A/N: Sorry that this chapter is a little short, I had good plans for this but couldn't get them written how I wanted, but I still enjoy it and I hope you all do too. Review and tell me what you like, what I could do better, and any ideas you have. (Also, I do not have a schedule at the moment to put these out so I may be late with some but I might also do more then one some weeks.) Enjoy!

Prolog:

[2 Months Later]

3rd P.O.V~

2 months had passed since the day that the death game revived itself. During that time, only 1,000 players had died, and 19 floors had been cleared. The players of ALO also found out how "Oberon" had somehow hacked into the network in charge of running the ALO servers, and used and I.D he ranked above Heathclift's. He had a small group inside the company help make and produce the AmuSphere Version 3, and made ALO require it to play. With everything going smooth, our story's protagonist find themselves back on the 22nd floor of New Aincrad, devising a plan to take on the boss of the 50th floor. A small elite team of 40 was formed with a mix of the 9 races, at the request of Jedi Master Emile, who had managed to bring together the races of the Sylphs, Cait Sith, Leprechauns, Undine, the Salamanders, and even the Spriggans. A meeting at a forest a few miles from Kirito and Asuna's home, which had become a sort of H.Q to the group of, now 11, and no large guilds had been made yet that were strong enough for this task. Our story starts at the meeting taking place in a clearing in the middling of a forest.

Chapter 2, Part 1: Boss Fight

[Mid-Day]

Kirito P.O.V~

With the meeting beginning, Asuna and I took onto the makeshift stage on front of our forces. Us and Emile were to be in charge of this boss fight, as in SAO every 25th fight was much harder then others, and Asuna and I were some of the only true frontline members from the SAO days that took a leadership role. Personally, being a leader wasn't something I hoped for, but at this point I couldn't continue being solo. Not with the people I had to stay with. I continued to try to think, but realized that the chatter that was once running around the large group in front of us began to grow silent. Asuna looked at me, sharing her thoughts through those blue, water-like eyes.

'He's not coming.'

'He'll show up, calm down.'

'I'm starting this meeting, if he shows up later then he shows up.' I nodded my head in response. With that, Asuna faced the crowed of people, and began talking.

"Last time when we made it to the 50th floor, we scouted the floor boss and figured out how we should proceed before we went in. However,"-she parted her legs shoulder width and held her hands behind her back. Slowly, she began pacing the stage- "However we are not able to scout now. As many of you know, the doors now close when you enter a boss fight room. We may still use crystals, so everyone is recommended to bring a teleporting and healing crystal laptop the minimum. We will to into the boss room, and go in with the set-up of..." After that, Asuna explained the plan to the group. "And Kira, since your Master hasn't shown up, you will be leading the bosses entourage forces. Understood?" Kira, as everyone had come to know her, was an extremely happy, upbeat girl. She took laugh with a smile and a laugh, but when she was prepared for a fight, that smile was replaced by a firm leg-together stance. Her eyes facing the leading general, and following all orders. It was strange seeing her change into something so serious so quickly.

'Who do I know that does that?'

"Understood." The young girl said in a firm, yet soft voice.

"Is everyone clear on our plan, and your own duties?" No one spoke up to question what was going on, so it was shown that everything was understood. With that, the time to meet was set and we all dispersed from the meeting. Since it was mid-day, Asuna, Kira, Klein, Sinon, Sugu, and I, who were all fought on the frontline, went to meet with the others back at our new group's H.Q., Asuna and I's home. Well not exactly our house, but a base that we had made close by on the same floor.

Little conversation was made between us the first while one our way to the base, so I broke the tense silence after a while asking Kira,

"Hey, where was Emile today anyways? He was suppose to be there." I noticed an annoyed look had returned to Asuna's face.

"Hmm, good question." Kira replied in her normal carefree tone. Her arms were up, pressed to the back of her head as she looked up at the trees we passed. "He said something about scouting, but I didn't think much of it."

"He missed the meeting for scouting?" Asuna asked in a tone that matched her voice. "What could he be scouting that's more important then this boss fight?"

