Chapter 7: Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
The two girls still had their arms wrapped around each other in their long embrace. Eventually there was a knock on the hospital room door.
Suguha pulled away from Sachi and sat back down in the visitor's chair. As she did so she grabbed a fistful of tissues from the side table and wiped her face off. Meanwhile, Sachi put her head back down on her pillows and smoothed over her blanket with both hands. She quickly winked at Suguha, who had already placed her own hands in her in lap as if nothing had happened.
The door opened a crack and someone peered in. "Can I come in?" It was Midori.
Sugua got up. "Hi, Mom. Good timing. She's up. We've just been chatting a bit."
Midori tentatively entered the room. When saw the petite girl with her head propped up on the pillows she gave a sigh of relief. "Sachi, you're finally awake. Thank heavens."
Sachi smiled. "Hi."
"It is so good to see you back among the living again. How are you feeling?"
"I feel just fine."
"That's excellent." Then Midori looked at her daughter. "Sugu, could you please come outside with me for a moment?" The request caught Suguha by surprise.
Suguha stood up, and as she did so she gave Sachi a questioning look. Sachi's face became impassive. Suguha silently left the room with her mother.
They were standing alone in the hallway. "Mom, what's the matter?"
Midori tried to find the right words to say to her daughter. "Sugu, on Wednesday evening when the ambulance took Sachi away I told them that I would notify her parents. I had to look up Mrs. Watanabe's telephone number in the phone book. There was no answer, so I went over to her apartment but nobody was home. I knew that Mrs. Watanabe worked several jobs, so I decided to go home and try again early the next morning, but there was still no answer at her door. I left a note. I went back today and the note was still there, so I finally gave up and called the prefecture's Child Welfare Council* to ask how to get in contact with her parents."
"Then what happened?"
"Instead of giving me the information I had asked for, they came over to the house while you were at school - two case workers. I was questioned closely for over an hour about Sachi. It wasn't pleasant."
"Mom..?"
"Sugu, they told me that her mother has been a chronic alcoholic for years. The case workers want to take Sachi into protective custody. Mrs. Watanabe will likely be institutionalized."
Suguha stared at her mother in disbelief.
Midori sighed, "I should have known. Sachi never talked about her mother. Whenever I had asked if I could meet Mrs. Watanabe, she always said that she was out working."
She looked down. "I think that was true at first. Her father had abandoned them both when Sachi was very young, and her mother worked several jobs to get by. According to the case worker, when Sachi was about six years old her mother had received an inheritance from a distant relative. It was a small annuity paid monthly from a bank trust. The annuity was enough to cover the rent, utilities, some food, but not much else. It seems that her mother then quit working and drank away the remainder of the check each month. And so from age six on, it looks like Sachi had basically raised herself. Her father refused to have anything to do with her."
Suguha tried to absorb the information. "She was always alone..."
"I'm afraid so. The annuity paid for the apartment, but other than that Sachi was on her own."
"But Mom, how could the authorities let her live like that?"
"Well, I don't think they or her neighbors knew. And with thousands of other VRDP cases for the authorities to deal with, I think she just fell through the cracks. Or maybe she just fooled them - forging her mother's signatures on school documents. I don't know."
Suguha tried to imagine what Sachi's life must have been like before SAO: Wake up, brush your teeth, go to school, come home, make something to eat, go on the computer for a bit, go to bed, and do it all by yourself with your mother passed out the whole time. She might have gotten a glimpse of her mother every few days if she was lucky.
Is that why she was so distant with me outside the game? Was it because that was how she herself had grown up?
She was never close to anyone, not even her own mother. How can anyone live a life like that?
The pair walked down the hall to an alcove that had some chairs and a picture window overlooking the quad below. Suguha walked to the window to gaze out at the falling raindrops as her mother approached her from behind.
"Sugu, please try not to be upset about what happened. You shouldn't blame yourself. ALO was truly a blessing for her. It let her forget her troubles in a fantasy world. She delighted in it. You both did. It was probably the same reason she had dived into SAO, as a form of escape. The way she grew up it is no small wonder she liked to lose herself in computers and video games so much."
Sugu said softly, "It's true, she was happy." Then she thought of SAO.
Sachi, SAO had turned your world upside down. Instead of escaping your troubled world you were trapped in a far more terrifying one, a world full of horrible monsters, pain, and death.
Kazuto must have seemed like a savior to you in that awful place - the first person in your life who ever cared for you.
Suguha felt it again, that pang of fear.
She starting speaking to distract herself. "Mom, I still feel responsible. I should have been her friend in the real world, not just in a make-believe one. I never asked her how her mom was doing. It never even occurred to me..."
Midori tried to console her daughter. "It's okay, honey. She was very guarded about her personal life. I should have caught it too."
