Chapter Eleven:
"Hey, hey Bach this isn't funny! Hey! Bach, you can't just say something like that and end it! You can't do this!" I sank to the floor and slammed it with my fists, my hair draped over my shoulders in a messy silver curtain.
"You can't do this to me Bach! You can't leave me! You promised that you wouldn't leave me till one of us died! You-you can't be gone, not-not after that…." I kept slamming my fists against the tile even after it was nothing but shatters pieces and dust. He couldn't just leave me, not after all we've been through, not after telling me that he's in love with me. My hands stopped, and I sank further on the floor.
"In. He's in love with me, not was or am. In. You idiot." Somehow that made it all the more worse. He chose that word, in.
"Ahhh, Bach you idiot!" How could I have not noticed? How could I have completely missed this? All those weeks together, we literally lived bed by bed. Sure we weren't together all the time, by there must be something. Some memory of him acting different, wait. That's it.
"Hah! I got you Bach! You're pranking me, aren't you? You're doing this as payback!" I sat up and crossed my arms over my chest. Hah, like this would work on me. I can just zap to him. But that's probably what he wants, so I won't. But, for some weird reason, I felt like even if I did fall for his prank, I wouldn't be able to get the zapping to happen. It wouldn't happen.
(Time skip for author's convenience.)
I stared up at the ceiling as we entered the boss room. If I remember correctly, which is rare indeed, the monster boss lizardy thing is up there, and then boom bazzles on down and kills a bunch of people. But they aren't important to the story so it's okay. Since the world I'm is technically fake. Which honestly isn't fair of me to say considering I've lived in here for about, three months? No, it's been far longer at this point. Six months is a lot closer to the time slot. Maybe even longer…. I sighed and looked around the room -judging the best place to plant my perfect ass so I don't have to help. Don't blame me! For some reason I've been super depressed recently. All week I keep mopping but I don't know why. I glanced around the room again and quietly counted the numbers we collected for this slaughter. There was 50 people, but it seemed wrong somehow….
"Hey Kirito, are we missing someone? I feel like someone is suppose to be here, but I can't remember." Kirito drew his swords and looked around.
"No, it looks like everyone is here. Why?" I shrugged my shoulders and drew up my menu. Now it had everything I could create in it. The boss shouldn't show up for ten or more seconds, so I had plenty of time to pick a weapon! Considering this fight is going to be super chaotic, I should properly go with a broad Final Fantasy styled clamore. But I didn't really want to swing around something so clunky, humm….. Maybe two Rune blades? No, too dramatic. Oh! A Rune blade and a Wakizashi! Oh, right, a Rune blade is a sword about as long as a saber, but the blade is thicker, and completely straight. It can be shredded edged or anything really. They are mostly a fictional kind of sword. The funny thing about them is that they can look like anything, anything at all. And a Wakizashi is the smallest of the three sword set you get from Japan. It's about a foot to two feet long, and has the traditional style to it. The armor I changed into was pretty rad too. It differed greatly from my usual style of white, and was in fact black. No racist pun intended for people who can't take a joke. It looks sort of like a padded wetsuit, skin tight, but then over the upper chest, shoulders, forearms, hips, knees and calves it had dark gray leather like stuff, this is the pads. On my feet were these super cool clawed shoes that resembled a dragon's foot, and on my shoulders was large spikes. It had silverish spiked gauntlets, and a high neck that looked more like scales than cloth.
I put my hair into a high ponytail, and then equiped my two swords. It's then that I noticed everyone staring.
"What? Is there something on my face?" Klein gave me a sheepish grin, and rubbed the back of his head.
"Well, Prince. You look kind of hot right now. Even after getting taller, and more dude-ish, you still like a chick when you mess with your hair like that." Before I could give him a proper rebuttal the monster boss decided to drop down. And, of course, landed directly behind me. I had barely any time at all to jump to the side, and away from its large mouth. But I landed too close to someone and we knocked into each other, it was some nameless chick. I quickly helped her up, and then lept to the side again as a large leg come down too close. As soon as we were both out of harm's way, the centipede got super hyper and started to move as fast as a four year old on sugar but was moving around on everything like a snake on silk. I managed to block a few sporadic attacks, but not as many were as lucky as me. The chick I had saved early was knocked right off the platform in mere moments. I gulped and glanced around the room quickly. Everyone was failing a shit ton faster than one would have thought, if only we had….. Someone I can't seem to remember.
I was broken from my thoughts as the tail came swishing back over at me, I blocked with the Rune and then slashed at it with the Wakizashi. The blade nicked the bones a bit but otherwise went shooting from my grip. Too much force it seems?
