Chapter 17: The Grand Conspiracy

A large hairy orderly had accosted Sachi, his beefy arm clamped on her shoulder. With his arm extended out she could see part of a tattoo peeking out from under his half-sleeve tunic, a rectangular box with gaudy red smiling lips superimposed on top. When Kurosawa had seen that partially exposed tattoo she did not know what it had meant, but Sachi did. She immediately recognized him as a former member of the Laughing Coffin Guild, the most notorious player-killer guild in SAO, whose amoral and psychopathic members had gleefully murdered other players simply for fun and sometimes for profit.

The LC member growled, "What the hell are you doing here?"

Sachi was caught. She knew that she would be searched so there was nothing for it.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the USB stick and showed it to him.

She looked annoyed. "I was ordered to fetch this for Doctor Sugou."

The large orderly glanced at her ID badge. Sachi was standing in shadow, backlit. He squinted at her, then shrugged.

"The big guy? Oh didn't mean to the bother you. Just don't loiter in here, okay?"

She said in a condescending tone of voice, "May I go now? You know that Doctor Sugou is not a patient man."

"You said it. Get moving. Believe me, you don't want to make him upset."

Sachi gave him a frown and then turned to leave. With her face turned away she dropped the mask and let out a huge mental sigh of relief.

But just as Sachi was ready to take her first step towards the exit and her freedom, the big orderly placed his large hand on her shoulder again.

With supreme mental effort Sachi tried quickly rearranged her facial features to put back on her annoyed-look mask. She turned back while saying in an exasperated tone of voice, "Yes? What is it now?"

The big orderly leaned in close to her face.

No! He is checking my ID badge!

But instead of checking her badge he simply whispered quietly, his ugly mug only an inch away from her own face, "Please don't tell him I stopped you, okay? That guy is scary."*

Sachi pulled back and said haughtily, "Well, I suppose I can overlook it this time. Just don't do it again."

The huge orderly jumped up straight. "Yes ma'am! Thank you ma'am!"

"Humph." Sachi turned back toward the tunnel exit and left the lab.

As soon as the doors closed behind her she slumped backwards against them and clutched her chest to try to stop her heart from jumping out. She then stuffed the USB stick back into her pocket and went upstairs.

Suguha pulled off her AmuSphere halo and tossed it aside as fast as she could. She jumped and ran out of her bedroom and into the hall.

In the hall she crashed right into Kazuto, who had also ran out of his own room.

"Out of my way!"

"Sugu, move!"

They raced each other to the end of the hall. Because of Kazuto's bad leg Suguha was able to stay a half step ahead of him. She reached the bathroom door, opened it, and slammed it shut behind her.

Kazuto moaned as he crossed his legs, then he started jumping on one foot.

"Gotta pee! Gotta pee! Gotta pee!"

After what seemed like an eternity he heard a flush. He counted to 5 and then flung the bathroom door open. Suguha had barely finished pulling up her drawers. "Hey!"

"Out!" He grabbed her and he not so gently pushed her into the hall as he jumped inside, the door slamming behind him.

In the hallway she fumed at the closed door as she finished lifting up her overalls that were down around her legs, pulling the them up and replacing the straps back up on her shoulders. She barked at the closed door, "Hentai baka!"

She marched back to her bedroom in a fury. While mumbling curses to herself she pulled open her bottom dresser drawer and rummaged under a messy pile of D cup bras until she she found what she was looking for hidden in the back. She pulled out a large bag of fig newtons, tore it open, and grabbed a fistful from the package. She started stuffing her face with them.

Eventually Kazuto sheepishly returned. "Sorry, Sugu. Emergency."

Kazuto saw the package in her hands. "Say, can I have some?"

Suguha tightly clutched the package to her bosom. "No yoof cahn naht, yoof puhvehrt!"

"Fine, whatever." He went downstairs to find something to eat.

Suguha and Kazuto were now sitting across from each other at the kitchen nook. Kazuto had just returned from his exploration of the fridge and was slamming the last of the prepackaged vanilla shakes down his throat as he sat on the stool.

When Suguha had ran out to pee she didn't even notice that Sachi had already returned and was dead asleep on her own futon. Sachi had apparently completed her own mission at the hospital. By mutual consent the two biological cousins continued to let her sleep upstairs.

Suguha's eyes were bloodshot due to her own lack of sleep, and Kazuto wasn't in much better shape. She moaned, "Kazuto, we gotta get some rest."

"No, I want to keep going."

"Oh c'mon, Lugru is tough enough as it is even when you are fresh. We're wiped and we need to rest. And I still need to find you a better sword than that stupid toothpick you were holding."

"I already friended Lisbeth and PM'ed her. She told me she's bringing her two best swords for me."

"Really? Two swords?"

"Uh huh. While you were scouting around I tried picking up a second sword that I found next to those dead imps. I swung it around a bit along with my starter sword. Yeah, I can do still dual blades."

"Cool. But isn't Lisbeth a Leprechaun?"

"Yeah."

"That means she is coming from the far side of the map, right? We won't meet her until we get to Alne."

"Probably."

"Okay, that's really great and all, but meanwhile we still need to deal with whatever boss might be lurking in those tunnels. And Sachi still needs to catch up to us from the Ancient Forest campsite."

"No, I don't want to wait."

"Kazuto, come on. Just switch off your Asuna beacon for a second will yah? Everybody is converging on Alne right now. It's gonna take a while for them all to gather there."

"But.."