"I think he said something about the 50th floor." Kira replied, continuing to stare into nothingness upward.

"50th floor?" Agil, who had been chatting with Klein had piped in. "But, isn't the only thing on the 50th floor to scout the-"

"No, we can't scout the boss room. There's nothing to scout up there." Klein replied while chewing a long piece of wheat he kept on him.

"Maybe he went to fight!" Kira yelled, smashing her hand into her fist. "He like training with only things that he think can beat him." She kept going on.

"No, he wouldn't go take on a boss alone, no one is-" Asuna went wide-eyed, which cut off my speaking. "At least, not intentionally." I said quickly, shaking my hands up and down in defense. I realized that she wasn't aiming that look at me. She cocked her head sideways toward Kira behind us, who had been standing next to the archer Sinon and the swordswomen Sugu.

"He wouldn't." Asuna said, almost in an asking tone. As the house came into sight, Kira picked up her pace, ending up infront of the group.

"Hm, I can't say he would." She said in the same tone she had been using, not worrying much about the conversation at hand. "But then again, I can't say he wouldn't. How strong are the bosses here, I haven't had a chance to be apart of the main boss fights yet, just in charge of fighting extra mobs and what-not." She asked, curiously.

"It usually takes a full raid of 49 to fight them." I stated.

"Hehe." Kira giggled in a low tone. He voice lost it's carefreeness, and became serious. "I've heard stories from players that my Master is stronger then 10 armies. I bet he'd still be trying to see if he can hold the title." Her arms had fallen to her side, and everyone had been caught by the statement. Sure, Emile had proven to be a good fighter, and an equally good leader, but nothing out of the ordinary.

'Surely he wouldn't.' I thought, but I was quickly interrupted by the quick and light footsteps of my girlfriend, who had started running in the direction of the Warp-gate.

"Crap!" I said, flying after the now in-air Undine. The rest of the group seemed to understand, and started towards the plaza which held the teleporter. I looked behind me to see the house, and Kira casually walking inside of it.

"Tell me what happens, I'll be with the others." She waved at us, but was quickly turned to a blur as we all sped off towards the 50th floor boss room.

[Outside the 50th floor boss room]

Asuna P.O.V.~

'Baka! Who the hell runs off to fight a boss for training!' I yelled inside of my mind and the group of 5 and I ran down the hallway containing the boss room. It hadn't been long since we'd arrived inside of the dungeon, but it doesn't take long for someone to die in this game. After a short while and killing off the mobs we found, our group had made its way to the boss room door. Unfortunately, since Kira and Emile had their main game aspects from a different game, as their player I.D's were as well, we couldn't put them on our friends list, causing us to not be able to see where they were like we normally could. As we ran up to the door, I yelled at the others.

"We are going to open the doors, look inside, and leave right away. Understood!" Everyone nodded to my command, and I pressed my hand to the door. I saw a black glove move to the other door next to my hand.

"If we are going into a boss room, I'm staying right with you." The stern voice came from my boyfriend and in-game husband, Kirito. I nodded my head in understanding, and with that we pressed our hands on the door. We pressed hard. We kept pressing, waiting for the door to move. But it stood still. The Door wouldn't budge, no matter how hard we pushed. Even Agil and Klein couldn't get the door to move when they joined us. A horror filled my mind after a minute of this.

"Boss doors only stay shut...if someone is fighting the boss..." Kirito cut into my thoughts with his words. We all watched he door, expecting it to open. But it didn't. We waited 5 more minutes for it to open. But it didn't. We kept our eyes on the monster-carved door, just waiting for it to open. We didn't want to believe that someone had voluntarily fought a boss, alone. We sat waiting for what had to be 30 minutes before someone spoke.

"The door not opening is still somewhat good, right." A nervous Leafa said, as she sat on a nearby rock in the forest like room.

"What do you mean? It means there's a boss fight happening right now and we can't help it!" I said to her, raising my voice. I felt bad for doing it soon after, but at the moment I was only seeing red in my eyes.