"Prince, get your head in the game! Stop goofing off!" I glared over at Asuna who was panting slightly. Her face was a bit red from all the jumping around we were doing.
"Shut the fuck up woman, I'm trying." I summoned a second sword and used both to block a very aggressive leg. Asuna jumped closer to me to dodge another leg.
"Come on, Prince! I thought you had those god-powers or something? Use them!" I growled at her. God-powers? What is she talking about? All I can do is summon random shit like Erza from Fairy Tail. No, that's not right.
I twisted to the side as a large chunk of rock came flying at me, and then threw my rune at the bone-lizard-centipede's head. It hit it dead center and the thing reared up screaming. The horribly small group of people left all charged at it's legs and ribs while they had the chance and I pulled up a poor sod that was near death. I quickly pulled a crystal from my bag and used it on the guy. I saved a chick earlier just to have her die on me, didn't feel so good from that. A screech alerted me to the boss's next stage.
"Shit, we only have it down halfway." The man next to me groaned in pain. I dropped him just in time to block another attack from the tail.
"Prince!" I was tossed back and slammed against a pillar, huh, maybe I'm not as powerful as I thought? If I wasn't in the game I'm sure I would have been puking up blood, but instead I just fell to the ground and gasped for air as my life bar went down into the red. Fuck, and here I used to think this battle would be easy. I pulled out my only other health crystal and used it on myself. My health went up to yellow, but no farther than that. I stood up and summoned a bigger sword, more like a Final Fantasy one. 'Bout time I get serious.
With a dramatic yell I leap at the boss and land on it's lowered tail. I start running up the side with my blade dragging along the side. The blade was leaving huge grooves between the bones, big enough to cause the boss some real problems.
"Kirito! Go for the joints!" I glanced down to see Kirito had heard me and was slicing at the marks I had made along the joints. I made it to the base of the skull faster than I wanted too, with one last glance around me I jabbed my sword between the joints of the skull and the vertebrae. There was a loud crack and then everything stilled, there was no sound, there was no movement. And then, far too slowly, the head started rolling forward and the boss health crept down. It didn't slow as it hit red, nor did the head stop until it was completely detached and falling freely to the ground. The bones shattered under me and I dropped to the floor with a huge grin on my face. Akihiko jogged over to me and clapped my back happily.
"You did it, my friend! You took it down in one swipe!" He peered down at me curiously, his inner developer shining forth. "How did you kill it though? It's taken us over half an hour just to get the HP down to yellow, and that ended with half of us….. Dead.." His voice dropped as he said this and a solemn air filled the room. I shrugged my shoulders.
"Doesn't matter if it's a game or not. It was just a skeleton. I think the developers weren't thinking on that part because they made it function just like any other skeleton. If you break apart the joints it's movements stop. I noticed that more damage was dealt when we hit the ball joint's or thinner parts of the bone that when we just went at it. So with chopping off half it's back legs on one side, damaging the rest of that half, breaking most of it's ribs, of course it's health would go down." Kirito's face appeared next to Akihiko's shoulder. He glanced angrily at the man before turning his glare on me.
"But, how did you know?" I shrugged again.
"Well, all skeletons are weakest at the base of it's neck. The boss has to have a weak point, and what better place than somewhere you'd never be able to reach unless you have high agility and a big ass weapon. Think about it, even in game terms, unless it's pre-thought; nothing can survive without a head. Even a wear Alien vs. Predator centipede skelly." Kirito eyed me for a few more seconds before turning to face Akihiko fully.
"Now, one more question. You're Akihiko Kayaba, aren't you." There really wasn't a question in that, nope. Definately a statement.
"I was watching you during the battle, of course I had my suspicions. The leader of the best guild in the game who's life never goes into the red zone. During our match is when I started suspecting you. There was no way you could have dodged me like you did." Akihiko smiled shamelessly.
"Ah, you found out. I was going to wait until we got to the top floor. Can't you see it? Leader of the Knights of the Blood turning out to be the final boss? I suppose…" He pulled up his menu before anyone could react and suddenly everyone slumped to the floor. I unfortunately landed face first. I tried to turn my head so I could glare at Aki. How could he betray us like this? He even told me I was his best friend, how could he do this to me? Was I just a pawn to him too?
"Don't look at me like that, Ted. You should understand more than anyone else." I enhanced the force of my glare.
"What the fuck are you talking about? I thought we were friends? You couldn't even tell me or give me a warning?" He quirked an eyebrow at me.
"But Ted, I did tell y-" His eyebrows shot into his hairline and he stared at me in amazement. His face grew puzzled and his head tilted to the side. Kirito growled and I realized he was still standing.
