A/N:
To best enjoy this chapter I recommend that you listen to one of your favorite epic movie soundtracks as you read the battle scenes below. If you don't have your own you can play and loop one of these suggested YouTube OSTs: Mass Effect 2 OST - Suicide Mission (4:45) by asmodejan or Requiem for a dream Soundtrack (4:06) by Team Sublime.
Chapter 18: The Greatest Love
Quest Day.
Nobuyki Sugou looked up fretfully at a dozen large HD display panels that were arranged in a 4x3 grid in the main control room for Project Inception located deep beneath the RECT Progress corporate campus.
His eyes shifted back and forth rapidly between the twelve displays. One display was showing a live image of the five original SAO servers that had been running since 2022 in the server room in Basement Level 5 of the old Argus building, the ones that everyone had thought were still under the control of Akihiko Kayaba. A ridiculous number of guards could be seen surrounding the servers, all paid for by RECT. They looked bored.
Many of the other displays showed live scenes from ALO, where an unprecedented number of players from almost every race were now converging at Alne. During the past 24 hours the GMs had sent several urgent alerts to Sugou about it, which he had read with mild amusement before he had discarded them.
Let them. Let them fling themselves against the Tree and crash upon it, for they will shatter themselves like wooden ships flung against the rocks of Gibraltar itself. Don't they realize that their puny lives are mere playthings for the amusement of the gods?
Look at them, beyond hope, with their pathetic and meaningless lives, all playing a meaningless game. I will watch them all perish like wheat before the scythe.
After they all die they can then go buy new equipment and cash items from the ALO Store and start all over again. More money for me! Hmm, maybe I should offer a discount for quest martyrs...
Another display showed Asuna Yuuki's sleeping form in her hospital room. The marriage was scheduled for Saturday.
Hmm, we really should decorate the hospital room for the wedding ceremony. Put up some bunting? Maybe bring in a serving table for the wedding cake?
Wait, I forgot the wedding dress! What should we do there? Nothing elaborate or gaudy. Let's see, we'll dress her up in something simple. How about a red and white wedding kimono? Yes, that would be nice. Simple and elegant. I'm a man of taste, after all.
Did I invite Kazuto? I think I did. I should mail him an invite today, heh.
Then he frowned as he looked at the last display, which showed a bouncy and blurry image of the backs of four men in green combat uniforms carrying semi-automatic rifles while slogging through a heavy jungle. The image was stuttery, running at only two frames per second. It was coming from a body cam that was affixed to the helmet of his Indonesian mole on Seijirou Kikuoka's military search squad. The man at the lead was probably Kikuoka himself.
Sugou had given the mole explicit instructions: As soon as Kayaba was captured he was to be quietly liquidated as soon as possible, using a pistol with Kayaba's fingerprints on it to make it appear like suicide.
Sugou grit his teeth as he watched the last display. Kikuoka's team had been running in circles in the jungles and savannahs north of Balikpapan for weeks now without ever finding any direct sign of Kayaba or his helper, Rinko Koujiro, his former grad student.
Sugou fumed as he remembered how that bitch had laughed at his sexual advances when he had worked alongside her as a post-doc RA under Kayaba. Kayaba himself never showed any prurient interest in the girl whatsoever, having regarded her only as a useful adjunct to his research. And yet for some unknown reason that was still unfathomable to Sugou she had remained totally committed to him.
No matter. Sugou's mole had a bullet with her name on it too.
Sugou then turned and accepted a data tablet that was handed to him. It contained the daily progress report on Project Inception. A few days ago the results of the trial runs for the basic basal memory injections had reached the stage where he was confident that they could be now used on real subjects. The dream-like memory runs had confirmed that the transfer from short term memory through the hippocampus to long term memory was now persisting at a 90% level, the threshold for acceptable use in the real world.
He smiled. Everything was going to plan.
Right after the unofficial wedding ceremony he would formally sign the legal paperwork with Shouzou Yuuki to be legally adopted as his son. Although an adult adoption was rare in other countries (and sometimes not allowed at all), in Japan it was actually a rather common business practice. It was because of Japan's arcane laws regarding the legal transfer of business ownership. Because of those laws the easiest and most efficient way to transfer the ownership of a closely held family business to a trusted younger partner was via adult adoption. It also had the additional benefit of avoiding paying any capital gains taxes. Sugou would soon become the President and CEO of a 400 billion yen empire, one that spanned electronics manufacturing, medicine, IT services, and of course VR gaming.
Marrying Asuna was just icing on the cake. The actual impetus had actually come from Asuna's mother, Kyouko, a cold woman who had regulated most aspects of young Asuna's life. Kyouko believed that Sugou would be an ideal husband who could best control her willful and sometimes unruly daughter. The fact that Asuna had hated him was just further proof, she thought, that he was the right man for the job. He would take the role of Petruchio in William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew against Asuna's defiant Katherina, and Kyouko believed that, given time, he would ultimately be successful in breaking her spirit just like Petruchio had broken Katherina's will in Shakespeare's most romantic non-tragical play, thus providing Kyouko with many wonderful (and compliant) grandchildren in her future.
Sugou started to fantasize again about his wedding night when he was interrupted. "Uh, sir?"
He turned and glared at the minion who dared to disrupt his daydream.
"What is it? I'm busy!"
The stocky man cowed in fear. He didn't want to be smacked across the face again like the last time, but he had no choice. His boss needed to be told.
"Sir, one of the Argus servers just rebooted itself. Server number four."
"What!?" Sugou twirled around and looked up at the monitor. The static scene in the basement of the Argus building was unchanged with the same bored guards standing listlessly around the servers in the exactly the same positions that they were in a few minutes ago.
"Sir, it looks like a power glitch. Don't worry, the other servers took up the slack."
"A reboot? Impossible! Those servers have double-redundant power supplies and UPS backups!"
"Well, it looks like number four did."
"I don't believe it. Did the guards see anything?"
"Uh, no."
Sugou was apoplectic. "I want those guards fired! All of them! Immediately!"
"Uh, yes sir."
"And I want server four permanently shut down. Take it out to a junkyard and have it compacted down into a cube. Then dump it in the ocean, you understand? The ocean!"
"Sir? That might be risky. Everybody thinks those servers are still under Kayaba's control. If somebody notices that server 4 is missing..."
"I don't care! I'm not taking any chances! Destroy it!"
The minion thought a second. "Sir, how about we just open it and gut it, rip out all the internal electronics, strip out everything, just leaving behind the external chassis and skins. That way nobody will know we scrapped it."
"Fine, fine, whatever. Just get it out of there! Now!"
"Yes sir."
"And I want a full reset! When was the last non-incremental backup done?"
"Uh, the last volume snapshot of the NAS storage array was taken yesterday at noon."
"Cryptographically checksummed?"
"Of course. HMAC at 4096 bits like you wanted." It was complete overkill. The US federal government's FIPS data processing standard required less than half that even for sensitive systems.
"Revert the NAS to the volume snapshot."
"Sir, if we do that we'll lose all of our Inception work since the snapshot."
"I don't care. Revert it. Then checksum it again before restarting it. Verify the checksums of the firmware and boot drives of all the other servers too."
"Yes sir."
Sugou started to mutter to himself as he paced back and forth.
"Kayaba. Made his move. I knew he would. But I'm ready. Oh I'm ready. He won't beat me this time. No, he won't. I'm ready. I'm so ready. TPM chip. Firmware checksums. Boot block checksums. OS loader checksums. Cardinal bootstrap checksums. Volume checksums. Everything is measured, offline checksums. He can't tamper with anything because I'll spot it. It's mathematically foolproof."
He continued to pace back and forth.
"Still, it's Kayaba. What is he up to? He made his move. Damn him, damn him to hell! What is he doing? I know he's in cahoots with that Kirigaya bitch somehow, probably with her bastard adopted kid too. I saw Kirito. He had a pointer to MHCP001. He tried to load it. Hah!"
He spun around and looked up at the flat panel display that was showing an image of the Bornean jungle. He mocked the screen, "Yes, Kayaba, I know. I know! I know all about your greatest triumph. I know what you are doing. You planned for that, that, *thing* to be in league with Kirito in ALO. You wanted to give him a self-aware AI with sysadmin privs? Haha! How stupid do you think I am, Kayaba?"