"Look, you have a zero chance of saving her until the cavalry arrives, so just chill. Otherwise you'll just get yourself killed and get tossed back to Ziggurat and lose your proficiency stats, and we'll lose at least another day sitting on our butts waiting for you to fly back from Ziggurat again."

Kazuto groaned.

"Kazuto, just be patient. We need to plan this out carefully like Mom said. This is a war, remember? Before Sachi crashed she left me a text note on my smartphone that she's bringing in some bigshot from the hospital to help. Mom is bringing in some heavy firepower too. The meeting is scheduled for tonight, so let's just get some rest. I'll text Sachi so that when she wakes up she'll read it and fly to our campsite just outside the Lurgu entrance. After the meeting you and I will join up with her and we'll press on together through Lugru to Alne. When we get there we'll sack out at an inn until everyone else catches up, then we'll all go together as a team to rescue your girlfriend - probably sometime late tomorrow morning or afternoon, okay?"

Kazuto put lowered his chin on his hands. "I guess..."

"Good. I'm crashing, bye." Suguha staggered upstairs like a zombie, and she flopped on her futon, belly first, without bothering to close the bedroom door. As she did so she saw that Sachi was still passed out on her own futon, still wearing her nurses-helper outfit with her checkered skirt flared open and her white blouse partially unbuttoned with a small transcept necklace tucked underneath where the left side of her bra was showing, and with her open left palm laying on top of her still fully covered right breast as her breathing slowly moved the hand up and down. Her pink sweater laid nearby in a rumpled mess.

Sachi's right arm had rolled on the floor between the two futons. Suguha, laying on her stomach and still dressed in her overalls, moved her own hand out to clasp Sachi's unconscious fingers between her own. She then dropped her face down into her own pillow, face first, and in seconds she was snoring loudly.

Kazuto walked past them towards his own room. He smiled inwardly as he saw his two sisters laying together holding hands, totally disheveled and dead to the world. He then entered his room, closed the door, locked it, and laid down in his bed. He tried to sleep but he couldn't. As he lay awake he idly picked up his NerveGear helmet that was sitting on the nightstand next to his bed, turning it around in his hands as he studied it. It was scratched and nicked, stained, and smelled faintly of mildewy body oils that he knew would never fully wash out.

He had spent one-eighth of his life wearing that helmet. Before the SAO Incident, Argus had shipped more than 200,000 NerveGear helmets all over the world for use in various VRMMOs. Given the notoriety of SAO they had since become collectors' items, sometimes fetching as much as 150,000 yen on eBay for one in mint condition in its original box. The government had previously tried to confiscate them all, but it simply wasn't possible with so many of them out there. They eventually gave up trying.

One of the reasons so many people had kept the helmets (besides their monetary value as collectables) was that many fans of SAO had believed that the alleged ability of the helmets' microwave transceivers to overload and actually kill someone was completely apocryphal. After all, nobody had died in SAO. The helmets had never killed anybody. Because of that fact many people believed that Kayaba had simply been bluffing the whole time.

What they did not know was that, after a year of failed attempts to disassemble a helmet without it spontaneously self-destructing, MINFO had finally been able to disassemble and dissect one without it's internal battery frying all the electronics first. They did it by freezing one in liquid nitrogen (-200 degrees Celsius), then while it was still frozen they sliced it open with a diamond circular saw. Upon inspection they confirmed that the low power microwave transceiver that was ostensibly used only for transmitting neurological information to the subject's neocortex could indeed be overloaded and cook someone's brain, even though it had never actually happened.

ALO was based on the same Cardinal System and network protocols as SAO so the old helmets were compatible. Officially all NerveGear helmets were banned from use, but sometimes people still surreptitiously used them even though they lacked the new safety features of the newer AmuSphere helmets (such as automatically logging out any player who had fallen asleep in the game).

Kazuto knew that Asuna was waiting for him. He was strongly tempted to put the helmet back on and go charging through Lugru on his own. But he knew that Leafa would be furious with him, and he didn't really know the actual exit route through the tunnels anyway.

He sighed and closed his eyes and finally tried to go to sleep.

5:30 p.m. Dicey Cafe.

Outside the cafe the yellow fluorescent sign was turned off. A paper 'Closed' sign was on taped on the main door. Inside people were already gathering.

The three oldest members of the conspiracy had already arrived a full hour earlier for a pre-meeting. They were seated around a circular table way in the back.

Klein had also arrived early and had nonchalantly seated himself at a nearby table within earshot. He faced away and pretended to look out a window as he slowly drew his drink, trying to eavesdrop on the primary conspirators at the rear table who were talking in hushed voices.

Seated around the table were three people: A balding man who appeared to be in his fifties, a thin middle aged woman with brown hair (who still looked rather attractive in Klein's opinion), and an old woman of undetermined age who was sitting in a motorized wheelchair wearing a nurse uniform.

Midori leaned forward with her arms crossed on the table. She frowned and shook her head sadly. "That USB stick is our biggest problem. It's his trump card."

Kurosawa asked, "Do you think he'll actually use it if he's cornered?"

Nishida sighed, "Yes. Yes I do. The JavaScript file was named "PlanR dot js".

"Plan R? Are you sure?"

"That clinches it, don't you think?"

"Unfortunately yes, I think it does."

Midori asked, "I'm sorry, but could someone please explain to me what 'Plan R' means? I don't get the reference."