"But, Mom, what is going to happen to her now?"
Midori leaned against the wall and looked out the window. The rain was still falling. "Well, I suppose she will be taken by the authorities and be sent to stay with her father. He lives somewhere in Osaka. It's possible we might not ever see her again."
Suguha shook her head. "No, he won't."
"He won't? How do you know that?"
"You said it yourself, he refused to take her. Otherwise he would have done it already."
Midori looked thoughtful. "Hmm. You know, I think you might be right. The case worker had told me that with her mother being institutionalized the bank trust would be legally hers. Her father can't touch it."
She pushed herself away from the wall. "You are right, he won't take her."
Suguha and her mother looked at each other.
Then Suguha turned her head back towards the window.
Midori quietly approached and embraced her daughter from behind. "You know what we have to do, honey. She doesn't have anyone else."
Suguha was now again facing the window, looking out at the rain. A moment passed.
Midori said softly, "Suguha, it's your decision too. We need to agree."
Suguha kept looking out the window. "She'll stay with me."
Midori smiled, then gently lowered her head on her daughter's shoulder. "Thank you, honey."
Suguha kept watching the rain with her mother's chin on her shoulder.
Her mother lifted her chin. "You know, we've always been a patch-work family."
The rain kept falling.
"It's who we are. It's because family isn't biological, it is of the heart."
Suguha whispered to herself, "A patch-work family.."
Midori heard her. "Yes, that's us. I haven't talked to Minetaka yet, but I am sure he will agree too. We'll get started on the paperwork to become her legal guardian beginning Monday."
Suguha turned. "Mom, wait, I don't undertstand. Do you mean she'll become my.. my.."
She couldn't say the word.
Midori completed it: "Your sister?"
"Mom?"
"Well, that will be up to her. However, I expect she will decline any sort of formal adoption. If we legally adopt her then she would lose her bank trust. Also, I think she likes her independence."
Suguha felt a sudden sense of relief. "Yeah, you're right. She won't let herself be adopted. She's too independent."
Midori misread her feelings as disappointment. "Honey, it's all right. Just think of her as a sister in your heart, the same way you think of Kazuto as your brother in your heart. You have told her that Kazuto is really your cousin, yes?"
Suguha shook her head absently.
"Oh. You haven't? I thought you would have told Sachi that by now, that and he and you aren't really siblings. I assume it is because you want to ask for Kazuto's permission first?"
The rain fell.
"Yes." She was lying.
"Quite proper. After he wakes up I am sure that he'll agree and you can both tell her together. Family should have no secrets between each other about something like that."
The raindrops fell. "No.. they shouldn't."
"Good. I'm glad we are all in agreement. Well, let's go back and welcome your new step-sister, shall we?"
Suguha silently fell in line behind her mother and they returned to the hospital room.
Sachi was laying alone in her hospital bed staring up at the ceiling tiles. She could hear the rain that was falling outside behind the closed window blinds.
She was not paying attention to the sound of the falling rain outside. It was because she was busy mentally playing out the conversation that she knew had to be taking place just outside her hospital room.
She closed her eyes.
It would be a big imposition on Suguha.
I'm old enough to stay in the apartment.
She thought some more.
She came to a decision. She opened her eyes.
Kirito, you need me.
She knew what she had to do.
I have to stay by your side.
Inside the Kirigaya home, life was back to normal again. Despite the new living arrangement nothing had really changed much in their day-to-day lives since Sachi had moved in. She was still doing most of the chores, Suguha was still prepping for her high school entrance exams, and Midori was still working 12 hour days researching and writing her IT magazine and newsletter articles.
Sachi had switched her hospital volunteering schedule back to late afternoons and evenings, the same schedule that she had before she played ALO with Suguha every day. With Suguha still in middle school it meant that they now rarely saw each other except at bedtime.
For the time being, Sachi shared Suguha's double bed by mutual consent. The two girls had discussed rearranging the furniture in the room and putting in two separate futons to give themselves more space between them. Neither girl had even considered the idea of Sachi sleeping in Kazuto's empty room, even though it was right next door to Suguha's. It was because Kazuto's room was considered by everyone to be sacrosanct, a shrine dedicated to his return.
One evening Suguha was busy scooping out Yaya's litterbox downstairs by the furnace when Sachi came bounding down the steps. She had just returned from the hospital. She stopped and saw Sughua scooping the box. She decided to needle her a bit.
"Having fun, Leafa?"
Suguha stood up. She was holding a small bag of extremely toxic and hazardous non-nuclear waste at arm's length. She held her nose closed with her other hand.
"Oh yoo nare snooooh fuummy."
Sachi grinned, "Hey, it's only until Christmas."
Suguha let go of her nose. "Yeah. Now get out of my way!" Suguha ran upstairs and out back to the garbage can as fast as she could.