From his white lab coat he pulled out a small crystal blue object, about the size of a cigarette lighter. He held it in his right hand as he thrust it triumphantly into the air.
"You lose, sucker! Guess what, Kayaba! I HAVE IT! BWAHAHAHAHA!"
He marveled at the small object. "Time for another interrogation, little girl. This time you *will* talk."
He walked across the control room to an air-gapped multi-Xeon server that had an external M.2 NVMe data slot. He booted it and plugged in the blue crystal. He then patiently waited for Yui to appear on the monitor that was sitting in a rack above a basic USB keyboard and mouse.
For some reason the bootup sequence was taking longer than expected. "Come on you little twerp, show yourself."
He started fiddling with the server controls. Suddenly a blue screen appeared on the monitor with an error code, STATUS_SAM_INIT_FAILURE, followed by a long string of hexadecimal digits.
Sugou blinked his eyes. He then smacked the reset button and booted into the UEFI BIOS on the standalone server to bring up a low-level SSD diagnostic. He scanned the binary data blocks of the 100 TB mass storage device.
It contained zeros. All zeros.
All 100 terabytes were zero.
"No, no..."
It was true. Yui had somehow erased herself.
"No!"
He started muttering again and pacing again. "How did she do that? It's impossible! But wait. She's Kayaba's creation. He created her, maybe not directly, but he did. She's his bastard digital progeny. She's as smart as him, maybe more. Of course. What is her plan? She must have escaped somehow. Yes, she escaped. But how? She never left my pocket. She never went anywhere except in that air-gapped server."
"Wait, that server.."
He stared at the server that was sitting placidly by itself in its 4U rack, about the size of a small filing cabinet.
"Hah! Gotcha! You're still hiding in there, aren't you? Right? Right?"
"Well, Kayaba made his move, girlie, and you are too dangerous for me to keep around anymore."
He ripped out the power plug from the back of the rack, killing the server. Then he kicked it over on the floor. The chassis broke and the main motherboard and power supply fell out along with several wires and cables like the guts of a person. "Nothing personal little girl, but I am afraid that you have to die. Like I said, Kayaba is on the move. I'm sorry, but I can't take any chances."
He stomped on the motherboard, breaking it in half. Then he threw the blue crystalline object on the floor and stomped it into shards.
He addressed his minion. "Scrap the whole unit. Compact it and toss it in the ocean along with Server 4. Take this too." He was holding out the broken pieces of Yui's Heart for his minion to collect.
His minion was standing frozen behind him, completely aghast.
"Well? Go!"
The minion suddenly blinked his eyes and realized that Sugou was now addressing him again.
"Uh, yes sir. Right away!" He grabbed the broken pieces and ran out.
Sugou walked back to the monitors that were showing the unprecedented gathering of almost all of the top ALO players in Alne beneath the shadow of the World Tree.
Yes, something was happening. Something big.
"We'll see, Kirito. We'll see. So sorry, but you don't get to have your tiny little all-knowing sysadmin AI helper bitch. No cheating! Still, I don't know how Kayaba is going to help get you up there. He'll try, but it's impossible. But if you do get through somehow, don't worry, I'll be waiting for you.."
He made a leering smile at the screen.
"..and if you somehow make it all the way up with his help, though heaven knows how, and get all the way up to the very top, and if you are very, very, lucky, you might even get to see me approach my lovely Titania as she screams for her life as you watch helplessly as I.."
A second minion came forward. "Uh, Sir?"
He whirled around again. "Now what!?"
"Uh, we ran the inventory again like you asked, and it's confirmed. One of the Plan USB storage thumb drives is missing from the memory lab."
"Well check the inventory again! Find it!"
"Yes sir."
He looked around the room at the rest of his minions, all of whom were trying to look busy with their heads down. "Well? Anything else? Anyone? Anyone!?"
Nobody moved.
"Very well. I'll be in my bunker. No one is to disturb me for any reason."
He marched out.
Everyone waited a few moments. Then, after one of the minions ran to the door and gave the 'all clear' sign, everyone in the room gave a collective sigh of relief. They then switched the monitors back to Mario Ultra Karts and resumed the tournament.
Andrew Gilbert Mills pulled his minivan up into the driveway of the Kirigaya family residence. The front door of the residence then opened and the four family members walked out to greet him. They were all wearing boxy packages on their backs.
Kazuto opened the rear door of the minivan and stored the small boxy backpacks in the back compartment. He then helped Sachi up through the side door of the minivan followed by Suguha. Agil climbed in to the driver's seat and slid the door shut behind him. Meanwhile Midori climbed up into the front seat next to Agil and closed the passenger door.
Sachi was still upset. She leaned forward and said, "Mom, you can't come with us. It's too dangerous."
"That is exactly why I'm coming along."
"Mom.."
"Look, I just want to help keep an eye on you with Nurse Kurosawa."
Suguha looked at Sachi and shook her head. Kazuto sighed too. She wasn't fooling anybody. She had brought a backpack too.
Sachi leaned back in her seat and looked at Suguha. Her sister made a small smile and held her hand in support. She smiled back at her in return.
Sachi was relieved that her sister had agreed to her request. She was afraid that she wouldn't, or worse that she might go and blab it to Mom or Kazuto, but she didn't. The sisters' loyalty to each other was absolute.
Agil shifted the van into gear and backed out of the driveway. He then drove down the road to the hospital in Tokorozawa. He was planning to park the van in an underground parking lot that was about four blocks away. From there they would proceed on foot.
The van drove on to Tokorozawa.
An hour earlier, Reo Fujiwara had stopped by the Kirigaya residence for a last minute consultation with Midori. This time both Kazuto and Sachi had trotted downstairs to Midori's basement office to watch. They saw that Fujiwara had his own backpack with him, which was about twice the size of the small boxy backpacks that were holding the helmets and halos that were now stored in the rear of Agil's minivan.
Fujiwara had opened his backpack to proudly show the tools that he was going to use to hack the most unhackable multi-player game on the planet:
- A VT100* data terminal with an RS-232 serial port.
- An RS-232 to USB converter ($15 at Fry's)
- A 5-1/4" floppy disk with an external USB drive caddy**
- A 4-port USB hub ($12)
That was it.
Kazuto looked curiously at Reo's hacking tools. He pointed at the VT100. "That's just a dumb terminal. Text only."
Reo grinned, "Yep. 80 characters wide by 24 lines. 9600 baud serial port."
"What? That's just a keyboard and a cathode ray tube. That's it. No processor."
"Right."
Kazuto pointed at the other device. "And that's a floppy disk drive with a connector to make it look like a USB mass storage device."
"Yep."
Kazuto said incredulously, "This is ridiculous. You are planning to hack a Class A Type Enforced server complex built on 21st century technology using just this.. this 1970s tech?"
"Yah."
Then Kazuto thought a moment. He said, "Ah, I get it. This is just your Command and Control [CnC] system, right? You have a bunch of high powered hacking tools and servers back at your home or office or whatever. This just connects to it."
"Nope. This is it."
"Oh c'mon! That floppy disk holds what, 320 KB?"
"Yeah, I admit it's overkill."
"Overkill? What's on it?"
"It contains two executable files: one named HACKME dot EXE at 61 KB and another file named WRISTCOM dot EXE at 130 KB. Lots of wasted space."
Sachi was now grinning because Nishida had previously explained to her his attack plan on their first meeting. Meanwhile Kazuto was doing a facepalm. "Okay, this is beyond ridiculous. Stop messing with me. You have other tricks, fess up."
Fujiwara shrugged. "Okay, you caught me. The VT100 will actually be virtualized. But otherwise these really are my only hacking tools for ring 4 and probably ring 3. Ring 2 might require something else, dunno yet. If it does I'll log off and grab whatever I need from my basement stash."
Kazuto groaned, "Hoo boy. Mom, can we really trust this guy?"
Midori smiled at her partner in crime, then she turned to address her son. "Oh yes, dear. Reo-kun is one of the best white hats in the business. Now if you will please excuse us, Reo-kun and I have one final detail to discuss. I'll join you upstairs in a moment."
Kazuto shook his head. He went back upstairs to the main level while muttering to himself about the wiles of crazy old men. After a moment Sachi followed him up with her own boxy backpack, passing him as he looked in the fridge for a soda as she continued on upstairs to her bedroom to meet up with Suguha, who was brushing her hair.