Klein continued to listen. The old man was apparently a movie buff because he quickly explained it. "The reference comes from the film Doctor Strangelove [1964] by Stanley Kubrick. It's named after the SAC B-52 bomber attack plan that was carried out by the head of SAC Bomber Command, General Jack D. Ripper, when he went insane and ordered an all-out nuclear bombing attack on Russia. Plan R was the letter of the classified document that he had ordered the B-52 pilots to execute. He sent the plan letter, R, via an encrypted radio command to each bomber's AN/CRM-114 Discriminator, a one-way transmission. The pilot of each bomber then unlocked a small secure document vault inside of his cockpit and pulled out Plan R and read it."

"And Plan R is..."

"Doomsday. Nuke everything. Fry all the helmets, kill everybody." Nishida sighed, "I suppose he could have named it 'General Order 66', but I guess Sugou likes Kubrick better than George Lucas."

The table was silent. Klein was now frozen in his seat as he began to realize just how high the stakes really were.

Kill everybody?

He finally he had to turn around. He addressed the table from the back of his own chair. "That guy wouldn't really do that, would he?"

Kurosawa looked at him. "Yes, I think he would."

Midori chimed in. "He's a sociopath. You should have seen him during my interview. He was barely able to control himself."

"Oh man..."

Midori wondered, "It is wise to let this get out?"

Kurosawa said softly, "I don't think we have a choice. The young volunteers that we brief tonight deserve to know what is at stake."

Nishida agreed.

Kurosawa addressed Nishida. "From what you've told me it sounds like you intend to hack his system and grab complete control, although I confess I don't understand the technical the details of your 'Operation Overlord'. Let me ask you a question: Once you grab control, can't you simply disable Plan R so he can't use it?"

Nishida and Midori both shook their heads. Midori asked him, "You want to try explain it to her or should I?"

"You better do it. You're the tech writer, not me."

"Right." Midori then addressed Kurosawa. "Okay, let me try to explain the problem as simply as I can." She though a moment. "Hmm, I'll need to first explain a few technical concepts about computer networks. Stop me if you can't follow and I'll back up."

"Very well. Please proceed."

"Let's begin. The NerveGear helmets all have installed in them something called a Network Interface Card, or a NIC. The term comes from the PC world back in the 1990s, where you could buy and plug in a rather expensive optional add-in circuit card into the PC's motherboard to give your PC high speed network communications capability. The back faceplate of the card had a socket in it for plugging in a tap to a shared round coaxial Ethernet network cable. Today the NIC is actually just a tiny chip, not a card, and the network socket is just a RJ45 phone jack that is permanently soldered to the back of the PC or laptop - or in this case to the back of the NerveGear helmet - but the concept is still the same.

"All NICs have a tiny processor that is listening constantly to all the data traffic that is flying by on the shared network cable, including the traffic destined to other NICs on the same network, or in this case the same 4-port 100GBASE-T switch that is installed next to each SAO medical bed. Every packet of data that flows through the switch has a six byte pre-amble called the Media Access Control address, or MAC address, that begins each data packet. You can think of it as the phone number for a particular destination NIC. Each NIC has a unique matching 6-byte hardware MAC number hardwired into it, and you can't easily change it. The number is unique to each NIC. When the NIC sees a packet flying by that contains its own assigned MAC address in the pre-amble, it grabs the data packet and reads it, then it forwards the data on to the main processor inside the NerveGear helmet.

"Every NIC also listens constantly for a second particular six byte value, a special fixed code consisting of all binary ones (FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF). This is the called the broadcast MAC address. Every NIC that sees it will grab the packet and process it no matter what.

"What Plan R does is inject a single broadcast packet into the 100GBASE-T switch. It doesn't matter from where the packet originates on the Internet. Every helmet will see it almost instantly, and Sugou can send it from anywhere. He can send it from any device, a smartphone, a random tablet inside a coffee shop, or even an old 1981 IBM PC located in Brazil. No special privileges or protocols are required to send it.**

"Inside the data packet Sugou inserts a special personal code, his own private magic 256 byte numerical sequence, that he embeds somewhere randomly inside the data packet. It doesn't matter where. It could be embedded inside a picture, a web page, an audio stream, doesn't matter. It could be anywhere. If the NIC sees that 256 byte code anywhere in the data packet it triggers a special action.

"This is actually a standard feature in modern NICs, called Wake On LAN [WOL***]. The NIC is always running even when the power is otherwise turned off. When the NIC sees the magic WOL packet it commands the NIC to turn the PC's main power supply back on. This is how a business can turn on/off a hundred PCs after the employees go home. All it takes is a single broadcast packet and boom, they all turn off. You can also use WOL to remotely power on your work PC from home.

"We inspected the executable scripts in Sachi's USB data stick, and we now know that Sugou is planning to use the WOL hardware feature of the NerveGear NICs in order to broadcast his special code to every helmet. Inside the stick we found three executable JavaScript files, each sending a different code: PlanF dot js, PlanC dot js, and PlanR dot js.

"Plan F sends the freedom code. It releases the helmets. This is what we think Kayaba had broadcast to everybody on S-F day. Somehow Sugou had blocked it or reprogrammed the code on 300 helmets so they ignored it. We're not sure how.

"Plan C sends the coma code. It puts the player into a permanent dreamless coma state, at least until it is countermanded by another code. This is what the helmets would execute automatically if somebody tried to tamper with or forcibly remove a helmet in SAO.

"Code F countermands Code C, waking the player up and releasing the helmet.

