SAO A Different Story

AN: Almost to the good stuff.

Disclaimer: I don't own SAO, wish I did.

A Different Story

Chapter 4- Dragons, Coffins, and Dangerous Women

A grumbling and frowning Kirito followed his girls as they led the teary-eyed youth back to the town. The guild had been hunting the orange guild Titan's Hand when they stumbled upon a young dragon tamer and her recently deceased familiar. Argo had immediately mentioned a way to revive said familiar, and thus a trip to the 47th floor was planned for the morrow. The fact that an eavesdropper from the guild they were after overheard their plans to acquire the rare item was simply a bonus.

Thus, when half a dozen players leapt from behind trees to ambush the black swordsman and the small girl by his side, they weren't expecting blades to be held to their throats form behind by a group of heavily armed and dangerous looking females. Silica was extremely grateful to 'Kuro no Kenshi-sama' and his companions for helping her, and the girls decided that since she wasn't going back to her old party that she was obviously joining theirs.

Thus, the Diamond Blades grew to eight players, and Argo had another name to tease Kirito over. It wouldn't be uncommon in the near future to find her jokingly calling Kirito 'Kenshi-sama', shortly after pestering Sinon with 'Sinononon'.

Silica stared skyward as the behemoth of white and blue flew overhead. 'Pina is much cuter, and less frightening,' she thought and X'rphan the White Wyrm soared past. Kirito and Lisbeth were down below gathering a rare material called Crystallite, which also happened to be the excrement from the dragon that the rest of the group were fighting. X'rphan didn't drop anything valuable at all when killed, and in fact wasn't even worth the effort financially, but they needed to distract him from his nest so that Kirito and Lisbeth could dig for more of the valuable ore.

Sinon fired another arrow towards the dragon, this time catching it in the eye, as it swiped at her. She dove out of the way as X'rphan roared and slammed into the ground, half-blinded by pain an arrow and in serious pain. Sinon was perfectly happy spending time sending arrow after arrow at the beast. Lisbeth had crafted her a bow using a higher leveled version of the Spider Silk from the spider queen the Blades had fought ages ago, and had made the frame out of bone from the Geocrawler that Asuna had led the fight against on this very floor.

"They're clear! Fall back outside the anti-crystal field and teleport back!" Sinon heard shouted by Asuna. The archer let loose one last arrow into X'rphan's remaining eye, smirking with more than a hint of sadistic glee at his roar of pain. She really enjoyed her new weapon, and the short sword that she would receive from one of the many ingots would make a wonderful backup.

The mass of assembled players were silent as they marched along, the halls echoing eerily with the sound of their boots. Today was the day that the red guild Laughing Coffin would meet its end. Kirito had first heard tell of the guild helping Silica revive Pina, as Titan's Hand had made a few dealings with them. Then he and Asuna had recently completed an investigation of a mysterious murder that it turned out the guild had been involved with. The clearers had spent countless hours tracking down clues and information on the notorious guild, and eventually they had found someone who wanted to defect the guild. The player was a green player, and had been forced to join after being saved form monsters by the guild. They knew where the guild's base was, and was more than happy to tell those wishing to know. The clearers organized a force of over fifty high leveled players to assault the base where their informant claimed the guild was. There was no way that the guild could resist against them today.

'So much for that idea,' thought Kirito, as his blades crossed with a manic-looking axe wielder, his thoughts unconsciously echoed by the rest of his guild. The red players had been tipped off by someone, most likely a traitor on the crusade team itself. Kirito would have time to wonder about the how and why of it all sometime later. Right now his attention was focused on the tip of an estoc that was rapidly moving towards Sinon. She was using her shorts word, which she was much less skilled at than her bow, as her bow was too unwieldy in the current environment's cramped corridors. The slight disadvantage she was at was more than enough for one of the members of Laughing Coffin to sneak up and stab her through the shoulder.

Sinon fell backwards with a cry as her sword fell from her hand. The estoc wielder pulled his arm back for another strike, and Kirito could almost imagine the look of triumph on the player's face as he prepared to strike down one of the infamous Blades. Kirito's girls were just as famous as he was, each being powerful and skilled in their own right. But as the pointed tip of the sword started to inch forward, one thought crystalized in Kirito's mind.

He was responsible for their safety, not only as their guild leader, but as their friend and the one they all looked up to. They constantly referred to the group as Kirito's girls. Kirito's. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, they were his. And he'd be damned if he let a murdering bastard take one of them away from him.

Kirito lunged forward, His sword arcing from behind him towards the enemy player. The needle tip was moving forward towards Sinon's eye, and his sword arm was on the other side of his body from Kirito. There was nothing Kirito could do to stop the weapon's movement. He had no other choice, but all things considered, he concluded that it was very much worth it.

Sinon had barely a few seconds to contemplate her fate as the needle-like weapon sped closer. Her dawning look of horror lasted a split second, before one of confusion followed by shock took its place. A blade had swiped straight through the neck of the man about to kill her. Her confusion over why she hadn't died faded as the tip of the estoc missed her face by inches as the body wielding it fell and shattered into polygons. Next was the shock from following the blade responsible back to Kirito's hands as he stood frozen from an executed sword skill. Another member of Laughing Coffin saw an opportunity and lunged for the immobile swordsman, but he fell and gasped as his leg was sheared off at the knee and a sword sprouted through his chest. Sinon hadn't even thought, she had just reacted. Just like that, a second member of the red guild exploded into pixels, and the fight suddenly turned vicious.