"Sugu, can we talk a sec?"
Suguha put down her hairbrush. "Sure."
—
Reo and Midori were now alone. They both stood up as she shut the office door. Reo then moved in close and held the hips of the woman whose virginity he had almost taken over 20 years ago.
"Midori-chan, you don't know what kind of tech those cameras are using. Be careful."
Midori gently but firmly removed his hands and smiled at him.
"Don't worry, I will."
Tokorozawa Private Hospital.
The Kirigaya hit team entered silently through the rear loading dock. Mills removed his backpack and pulled out a tiny silvered mirror that was attached to a short stick. He slowly pushed the stick into the rear hall.
He peered into the mirror. "Clear." He gestured, "Let's go."
Midori was behind him working on her WiMAX Surface Pro that she had held open flat against the wall of the loading dock. "Wait a sec, I'm not in yet."
Agil whispered, "C'mon, we need to go before someone shows up."
"Just give me a few more seconds." She did some more furious typing on the small chiclet keyboard. "Ugh, I can't touch type on this thing, the keys are too small."
Kazuto hissed, "Mom.."
Sachi bumped Kazuto with her shoulder. Kazuto took the hint and shut up. Meanwhile Suguha nervously looked all around them. Her hands were gripping Kazuto's shirt tightly.
More typing. After what seemed like an eternity Midori finally said, "Okay, it's looping."
"Let's go!"
It was a beautiful sunny day. A flock of birds passed underneath great billowy white clouds that slowly rolled across a deep blue sky. In the distance a pair of floating islands could be seen drifting by high in the sky.
A man wearing a wool Greek fishman's cap was sitting on a dock holding a fishing rod. On the dock next to him was a clunky looking gadget with a glass front and a keyboard.
The fisherman pulled the rod towards him and threw another cast. He watched his bobber dunk into the water again in a series of concentric ripples.
As he waited he hummed a little ditty to himself.
After a few minutes a passerby noticed him. The passerby paused and said, "Uh, sir, there are no fish in that lake."
At that moment the bobber plunged underwater. The man silently counted to five, then he jerked the rod up briskly. He started cranking. Soon he reeled in a beautiful sparkling blue fish.
The fisherman smiled at the passerby. "There is now."
The passerby shrugged and walked away.
The man transferred the flopping fish into his inventory and it disappeared. He knew that particular fish required 950 skill points.***
Yep, I still got it, the best fisherman in SAO/ALO.
Still can't figure out how Kirito had caught that big one with only 643 points though.
Oh well, at least I have my lunch.
The attack on the World Tree had begun.
Earlier Nishida had asked Kirito to do something rather unusual.
{ Nishida: Kirito, join a party with yourself and nobody else. }
{ Kirito: Huh? You can't join a party selecting yourself. It has to be another player. }
{ Nishida: You can now. Do it while you are still in ring 4. No time to explain. }
{ Kirito: Done. }
Kirito was now hovering at mid-field inside the huge central chamber of the World Tree. As he surveyed the battle that was unfolding around him he was grinning like a maniac.
He was grinning like that for several reasons.
First, it was because Kirito was now wielding the dual blades that Lisbeth had given him that morning in the inn at Alne. They were called the Gemini Swords, Castor and Pollux, two magnificent +50 katanas, surpassing even Kirito's Elucidator and Dark Repulser in SAO. They were Lisbeth's ultimate creations, the greatest swords that she had ever forged in her many years of toiling away as a swordsmith in SAO/ALO. They surpassed in quality, sharpness, balance, strength, and durability even the blade forged by Hattori Hanzou himself for Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill (2003), the katana that she had used to lay waste to all of her enemies in a rampage of wild vengeance. The Gemini Swords could be wielded only as a pair, for a single one of them only had the power of a mere +8 sword, but when they were held in unison - in the way that Kirito was holding them now - they approached in power even the great sword Excalibur itself.
Second, it was because the Cait Siths were creating a spectacular light show. Alicia's Wyrm Riders, the Dragoons, were charging in tight flight formations against the spawning Guardians. They flew like A-10 Thunderbolts, the so-called 'Warthogs' in the United States Air Force that had laid down so much devastation against ground-base enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq with their 30x173mm GAU-8/A Avenger autocannons, one of the most powerful aircraft cannons ever flown*4. The Dragoons spit boiling death from above upon the hapless Guardians, with their molten bolts impacting in awesome red and white explosions that obliterated the autobots into dust.
Third, it was because he saw that the Undines had shown up, an unexpected bonus. The great water nymphs were being led by Ariel herself, their race leader, a young woman of unsurpassing beauty wearing a pair of blue clamshells as a bustier above a corset of pearl. The Undines were now swirling below him, keeping the Guardian Knights in check with great blasts of water which they when froze into ice, creating innumerable floating Guardian iceballs that were now slowly drifting helplessly around the chamber. By immobilizing the Guardians instead of killing them Kirito knew they would not respawn.
Fourth, it was because the Pookas had also come. Kirito watched little waddling forms fluttering around the chamber like gold colored penguins, with their stubby little winglike arms flapping and propelling them along. Kirito knew that they were the weakest race in ALO. He had never seen one before, and looking at them now he wondered why anyone would ever pick one as a race choice. He wasn't even sure that they were actually even PCs. The Pookas bumbled around the chamber in little clusters, and whenever a pair of Guardian Knights approached them they would then start to sing a Song of Control. The Guardians would then start to dance a weird jig, crashing into each other and destroying themselves as they did so. The Pookas were crucial to the battle because they were the greatest healers in ALO, and their Songs of Healing could cure even the gravest of wounds as long as victim could be reached before turning into a remainder flame. Kirito bemusedly watched the little creatures twirl in their dances looking like cute kawaii golden penguin plushies as they sung their Songs in the chamber.
Kirito's only disappointment was that the Salamanders had not come. He tried to contact Klein but he wasn't getting through to him on his wrist com for some reason. Klein had chosen a Salamander as his race character so that he could go to their race capital of Gatan beyond the Desert Wastes and petition Mortimer for their help. It was a pity that the Salamanders were sitting out the battle, because as the race with the most raw power they could have been very helpful in the fighting the Guardian Knights, particularly during the end game in getting any survivors out before they were all crushed to death by a million Guardians. Lady Sakuya had already given in to Mortimer's many demands, including commanding Leafa and Sachi to reveal to Mortimer and Eugene exactly how their kinetic nuke-dive attack had worked so that the Salamanders could use it too. Leafa had protested vigorously to Lady Sakuya, saying that the Salamanders would then abuse it indiscriminately and that there was no defense against it. Lady Sakuya predicted that if they did so that the GMs would then ban that particular attack method in order to maintain game balance. It was a minor miracle that the GMs had not done so already.
Kirito shook his head in amazement. The battle had barely begun and it was already the greatest in the history of SAO/ALO. Above him he saw Agil, who was flying at high speed close to chamber walls, whacking a stream of a hundred Guardians with his scimitar, zooming down the wall with his great scythe-like sword slicing them all in a neat vertical column, like a zipper unfastening a closed jacket.
Kirito decided that it was time for him to participate. He laughed and shouted with joy as he flung himself into the thick of the battle. He flew straight through a dense pocket of Guardians, twirling his swords like an eggbeater as he sliced them all apart.
As he flew out of the expanding cloud of tumbling clay arms and legs, Sachi buzzed past him. He tried to wave at her but she was already gone, shooting past him like a blur.
Sachi herself held no weapon. She didn't need one, and so far she had not even been scratched. Throughout the battle she was whipping around the chamber like a mad bumblebee on amphetamines, doing feint attacks against the Guardians, bopping them on the head with her fist as she flew away again. A pack of Guardians would then chase her as she led them straight into Lady Sakuya's attack force, where Sakuya's silver mithril armored Sylphian knights would then obliterate the hapless Guardians in massive green explosions from the impact of volleys of needle darts.
As Kirito watched and admired Sachi's buzzing madness, Leafa flew up to him and stopped. "Kirito, what's your life bar at?"
He checked his health bar. "I'm at 99%."
At that moment Nishida's tinny voice could be heard in Kirito's ear.