It was past 2 a.m. and Suguha was snoring softly. Meanwhile, Sachi stared up the ceiling while laying next to her in the double bed. She couldn't sleep. She quietly got up, put on her robe, and went downstairs to get a glass of milk to drink.
As she finished her milk she noticed a faint glow of light coming up from Midori's basement office. It was not at all unusual because, like many computer geeks, Midori was a chronic night owl. Her office door was open, so Sachi decided to go down and keep her company.
She found Midori leaning back in her high-backed office chair seemingly lost in thought. Her tiny home office was cramped. It was stuffed with stacks of papers and books, some precariously close to tipping over. Next to Midori's hopelessly cluttered desk was a 6-color cartridge Canon proofing printer, and below it was a top-of-the-line Dell Precision XPS tower that was connected to a 100GBASE-T switch. On the walls were photos of her family, including a stern one of Suguha's imposing grandfather holding a shinai in front of the dojo that he had built next door to their home.
Sachi lightly knocked on the open door to get her attention. Midori leaned forward in her office chair and welcomed the interruption. "Oh, Sachi, do come in."
"I'm sorry if I disturbed you. I couldn't sleep."
Midori offered Sachi the folding chair that was learning against the wall behind the open door. "You're timing is perfect. Come, sit with me."
Midori Kirigaya was the senior editor for a major trade publication that covered Japan's burgeoning computer industry. Her expertise was in computer and data security, and she was always happy to share her thoughts aloud with the younger female computer geek. Sachi would often sit attentively and watch the editor's hands fly over her keyboard. She would listen with interest as Midori chatted about the cloak-and-dagger world of computer hackers (called the 'black hats') and the people who tracked them down (the 'white hats').
Most of her chatter went right over Sachi's head. Midori had found that by simply talking aloud to Sachi as she typed merrily away that she could better organize her own thoughts as she composed her articles, and Sachi was more than happy to oblige.
Sachi asked, "So what are you working on tonight?"
Midori rubbed her eyes. "Well, I'm in the middle of writing a feature piece for our quarterly IT security insiders newsletter, which has a very select, very limited clientele. I don't dare tell you how much our publisher charges for just one issue."
"Wow, so this is insider stuff?"
"Oh, this is inside as you can get, honey."
Sachi was fascinated. "So what are you working on?"
"I am writing an article about how advanced stealth hypervisors are now being used by the black hats to evade anti-virus detection using hardware virtual acceleration and state cloaking. These new computer viruses are getting really nasty."
It was all part of an ever escalating war that had been going on since the earliest days of personal computing, going all the way back to the DOS viruses of the 1980s. The cycle was always the same: The black hats would come up with a novel way to infiltrate computer systems, then the white hats would develop a countermeasure to stop the threat, then the black hats would invent something more sophisticated, and the cycle would repeat again.
It all began with signature detection: the anti-virus software would simply scan a potentially unsafe file for byte patterns against a table of known viruses that were stored in a database within the installed AV package. To counter this, the black hats had started to slightly modify their viruses so the signature would no longer match and then release new variants. In response to this, the white hats soon became adept at quickly capturing new virus variants in the wild using online honey pots in order to update their databases and distribute them out to their customers.
The next step the black hats took was to encrypt and compress their payloads using so-called 'packers' and 'unpackers'. Unpackers were software stubs that decrypted the virus payload upon launch. Each time the virus infected a new machine, the virus would re-encrypt itself with a different initialization vector (IV), causing all the bytes in the payload to be randomly scrambled to new values. This defeated passive signature detection.
The unpackers were common software items that were also used by legitimate apps such as games and proprietary software containing trade secret algorithms. They used unpackers to prevent reverse engineering and the theft of their valuable assets. For this reason the AV software couldn't just detect the unpacker to trigger an alert.
So the white hats invented a new method: Run the unpacking algorithm themselves within their own AV software, then intercept the entry point into the main virus payload and freeze the app. The AV software could then inspect the frozen app's memory contents for suspicious byte signature patterns.
The war then escalated: polymorphic viruses. They could re-write themselves on the fly using complex algorithms while adding huge amounts of dummy code that never got executed. Each run was different. The AV vendors had to modify their detection engines to figure out these algorithms, but the polymorphism became more and more sophisticated.
The white hats eventually realized that signature detection was becoming a losing battle. They concluded that it was simply not possible any more to detect such sophisticated viruses prior to their execution.
So the white hats took a new approach: They would monitor the operating system itself. Whenever a new app launched for the first time the AV monitor would shim the app's calls to the operating system (for example, to open a file for writing) so it could track the app's activity as it manipulated the surrounding environment. Suspicious patterns of activity (such as attempting to modify an OS executable file) would trigger alerts and be blocked.