"She does have a point." Sinon spoke up. "If the doors won't open, whoever is in there is still alive for the moment."

"Still, that's not extremely good that some idiot would charge in to something like this." I said, my words starting to become one big loop. Silence fell again, for another half-hour. In that time, I thought of our 2 new allies, mainly the one who was possibly in this locked room that stood infront of us. This man known as Emile, or Jedi Master Emile officially when introduced to leaders and high ranking officers for clans, was one of 413 players from some game that no one had bothered caring to remember (How could you not remember a game you had been trapped in for 4 years, and played normally even longer!) that had been transferred to the ALO servers when we were all trapped here 2 months ago. Over that time, this 20 or so year-old man had shown that he was extremely wise and rivaled me as a battle general. His skilled with his weapon know as a 'Lightsaber', which was similar to what Kirito had used in his time during GGO, was fairly talented. Kira had told us many stories of him defeating armies and rulers as easily as anyone could take down a lone mob, but it was hard to believe considering we hadn't seen him fight often.

The only real fighting we saw of his was whenever he took part in a boss fight, but most of the time he took the defensive leader role while Kirito and I lead our offensive. A reason that I only ever saw him fight in boss fights was his personality. He was a passive person, trying to be as peaceful as possible. His beliefs in peace helped bring many of the fairy races come together, to fight as one. Kira and I talked often about this way of living they had taken up, the so-called Jedi way. It was an interesting belief that they shared, but I still knew little about it. I had grown to be curios about Emile, as not even Kira knew incredibly much about him before the 4 years they had been together as Master and Padawan, which I learned is a student that a Jedi Master takes up as their own.

I was doubtful that Emile would come out of this room, really I was just hoping it was a separate clearing group fighting the boss. But with it having been over an hour already, my hope was fading fast. As I thought in the room while sitting next to Kirito, hands interlocked, a screeching cut the air. It was not from a monster, but from the floor as the boss room door slid along it. Everyone put their hands on their weapons, and jumped to the door. As Kirito prepared to cast night-vision (as boss rooms usually started out dark) we were instead met with orange flames decorating the small room. When we stepped into the room, blue polygons of light danced through the air, steadily falling. The sight was breathtaking, but I didn't notice it much. What I DID notice was the light-grey cloaked figure sitting in the middle of the square, boxed room. The room, which was held my pillars evenly spewed acrossed the room, had gold dragon decorating the walls, like a story had been painted in. It was similar to what we had seen of the 25th floor, so I made a mental note to check the walls later. But at the moment, I stomped to the man who had his backed turned to us.

"What the hell is your problem! You came up here, and thought you could fight a boss alone! Are you insane!?"

"Uh, Asuna." Kirito's words directed me towards him.

"What!?" I yelled at him as he put his hand on my shoulder. I saw his figure point to the polygons that had almost disappeared from the air.

"Have you noticed something?"

The thought had just hit me. There was no boss. Only Emile had sat in the room when we came in, and the boss was already...dead? No there's no way, he couldn't have... I turned my attention to Emile, who had stood up and faced us all. He rested his hands on the back of his head, reminding me of Kira when she was feeling carefree.

"I think I'm going to head back to the house, sorry for the trouble I'm sure you took to get up here." He said, his hands dropping to his side as he bowed to us. He did this a lot whenever he felt sorry for doing something, I felt it was a bit much but it was his way of showing respect I guessed. You can open up the teleporter to the next floor if you would like, I'll meet you all downstairs." And with that, he calmly strolled out of the room, his hands held softly behind his back. Everyone in the group, besides me who was wondering, was struck by amazement. We all had to have been sharing the same thoughts.

'How could he have done that?' But as me and Kirito locked eyes, we shared a thought separate from the rest.

'Who is that guy?'