"Plan R sends the death code. It cranks the microwave transceiver up to 1000 watts and cooks the brain in less than 10 seconds. As far we know Code R has never been triggered."

Kurosawa asked, "So, am I to understand that the USB stick that Sachi had found contains these three critical codes? That seems rather surprising to me. Sachi told me that she had picked up the USB stick from an unattended table inside the memory lab. I did not think that Sugou's security was that lax."

Midori shook her head. "Oh believe me, it isn't. Those three critical 256 byte codes were not found on the USB stick. The JavaScript file simply prompts you to type in a URL, which Sugou presumably types in himself. I doubt that anybody else in the world knows what that URL is. The URL for that web page contains the 256 byte code somewhere inside it. That deadly web page could be sitting anywhere, on any web server on the planet, even a on a totally unsecured web server on the opposite side of the world. I bet that Sugou probably has a hundred of those USB sticks scattered around too.

"All Sugou has to do is grab one and walk into some random Starbucks coffee shop or a McDonalds anywhere on the planet. He can then just plug in the stick, run Plan R and type in his memorized URL when prompted, press the Enter key, and boom, 300 children are dead within 10 seconds."

Klein asked, "Why not just block the broadcast packets? Or just unplug the helmets from the net?"

It was obvious that Klein had not thought it through yet. Nishida patiently explained it to him.

"Simply blocking or unplugging the helmets from the network won't work. That was tried right at the beginning during the first days of the SAO Incident. All it does is trigger the helmets. What's worse is that when Sugou grabbed control he had also switched all the helmets from Code C to Code R, full lethality mode*4. That means the result will be even more catastrophic.

"We can't just filter out the 'bad' packets either. We don't know the code. It can appear anywhere in the packet in any form: image, audio, web page, SNMP update, anything. We know that the helmets are receiving periodic pings from random IP addresses on the net, each with a varying encrypted keep-alive nonce followed by a bunch of random garbage bytes. We know that if those keep-alive packets stop coming in the helmets will trigger. Any one of those keep-alives could slip in Code R at any time. We have no choice but to allow them all through to keep the helmets from triggering."

Klein muttered, "Crap."

Kurosawa nodded. "I see the problem. Capturing ALO won't help."

Midori sighed, "No, it won't. Plan R is his trump card."

"So the goal is..."

"Keep him distracted. Keep him 100% focused on something else. Keep him so obsessed, so focused, so zealously zeroed in, that it doesn't even occur to him to log out and run Plan R."

At that moment Kazuto, Suguha, and Sachi walked into the cafe.

Midori smiled broadly at her children, and she waved at them.

The trio saw her and approached the table. Their timing was perfect.

Klein saw them approach. He laughed long and loud.

"Hahahahaha! Gosh, I wonder what that distraction is going to be?"

And Midori smiled again.

The meeting for the ALO Grand Conspiracy had begun.

About 40 young people were present in the cafe. They had filled up all the tables and were now seated quietly facing the main counter. Standing in front of the counter were Midori, Nishida, and Kurosawa (seated). Kazuto, Sachi, Suguha, Agil, and Griselda stood next to them.

Agil played host. Suguha looked nervous. Kazuto looked determined. Griselda had a stern and eager look. Sachi's face was deceptively impassive.

Agil was holding a microphone that was plugged into the cafe's karaoke system. He made introductions for everybody, which took about 5 minutes. Then he said, "Okay, people this is it. You know the stakes. And you know why we have to do this." He addressed Midori. "Ms. Kirigaya, since this battle involves you and your family more than anyone, why don't you begin?"

Agil handed the mic to Midori. She said, "Thank you Mr. Mills. All right, I will now give you the high level overview of our battle plan. After that, Nishida will explain the computer part, then Nurse Kurosawa will explain the hospital part, and finally Griselda and Leafa will explain the ALO part. Then we will split up into working groups at our separate tables, and each group will huddle together and hammer out the tactical details for their part of the plan."

Midori turned to Nishia. "Reo-kun, to get us started why don't you briefly explain to our dear friends how our little plan was first hatched?"

Nishida said, "My pleasure." He took the mic. "Our plan is called Operation Overlord." He turned and smiled at Sachi. "Midori-chan's lovely little daughter here was the one who first came up with the original idea." Sachi blushed badly and looked down in embarrassment. "So we gave her the honor of picking the name, and she picked Overlord."

Klein was sitting near the front. He stood up and asked, "Overlord? You mean that really popular anime, the one with that crazy overpowered lich lord skeleton guy, Ainz Ooal Gown with his overpowered helpers in his Tomb of Nazarick? I loved that show! Are we gonna become like them? Man, we are so gonna kick Oberon's ass..."

Nishida had no idea what Klein was talking about. "Uh, no. Overlord refers to something else." Klein sheepishly sat back down.

Nishida started to muse, "You know, the more that I think about it, the name Operation Overlord really does have lots of other nice meanings and connotations beyond the main one. Sachi did a good job picking it. You see, in the context of our plan the name not only includes a description of a key part of our computer attack plan, but it also alludes to the historical Operation Overlord*5 in World War II. We will be doing something much like what Eisenhower did in that plan on D-Day, when Eisenhower had set up General Patton as the fake leader of a huge fictitious invasion force to land in France at Calais, but he had the invasion force actually land at Normandy. When Hitler got the reports from Normandy he was certain that it was just a diversion so he moved all his Panzer divisions to Calais.."