"Shut it, Kayaba! Why would you do this?" Aki, no, Kayaba signed. The bastard.
"It seems that my dearest Ted forgot our promise. Oh well. I will move along as planned." I honestly can't tell you what happened next because I don't remember. All I could see was blurred images and all I could hear was my own sobs. I've, I've never been one for crying…. But even people like me suffer sometimes. I couldn't see Kirito and that bastard fight, I didn't see why Kirito suddenly seemed so depressed, I saw nothing. All I could do was cry and cry and cry, for what I don't even know. I just felt so sad and I couldn't stop it.
"Prince? What are you doing here?" After what felt like hours but was probably ten minutes, I sat up and wiped away my eye blood. Kirito was leaning down at me with his hands on his knees and a curious expression on his face. I glanced around us in surprise, instead of the boss room I was greeted with an amazing sunset over nothing but clouds. Off to the side was the blasted floating castle we were trapped in, wait, if it's over there, and I'm over here… I promptly started screaming.
"Kirito you did it! You did it, you beat the boss! You finished the game!" I stood up and grabbed the little guy into a bear hug. We twirled around happily for a few minutes before a dainty little cough broke my moment. Asuna was standing off to the side with an awkward expression gracing her face and her hands clasped firmly behind her back. I let Kirito drop to the ground and grinned at her.
"Hey hey Asuna. Guess what?" She glanced nervously between the fallen swordsman and myself before shrugging her shoulders. I pounced at her with a gleeful shriek and tackled her to the ground.
"We're free, Asuna! We're out of the game! We can go home now.." My happiness was tinted with the smallest bit of sadness. Oh well, although being in the game was fun, I'll get over it. Asuna grinned back at me and held out a hand to Kirito, who sat down next to us calmly.
"You're right, Prince. We are free and we can go home now." Kirito smiled gently and grabbed Asuna's open hand. I got off her and scooched over to Kirito's free side before tossing my legs over the little edge of whatever it was we were sitting on.
"Hey, I've always wondered this, but what are your real names?" Asuna tilted her head at Kirito's question but answered all the same.
"Asuna, Asuna Yuuki." We both chuckled.
"You used your real last name?" She blushed at my teasing.
"Oh yeah? Well then what's yours?" I grinned back at her and opened my mouth to tell them, but I froze. My name? My real name? I have a real name, but why…...why can't I remember it? I closed my mouth.
"It's okay, you don't have to tell us if you don't want to. Mine is Kazuto Kirigaya." I shook away the strange feeling in my stomach and smirked at him.
"Kazuto Kirigaya? Geeze, both of you and your lame gamer names. Obviously you got your 'Kirito' from using different parts of your real name, and Asuna here used her actual real last name. You two are made for each other, you know that right?" Kirito tsked at me, but his response was interrupted by a certain villain.
"Your name isn't any better, you know." All three of us jumped up and faced the asshole that trapped us in a game for two years.
"Akihiko Kayaba. What do you want? We beat the game, we get to go free now." Akihiko gave us a closed eye smile and tilted his head to the side.
"Yes, you did defeat me. You defeated my world and I thank you for that, Kirito. You were the hero I wanted." I eyed the man with a frown. The weird feeling was back.
"Prince, I.." I narrowed my eyes.
"What? What do you want? As far as I remember we don't even know each other, so what could you possibly want from me?" Kirito pulled on my sleeve gently.
"Prince? Are you okay?" I shrugged off his hand.
"Why? A bit pissed at this guy, but other than that I'm fine." Kirito and Asuna both gave me a concerned look.
"But you and Kayaba, you both are pretty good friends. Or at least you were good friends." I raised an eyebrow.
"Uh, no. This is the first time I've actually talked with the guy." Kayaba sighed and rubbed his face slowly.
"I thought something was wrong at the boss fight. Prince,Bach made me promise him that if you started going crazy I'd smack some sense into you. But it seems I only have a few minutes left before you leave. I sorry I couldn't keep his promise. And, and I'm sorry that I'm not letting you come with me. I know you wanted to…" I gasped at him in shock. Say what now? Who's Bach? He gave Kirito a stern look.
"Kirito, you owe me nothing. But I'd like to ask a favor of you. Will you please help Prince? I can't anymore, so please help Prince in place of me and Bach… Since he can't ever help again." A feeling of dread entered my chest and I bent over in pain. I clutched at my chest helplessly and groaned. Why, why do I feel so horrible inside?
"I will." Those were the last words spoken before everything turned into nothing but whiteness.
A/N: Hey, so here's the next one. I hope all of you are crying as much as I am. Please be crying so I don't feel like a worthless worm...