The black hats soon stole this idea and started to write their own shims. They would lie about what the virus was actually doing and prevent user-mode AV from triggering. In response the white hats began to write kernel-level shims that intercepted the system call jump tables within protected kernel memory itself.
Of course the black hats responded and did the same thing. This prompted OS vendors like Microsoft to digitally checksum all the system call tables inside the kernel itself, a method they called 'PatchGuard'. PatchGuard was an extremely sophisticated monitoring system that would checksum the page tables (and checksum itself) to prevent any sort of tampering.
The black hats struggled with PatchGuard. Microsoft would quickly learn about whatever new trick was being used to evade it and then would rapidly release a new Windows Update to counter it. AV vendors did the same for their own products. Meanwhile, Microsoft added a requirement that all kernel loaded software be pre-approved by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) and be signed-off by Microsoft with a tamper-proof digital checksum that they added. Windows was then modified to block the loading of all unsigned kernel code. Meanwhile, PatchGuard did periodic sweeps of kernel memory in case something tried to sneak in some other way.
Hackers could no longer tamper with kernel memory.
The black hats were losing.
In the meantime, the CPU hardware vendors like Intel and AMD were busy adding hardware virtualization to their 64-bit processors, which allowed one OS to run a second OS inside of itself. This was called a virtual machine (VM). VMs soon became very popular and were a handy feature that let businesses run legacy apps on their servers, or create isolation walls between external Internet facing websites and internal database servers, or set up virtual server farms without buying additional hardware. VMs soon became ubiquitous and led the way to the creation of the Cloud.
With VM technology the good guys now had a new powerful weapon to use against the black hats. They could now inspect and dissect a virus in their labs without the virus being aware of it. Previously the only way to inspect and reverse-engineer a virus was through the tedious inspection of the suspicious code (which was useless for polymorphic viruses anyway) or to actively debug them while they were still executing. In response, the black hats added new methods to detect attempts at reverse engineering their malware using user-mode debuggers like OllyDbg or kernel-mode debuggers like WinDbg. When a virus detected a debugger in use, the virus would change its behavior or simply do nothing to frustrate the white hat.
But with a VM there was no longer a debugger to detect. It looked like a pristine system. With this weapon the white hat analyst could now dissect the virus at their leisure. The VM could even lie about the clock value so the virus would think it was running at full speed without interruption. Using VMs in this way, the AV vendors were now able to quickly dissect new viruses and push out new revisions of their detection systems, often on the same day.
The white hats were winning again.
In response the black hats rolled up their sleeves and they invented the Red Pill, named after a scene in the film The Matrix where Neo was given a choice: Take the blue pill and nothing would happen - he would just wake up back in the fake reality of the Matrix and forget that anything had happened to him, or take the red pill and he would wake up for real and discover that he was actually living in a simulation.
Red Pill exploited an obscure machine instruction in user mode whose behavior would change subtly whenever OS was running inside a VM. On a real machine the Interrupt Descriptor Table (IDT) address was always located at a certain fixed address in kernel memory. By necessity a VM had to virtualize the IDT using a shadow table that was stored at a different address. The SIDT instruction revealed the address, and SIDT happened to be a legal instruction to execute in user mode, even though it was useless in that mode. The Red Pill exploited that fact to detect that their virus payload was running inside a VM. The hackers now had a way to thwart reverse engineering using a VM.
And so, over the years, the war went on. In the mid-2010s high speed networking had became ubiquitous, which let the white hats download AV updates to their business customers and even to home users in real time. What was worse for the black hats was that the AV software could now upload suspicious new software back to the labs of the AV vendors, also in real time. When a user clicked to run a new app for the first time, it would pause for 5-20 seconds while the AV vendor quietly uploaded the entire app up to their labs where they would automatically run some very sophisticated analyses using highly proprietary algorithms on large dedicated servers that had a tremendous amount of compute power. Microsoft soon added the same tricks to Windows itself, a feature they had called 'SmartScreen'. Even worse was the fact that the black hats could not see what was going on in the labs. They no longer had a way of learning what was triggering the detection of their handiwork. They were locked out.
It was a strong defense.
The white hats were winning.
And then...
And then came the worst of them all, the Blue Pill. It had shocked the white hat community like nothing that had ever come before. It was the first stealth VM hypervisor.
The Blue Pill was the hacker's way of tricking the OS the same way the blue pill did in The Matrix: If Neo took the blue pill he would he simply go to sleep and forget everything that happened, then reawaken back in the fake reality of the Matrix. He would live his life blissfully unaware of the fact that he was actually living inside a simulation.