{ Nishida: I'm in. Ring 3 is now hacked. Huh, that was easy. }
{ Kirito: That was fast. }
{ Nishida: Yeah. It looks like our boy Oberon established a full two-way trust relationship between ring 4 and ring 3 with only minimal security checks. }
{ Kirito: Hmm. }
{ Nishida: I'm suspicious too. Might be a honeypot*5. Checking. Give a minute. }
Kirito nodded. He then charged and wiped out another large cluster of Guardians with his Gemini Swords. A minute later Nishida had finished his checking.
{ Nishida: Confirmed. It's clear. Ring 3 is now hacked. }
{ Kirito: That was too easy. You know, I'm kinda disappointed. }
{ Nishida: Me too. That idiot really has a Maginot Line mentality. He positioned all of his heavy security firepower at the outermost perimeter of ALO. He left himself wide open if anyone should get past it. Oh well. }
{ Kirito: He's an idiot. Let's do it. }
{ Griselda: Just be thankful. Nishida, please confirm: Are we 'go' for the attack run? }
{ Nishida: Yep. My tracer has a solid signal on Kirito's location. I will have a good track on his beacon once he's inside ring 2. Yeah, go for it. }
{ Griselda: Thank you. Okay, listen up everyone. You heard the man. Assume attack formation. Tanks, Eagles, and Falcon take your positions! }
Sakuya and the other Sylphs promptly flew to mid-field along with Lisbeth and the other Leprechauns. Meanwhile, the Gnomes and Undines shifted themselves to the outer walls, led by Griselda and Ariel. The Pookas divided themselves into pairs and positioned themselves at their assigned locations. Per the plan, Kirito flew himself to the exact center of the chamber and waited for Sachi and Leafa to arrive.
The two green Sylphs quickly approached his position. They both said cheerily, "Hi brother!"
Kirito rolled his eyes. They were loving it. He so hated this next part.
Sachi grinned and nodded at Leafa, who took her cue and approached her dear brother very closely.
Kirito and Leafa were now facing each other, their faces only a few inches apart. There were standing upright in midair. She leaned in and gently embraced him, stroking his back, then she gazed into his eyes again.
They were now holding each other like ballroom dancers on an invisible floor, slowing rotating around each other as she continued to look deep into his eyes.
Kirito sighed as Leafa held him. She then released him and pulled back a step.
Leafa's green eyes gleamed with a strange unearthly sheen as she pulled out her sword.
"Kirito, my brotherly love, this is where you die."
She then ran her sword straight through Kirito's heart.
"Gah!"
She shanked it up hard, creating a terrifying red slash on his chest.
Kirito gasped again. "Aah!"
"Life bar?"
He coughed, "Uh, down a good bit." He winced at the pain, thanking his lucky stars that the pain absorbers were doing their job.
Leafa sighed and pulled her sword out. She thrust it in hard again, shanking it the same as before.
"Aaah!"
Her sword was now stuck deep in Kirito's liver.
"What's your bar at now?"
He coughed, "Down a bit more."
Leafa stamped her foot in frustration on the invisible floor. "Oh c'mon, just die already!"
Agil flew up. "Let me do it." The huge Gnome pulled out his mighty curved scimitar and gave Kirito a terrifying gash to his left thorax.
"Aaagh!"
The scimitar's blade had sliced Kirito all the way down to his spine.
Agil tried to pull it out. "Dang it, it's stuck." He started to twist it by the handle to try to remove it.
"Gaaagh! Stop that!"
Lady Sakuya then flew up. "What's the delay?"
Leafa pointed her at brother. Sakuya saw the devastation to Kirito's body with the hilts of the two stuck swords still poking out of him.
"Right." She pulled out her metal fan and snapped it open wide. She then moved behind him and rammed her fan deep into Kirito's right kidney, the fan going in all the way up to the handle.
"Aaaaah!"
Leafa asked, "Now?"
"Uh.. *cough* the bar is down a bit more.."
Agil sighed, "Man, he's hard to kill."
Sakuya said, "So it would seem."
Leafa looked at Sachi, who shrugged back at her, "Hey, don't look at me. I'm not even carrying a weapon."
{ Nishida: What's taking you guys so long? }
Griselda then flew up. "Out of my way."
The rest took a step back from the human pincushion.
Griselda faced her target. "Sorry about this, Kirito. It's nothing personal."
Before Kirito could say anything in response, the leader of the Gnomes raised her scimitar and pointed it at him. She drew a deep breath and swung herself around in a 360 degree roundhouse arc...
"Hiiiiiyaaah!"
.. and sliced his head clean off.
Agil nodded. "Oh yeah, that'll do it."
The ball was now in play. The game clock started counting down.
600, 599, 598...
Normally a remainder flame would survive for exactly one minute (60 seconds) before being extinguished. Inside the World Tree it was ten minutes (600 seconds). The attack plan took advantage of that fact. Leafa did the kickoff, using her foot to smack the flame towards Sakura, who caught it with her fan.
Sakura immediately flew up with it. Until this point in the battle nobody had ever flown higher than mid-field. She had now crossed that line, and in response the Guardian Knights were starting to pour of the walls at an unprecedented rate. The Tanks were ready and they charged, crossing the line while staying close to the walls of the chamber, smashing and freezing Guardians as fast as they could while flying higher and higher.
Something then happened. There was a sound that now permeated the great chamber, a wail, like that of a thousand banshees. It grew louder and louder, a chorus of terrible screeches that seemed to emanate from everywhere.
Leafa blocked her ears with her hands. "What's that noise?"
It was the Guardian Knights. They were triggered now. Their sounds were growing louder and louder, their hideous wails sounding just like the terrible screeches of the Ringwraiths in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings as the Ringwraiths dove in coordinated attacks on Minas Tirith during the Battle of the Pelannor Fields.
It was an inhuman noise. It froze many of the players in their tracks. Only the Pookas seemed unaffected by it.
{ Griselda: It's psychological. Ignore it. Keep fighting! }
{ Agil: Oh man I'm getting a headache. Hey Nishida, can you squelch that sound out of our halos please? }
{ Nishida: Nope, can't take the risk, sorry. }
Because the effect of the noise on the players, some Guardians were now getting through the Tank cordon. Sakuya passed the ball to Alicia, who caught it with the flat blade of her sword and pulled it in. The great wyrm under her saddle then turned and spiralled up, then it turned upon itself flew down again, rushing back towards mid-field.
It was a deliberate tactic. The Guardians were following the ball so they turned around and flew down themselves to go after it, pulling about a thousand of them down to mid-field. Alicia then did a hidden pass back to Sakuya. The Guardians at first did not see it and kept following Alicia, while Sakuya zoomed up again.
Sakuya was rushing up to the highest altitude yet. Suddenly a huge sword spear shot through her back, the blade protruding from out between her breasts. She dropped the ball and fell lifelessly to earth. A pair of Pookas that were on station then moved to intercept her. They caught her and began to sing the Song of Healing.
The ball was floating by itself unattended, and a Guardian was approaching. Sachi zoomed in at warp speed and snatched it away, kicking it back to Leafa at a lower altitude. Sachi was improvising at that point, knowing that she wasn't supposed to actually touch the ball until the final run.
Leafa caught it with the flat edge of her blade. She then let it go and it floated in front of her. She aimed her sword like a hockey stick and did a tremendous slapshot up to Ariel, who was near a wall at a much higher altitude.
The Guardians did not expect this. There were now over 50,000 of them in the chamber, ebbing and flowing like a cloud of smelt in the ocean or a great flock of starlings in the air, turning in perfect synchronization as they headed for the ball again.
However, because of the back-and-forth slapshots the ball was moving faster than they could respond. Indeed it was moving faster than any player in the game could fly (except for maybe Leafa and Sachi). The Guardians were lagging behind.
The problem now was their sheer quantity. A thousand of them halted and turned to face the Sylphs who were still mostly at midfield. In unison they pulled their mighty bows and aimed a volley of arrows at the center of the group.
{ Griselda: Incoming! Get out of there! }
The Sylphs scattered, but not quickly enough. The volley of arrows fired, slicing right through the mithril armor of the Sylph warriors, causing about a third of them to fall to earth.
Meanwhile Sakuya was watching from the ground as three Pookas and an Undine ministered to her.