Midori discreetly cleared her throat. Nishida caught himself, "Uh, sorry, rambling." He then continued his explanation, "Anyway, we will be doing a similar feint on ALO's ridiculously strong Class A Type Enforced security cordon that surrounds ALO. Rather simple really. The guy has a Maginot Line mentality. He thinks his security reference monitor [SRM] is bulletproof."

Klein asked, "Is it?"

"Well, yeah, it is. The trick is to do what Hitler's Wehrmacht did to France, when Hitler simply went around the Maginot Line. His tanks went around and his Luftwaffe flew over it. It was due to a lack of French imagination. Our boy Oberon doesn't think outside the box either, in this case his own system. That's why we aren't even going to bother to try to attack it."

Klein understood. "We're just gonna fly over it."

"Exactly, you see.."

Midori cleared her throat again. Nishida looked at her sheepishly and stopped.

She said, "You know what, Reo, why don't you just explain your part of the plan now? You seem to have to have started already."

Nishida was chagrined. "Sorry! Bad habit. Can't help it. This is so exciting for me, and a man my age doesn't get a lot of thrills like this anymore.."

"Please, Reo-kun, just finish your explanation of your computer part. And do try to make it brief will you? We need to get these young people back home before midnight. Many of them still need to reach Alne before tomorrow afternoon."

"Oh. Right, right. Okay. Here it goes. I'll go quick."

He took a breath. "ALO has four concentric security rings. From outermost to innermost they are ring 4, ring 3, ring 2, and ring 1. Ring 4 is everything outside of the World Tree. ALO is hooked directly into the Argus servers, so it's a sitting duck. As long as we can log in to ALO in even the most minimal way, even as a noob player, we can take over ring 4 pretty much effortlessly. The only danger is if Oberon discovers he's been hacked and panics. His doomsday Plan R is the main obstacle."

Midori interrupted and explained Plan R to everyone.

The room went silent as a tomb.

Nishida waited a moment, then he continued his briefing. "You see the problem. Any hacks that we do have to be very discreet and low key, undetectable. It is critical that our boy Oberon does not notice what is happening around him.

"Ring 3 is the next target. It controls the player-accessible area inside of the World Tree where you will be fighting in the Grand Quest against the Guardian Knights. Ring 3 executes on a set of servers at RECT Progress that aren't hooked into Argus directly, so it will be harder to capture them. Before you start your attack I will be placing tracers on the Kirigaya kids and a few other key players. As soon they enter the doors at the base of the World Tree for the start of the Grand Quest I'll piggyback and start my run.

"Meanwhile you kids need to distract Oberon as much as you can. He will be watching you guys using remote monitoring from his bunker up in ring 1 at the very top. Now look kids, pay attention. I want you guys to make your attack on the Tree really, really, big. Flashy, lots of explosions, big magic and stuff. Make it epic, make it awesome. Hopefully he will be so distracted by your massive attack that he won't notice if I accidentally trigger an alarm for a couple seconds before I can squelch it.

"Here's the real problem though: You can't win. The vault door on the ceiling is impossible to open. It's unwinable. If you fight long enough you'll all be killed, guaranteed."

Klein said, "Huh?"

"Sorry kid, but the Grand Quest is a lie. It's unwinnable by design. There are no Alfs beyond it. There is no floating city at the top. No reward. Nothing."

Klein stamped his feet. "What? Really? Oberon is such a griefer!"

"Indeed. What's worse is that I've looked at YouTube recordings of previous runs against the World Tree and ran the math on the spawn rate of the Guardian Knights. The higher you fly up in there, the faster they spawn. The Guardians will spawn at an exponentially faster rate the higher you go: At first 2 per second, then 50, then 200, then 1000, and when you reach within ten meters of the ceiling hatch they will spawn at the rate of tens of thousands per second. At five meters it is a hundred thousand per second. At one meter it is infinite. They will come shooting out of the walls so fast that the entire chamber will be literally packed with millions of them and you will all be crushed to death."

There were several murmurs around the tables. Some players members said "Cheater." "Griefer." Others said less charitable epithets.

Klein nodded with understanding. "Ah, I get it. The plan is that we just buzz around in there, blast stuff at the lower altitudes, and do it all flashy as we distract Oberon and buy you time. We have unlimited flight time inside the Tree so we can do it as long as you need. Eventually you hack ring 3, and then we go through. We cheat the cheater."

Klein looked around at the other tables. "Hey, it's only fair, right? We hack the cheater." There were several nods of assent.

Nishida said, "Nope."

His statement threw Klein off his stride. He turned and said, "Huh?"

"I'm not going to do anything in there to help you. Not a single thing."

"What?"

Nishida shook his head. "You said it yourself. Oberon will be closely monitoring everything that happens in there like a hawk. If I hack the Grand Quest he will spot it instantly, and he'll know his system has been compromised. Then he might panic and do Plan R. I'm sorry, but I will absolutely not open that unopenable vault ceiling hatch for you. Nor will I be giving Kirito any sort of magic cheat keycard to open it for him, nor will I do anything else to help him. I will do no such thing. Kirito will beat the quest himself, and he will do it fair and square."

"Huh? I don't get it."

"You are correct that you will need to buy me time so I can capture ring 3, but only so I can then proceed on to ring 2, nothing more. I won't do anything else in ring 3. The 300 children are being held at ring 2, so that's my primary target. When Kirito goes through the vault ceiling into ring 2 my tracer will let me piggyback in and I will start my attack on ring 2. Meanwhile Kirito will be keeping Oberon distracted to buy me time, probably in some kind of 1-on-1 confrontation or something. During that time I will try to free those 300 children while Oberon is kept distracted."

