I was going to tell you about it, but-"

"But you wanted us to have a good day first, right?" Victoria said to cut me off. "Dude, if you're on a run in the woods and you fall of the beaten path, do you wait until people have had a 'good day' to call for help?"

I cocked my head before I replied, "Okay, first of all, what kind of a metaphor is that? Second, I hate running, so I'd never be in that situation."

"Biking, then," she shot back. "What if you're biking and you have an accident?"

"That's more plausible."

"The point is, you can't be waiting to get help for these kinds of things!" Victoria snapped, and she looked like she wanted to hit me, so I backed up a couple of paces. She rolled her eyes and added, "Chill out, I'm not gonna smack you. You're clearly beating yourself up more than anyone deserves to be."

"One can never be too careful with you," I said, making a point of staying where I was, out of her reach. "Look, I just don't want to get put under some kind of intensive… care… observation?" Victoria's expression was getting fiercer by the second, so I decided to stop talking at that point.

"You. Are sweating. Blood!" she shouted at me. "For crying out loud, you're the older one between us- try to have more common sense!"

"I have plenty of common sense! I don't want to get put in a hospital and leave you and Sachi alone, okay?" I shot back. "If I'm your guardian, I don't get sick days."

"Dude, we're not in grade school," Victoria deadpanned. "A few days on our own won't kill us. Besides, worse comes to worst, we can always stay with the Kirigayas for a few days."

"Don't volunteer stuff for people!"

"Kiriha already told us that we can stay over whenever we need to- they have a spare room. I'll even make sure that Kirito and Sachi don't get up to anything."

I scowled before I said, "I need a doctor to prescribe sleep meds and a therapist that isn't going to rat me out to the authorities."

"Can't Kikuoka put you in touch with somebody?"

"He already has, but I don't like relying on him any more than I have to."

"Michael, pick your phone and call them, right now!" My sister shot forward and grabbed my ear, twisting it painfully so that I had to bend over. "I don't need you having another breakdown because you can't get any real sleep, so start using whatever tools you have to make that happen!"

"Ow! Okay, okay, I'm doing it, I'm doing it!"

Interviewer: Okay guys, thanks so much for agreeing to sit down and do this.

Victoria: No problem- I'm actually super excited to get to interact with everyone this way.

Michael: It doesn't seem all that different to me, but eh. We'll see how it plays out.

Interviewer: Maybe it'll help your readers understand what's happening if we just get started, if that's okay with all of you?

Kazuto: I'm game.

Michael: Sure, let's do it.

Victoria: Shoot.

Interviewer: Okay now, Michael, you've had a pretty consistent format with an omake-style epilogue at the end of each chapter for several years now. What prompted this change?

Michael: Honestly? I was scrolling through Pinterest a few months back, and I saw this fan comic for My Hero Academia where all the characters are 'off-set' and just hanging out, taking pictures behind the scenes, and doing interviews like this. It seemed like a lot of fun, and I wanted to give it a try, myself.

Kazuto: We also felt like this format might be a better way to interact with our readers in terms of responding to reviews.

Interviewer: Yes, we will be getting to the questions, comments, and concerns of your readers here in a little bit. First though, I've got a few questions of my own. I wanted to start by asking, how does it feel to be back and playing your roles after such an emotional rollercoaster that the last story had to have been for you guys?

Victoria: I mean, I feel like it's gonna be a new kind of challenge to play this character who has basically survived a war unlike anything the world has ever seen before, because to a lot of people, it might as well never happened. When we see news coverage of wars fought in the real world, we can at least get some idea of what's going on, but nobody from the outside knew what it was like inside the the death game. So I imagine there's gonna be a lot of struggles with trying to relate to people that haven't had their kind of experiences, and for my character, who's basically taken it upon herself to try and relate to basically anyone she comes across on some level, it's gonna be extra-hard to make that adjustment.

Michael: Yeah, for me it's gonna be kind of weird getting used to just playing on character again, cos you know, I had to be both Crimson and Mataras, who are fairly different form one another. There's also the aspect that all the stuff that he did is really starting to catch up with him in a psychological sense, and he's trying to figure out how to handle that. So I guess I'm gonna have to learn how to play yet another kind of crazy?

Victoria: Good thing I'm around to help you get a grip on it, huh?

Michael: That's true, but I somehow doubt that we've seen the last of Mataras' stubborn streak when it comes to accepting help from others, at least in this area of his life.