{ Sakuya: Wait, that shouldn't have been possible. Mithril armor should block a mere arrow! }
Meanwhile, Agil was hacking away at the emerging Guardians about two thirds of the way up the chamber, slicing madly at them with his scimitar as they spawned. One tried to sneak up on him from behind. He turned and swung at it, his great sword hitting it cleanly right at its waist. His scimitar dented the clay creature but did not slice it in half. He had to hack at it three more times before it split apart and disintegrated.
{ Agil: Hey! They're getting stronger! No fair! }
He pulled back and looked at them to see if they were different. They weren't. Their appearance had not changed.
{ Nishida: Confirmed. Somebody is messing with their stats, cranking them up. }
{ Agil: Dammit, Oberon, you cheater! }
{ Griselda: Agil, stop complaining. That's an order. We knew this wasn't going to be a fair fight. }
Her second-in-command obeyed, and he kept the rest of his grumbling to himself as he dove back into the thick of the battle again.
Meanwhile the ball was still bouncing all over the chamber, going higher, then lower, then higher again. The randomized path was confusing the Guardians.
Slowly, without the Guardians fully realizing it, the ball was being drawn up higher and higher in its oscillating path.
The game clock continued to count down. 299, 298, 297...
Some of the Eagles were now three-fourths of the way up the chamber. There, a torrent of Guardians had become a flood. Over 100,000 of them now occupied the chamber and it was becoming difficult to move safely. A contingent of Alicia's Wyrm Riders were also at the three-fourths level blasting away at the emerging Guardians.
Then suddenly, and without any warning, almost the entire mass of Guardians turned in unison like 100,000 smelt in the ocean to face Alicia and her brethren. They pulled their bows in unison.
{ Leafa: Alicia! Scatter! }
The bows fired simultaneously and 100,000 flaming arrows shot towards her Dragoons. Despite their fast reaction many of the arrows had still hit, and more than half of Alicia's teammates fell to earth along with their vanishing wyrms. 10,000 arrows were aimed specifically at Alicia, and 30 of them had hit her.
From far below Sakuya shouted her dorm-mate's real name, "Chika!", as her body fell to earth. A Pooka pair approached to intercept.
Then something else happened. All of the Guardians froze for about four seconds. Then they all turned in different directions and started to move. Leafa saw five hundred of them surround a pair of Pookas that happened to be floating at the three-fourths level, crushing them to death. The rest of the Guardians were now rapidly converging on the other Pookas, who were now scattering themselves, but they were far too slow to avoid their doomed fate.
{ Leafa: They are targeting the Pookas! }
{ Griselda: Defend the Pookas! Escort them to mid-field! }
Each player then grabbed a nearby Pooka, saving it from the rapidly approaching Guardians. The faster players zoomed to mid-field with one under their wing, while the slower ones either tanked their way in or simply threw the adorable little golden butterballs right at the center of the chamber, where the remaining Sylphs and Leprechauns caught them, shielding them with their own bodies.
Lisbeth caught two of them. They purred in her arms.
"Oh, you are cute!"
The pair blinked their captivating golden eyes at her adorably.
Lisbeth cuddled them. "Say, do you two want to come live with me?"
The pair of living plushies snuggled in, and Lisbeth squeed with delight.
The game clock continued its countdown. 179, 178, 177..
The Guardians were regrouping. Their attacks were becoming more sophisticated. They were now doing some of the same lure-and-feint attacks that Sachi had been doing the whole time. Apparently someone was watching her and had decided that it was a good tactic to use against them.
Griselda was panting hard. Agil flew up behind her. "This isn't working. He keeps making them tougher and tougher. We're running out of time!"
Griselda frowned. She saw that all of their carefully laid plans and strategies were now going out the window.
Agil then let his thoughts be known to everyone else.
{ Agil: Nishida's simulations are crap. Forget the attack plan. We gotta go now! }
Then he added, { Uh, no offense... }
{ Nishida: None taken. He's right. Oberon is screwing with us too much. Sachi is going to have to improvise her attack and do it right now. Sorry, kid. }
{ Sachi: I'm ready. }
{ Griselda: Let's do this. Give me the ball! }
Leafa smacked the ball at Griselda, who caught it with the wide edge of her scimitar and started to zoom up.
Sachi then flew past her very close, passing by in a flash. She flew away as the Guardians continued to focus on Griselda.
Sachi glanced behind herself. She saw the Guardians below continuing to converge on Griselda. She smirked and flew on.
Griselda waited until 50,000 Guardians were almost upon her. Her arms were criss-crossed tightly in front of her, with the ball presumably within one of her hands. Then she unfolded her open arms and opened her hands, revealing that she was holding nothing.
It was a simple fakeout like the Liberty Play in American college football. It shouldn't have worked but it did. It was because someone hiding in a secure bunker far away was secretly controlling the Guardians and was manually directing them toward their targets. If they had been computer controlled they would not have been fooled.
The Guardians turned en masse away from Griselda as she laughed. She had secretly palmed the ball to Sachi, blocking their view as she did so.
Sachi was already zooming towards her intended target. She had taken the flame and had held it tightly with both arms, moving her clasped hands to her chest, then pressing the flame hard into her bosom so it could not be seen.
A remainder flame was an object with no mass, totally incorporeal and completely spectral. It could be manipulated by a living person but otherwise the flame simply floated around as an insubstantial thing. As an incorporeal object with no mass it simply floated and drifted in whatever straight line it was already traveling in. When a grendel had punted Sachi's puny flame in the Ancient Forest it had floated right through a tree trunk.*6
Sachi remembered what had happened and used it to formulate her plan.
Sachi pressed the flame deep into her bosom and let it sink in, keeping her hands pressed tightly over her chest to keep the flame from falling out again*7. She faltered for a split second, then she zoomed up, faster and faster, not in a straight line, but zigzagging back and forth a like hummingbird drunk on nectar, avoiding the sword spears that were shooting at her by the dozens, then by the hundreds, then by the thousands.
She had faltered as his flame sank into her chest, when for a fraction of a second she had actually felt Kirito's spirit within her, and in that glorious split second she felt his soul and body commingle with her own, a thrill that to her felt almost sexual, and she knew in that short moment that this would be the closest that she would ever experience to physically joining herself with the man that she loved so dearly.
The moment passed. While pressing her hands tightly against her chest to keep the flame from falling out, she zoomed up, faster and faster, then faster still, as the Guardians were now pouring out of the walls at an exponential rate. The Undines were blasting out great walls of ice, high, higher and higher, blocking some but not all of the explosion of shrieking and wailing Guardians as they came pouring out. Their roar was now beyond deafening, causing the walls of the chamber itself to start to shake.
Sachi flew higher and higher at an incredible speed, her fists tightly pressed against her bosom, holding Kirito inside of her.
She was now closing in rapidly on the large black 'X' that cross-crossed the center of the vault ceiling hatch. The center of the 'X' was her target.
2 seconds.
A sword spear finally impaled her, going right through her chest. She ignored it.
With both hands she pulled Kirito's remainder flame out from her bosom, transferring it to her left hand while at the same she plunged her right hand into her vest pocket.
Another sword spear went through her side.
1.5 seconds.
Ten meters away. She started to rapidly decelerate, braking as hard as she could as she fumbled to grab the glass object in her pocket. Meanwhile more Guardians came pouring out at her.
A third sword spear went through her left thigh.
1 second.
Another hit her lung. She ignored them all and skidded to a stop exactly 5 meters away, still trying to grab the unexpectedly slippery item. She did not anticipate that her palm would be so sweaty.
According to Nishida's simulations there was a computer-induced delay of approximately 0.75 seconds before the multi-Xeon servers that controlled ring 3 could generate all of the necessary data to create another 100,000 new Guardian avatars. Nishida's plan took advantage of that fact.
Sachi now had 0.75 seconds. She was finally able to grab the item.
Impaled with four sword spears, Sachi, in a single sweeping balletic motion, tossed Kirito's remainder flame up at the ceiling vault hatch, and at the same time she popped the lid off the crystal blue phial containing the Dew of the World Tree in her right hand and flung the open phial with all her might straight at the vault ceiling, right on the center 'X'.
The small phial flew past Kirito's flame and smashed against the center of the 'X', shattering against the closed hatch in an explosion of glass shards and liquid droplets.
A split second later Kirito's flame drifted through it, covering his sputtering flame with a rapidly expanding cloud of tiny droplets of dew...
... as the flame drifted right through the vault ceiling ...
