To the one anon I couldn't reply to via pm, yes I am still going to explain what happened in the final battle. It's going to be a part of a plot important scene. You'll see.

As a quick reminder

Kirito = Kazuto

Lisbeth = Rika

Leafa = Suguha

Aurain = Ryan

Chapter IV: The World Tree

After an half-hour or so I yawned and sat up in the bed. The quick rest had felt good. I popped open the window and hopped outside. Just in case the Salamanders were smart enough to wait outside my door. Only individual rooms in inns were safe zones.

'Wonder where Gamalir wants to meet.' I opened the messaging program, 'Guess I'll ask him.'

I sent a message asking exactly that, and headed down the streets towards Lugru's Arun side. By now the Salamanders would hopefully be miles away and I wouldn't have to deal with them. I couldn't help but whistle. It felt good giving someone the slip that well. It reminded of the bullys in second grade back in America. I used to have to do all sorts of clever things to give them the slip. Luckily it let up in middle school when I moved to a private school and went through a growth spurt. Nobody wanted to mess with the tall, smart, quiet kid in the back. While I was nice to people when they did talk to me, people still tended to avoid me.

I sighed and stretched out my back. I figured I'd go to Arun, meet up with Gamalir, and then call it a day. I was getting tired. With that in mind, I picked up my pace to a jog. I needed to get back before the Salamanders doubled back to this town. I didn't need to have my escape mean nothing. I took one last look at the etheral glow of the underground lake before taking off into the tunnel.

'I need to try and convince Lisbeth to come out here at some point. That lake is so pretty. She'd probably love it.'

It only took me a couple minutes to exit the cave; since I was running at full speed. When I exited, I was met with yet another beautiful site. Off in the distance was an enormous white spiraling mass. It went up so far that it disappeared into the clouds twisting and turning the entire way. I had a great view due to how high up off the ground the exit of the cave was.

'Wow...that'd be the world tree then? At least I won't have any trouble finding it. It's massive!'

I took a running jump and let my wings out, letting that odd euphoria of flying take over me. It really did feel like the program was telling my brain to release endorphines.

'I should really google that at some point and see if that's true. If it is, it's got to be on the internet somewhere.'

I accelerated to the maximum speed allowed by the system, and shot off towards the massive, artificial looking tree in the distance. I let my thoughts drift as I flew. It was going to take a while to get to the tree. I wondered how the treaty meeting was going. Knowing Kirito he probably saved everyone and managed to get several girls to fall in love with him. I chuckled at that thought.

'Nahhhhhh...'

I amused myself for the next few minutes by thinking of what exactly I wanted to do after Kirito and I finished saving Asuna. I obviously still had my own business to take care of. Kirito'd probably help if I asked. Maybe it'd all work out in the end, and my business would connect up with saving Asuna. Then everything could be solved in one simple bundle with no hassle.

Oh how wrong I was going to be in a few days. So so wrong.

I touched down in front of the town softly and gazed up at it in wonder, my mouth hanging slightly ajar. The town spiraled up from the ground, very similar to the tree, until the very back of it ran into the tree itself. From a distance it probably wasn't possible to tell the city apart from the tree itself. Their colorations and designs were so similar. I heard a beep, and saw the familiar letter icon flashing on my hud.

'Guess Gamalir finally responded to my message.'

I opened the message up and read it over. He wanted to meet at a place called The Burping Chimera. I raised my eyebrow at the name, but didn't really question it. Someone on the design team was either having a little bit of fun, or they just straight up ran out of ideas. I pulled up the virtual map and shoved it off to the side so I could look at it and walk. According to the map, the place was on the 2nd level of the town.

I set off down the street, marveling as the entire town became bathed in a golden glow. The sun had finally set, and all the lights were now on. The golden lights shining on all the white architecture were what caused the glow.