In principle, the Blue Pill was theoretically unbeatable. It had caused a panic among the white hats. Suddenly the tables were turned, and the white hats had to scramble quickly to find a way to detect if the user's protected OS was actually running inside a hacker's stealthy VM. What was worse was that the latest Intel and AMD processors had added hardware VM emulation, which meant the old Red Pill trick no longer worked. Something more subtle was needed, which of course the black hats then soon countered...
... and the war continued like this up to the present day.
Midori had finished her explanation and rubbed her eyes.
"The black hats are getting so good at detecting VMs now..."
Sachi had been resting her chin in her hands while listening to Midori. "You know, it sounds like the war will never end."
Midori sighed, "It won't. And the stakes now are higher than ever."
It was because major segments of the US military and intelligence infrastructure, including the US Cyber Command and the Concepts Analysis Agency (CAA), were now deeply involved in the battle. It was a battle that involved not guns and bombs but bits and bytes. Stopping the offensive cyber weapons being developed by Iran, North Korea, and China had become in many ways just as crucial to world wide peace and stability as stopping the use of nuclear weapons.
Midori pinched her nose. "The latest processors virtualize everything perfectly now. The white hats asked the hardware makers for it so they could analyze uploaded viruses without detection. But of course the black hats then did the same."
Sachi brought her head up.
"Hey, I get it."
"You do?"
"It's a game of capture."
"Capture?"
"Yeah. If you can capture the other guy's system inside yours, you win."
Midori mused for a moment. "Capture, yes. That's the name of the game all right. You enwrap the other side's software environment inside your own. You get their system running in yours, and once you do that, you win."
Midori smiled at the girl. "It's an old trick, too. It goes back to the 1990s, maybe even earlier."
Midori then explained how back in 1995 Microsoft had written a web browser called Internet Explorer. It had copied all of the features of the dominant web browser at the era: Netscape Mozilla. Microsoft dedicated an untold number of software programmers and testers to the task of creating it. The amount of money Microsoft had spent was incredible. Soon Internet Explorer did everything that the Netscape Mozilla browser did. It even lied about its identity being Mozilla. It was made 100% compatible. Then it extended Mozilla and added even more features. IE rapidly overwhelmed all competitors and soon became the dominant web browser from 1998 on, grabbing more than 70% market share at one point.
"I see. So the goal is to take over the other side's system by wrapping it in your own."
"Yes."
"And with a stealth VM, whoever owns the admin rights on the captured system will think that they still have total control, that they are god. They still are, but now with a stealth hypervisor there is a now a god even more powerful than they are, one that exists completely outside the system. Call that person an, I dunno, an 'overgod'."
Midori asked, "An 'overgod'?"
"Yeah. It's because you have captured and wrapped that other system in a web of your own. You control it just like a spider wrapping up a struggling insect in its cocoon of silk. The insect is still alive but is now totally at the spider's mercy. The 'overgod' has total, absolute, and final control no matter what anyone with administrator privileges might possess within that system, no matter how high and mighty they are. It is because, like the spider, the overgod is outside the system."
"Mmm."
"They are outside it, above it, beyond it. The overgod is untouchable."
Midori sighed, "Yes. And that's the problem right now. The white hats are really panicked about these latest stealth hypervisors. No anti-virus detection software, no matter how well written or well designed, can defeat something like that from the inside. Once a stealth hypervisor takes control, the good guys are basically toast. Game Over."
Sachi realized something. "Hey, can I ask you a question?"
"Of course."
"It works both ways, yes? The good guys can do it too, right?"
"Well, yes, I suppose so. Both sides are always copying each other's new advances in the never-ending battle."
"So tell me, why didn't the Ministry of Information do that with SAO?"
"With SAO?"
"Yeah. Capture it, then fool it and make it think that it was still in control."
Midori thought a moment. "I see what you mean. Clever. Well, I don't know the answer to that. I suppose the reason might be because the authorities couldn't gain physical access to the SAO mainframe."
"No access?"
"The stealth hypervisor has to boot first, you see, ahead of the main operating system. It needs to do that so it can prepare the 'spiderweb', so to speak. If the main system successfully boots first and gets control of the physical hardware, then it is already too late. It can execute a CPU instruction to disable the VM hardware in such a way that only another reboot can unlock it again. In fact most modern operating systems already do that as a security measure."
Sachi nodded. "If the insect flys away the spider can't entrap it in its web."
"That's right. Also, with SAO there are 6000 human minds plugged in. That has to be factored in too. If the mainframes were forced to reboot it would probably trigger the helmets."
"So how do these stealth hypervisors get inside, anyway? How do the bad guys sneak them in?"
"Well, there are two basic ways. First, you simply gain physical control of the computer and insert a USB stick or bootable DVD that contains the stealth hypervisor. Then you boot it. The other way is to trick someone with administrative rights inside the target system to run the malware with their privileges turned on. The executable object includes a small virus payload that overwrites the master boot record and the initial loading sequence on the boot disk to slip in the stealth hypervisor code ahead of the main operating system. The next time the system boots it gets captured by the hypervisor."