Chapter 2, Part 2: Training in the Moon Light

[After Dark]

Kirito P.O.V.~

Later on in the day, everyone had ended up back at our base, or H.Q., which was a large building similar to that of a farm house, but made more militaristic. It was a large, white building that housed multiple training areas, meeting rooms, storage rooms, sleeping areas, and a large blacksmithing room in the basement (Liz wouldn't let me hear the end of it if I didn't make sure we had put one in, as Asuna had put me in charge of planning the base). We all spent a lot of our time here, as a lot of our group didn't have homes in New Aincrad since we had lived in Yggdrasil for the most part before we had committed to clearing this death game. Most of us were apart of the clearing group except for Liz, who was our official blacksmith, and Silica, who didn't feel she was able to fight on the frontlines.

It was after dark when Emile finally arrived at the base, and everyone but Kira and Asuna immediately ran up to him. All at once, we asked the same question,

"What the hell happened!?"

Asuna seemed fairly still mad about him going to do something that she thought was extremely stupid, and Kira just sat at a table with her feet up. The room we had all gathered in was the bases main hall, and it was our main meeting space. It was a large white and black room with a long table in the middle surrounded by chairs. The room had a stairway in the back that lead to the 2nd floor of the base, and also the balcony that surrounded the 1st floor.

Emile had stayed silent for the most part while everyone shouted random questions at him, but eventually he spoke.

"Kirito."

"Hm?" I replied, confused.

"Can you meet me outside?"

"Umm, yeah." I replied, still confused at the request. Though he seemed to enjoy us all, Emile didn't hang out with us individually much. After that, he stepped outside of the base, and I followed close behind. We kept walking for a few minutes, until we ended up at a clearing by the base.

"Why did we come out here?" I asked him, arms crossed.

"I want to help you train." He stated, turning to me.

"Train? I'm not sure I follow."

"You fight well with your dual-blades, but I wish to help you fight better."

This was a bit weird for me. As I was the only dual-blade user that most people, including myself, had met, I was curious on why he thought my skills weren't good enough. I mean, I did beat the 74th floor boss alone back in SAO, and I'd become increasingly better, so why was he wanting to do this?

"I mean, how do you think you can help make me better?" I was pulled into the conversation a bit. "There isn't much I can do for now but improve my skill ratings."

"I want you to learn the way I learned to fight, outside of the system."

'Outside of the system?' I was confused.

"What do you mean 'Outside of the system?"

"I mean in a way that your skill points do not matter, past the limit of a normal player." He replied, hands sitting behind his back. "You told me once how the man named Oberon had been beaten by you before, but he doesn't seem to care much for rules or fairness by the story you told me."

It was true, Kira and Emile were curious on how we know who Sugou, so I had told them the story of me coming to the original ALO and defeating him. It was also true that when I fought Sugou that he tried to used unfair advantages and broke the rules when we fought, but I HAD beaten him. I found it strange that this had come up and the conversation between the Jedi infront of me and I.

"I wish to start preparing for anything else he could plan down the path for us, and I'd like to start with you." Emile continued to speak. I put in my words quickly so that we could head back to base soon for dinner.

"Ok fine, what would you like me to do?" I asked, wanting to hurry this up. With that statement, Emile pulled out his weapon of choice, his lightsaber. It reminded me of what I wielded in GGO, but it was a bit different. The hilt he held was about the size of an average forearm, and was a cylinder-like metal object that was silver with gold rings every few inches. When he ignited his weapon, the lightsaber shot out a bright yellow light, which had to be 3 feet long in itself. The yellow blade seemed to light up the world around him, and Emile seemed like he knew how to truly wield this weapon. He held it steadily away and to the left of his body, slanting it upwards to his right side, covering his body. He had called this fighting form of his 'Ataru', which was suppose to be an agility style fighting technique. After setting his form like this, I finally realized he had started speaking.

"I wish for you to disarm me." When he said this, I nodded and pulled out my black, broad longsword and got into an attacking stance, holding my weapon towards the back of me.