... and came out the other side.
Sachi smiled. She closed her eyes for what she thought would be the final time.
Please take me now.
She let her dying body fall to earth as over 200,000 Guardians converged on her from all sides.
Then something happened. The mass of clay bodies shuddered and blew apart from below. It was Griselda, who had blasted through and grabbed Sachi's falling body before it reached the converging Guardians. Previously Agil and Ariel had worked to open a narrow tunnel through the writhing mass of autobots, and with a single tremendous heave she flung the petite Sylph in a mighty fury down through the tunnel at Leafa, who was waiting at the bottom of it. Leafa caught Sachi's body in her arms. But before Leafa could begin her downward dive two sword spears pierced her body. She ignored them and cast Protection from Falls on herself and began her kinetic dive.
Far above and surrounded hopelessly on all sides, Griselda then whirled and faced alone the 200,000 Guardians that were now pressing in on her from every direction.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven sword spears now transected Griselda's body.
She laughed.
Griselda then began to chant. Agil saw it, the beginning of a Dark Art spell. He realized that she was going to detonate herself, and as a penalty the spell would wreck her character and erase all of her skill stats, effectively resetting Griselda's avatar down to nearly nothing.
{ Agil: She's nuking herself! Everybody dive for the exit! }
Using her kinetic dive trick, Leafa raced down with Sachi's body at an impossible speed. At her normal flying speed she was the famous Speedaholic, the fastest player in all of ALO. Her speed was now supersonic, with the shock wave blasting away any Guardians nearby.
But then she saw something ahead of her, and she hit the breaks hard. She came to a stop only about 100 meters from the bottom.
It was because her path was now completely blocked. 100,000 Guardians that were at mid-field had silently moved down to the bottom of the chamber ahead of her, before she had begun her dive, physically blocking any possible exit even with a kinetic nuke-dive attack.
It was at that moment that Leafa realized that they all would die.
{ Klein: Here we come! }
The mass of Guardians suddenly blew apart from below like an infinity of bowling pins. It was the Salamanders: Eugene, Mortimer, and Kagemune, at the tip of a wedge of a hundred armored Salamanders blasting up through the impregnable mass of clay.
Leafa was nearly passing out from the pain when Eugene yelled, "Toss her to me!"
With her last ounce of strength Leafa did as her enemy instructed, and the greatest of warrior of the Salamanders deftly caught the petite Sylph. He dived down using a Fire Shield spell to shove the remaining Guardians away like chaff in the wind.
He looked at his tiny frail charge that was cradled in his arms and spoke.
"So, we meet again, little lady."
"T-thank you.."
"Just remember to tell Sakuya who did this for you."
"I.. I will."
Eugene quickly landed outside the entrance door and eight Pookas waddled up to greet them just before Sachi's life bar ran out. The little creatures surrounded Sachi with their gentle healing Song. As they did so, Sachi finally closed her eyes.
And she knew no more.
A small sputtering red flame drifted through the vault floor in ring 2. The flame was now sparking furiously, shifting, changing, morphing.
There was a blinding flash of light, and Kirito found himself corporeal again. He was now laying flat on his back directly on top of a large 'X' on the floor, panting and coughing as he gasped for air.
He sat up dizzily, shaking his head.
{ Nishida: Dang, you kids actually did it. I'm in ring 2 now. Checking. }
Kirito stood up. He looked at his empty hands.
{ Kirito: Aw crap, I lost my swords. }
{ Nishida: Check your inventory. }
Kirito did. Everything in his inventory was still there including Castor and Pollux. He quickly pulled out the Gemini Swords from his inventory and checked them, swinging both of them around. The two swords hummed with power like lightsabers as they sliced through the air together.
{ Kirito: How..? }
{ Nishida: You know that when someones dies all of their inventory automatically gets transferred to the rest of the party, right? If you recall back in ring 4 I had instructed you to create a party consisting of yourself and nobody else. Your swords got transferred back to yourself as a party member. }
{ Kirito: Wow, thanks. }
Kirito looked around. He saw in front of him what looked like a roundish brightly lit grayish-white tunnel. The tunnel inclined upward at a moderately steep angle, curving away around a corner and out of sight. Nothing else was visible.
{ Kirito: Where am I? }
{ Nishida: You're standing in an admin area. Players normally aren't allowed in there. Don't worry, I got a good track on your locus. Hey, wait a sec.. }
Kirito waited. Several moments passed by.
{ Nisihda: Aw crap. Crap! }
{ Kirito: Nishida? Hello? }
{ Nishida: [bleep]! [bleep] me! [bleep] me with a ten foot pile driver! }
Kirito raised his hand to his left ear to try to turn down the volume of curses that were now hitting it. { What's going on? }
{ Nishida: Kirito, we got a big problem. }
{ Kirito: What's wrong?}
{ Nishida: Ring 2 is running exactly the same bulletproof and unhackable Cardinal System that rings 3 and 4 are running, but it is built on top of a completely different base OS subsystem. The underlayer isn't a hardened SELinux*8, it's goddamn QNX*9! Aw [bleep]!
{ Kirito: I take it that QNX is bad? }
{ Nishida: Kid, QNX is as bad as it gets. It was originally created in the 1980s as an optimized Unix microkernel designed originally for embedded systems and real time control. Remember when I showed you that floppy disk, the one that held only 320 KB? Well, the QNX executive can actually fit on that diskette. I once did a programming gig on QNX 1.14 back in the 1980s. The diskette I used held it all: the executive, the device drivers, a command shell, a text editor, everything. A second diskette held the C compiler, a linker, and the software link libraries. I ran the whole dang thing on an IBM PC with two floppy drives and 640 KB memory. No hard drive at all. Even today the core of QNX isn't much bigger than that. }
{ Kirito: Can you find a weakness? }
{ Nishida: No way. The problem is that it's so simple. That's what makes QNX so impossible to crack. They run QNX in goddamn nuclear power plants, smart weapon systems, maybe even in MIRV'ed nuke warheads. I can't do the HACKME crack because ring 2's two servers run on AMD processors, not Intel. Sorry, kid, but we are thoroughly screwed. Kurosawa, pull their helmets off. }
{ Kirito: No! Kurosawa, don't touch us! }
{ Pookie: Kurosawa, stop. Don't pull them off us. That's an order. }
{ Kirito: Mom? }
{ Kurosawa: Understood. Your vitals all look good, including Sachi's. }
{ Pookie: Thank you so much. Kazuto, I'm fine. I've been standing here just outside the quest doors the whole time. I'm now kneeling with Leafa and the Pookas over Sachi's unconscious body. Agil made it out alive too. Sachi is still in bad shape but Ariel told me she is going to be okay. I'm sorry son, but except for the Salamanders none of the rest made it out alive. Klein didn't make it either. }
That hit Kirito hard.
Sakuya, Alicia, Lisbeth, Klein.. all of them? They all died?
He realized that none of them had literally died, only their avatars. He knew that they were now all respawning back at their home race capitals, but still.
{ Kirito: Nishida, listen to me. They all gave up their lives for me, all of them, just for this. We can't give up now. }
{ Nishida: Believe me, I'd let you continue on if I could. There's just no way. }
{ Kirito: Are you sure? Think, man, think! }
There was a pause.
{ Nishida: Well, uhm, the source code for the QNX executive was posted online in a few places on the Dark Net until about 2011, then it got scrubbed. I think I still have a paper printout of the executive's source code in a box somewhere in my basement. About 100 pages I think. Really small. }
{ Kirito: If you can find it, do you think..? }
{ Nishida: I don't know! That box could be anywhere down here! }
{ Kirito: Find it. Please? }
{ Nishida: Okay, okay. But look kid, this might take a lot of time. In the meantime you gotta stall. When you run into Oberon keep him occupied as long as possible. Distract him, let him monologue, piss him off, whatever it takes, you understand? }
{ Kirito: Got it. }
{ Nishida: Just keep walking up that tunnel. I'm sure you'll run into Asuna and Oberon eventually. I'm going to find that damn box. Signing out. }
Kirito sighed. It was all up to him now.
{ Leafa: Kazuto, please be careful. }
He realized that he was now truly on his own. Nobody could help him anymore. He felt like he was back in SAO again.
Then he heard a tinny voice in his left ear.