Eventually I reached the place. It was a smallish place shoved in the back of remote area of the capitol. I probably wouldn't have found it without the map. My mouth twitched upwards at the sign which displayed a comical picture of a cartoon Chimera with an extremely fat stomach. The animal had its mouth open, probably trying to bring across that it was burping.

It didn't take me long to find Gamalir. He was in a small booth by a window that gave a nice view out at the city.

"So what's up?"

I sat down across from Gamalir, still wondering what exactly he wanted. The guy looked nervous for some reason. I just sighed and gave the NPC waiter my order. I figured I might as well enjoy a glass of lemonade while I waited. Eventually my usual well of patience ran out, and I finally asked again.

"So what exactly did you want to talk about? It's gonna drive me crazy having to wait any longer."

"R-right sorry." Gamalir looked back and forth at the other people in the restaurant, almost like he was afraid of them overhearing us. Eventually he breathed in deeply and finally spoke up

"I think there's something screwy going on with ALO's system."

I raised an eyebrow, "Go on."

"Have you noticed how the people in the game tend to take it a tad too seriously? Especially among the people that have been playing a long time."

I took another sip of lemonade. I'd actually noticed that. Especially with that one Sylph that was so upset that Suguha was leaving his party. His behavior set off all sorts of warning flags in my head. I nodded in response to Gamalir, encouraging him to continue.

"Okay." Gamalir breathed in extremely deeply, looking almost comical. He then leaned over to whisper in my ear "I think someone's tampering with the in-game systems to make people believe this is real-life. A brain-washing kind of thing I guess you could say?"

"Hmmm..." I tapped my finger on the lid of my lemonade glass, "This is all just theory right? You don't really have any proof?"

Gamalir looked a little deflated in my response, and looked like he wasn't going to say anything else. But then he perked up and leaned over to whisper in my ear again.

"Yeah... but I've been around this game for ages!" he practically yelled in my ear, causing me to wince from the sudden noise, "People have been getting super weird lately. Everyone used to act like ALO was a normal MMO, but then all this territory war crap started up a few months ago. Around the time infinite flight got announced really...A-anyways, I figured you and I could investigate it!"

I sighed deeply and looked at him. He sat back in his chair and was looking at me excitedly. On one hand, he might've been making a lot of this up just to have an excuse to have prolonged interaction with someone he idolized. However. His theory might be the lead I needed. It was the best clue I had, even if I hadn't been looking particularly hard because of Asuna. Hell, why not. As soon as Kirito and I cleared up this Asuna business I'd go looking into this with Gamalir. I didn't have any better ideas on where to start.

"Alright." I nodded, wincing at how the gleeful look on Gamalir's face grew, "I'll do it."

He grinned widely and began going into his plans with gusto. I tried to pay attention. I really did. My goal in life is to be as nice to people as possible, but the guy was driving me nuts with the hero worship and how easily excited he was. Due to how unfocused I was quickly becoming, a dark cloud in the sky caught my eye for whatever reason.

'Wait is that dark cloud moving.' my brain suddenly turned back on. I looked closer at the black shape. It sure looked like a person.

"Is that a person?" I squinted up at the sky, interrupting Gamalir's train of thought.

"Er yeah probably?" Gamalir looked like I'd grown a second head, "It's pretty common to see a person in mid-air around here dummy. N-No offense Aurain! I don't mea-"

I slapped my hand over his mouth and just told him I really didn't mind. Seriously. I was just a normal guy, I didn't need all this hero worship. It made me feel uncomfortable.

"Anyways!" I sighed and continued my train of thought, "I realize that people can fly in ALO, so a person in mid-air is pretty common. HOWEVER, that person looks like they're free falling."

"Huh." Gamalir took a second look, "You might be right."

We just looked at each other for a few seconds. Then both our eyes opened wide, and we looked up into the sky again. Sure enough there was definitely a human falling from the sky. My wings came out, and I dashed to the front of the dingy place and out the door without a second thought. I crouched down, and took off as fast as I could. Even if you couldn't really die in ALO, I didn't want them to feel the fear of smacking into the ground while free-falling.