Kazuto: I'm personally interested to see how Kirito and Sachi's dynamic with Yui will continue to grow as time goes on, as well as with each other. Like the others, they've been fighting for so long that it's probably gonna be hard to get adjusted to living normal lives again. Not to mention that this guy is breathing down my neck with how I'm supposed to conduct myself IRL with my in-game wife.

Michael: Hey, I'm just trying to stay true to the character.

Kazuto: Uh-huh, sure.

Interviewer: Nice, guys. Now, Kazuto, you were the lead character in the original story, so how do you feel about taking a back seat in this iteration?

Kazuto: I mean, my character never really sought out the role of the hero, it was just handed to him by circumstance, and I kind of like to think that there are some similarities between him and me. So I guess I'm just gonna go with the flow and see where it takes us. If I need to step up a little more in terms of taking the spotlight, I will, but I'm really just curious to see how Mataras handles taking the lead in this game.

Michael: Wait, who says I'm the lead? I'm pretty sure Kirito is still in charge of the guild.

Kazuto: Yeah, but Kikuoka is kind of relying on Mataras a little more heavily than Kirito, so I think yor character is gonna have to step up a bit more.

Michael: Oh, goody.

Interviewer: Victoria, you actually feature much more prominently in this iteration than you have in previous Red Swordsman stories. How did you feel about your character's take in this version?

Victoria: Actually, I was really surprised when I was told that my character's death was only a temporary thing in this version. I was used to being the catalyst for the Red Swordsman's persona, and I still fulfilled that role in Shattered Fragment, but now Saphira really gets a chance to come into her own, which is a lot more exciting than just showing up in a couple of flashbacks.

Michael: Was it more than one flashback in the other stories? I can't remember, it's been so long.

Victoria: Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was at least two.

Michael: I'll take your word for it.

Interviewer: Were there any screw-ups on the set that you think the readers might like to know about?

Michael: Okay, you didn't hear it from me, but Shino actually has this annoying habit of making gunshot sounds while she's using the props, and I have to remind her that those sounds get added in by the effects team later.

Victoria: Yeah, I'm just glad that Strea doesn't have that big-ass sword anymore. I wanna say that sixty percent of the set injuries during Shattered Fragment were either her tripping, or accidentally smacking someone with her prop.

Kazuto: Yeah, I dunno how 'accidental' some of those were...

Interviewer: Hahaha! I'll have to bring that up next interview, but I think we're about to actually get to what your readers have to say about the summary from the last chapter... Yes, here we are! TriforceHero has the first review, and as I understand it, he's been a longtime fan of the Red Swordsman, right?

Kazuto: Oh yeah, I think he's been around since the first one, and it's always great to hear from him! What'd he have for us?

Interviewer: He says, 'Welcome back Mataras and I am very Honored to be the first to leave a review for the next part of this journey. Nothing wrong with starting off a new story with a little refresher for those new readers who have not had time to read or finish Shattered Fragment yet. Only 4 more days until we get to see the 1st Chapter of what I am sure will be some of your best work yet! Until then, stay well and stay safe my Friend.'

Michael: Well, first of all, we're excited to have your attention again, and we always look forward to hearing your thoughts on the chapter, so bring it on, dude! Glad to see someone appreciated the recap!

Victoria: I was in favor of skipping it altogether, but I got outvoted.

Interviewer: Next up, we have Naruto Sakura Uzumaki, who says, 'This is a great Prologue and Summary of Shattered Fragment! I can't wait for the ACTUAL first chapter of Lost Wish! Remember that I am always here for you to discuss stuff and share ideas with!'

Kazuto: Well, NSU, we hope that the first scene held up to your expectations! Glad to have you back, too, your long-time support means a lot to us!

Interviewer: Last off, we have Joeclone, who sounds very excited to tell us, 'Alright, let's go!'

Victoria: Yeah, dude, let's do it!

Interviewer: And... Oh, that's it for this one!

Michael: Aw man, I love this part! You sure we don't have more?

Victoria: Hey, no-one likes a guy who fishes for compliments.

Michael: Hey, I'm just intrigued by what people have to say. Is that so wrong?

Kazuto: It kind of is when you're actively looking for attention.

Michael: That's easy for you to say! You're just a natural attention magnet!

Interviewer: In any case, it's great to see our readers again, and we look forward to the next round of reviews! Be sure to check out the interview sections from now on if you want to see what the cast and crew have to say to you, the readers!

Kazuto: Stay cool, everyone!

Victoria: Bye! We hope to see you for the next chapter, which I do believe is going to be called 'Race Against Luck'.

Michael: Wait, good luck or bad luck?