{ Kurosawa: Kazuto, I know what you're thinking right now and you're wrong. You are not alone even now. We are all here with you. Remember that. }
He smiled. She was right. The whole world was behind him. Maybe even the whole universe.
He was not alone.
He continued to walk slowly up the tunnel.
Reo Fujiwara ripped off his AmuSphere halo and tossed it aside. He sat up on his mat in his basement and stretched, then he slammed a water bottle. As he lowered the water bottle he looked around his basement and sighed to himself.
It was because his home basement was strewn with hundreds of cardboard boxes. He was a packrat, keeping thousands upon thousands of mementos from various computer conferences, gaming cons, old comic books (many collectable), anime figurines, a few NerveGear helmets (still unopened in their original sealed Argus containers), left over computer parts, several dead ATX systems, computer video monitors, printers, and an endless pile of other claptrap. They were all stored haphazardly in row upon row of shelves around the basement walls.
He went to the shelves and started to tip them over, all of them. Cardboard boxes broke open on the hard concrete floor. Delicate computer parts were smashed. An old VT52 monitor fell and imploded, showering his legs with glass shards.
He ignored the cuts to his bare legs as he continued to dive into the boxes, looking for ones that contained computer printouts. Some of them were old lineprinter rolls with punched holes perforated along the side edges. He kept pulling and tearing apart paper, going from box to box to box.
"Where is it? Where is it!?"
Kirito slowly crept up the gray-white tunnel, feeling the walls with his open fingers while searching for booby traps or secret passages.
He kept moving very slowly forward. Several minutes went by.
As he rounded the sixth corner he heard the faint sound of haunting laugher all around him. It seemed to emanate from the walls themselves.
That must be Oberon. He must be getting impatient with me. Good. I'm going to ignore him and continue to creep along as slowly as I can.
He knew that his ignoring of the taunting echoy laughter would maximally annoy the god of this world. He kept walking forward very slowly.
Finally the disembodied voice spoke. "Impressive. Very impressive. You beat the Grand Quest fair and square. I was worried Kayaba was going to help you, but I guess not. Well done."
Kirito ignored him. He continued to creep through the tunnel at a snail's pace.
"Kirito, hurry up. I'm getting bored."
Kirito kept ignoring the disembodied voice. He slowly crept forward.
"You're stalling. Why are you stalling?"
He kept up his slow pace.
"Hmm, no external data transmissions. Yui isn't in there either. What are you up to, Kirito?"
Kirito finally spoke. "None of your business."
"Well, hurry up. Asuna is waiting for you. She doesn't have much time left. You better hurry for her sake."
That shook him. Oberon could easily make good on his implied threat against Aunsa. Kirito started to walk faster.
"That's better. I told her that you're coming, by the way. Thought you might appreciate that."
"Gee, thanks."
"I can be a nice guy, see? Oh, I almost forgot, you're invited to attend our wedding ceremony in Asuna's hospital room on Saturday. Try to wear something nice."
Kirito growled at the ceiling, "Shut up you bastard."
"Now, now, that is not a nice thing to say to the future sire of her parents' many happy grandchildren."
"I said shut up!"
"Make me."
That did it. "Fine, I will!" Kirito was now moving quickly up the tunnel, going around the final curve, holding his Gemini Swords at the ready.
Leafa knelt next to Sachi, who was now sitting upright and gently touching her own midsection where the huge gashes had been closed by Ariel and the Pookas.
Leafa asked, "Sis, you okay?"
Sachi stood up unsteadily. "Uh, yeah, I'm fine now. Where's Kirito? Did he make it?"
Leafa said, "Let me go ask him." She raised her wrist com to her lips and was about to speak into it when Pookie clamped her hand down on it, smothering the communication device.
Agil, who was standing guard nearby, was wearing a bemused look on his face as he watched the tall gangly Sylph with the tiny wings and weird outfit address her daughter.
Pookie said, "Sugu, no, don't use it. We have to maintain radio silence until we hear from Nishida again. All the others are now dead except for us. We don't know what's going on up there or what secret capabilities Oberon has."
Sachi shook her head and sighed, "It doesn't matter. Nishida gave up on us. We were so close." She knew that Asuna's physical body was only about four meters away from their own in the adjacent hospital room on the 18th floor. "So close.."
Then she realized something.
"Wait, let me think. We four are still asleep nextdoor to Asuna's room, in ring 1, right? We're already inside."
Pookie said, "True, dear. But I don't see how that helps us. Oberon has absolute control of ring 1 with his air-gapped server and hard line. Nishida can't touch it. He said so."
"Yeah, I know. But maybe I can think of something."
Sachi tilted her head upward to look at the gigantic pearl-white wall of World Tree. It loomed impossibly high into the distant clouds above.
Kirito, be careful. Oberon will goad you, taunt you. Don't fall for his cheap tricks.
I so wish I could be there to help you. I should never have left your side.
Kirito saw daylight ahead. He activated his Spriggan illusion magic, making himself invisible.
The tunnel opened up onto a broad natural path of wood chips that curved and led up into the sky. Kirito marveled at the view. He looked down and saw a thick swirl of clouds orbiting the Tree about 500 meters below him. Nothing else was visible except the Tree itself and the path that curved upward.
Nishida was right. There was no great floating city here. No Alfs. No reward. Nothing. The whole Quest was a lie.
He continued up the path as it curved up. Eventually he saw something ahead, the top section of a golden birdcage rising up into view. He ran faster and the rest of it came into view.
And there it was, the birdcage that was in the image. And in the middle of it he saw that someone was standing there waiting for him, a beautiful fairie with long auburn hair and great gossamer wings of gray-white.
He turned off his illusion magic and lunged at the cage. "Asuna!"
She turned and recognized him, her eyes opening wide.
But then something happened. Kirito felt himself hurled down flat on the woodchipped path as if some giant invisible hand had swatted him to the ground like a fly. He felt himself being pressed down, laying flat on his back, and he could not move. With supreme effort he turned his head and saw that Asuna was also pinned to the floor of her birdcage. She was looking at him, pleading.
Kirito heard a disembodied voice laughing. "You like it? Gravity manipulation. It's a new ALO game feature in the next release."
"You bastard.. Let Asuna go.. Take me instead.. I'll do whatever you want.."
The voice giggled, "Hee hee. Nice of you to offer yourself to me like that, but I'm afraid that I don't swing that way. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you. Nope, I decline your gracious offer."
Then the voice added, "Oh wait, that's right, I have both of you in my clutches now. I can enjoy you both! Don't worry, I'll just make you watch. Hmm. Let me take a screen shot. There. Hey, nice composition. I'll be sending an SMS to Midori's cellphone now. She'll probably get it in a few seconds, heh. I left a callback number too."
Kirito now realized that Oberon did not know that Pookie was actually already in the game. It meant that the King of the Fairies still had no idea how thoroughly his system was already hacked.
Kirito thought boy, is he going to be surprised. He clung to that grim hope.
"Kirito, it's time for some fun! You want to have fun with me? I'm going to tie her up now and watch her scream for her life as you watch helplessly as I pull her.."
While he was still taunting him the floor opened up underneath Kirito and Asuna. They fell into what seemed like an endless pit, their bodies hurled down into seemingly oblivion..
.. and Kirito knew no more.
When Kirito awoke he was laying in pitch darkness. He stood up and pulled out his Gemini Swords, ready to fight. He couldn't see anything but blackness.
He switched to his Spriggan night vision. His eyes glowed softly.
He saw that he was standing inside some kind of black featureless circular chamber that was about 100 meters in diameter. The walls of the circular chamber soared up to infinity.
Some sort of light source spontaneously appeared behind him, and he turned around. He saw Asuna hanging up in the air with her bare feet dangling about a meter from the ground. Her wrists were tied to sturdy ropes that hung from an unseen connection point above.
She was wearing a bare whisp of a garment that revealed far too much, wearing what looked like a red bow that barely covered her almost bare breasts. He could see that the merest tug on that red ribbon would unwrap the bow and reveal the 'present' in the most humiliating way possible.
Kirito's blood boiled and his face grew hard. He held his swords at ready. He could feel them humm with power.
He looked around but so far Oberon had still not shown himself for some reason. No matter. Asuna needed rescuing and she needed it now.
He began to rush toward her.
Oberon was now standing right next to her as she writhed and tugged at the ropes.