"So how do you stop something like that?"
"Well, the white hats invented a hardware fix called the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip. The chip contains the digital signatures of all well known proprietary operating systems like Windows, and it will refuse to boot the computer unless the digital signature matches. The TPM chip self-destructs if you try to tamper with it, just like the NerveGear helmets."
"That sounds pretty secure."
"Ah, but the free software Linux community objected. They were adamant that the end user should always have the final say over what was run on their personal computers, and that included free public operating systems like Linux. So the CPU manufacturers added a way to insert new digital signatures if the user wanted to boot something other than Windows."
Sachi sighed, "Let me guess..."
"You are right. You see? The war never ends."
Sachi yawned loudly.
Midori chuckled, "Did I cure your insomnia?"
"Yeah. That was really interesting, and you gave me a lot to think about, but I feel really zonked now. I'm going to bed."
"Well, I put my publisher to sleep too a lot."
They both laughed.
Midori kissed her on the cheek. "Good night, honey."
"Goodnight." She left.
Midori then closed the door to her basement office and sat back back down.
She sighed and leaned back in her chair again. Her shifted field of view was now centered on the cinderblock basement wall above the flat panel. There a small poster was affixed to the wall. She read the poster again.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
She nodded to herself and went back to finishing her article.
A few days later Sachi was in the hospital doing her volunteer work. She had finished her rounds and was now in Kazuto's private ward sitting in her customary chair next to his bed. She lovingly watched his face for several minutes, then she settled in her chair and re-opened the book she was reading, a Japanese translation of a memoir by C.S. Lewis entitled Surprised by Joy.
She was quietly reading in the silent room. Then she thought she noticed something.
She looked around, then checked on Kazuto. After a minute she went back to her book.
Another minute later she caught it again, the barest flicker of motion out of the corner of her eye.
She looked around again, then she stood up. She leaned down close to Kazuto's impassive face. She peered at it carefully.
Her intuition told her that something was wrong.
Then she caught it, down near the foot of the bed. The blanket shifted very slightly. A small twitch in his leg.
She slammed the emergency call button.
Sachi greeted Midori and Suguha in the waiting room of the surgical section of the hospital.
Midori asked anxiously, "How is he?"
"Still in surgery. He threw a blood clot in his leg."
"Oh no..."
Sachi tried to reassure her. "They are doing everything they can for him. All we can do is pray."
They waited.
An hour later the surgeon came in to the waiting room and removed his mask.
Midori ran up to him. "Doctor..?"
The surgeon explained, "We ran a full body CAT scan. A blood clot had developed in the femoral artery of his right leg. It looks like it had started a few days ago, but we were able to save the leg. He's going to have a lot of difficulty walking on it after he wakes up, but I think with time and physical therapy he should eventually regain full use of the leg."
"Oh thank heavens."
"There's more. In the CAT scan we spotted a fresh blockage in the right temporal lobe of his brain. We immediately injected TPA and we were able to dissolve it before it did any permanent damage. We think it must have happened within a minute of Miss Watanabe hitting the emergency call button. It was probably something from the leg clot that got thrown off."
Sachi nodded. "Yes. I saw his leg twitch."
"Well, it was very fortunate that you spotted that, young lady. After another 5 minutes or so and he would have suffered irreparable brain damage."
Midori hugged Sachi. "Thank you. Thank for being there."
Suguha came forward too. "Hey, you did good."
Sachi was self deprecating. "I was just doing my job."
Midori released her embrace. "Kazuto is so blessed to have you in his life."
She then put her arm around the petite girl. "Thank you."
"Really, anyone could have spotted it."
Suguha gave a small smile, then she turned to face the window.
Present time. S-F Day.
Kazuto was sitting in bed listening to Sachi's tale. She was just finishing up.
"... and that is why I'm living with your family. Your parents are my legal guardians now."
"Stop. Let me get this straight. You are now living with us?"
Sachi looked at him a bit sheepishly. "Your mother insisted. I hope you don't mind...?"
Kazuto blinked his eyes trying to absorb all the information that Sachi had just dumped on him.
"Uh, yeah, it's okay. Wow, that's a lot to take in. Can we back up for a moment?"
"Sure."
"Let's go back to the beginning. You died in the game, then you woke up, and you have been taking care of me ever since?"
"Yeah."
"But that's..."
"17 months."
"That's amazing."
"Kirito, I've been with you every day. Watching you. That blood clot was a close call. You almost died."
She sighed to herself. "You and I are going to need to do a lot of rehab on that bad leg to get you up and walking unassisted again."