He looked at Kazuto. "Lad, you will need to keep him occupied as long as you can. Keep him monologuing, gloating, bragging about how he's god, yadda yadda. Piss him off, whatever it takes."

Kazuto crossed his arms. "That won't be hard." Then he asked, "But what about Asuna?"

Nishida looked down. "She's in ring 1, 18th floor." He looked at Nurse Kurosawa.

Nurse Kurosawa took her cue. "Right. My turn."

Nishida gave the microphone to Kurosawa.

"My name is Akira Kurosawa and I am one of the head nurses at Tokorozawa Private Hospital where the 300 sleepers are being physically kept. Tomorrow I will arrange to quietly clear out a room on the 18th floor that is directly adjacent to Asuna Yuuki's room. It has an interconnecting door. Before your run on the World Tree tomorrow we will sneak Kazuto, Suguha, and Sachi in to that room. They will secretly enter the hospital from the rear loading dock and go up via the rear stairway to the 18th floor. There I will plug them in to a shared 100GBASE-T switch in the adjoining room and monitor their vitals during their dive. Since they are on the 18th floor they will already be inside the ring 1 security perimeter, the same as Asuna Yuuki. Midori Kirigaya will help me to spoof the cameras in the stairwells and on floor 18, loop them, so nobody will see what we are doing.

"The main problem will be an orderly on the permanent staff who sometimes patrols the 18th floor at irregular intervals."

She thought a moment as she appraised Agil's formidable muscular form. "Actually, I think I'd like to bring Mr. Mills up there too, just in case that orderly shows up. Is that all right, sir?"

The large muscular man smiled. He made a fist and smacked it hard into his open hand. "My pleasure."

The he added, "Just promise me that if that blowhard Fairy King [bleep]hole with delusions of godhood starts smacking around my man Kirito in there, that you'll let me dive in using my Gnome avatar to show him who's the real boss."

Nishida spoke up, "Oh, I'd love to, believe me. I would certainly enjoy having you pummel him, but unfortunately I can't help you with that. The problem is that ring 1 will be unhackable. Sugou is using an air-gapped server that sits right next to his bed in his underground bunker underneath the RECT campus. A hard line runs from there directly up to floor 18. There's just no way. The only way that you will be able to reach Oberon's avatar in there is if he is so overconfident that he brings you in himself. Now, I admit it's a distinct possibility - he might want to gloat over you - but you'll be totally on your own up there. Otherwise my job ends at ring 2, sending the F code."

Agil understood. "Got it. You free those 300 kids, and we'll handle the rest ourselves."

Klein then said, "Okay, got it, great. I wish I could be there too. But let's back up a sec here. You said that Kirito is going to beat the Grand Quest by himself?"

Nishida nodded. "Yep."

"Without any cheating?"

"Yep."

"I don't get it."

"As I said, Kirito has to beat the quest fair and square. Oberon will be watching him like a hawk so it has to be done without any cheating whatsoever."

"But you just said it was impossible..?"

"Yep, I did."

"So how is he gonna do it?"

Midori smiled and put her hand on Sachi's shoulder. "My darling daughter figured out a way. No cheating, no hacking. It can be beaten using only the rules of ALO."

A/N:

Challenge to readers: Can you guess how Sachi is going beat the Grand Quest so that Kirito can reach Asuna's cage? I dropped some hints in the previous chapters. No computer hacking or other cheats are required (no Overlord, no magic keycard). The quest can be beaten fair and square simply by using the rules of ALO as shown in the anime. Although it is admittedly difficult (and most of the players probably won't survive) it can indeed be beaten fairly even though the Quest is designed to be physically impossible to win. You should be able to figure out how it will be done using the hints that I dropped in this chapter and in the previous chapters.

Nishida then leaned over and pulled out a cardboard box that he had previously hidden behind the counter. He opened the cardbox box and removed several sealed baggies, each with an bluetooth ear piece inside. He handed a baggy to each of the four Kirigaya family members, then he ripped open one himself and placed the ear piece behind his own left ear. The others did the same.

{ Nishida: Mic check. }

{ Kirito: I hear you. }

Nishida then addressed the crowd again using the karaoke microphone. "When ring 4 gets hacked each of you will see a small thin bracelet magically appear on your left wrist. The bracelet will be camouflaged to match your clothing or skin color, essentially invisible. These are wrist coms. They will let you communicate with the other conspirators via a low bandwidth encrypted sideband channel that is part of the Cardinal System's internal maintenance protocols for the helmets and halos. The bandwidth will be low, only 4000 Hz, so your in-game voices will sound tinny, like they are coming out of a walkie-talkie speaker."

Somebody asked, "What's a walkie-talkie?"

"Uh, nevermind. Anyway, while inside the game just raise your wrist com and whisper into it. You will also be able use them subvocally with practice. When you do it touch the wrist com. I'll also try to rig it so you can transmit subvocally by briefly touching the roof of your mouth with your tongue. That way there will be no evidence that you are secretly communicating with each other."

Klein sat back. "Kewl. I like it."

Nishida finally said, "Okay, I'm done." He handed the karaoke microphone back to Midori.

"Thank you, Reo-kun." She turned to Suguha and Yamashita. "Leafa and Griselda will now brief you on the overall plan for the World Tree attack." She handed the microphone to her daughter.