The crusaders had planned on attempting to capture the guild members alive, and that had been what Kirito had been aiming to do at first. But now they had almost taken one of his girls from him. The possessive connotation he felt with that word would have worried him had he been thinking rationally. As it was, he wasn't. He no longer held back against the murderous players. Three more fell within a matter of seconds, as Asuna, Argo, the rest of the girls, and several crusaders watched in shock as Kirito showed why he the strongest player in the game.

The fight was brutal, and several crusaders had lost their lives before Kirito had snapped and slaughtered the enemies that remained. Only a handful of the enemy had been captured, using combinations of paralysis poisons and teleport crystals set for the Black Iron Palace. But many more had met their fate in a burst of pixels as Kirito's blades dismembered them. The shock expressed by the other players was so great that it could almost be physically felt by those in the room.

Sinon saw how everyone was reacting, and even a few of Kirito's girls were a little nervous of approaching him. But Sinon understood. The player she killed wasn't the first life she had taken. She had been entangled in a bank robbery as a child, and had ended up killing the perpetrator by accident and reflex. So she the stares she had received then were the same ones that Kirito was receiving now. So she understood, and she provided something that no-one had provided her during her experience.

Sinon stood up from where she was kneeling on the ground, and calmly walked over to Kirito's shaking form. She sheathed her sword as she walked, and when she reached him she embraced him. Not forcefully, not smothering him. She simply held him close to her as his emotions were in turmoil. The rest of the girls immediately realized that they had been temporarily afraid of Kirito, and were heavily ashamed of themselves. They quickly put away their weapons and followed Sinon's example in comforting their mutual protector and crush.

The crusaders were a mixed basket. Some believed the murdering bastards deserved it, some were disgusted by Kirito's actions, and some were indifferent, deciding that the players were no different than enemy mobs at this point after everything they had done. Kirito's girls didn't care. They wouldn't think differently of him, and would be sure to demonstrate that as the days passed and Kirito came to terms with the fact that he had killed several dozen people, and that he honestly wasn't to upset about doing so.

For that's what had Kirito so worried. Not that he had killed, because it had been them or his girls, so the choice had been simple and straight-forward. No, what bothered Kirito was that he was able to rationalize and dismiss his actions so easily. The possessiveness he had felt when defending Sinon was something he realized that he felt towards all of his girls. Kirito concluded things were about to get really messy.

Things went back to normal much more rapidly than Kirito had expected. The other players present didn't mention the events of the raid against Laughing Coffin, so the general populace never learned of Kirito's actions, and the clearers were too wary of losing the support of one of the strongest- despite its size- guilds, and thus kept their mouths shut and their opinions to themselves.

Right now Kirito and his guild were marching out of the exit of the 74th floor's boss room. A platoon from the Aincrad Liberation Force had foolishly challenged the boss without being ready, and a handful had died before the Blades had arrived. They had been training nearby and heard the sounds of battle and screaming of other players, and quickly ran to investigate. Kirito had finished the boss with one of his recently learned Sword Skills, Starburst Stream. Kirito had been using two swords since the very first floor, albeit without a related skill, and had discovered that he had received the Dual Blades skill shortly after encountering the Moonlit Black Cats.

The girls of the Blades were tired, and they felt like taking a break from daily grind of slaying. They also believed it would be good for Kirito to relax a bit. So they dragged him off to the 22nd floor to buy a house that Argo knew of.

While Kirito was sleeping on the couch in the living room with Pina curled up on his chest, the girls were huddled up on one of the beds in the master bedroom, whispering.

"So we're agreed then?" asked Lisbeth.

"Yes, I believe we are," Asuna replied, looking at each individual in turn. "It was inevitable that something like this would happen. There were too many of us, and the choice would have been painful for the others. Are you sure that it will work, Argo?"

"Yes and no," the whiskered girl said. "Can it be done? Yes. There's actually nothing stopping it, it's just that most people would never think of actually performing something like this. Will he agree to it? That's a harder question, but my gut says yes. He's done a lot for us, gone above and beyond sometimes," Argo trailed off, her mind recalling the semi-recent raid where he had killed another player- several times- in order to protect them. "And I don't think he'd be truly opposed. It's merely convention and norms that are the problem, and it's not like they really apply here in Aincrad anyway."

"We can figure out how to deal with the outside when it comes to it, but for now it's not an issue," spoke up Silica, wanting to get a few words in.

With one final round of nods, the girls rose and filed into the living room.

Kirito woke with the feeling that he was being stared at by several pairs of eyes. His eyelids pulled pack to reveal that, indeed, he was looking at the entirety of his guild arrayed before him. Asuna and Argo stood front and center, Lisbeth and Silica beside them, Yuuki, Sinon, and even Kizmel close behind them. Kirito started feeling vaguely uncomfortable with the looks he was getting.

"We have a problem," Asuna stated matter-of-factly.

"And the problem is?..." Kirito hesitantly asked. It was Kizmel who told him.

"We like you. All of us. And you haven't made it clear which of us you like back."

Kirito's unease was gargantuan at this point. 'Oh no, don't let them make me choose right now. I won't even be able to explain why I can't come up with an answer,' he thought with trepidation. He was saved from a potential deadly situation by an even more dangerous one.

"That's why you're going to marry us," Sinon said.

"All of us," added Lisbeth.

Kirito's eyes couldn't possibly have gotten any wider, and he wasn't entirely certain whether or not the NerveGear could simulate a heart attack.

AN: Almost done with Aincrad, just a few more chapters. Then a few chapters with ALO, and we'll be off to the lands of Nords and dragons with the Elder Scrolls.