Kazuto pulled the blanket aside and looked at his legs. The right one looked like a plucked chicken leg compared to his left one. He tried to raise his right leg and winced at the searing pain in his thigh. He replaced the blanket.
"I see what you mean. Oh, my real name is Kazuto by the way."
"I know."
He understood. She would always think of him as Kirito. He decided not to press the point.
He was still trying to come to grips with the situation he was in. "Okay, so your mom was institutionalized. Then my mom took you in, and now you are now living with us."
Sachi said brightly, "Yep! Don't worry, I'm gonna take good care of you. I'll be there for you every step of the way. Just think of me as your live-in helper. I'll be staying in the room right next door if you need anything. Just knock."
"Just knock?"
"Oh, I forgot. You can't walk. Silly me. Just yell my name from your room. I'll hear you and come running."
"Uh, sure."
She thought a moment. "Hmm. I'll get a bedpan to place in your room. Don't worry, I'll clean it."
"Wait, a bedpan?"
"Kirito, just look at you. You're in bad shape. We have a lot of rehab work to do. Have you seen yourself? Wait a sec..." Sachi opened her pocketbook and pulled out a small makeup mirror. She gave it to Kazuto.
He took the mirror and inspected his face. He was stunned. He almost didn't recognize himself. He slowly touched his sunken cheekbones.
She's right. I look terrible. Oh man.
Asuna, do you look this bad too?
Don't freak out. It'll be okay. I don't care what you look like. You could look like a shriveled prune for all I care. I love you.
You'll be shocked when you see me too. Hmm, maybe I should do a bunch of rehab first. Get my body back in shape. I'm sure Sachi will be happy to whip me like a drill instructor if I ask her.
No. I can't wait for that. Asuna, I need to see you now. I don't care what either of us look like.
Hey, I have an idea. You and I should take a photo of us together looking like cadavers. We can use it to scare small children, heh. It would be great memory. We could look back on it and laugh.
Asuna I'll find you. Then we will get out of these hospitals and we'll do Sachi's rehab program together. We'll get our bodies back in shape together. We'll do our sit-ups on the gym floor, you and I, side by side, as Sachi stands over us with a whip, heh.
Man, that girl has changed. She's so bossy now. And, yeah, she's pretty.
Bossy and pretty - hey. Asuna, she kind of reminds me of you early in our relationship. You remember? I'm not kidding. Man, I was always so terrified of you whenever you got in a bad mood, heh...
Sachi said something but Kazuto wasn't listening.
Sachi bounced in her chair. "Isn't it great?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, it is."
"Look, just think of me as your step-sister. Okay, technically I'm not formally adopted, but I don't mind if you call me that. Your mom says I'm your 'sister at heart'."
My sister at heart.
I already have one of those.
"I guess that sounds nice."
"Sugu is going to be there for you too. She has a full school course load and exams are coming up, so she won't be able to spend as much time around you as me, but I'm sure she will want to help you out too."
"Yeah, that would be great."
"I've been thinking about your rehab for a long time. Frankly I thought you'd be a VRDP basket case and we'd need to first work on your mental state for at least two weeks. But I must say, mentally you seem to be in really good shape. Are you sure you died?"
"Yeah, Asuna died too."
"Well, I'll find her for you as soon as I can. I already checked the hospital's roster and she is not in this facility. Don't worry, if she wakes up with a bad case of VRDP syndrome and she panics, she'll still be okay. I promise they will take good care of her, wherever she is. These people are experts now. They've been doing it for years."
"Okay, just so we find her."
"Kirito, we will, I promise. You can check on your team partner as soon as you get discharged and we can locate her. Once you're out of here I'll find a wheelchair and I'll push you there myself. I know how loyal you are to your team mates."
She doesn't know.
Then Sachi stopped talking. She just looked at him.
Kazuto grew concerned. "Sachi?"
A tear formed on her face. "I'm sorry. I'm kind of emotional right now..."
He raised his arm and touched her. "Hey, it's all right."
She wiped the tear with her sweater arm. "Dang it, look at me. I'm getting blubbery. I probably look like that scared kid to you again..."
"No. No, you don't. You look great. Really."
She sniffed and recomposed herself. "Kirito, I really missed you. I did everything I could to take care of you, and now you're back. I'm so happy right now."
He tried to sit up. "Sachi, look. I'm sorry. I failed you."
"Lie back down. It's okay, really. Look, I'm fine now, see?"
"No, it was all my fault. I promise I'll try to make it up to you somehow."
She looked at him with a benevolent smile. "You already have."
Then she added, "Don't worry about anything. We have a lot of work ahead of us. I'll give you everything you need."
He looked at the smiling girl. She was so happy. Her face was shining like a beacon.