Suguha was really nervous. She passed the microphone on to Yamashita as expected.

Griselda addressed the crowd in a crisp businesslike manner. "Okay ALO players, please pay attention. You have already heard the main plan: We go in guns blazing and make a huge ruckus, distract Oberon while he's monitoring us, and we keep doing it until Nishida can successfully hack ring 3, and then..."

While Grisdela was speaking, Sachi quietly leaned over to Agil and whispered, "I heard that Griselda was just elected the race leader of the Gnomes?"

Agil whispered back, "Yep. I was gonna run for the office myself, but when she threw her hat in the ring I withdrew my candidacy and let her have it." He gestured at the determined combat veteran. "You can see why. She's a natural born leader."

Sachi agreed, "That she certainly is."

Meanwhile Griselda had turned and faced the karaoke monitor. She spoke at the screen. "Lady Sakuya, Alicia Rue, will you be ready?"

On the karaoke screen were two young women who were sitting in a dorm room at Osaka University. The taller busty brunette was wearing a green obi. She leaned into the Skype window. "Yes, the Sylphs will be ready."

The smaller girl wearing cosplay cat ears then chimed in, "I have a full squad of Cait Dragoons and their Wyrm Riders en route through the Butterfly Valley. This is going to be so fun!"

Griselda thanked them. She then turned to face the people sitting at the tables again. "As soon as ring 3 is hacked we will switch to Sachi's plan for getting Kirito through the ceiling vault hatch. Now, I won't sugarcoat this. It is going to be gruelingly hard. We will need everyone on the playing field doing their jobs to score this one-shot goal, and we will only get one chance to do it. For the attack run we will divide the playing field into three zones and assign a race group to each zone: Tanks, Eagles, and Falcons.

"The Tanks will be the Gnomes and Cait Dragoons, and hopefully also the Undines and Salamanders too if they show up. They will guard the perimeter and blast away at the Guardian Knights as they come pouring out of the walls. The Eagles will be the Sylphs plus some Leprechauns. They will play mid-field."

Griselda turned and looked at Sachi. "And we will have one Falcon, just one. Because of the expected geometric explosion of Guardians near the top we can't have more than one player up at that height. Sachi will take point and escort Kirito through. Sachi, are you ready?"

Sachi finally spoke up. "Yes, ma'am. I've been practicing it hundreds of times. Lady Sakuya loaned me her entire inventory. I think I can do it."

"You're only going to get one shot at this."

"I know."

"Very well." Griselda then addressed the crowd again. "During the endgame the Guardians' numbers will explode as Sachi uses her amazing flight agility to escort Kirito up to the goal line. They will flood the chamber, and we expect that we will suffer at least a 90% fatality rate, maybe higher at that point. Some more of us might survive if we get some unexpected help from the Salamanders or the Undines to blast open a last-second escape path for us out through the bottom entrance door."

She then addressed Klein, "Mr. Tsuboi, how have your negotiations been progressing with the Salamanders?"

Klein stood up again. "I've been trying to recruit Mortimer, Eugene, and Kagemune, but they've been making some pretty heavy demands in return for their cooperation, on the Sylphs in particular. I think part of it has to do with Lady Sakuya's attempted assassination of Mortimer last year." Then he looked at Sachi and Suguha. "Plus he's none too happy about you two gals doing all of those kinetic nuke-dives on his men."

Sachi objected, "Hey, Eugene already killed me for that."

"Yeah, like I said there's some bad blood there. Still, we really do need those guys. I'm still working on it."

Griselda said, "Thank you for your update, Mr. Tsuboi. We also have leads on on recruiting the Pookas. They are the best healers in the game and we will surely want their help as well."

Griselda then ended the plenary part of the meeting: "That is basically it. We will now break up into our individual race groups where you will plan among yourselves your own tactics. If you have any questions please come up the front. As soon as you are finished you may go back to your homes and resume your dives to reach Alne as soon as possible. I know that none of us will be getting much sleep during the next 24 hours. Good luck." She lowered her microphone. "That's all I have to say. Leafa?" She offered Suguha the microphone.

Suguha was struck dumb with stage fright and refused to take the microphone.

Griselda smiled and raised it up again. "Don't worry people, Leafa is far more voluble when she's flying in her element. She and I will be working closely during the battle. Well, I guess that's it then. Dismissed."

People started to stand up and mill about the room as they reassembled into different tables based on their race groups. Meanwhile, Kurosawa silently reached out and held Sachi's hand in a show of support. Sachi returned her grasp and smiled at her mentor for a moment, then she turned and resumed her explanation to Kazuto about her escort plan.

As Kazuto listened his eyes gradually widened. When Sachi had finished her explanation he hugged her, then he pulled back and grinned, "Oh I love it. So, you and I do an attack run together just like Luke Skywalker did against the Death Star's weak spot, the thermal exhaust port?"

"Yeah, pretty much. If we zigzag fast enough I'm hoping most of their sword spears won't hit us as we approach..."

As the conspirators continued talking, Kurosawa sighed as she sat by herself in her wheelchair alone. Even though she had stopped taking her chemo weeks ago she still felt physically exhausted.

As she sat by herself watching the young conspirators make their plans she said a silent prayer.

Dear Lord, please protect them all.

The Kirigaya trio walked the four blocks back to the Okachi train station in silence. Midori had stayed behind to work out some final logistics with the two eldest conspirators. Afterwards she planned to stop by the store next to the Saitama Omiya train station for a last-minute purchase.