I soared up to where I was level with the person, and wrapped my arms around him, matching my speed. When I finally pulled out of the fall a couple meters above the ground, I took a look at the person in my arms.

"EHHHHH!?"

Laying in my arms was a very familiar looking girl with auburn colored hair. Not the proud one I remembered though. Her eyes were red from crying, and her body was covered by a fairly revealing dress. Not at all like her outfit from SAO. I swallowed and tried not to stare. My hormones were going to be the death of me one these days.

"Aurain!?"

Asuna's eyes lit up and she grabbed me around the neck in a tight hug.

'Guess my ALO avatar is close enough to my SAO one for her to recognize me.'

I glided down to the ground and touched down just outside Arun. I let Asuna down out of my arms and sent a message to Gamalir assuring him I was fine. Also that he definitely didn't need to come looking for me. I didn't want Asuna to have to deal with a fanboy. Who knew what she'd been through lately?

Asuna grabbed me by the shoulders.

"Is Kirito with you? More importantly is he alive!?"

'Right... she wouldn't know. She's probably been worried sick. Yes to both questions."

She let out a shriek of joy and wrapped her arms around my neck again. I wrapped my arms around her back, and rubbed it as she began to cry softly into my shoulder.

"I t-thought he was d-dead all th-his time..."

"He's definitely not." I replied with a grin, "In fact he's gonna be a bit mad I found you without him. We've been looking for you for a couple days now. He should be here in Arun pretty soon. That's the uh town behind us in case you didn't know. He had some stuff to take care of first with his sister."

"Really!" Asuna looked up me with the biggest grin on her face I've ever seen her have. I nodded, and she sighed happily in response.

"C'mon." I grinned, "Let's get to an inn so we can wait for Kirito comfortably. Plus I kinda want to surprise him with you. He definitely won't expect to see you so soon."

"So." I sat reversed in a chair, and rested my chin on the back, "How exactly did you end up here Asuna? All Kirito and I know is that you never woke up after SAO shut down. We don't really know the specifics of how you ended up in ALO, or even if you were you until now. Could've been any auburn-haired girl in that picture Agil got."

Asuna's face twisted into a frown and she took several deep breaths.

"You can wait till Kirito gets here if you want," I replied softly, "I'm curious, but I can wait. I understand."

She nodded quickly, and shivered a little.

"I've been through a lot the last few weeks. Thank you for understanding. It's not that I can't tell you right now, it's that I'd rather only relive it all once. I try to forget all the things Sugou has done."

That one caused my head to snap up. I knew that name. I'd been briefed on how he was the director for the company that'd absorbed the SAO servers/data after Kayaba died. That'd certainly explain a lot. I'd discarded it as useless information since I didn't really know how knowing the names of the company that ran ALO would really help me. Unless it was a different Sugou.

"Sugou? Do you mean Sugou Noboy-"

Just then Kirito burst in completely out of breath, cutting me off. His sister was right behind him, similarly out of breath. She had a bemused look on her face.

"ASUNA!"

Teary reunion next time. Oh and don't think I forgot about the server maintenance that happens in the regular universe. I have plans.

I turned a review from one of the last chapters of Just One Time into a plot point =P. Ssssh don't tell anyone. Also, I totally got the name for the restaurant from an automated site. It was the first thing generated, and I was laughing so hard I had to use it.

Seriously considering rewriting Just One Time at some point. Just to fix a lot of the stuff in early chapters and to bring the entire story quality up to my standards these days. On a final note, I've been watching a lot of Saint Seiya/Saint Seiya Omega, but I couldn't help but notice the lack of a english fanbase. There's like 13k fanfics, but not really many english ones :(, especially no english Omega ones. It was kinda dissappointing. I might need to write something for that sometime in the future ;).

-Forscythe