He looked at that face, that smiling beatific face, and it convicted him.
Look at her. She acts so grown up now, but she is still so sweet, so innocent. How could I possibly hurt her again?
And she has all that determination now, that drive. She must be acting strong for my sake. She's doing it for me.
She's doing it all for me...
Argh!
Now what? Do I just say "Oh by the way, that girl Asuna I mentioned? We are actually lovers. I married her in the game. We lived together as man and wife."
If I say that to her and she has feelings for me, I might as well run my Dark Repulser right through her chest. It would probably do less damage.
Sigh...
Gah! What do I do?
I need to talk to someone who knows Sachi, and do it fast.
Who?
Mom?
Sugu?
Hmm, yeah, Sugu. I expect she knows her pretty well, I bet. 17 months. Sure she does. They are probably acting like real sisters now.
Good grief, they share a bedroom together. Of course Sugu knows her. They probably share a half hour of pillow talk every night before going to sleep. What do girls talk about in bed, anyway?
Sugu, I'm sorry. I had treated you pretty shabbily before SAO. I need to make that up for you.
I need to reconnect with you again, like when we were young. I owe you that.
Yeah, that is what I'll do. Sugu, I'll patch things up with you. Then I'll privately confess to you about my feelings for Asuna. I want to be able to talk to you about private stuff like that.
Sugu, you're my sister now, and brothers and sisters should be able to do that.
Yeah, I'll ask you, Sugu. Then you'll tell me what to do.
"Hey, Kirito, you home?"
Kazuto blinked his eyes again. It was because someone was waving a hand in front of his face.
"Oh, sorry. I'm sorry, Sachi, you were saying?"
Sachi gave him a look.
VRDP mental displacement? Or was he just daydreaming? Humph.
"I said, Midori and Sugu will be here any second. Is there anything else you want to ask me about before they get here? Or anything else you need?"
Yeah. Asuna, hang in there. I'm coming.
"Well?"
"Just that glass of water. You forgot it again."
Sachi jumped up. "Argh! Sorry!" She ran out.
Asuna, I'm coming.
A/N:
* See Japan's Child Welfare Act of 1947 (Act 164).
Sugou is smarter. In this story I was originally planning to kick Sugou's keister for being so stupid. "Asuna hates me! Her parents don't know that! Bwahahaha!" Seriously? But I wanted a more interesting story than just doing cheap humor, so I changed my mind. In this story Sugou will be smarter. He also knows that Kayaba is still alive, which will raise his paranoia level up to 11.
Kazuto was also acting pretty dumb in his quest to rescue Asuna. In fact everybody was. It seems absurd that Kazuto and Suguha did not realize that they were playing the same VRMMO together side-by-side in adjacent bedrooms for days.
Up until now I have been following the major events in the original story pretty closely, but this will soon change. In this story the characters are less dense and Sachi being around will churn the pot even more. This will change the direction of the story. I have dropped several hints in the story about the direction that the ALO arc will take, so it shouldn't come as a surprise if you have been following the story closely.
I do admit that I sometimes digress in my more geeky sections. If they bore you too much, just scroll past to the next section.
Anyway, we are now back to real time. Kazuto is awake, and the plot is finally going to start moving again. Yay!
As always, thank you for reading.
-HuuskerDu
A/N Update:
- In a note in chapter 3 I had indicated that I had changed the planned ending from a sad one to a better one. I will make that explicit here: This story will have a happy ending.
- In my stories I often put the characters through the emotional wringer: Tension rises, emotions get punched up, and the drama is increased. The resulting roller-coaster ride can be stressful if you have a strong emotional attachment to the characters. This is why I don't mind telegraphing the fact that this story will have a happy ending. (I did the same thing with The Heart Connection and After Ragnarök.)
- I enjoy doing plot swerves and shifts (HC and AR had big ones). At any time the story might suddenly turn sideways and go shooting off in a different direction, so be ready for it. (It's called AU for a reason.)
- The characters in my stories tend to figure things out faster than in canon, but they often jump to the wrong conclusions because of it (this has been happening a lot in this story).
- The mistaken identity plot in ALO is very hard to maintain with the introduction of Sachi. Three people need to be in the dark instead of two. Sachi knows Kazuto is Kirito and Leafa is Suguha, so if the Spriggan says his name she is going to spot him right away. If Sachi says her own name Kirito will spot it too. The whole mistaken identity plot was mainly a way to pull an Oedipus Rex stunt on poor Suguha and push her into a very emotional confession scene. (I loved that scene, BTW.) The mistaken identity plot is simply too hard for me to pull off here given the situation, and we can hit similar emotional beats in other ways. (See also: Plot Swerves.) Dumping the mistaken identity plot also clears the board so we can bring in other SAO players like Griselda, Klein and Agil.
-H