Kazuto's cane was now folded up in his backpack. He didn't need it for the long walk back to the train station. It was because his right arm was now entwined firmly in Sachi's left and his left arm was now wrapped tightly in Suguha's right.

The two sisters were holding him as close to themselves as they could, giving him all the support they could muster.

And it was not just for his leg.

None of them spoke. It was because it wasn't necessary.

Kazuto felt humbled, grateful beyond words. He had never felt so bathed in love before. And what he had felt that night, that feeling of love that had overwhelmed him so much, came not just from his sisters, nor from his mother. It was because that night he was showered with love, flooded with it, soaked in it, from all those he knew, from all his family and his friends, from everyone, all of whom were willing to sacrifice so much just to help him with his quixotic quest.

And he felt ashamed.

I am such an idiot.

I was going to rush in there all by myself. Take it all on alone.

At any moment I could have stopped and asked for help.

But I didn't.

I could have contacted Mr. Kikuoka. I could have gone to the police. I could have explained what was happening to Lady Sakuya, Agil, Griselda, Alicia, any of them, even my mom.

But I didn't.

I just went all "banzai!" and tried to do it alone.

I was so focused on Asuna. It was like I had lost all rational thought.

What is wrong with me?

This is not SAO!

I can log out. I can ask for help. I could have done it at any time.

Why didn't I?

I was so, so, stupid.

Now I know.

Wait, what is this?

This feeling..

And then it hit him. It was something so simple, so obvious, something that was there right in front of him the whole the time, if only he had the eyes to see it. It was staring him right in the face.

It was then that it really hit him. It was like a lightning bolt, a spiritual jolt of pure satori, what the Buddhists called Enlightenment - a heightened state of spiritual awareness that Buddhists strive for in years of practicing zazen, in meditation, in prayers, sometimes for decades, and sometimes never reaching it at all.

For it was at that moment that Kazuto Kirigaya had finally understood one of the deepest Truths in life, a truth that was eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, universal, everlasting.

Four words.

You are not alone

He pulled his sisters in tighter.

And they did the same.

As the trio continued to walk arm-in-arm to the train station, Sachi absently stroked Kazuto's right arm with her free hand.

Kazuto glanced over and saw that she was lost in thought. He decided to gently pull her out of her reverie. "Hey, you okay over there?"

Sachi blinked her eyes. "Huh? Yeah."

She looked back at him. She knew what her feelings for him really were now. As they were walking together arm-in-arm she had thought hard, then she came to a decision.

She knew that events were reaching a climax and that she might not have another chance. She pulled him in even tighter, then she looked him right in the face.

He looked back at her expectantly. It was time. She prepared to say the words.

She started to open her mouth..

.. but then she faltered.

It was because that awful nagging thought suddenly popped up again in the back of her mind. It was the awful thought that she had striven so mightily to dispel so many times before. It wrecked the purity of the moment, and she slightly loosened her hold on Kazuto's arm.

Still, despite all her self doubts, Sachi knew her mission. She was determined to carry it out no matter what. If she couldn't say the words, she felt that at least she could show it to him by her deeds.

She had practiced the run so many times now. But it was at that moment that it happened again. That nagging thought hit her. It was an external attack.

If her run on the World Tree was off even by a couple of inches..

If I slip up by even the tiniest bit, Kirito will fail. Asuna will not be rescued. Sugou will panic, and Asuna might even die..

Sachi closed her eyes tightly.

Help me! Please! Keep these thoughts out of my head!

Meanwhile, Suguha had seen the play of expressions across Sachi's face. She knew her sister well enough now to realize what was going on.

Just look at her. Her internal battles are still not over. She's not so different from me after all.

Still, Suguha now felt her own shame because she was now inwardly relieved at watching Sachi's own spiritual struggles continue. She knew that she could never reach Sachi's level of pure selflessness, which was her strongest and yet paradoxically also her weakest trait. It was because she knew that the latter was because Sachi herself had doubted her own reasons for it, and she knew that weakness was preying on her now.

The three siblings continued to walk together, each looking in a different direction. They were now all lost deep in their own private thoughts.

The trio walked together in silence to the train station in the darkening twilight.

A/N:

* I included one Laughing Coffin member in the story just for this humorous payoff. Look at that, even *he* is scared of Sugou!

** Technically this is called an IP multicast packet, not a broadcast packet. Midori is simplifying her explanation for Kurosawa's benefit. For the technical details on how a multicast network transmission actually works see Multicast on Wikipedia.

*** See Wake-on-LAN at Wikipedia.

*4 See chapter 6.

*5 See Operation Overlord at Wikipedia

A/N Update:

This is AU. This story is set in an Alternate Universe (AU) as indicated in the summary. In an AU story some facts on the ground are going to be different. For example, Sachi isn't dead, Griselda isn't dead, the mains are less dense, an OC was added, Nishida and Midori are major players, some canon characters' motivations have changed (Kayaba, Kikuoka), the Sigurd subplot was skipped, the mistaken identity subplot was dumped, the SAO gang are on board, Sugou's memory lab is in the real world (essential to get the incontrovertible evidence and knowledge of the stakes [300 lives] to enlist the needed massive aid), Sugou is still a psycho but he's not a total idiot, and so on. I said up front in my Chapter 7 Author's Notes that this story might turn sideways and go shooting off in a different direction at any time, and it has. That's why it's called AU.

Yui will appear. A lot of you have been begging for Yui to appear in the story. Don't worry, she will. -H