"Use both of your weapons." His words surprised me. I only normally used my dual-blades when I was in a serious fight, and I had never seen this guy do anything extraordinary to be impressed with. Reluctantly, I pulled out my second sword, the golden Excalibur. I held both of my weapons in hand, and prepared to move in to strike his weapon. Quickly, I shot off my feet, hoping to end this stupid training quick. I was prepared to aim for the hilt of his lightsaber, and knock it out of his hands. I sped across the clearing faster then the game could keep up with, and ended up behind Emile. He was still facing forward, and I struck downwards towards his weapon.

'Too slow.' I thought to myself, but as my weapon pressed to the Jedi's, it quickly vanished from my view. Horror came across me, as I realized Emile was behind me, weapon in hand.

'How the-' my thoughts were cut off and I flew to the ground infront of me, unaware of what had just happened.

'When did he get behind me?' I thought to myself, but the man who stood infront of me when I jumped off the ground had maintained his starting stance, but was clearly farther back then when he had started. I slowly understood that this wasn't going to be the fight I had thought before hand. I was going to have to try a bit harder, and so I did. I leaped off the ground, and ended up infront of Emile. I sliced my swords towards each other, lightsaber in the middle of them. As my blades one again made slight contact with the silver hilt before me, I suddenly saw a palm go towards my face. As the hand made contact with me, I had to think of what just happened. After I landed on the ground below, I rolled off my back and onto my feet, leaping back to gain some space. The man infront of me had his lightsaber in his left hand, right hand forward where my face had been a few moments ago, his feet still shoulder width. As I brought my swords up, I prepared for the next while that we would be at this. I breathed in the night air, and spaced out my feet to match my swords. Before I shot forward, I realized something. The bright blue eyes of the Jedi that normally stood on his face weren't there. Instead, his eyelids covered them. I had realized what was going on. Emile had kept his eyes shut, following me with ears and not eyes. After I understood this, I took flight with my grey wings, and went above him.

I sped down the air, towards my opponent. He had taken up his original stance, and wasn't in the position to take an aerial attack, so I took up the opportunity to go towards him with my blades in hands. As I had become an inch from him, time slowed down. It wasn't like the system-assist the Heathcliff, but it was almost identical. When I had to the hilt of his weapon, I was the eyes of the Jedi infront of me open, and look at me. My face tensed up as the eyes infront of me vanished. I quickly turned around to catch a foot above me, and saw Emile in the air above me. With a grin, he landed in me, foot still in my hand. I expected to land hard on the ground, but the impact was like a normal fall, like no extra force had been added. I didn't understand why he didn't put pressure on his foot to send me flying, but only went softly down to the ground. With the grin still on his face, Emile removed his foot from me, and held out his right hand to me. Noticing his lightsaber was put away, I reached for the hand and was brought up.

"Do you understand?" He asked. I nodded, as I knew what he meant. Did I understand what he meant by fighting outside of the system, where skills didn't matter.

"Are you willing to let me help you?" He continued. I stopped to think. Looking up towards the moon, I thought not of my answer, but of the day. This guy was unbelievably fast, and had beaten a boss alone. I wanted to know who he was, but I more wanted to know how to get to his level of fighting.

"Yeah, I'll go along with it." I replied, sheathing my weapons.

"Ok." That was it? Wasn't much of a response for trying so hard to get me to train with me. With that statement, we started walking toward the base next to each other.

After awhile, the house came into view, and I asked him a question.

"Did you really beat that boss by yourself?" He shook his head. I was confused, no one had been in the room, so did someone...

"Something I've learned over the years of fighting," Emile's voice cut my thoughts. "You're never truly alone, even if no one is standing next to you."

As we entered the house, I thought about what he had said. I understood what he meant kinda. How we didn't ever fight alone, but one question remained in my head.

'Who are you?'

When the brightness of the base hit my eyes, and blue hair figure appeared infront of me.

"Where did you go? Do you know how late it is?"

When my in-game wife asked me this in a curious voice, I quickly realized how late it was. After realizing this, I saw a horror that I had nightmares of become true. The food that had been made for dinner, quickly become blue polygons, disappearing from my sight. That night, my thoughts were stuck on the food that I would never get to eat. I was truly defeated.