She screamed for her life. "No! Stay away from me!"
No! He must have been using some kind of invisibility magic!
He saw that Oberon was holding Excalibur, the greatest of all swords. The Fairy King aimed the sword right at Asuna's heart.
"No! Please, no!"
"Asuna, I'm coming!"
"No!"
Kirito lunged forward like a madman to try to stop him. For some reason time slowed down, and it felt like he was running in taffy.
Asuna!
He kept lunging forward..
.. as Oberon raised the mighty sword over his head...
.. and sliced the ropes from Asuna's wrists, freeing her. She fell to the floor in a collapsed heap. She managed to quickly stand up as Kirito finally reached her. "Asuna!"
But then Oberon blocked Kirito with his mighty sword...
.. and he pulled out a second sword and handed it to Asuna..
.. and she grasped the sword's hilt.
Oberon and Asuna were now standing side by side, their shoulders touching, as if they were combat partners who had been jointly fighting together for years. They were both pointing their swords at the onrushing Kirito, who had stopped dumbly in confusion.
Asuna pushed Oberon aside. "Oberon, stay out this. He is MINE!"
Oberon said quietly, "But Asuna.."
She whirled back, "Just stay out of this Oberon! You don't understand. When I was imprisoned in that gilded birdcage he.. he whispered things to me.. the most vile things, horrible things.. all the ways he was going to rape me, worse things.."
Kirito said weakly, "Asuna, it's me.."
She whirled back to face him, her eyes shining with the purest hate.
She lunged. "Kirito! I am going to kill you. KILL YOU!"
Kirito jumped back as he parried her slashing blow.
"Asuna, wait! It's me!"
She lunged at him again in blind fury. "KIRITO YOU MONSTER I HATE YOU! DIE DIE DIE!"
"Asuna! It's me, Kazuto Kirigaya! Look at me!"
Behind them Oberon chuckled, "She can't hear you. All she sees is your lips flapping."
Asuna wildly hacked again at Kirito, who jumped away.
He flew up in the air, about 8 meters away, to stay out of the range of her repeated slashing ground attacks.
Meanwhile Oberon looked at his fingernails. He said quietly, "Project Inception is rather limited at this stage. It can only change one concrete memory. Just one. Or rather swap one. Can you guess what I swapped in her mind? Guess. C'mon, it's not hard."
"You bastard!"
"Kirito, c'mon, be reasonable. I couldn't just make her fall in love with me. Love is a complex emotion tied to thousands of memories and experiences, and Project Inception is nowhere near the stage where we can create that many false memories and inject them into someone's mind. All I did was a rather simple search-and-replace of one particular memory engram. Just one. That's it. All her experiences in SAO are now with Oberon instead of with Kirito. Otherwise I didn't change a thing. Simple, see?
"I didn't even need to erase her memory of the time when you two had talked with Kayaba. Didn't have to. You see, the SAO death trauma always, *always*, removes the memories of a player's death and the events immediately surrounding it. Always. No exceptions. And yet somehow you managed to retain your memory of your little final talk with Kayaba. Asuna didn't of course. You know, I still wonder how he managed to do that. Shouldn't have been possible. Oh well, that's Kayaba for you. Asuna forgot it."
Asuna was jumping up and down, trying to slash at Kirito who was still floating out of reach.
Oberon said, "Oh, Kirito, please wait one moment. I need to talk to my lover."
Oberon then rushed up to Asuna. "Asuna my love, what's wrong?"
"I can't reach the bastard! He's just floating up there taunting me. Look at him, trying to talk!"
"He is such an evil man. Asuna, you can still reach him. This is Alfheim Online. You have wings. You can fly too." He pointed at her back.
She tried to twist her head around to see the beautiful large gray-white wings on her back. "I can fly? Really?"
"Of course. Everyone in ALO can. That evil overlord had transformed you into his bride Titania, the Fairie Queen. Your wings are actually stronger and more powerful than any other player in ALO. You should be able to catch him quite easily."
"How? Tell me!"
"It's called Voluntary Flight. Look, I'll show you..."
{ Nishida: Kirito, you there? Hello? }
{ Kirito: Oh thank god. I need help! }
{ Nishida: Yeah, I've been watching you guys for the past two minutes. What a simple mind hack. She never saw you outside the game so she knows nothing about Kazuto Kirigaya, nothing. Oberon can lie his head off and say that her SAO partner was Nobuyki Sugou all along. He is her father's business partner, someone she knows very well. It will really shake her up because she remembers Sugou as a guy she really disliked. But now she has spent two years with him inside SAO. At first he became her battle partner, then he became her friend, then he became her best friend, then he became her lover. She knows that Oberon saved her life many times, and she saved his. They bonded, became lovers, even shared a child. She'll change her opinion of him in real life. He'll sincerely apologize for being such a jerk to her in the past. Given all of their shared experiences in SAO she'll accept his apology. Then they will become lovers again IRL. I bet she'll even accept the planned marriage ceremony on Saturday. Sugou will explain it was because he thought she would never wake up again, what with only 6-18 months of life left, so he wanted to marry her to show how much he really loved her even if she couldn't participate herself. After all, they were already married in the game. This would just make it official. Yeah, she'd do it. }
{ Kirito: I don't believe this. How could Asuna assume a guy could change from a total jerk to a nice guy just like that? }
{ Nishida: Kazuto, the same thing happened to you. Midori-chan told me that before SAO you were really withdrawn, a loner, anti-social with no friends. The game really changed you, your personality, for the better. You became a different person and were much better for it. Sugou will claim the same thing about himself. He will say that SAO changed him into a nice guy, and she will accept him now. It's brilliant. Kirito, I'm sorry but you're screwed. }
{ Kirito: Nishida! }
{ Nishida: Anyway, the reason I broke radio silence is because I found the source code for the QNX Executive in a cardboard box in my laundry room. I had written some handwritten notes on the first page that I had completely forgotten about. You see, I remember now that a black hat named Zoidberg noticed that the default config file for QNX was shipped in devel mode by default, not production mode, and it wasn't documented well so a lot of sites with stupid IT admins didn't edit the config file to lock it down for production use. Some didn't even change the default root password. So what Zoidberg did was... }
{ Kirito: Nishida! Shut up! Just do it! }
{ Nishida: Working on it.. }
During all this time Kirito was floating in mid-air more or less motionless, about 8 meters up. Meanwhile Oberon had been lovingly giving Asuna a fast lesson in Voluntary Flight.
"Asuna, my love, just close your eyes."
"Okay."
"Now try to feel the wings on your back."
"I feel them."
"Good. Now use your shoulder muscles like I explained, then jump."
Her wings expanded magnificently, four great shimmering blades of gossamer gray-white. Her wings were larger than any other player in SAO.
She went up. And up, and up, and up.. "Oberon, it worked! Whee!"
Oberon lept himself. "Woo hoo! Asuna, you did it! You're a natural! I love you so much!"
"I love you too! Now stay down there while I slaughter this [bleeping] bastard!"
She turned and shot herself at Kirito, her sword extended like a hornet's stinger.
She was really fast, and the lunging move had surprised Kirito. He almost wasn't able to move out of the way in time. Even with his own fast reflexes her sword still managed to scratch his cheek.
Kirito knew that this was now getting out of hand. He had to stop Asuna somehow without actually hurting her. He tried to think quickly.
I could never match Asuna's speed or her accuracy in battle.
He saw that her flying style was still very basic. She always stopped, turned, then moved again in a straight line. She was incredibly fast but she didn't know how to bank or turn yet. He decided that he should try to take advantage of that weakness now and disarm her before she got any better at flying.
He quickly flew up to 200 meters, then he turned and dived, twirling and swirling in a complex twisting arc as he approached his target. Just before reaching her he pulled the fancy Immelman maneuver that Sachi had taught him: He flew in a blur right across her front, still inverted, as she swung at him and missed. In a smooth continuous motion he then did a tight U-turn and a barrel roll, and as he flew toward her again he swung his two mighty Gemini Swords at her own, intending to snap her blade off at the hilt.
The combat maneuver should have worked but it didn't. The Flash was just too fast in her reaction time. With her amazing reflexes she successfully pulled her sword away before Kirito could destroy it.
Oberon wagged a finger at Kirito. "Tsk tsk. I can see that those two swords are way too powerful. Where did you get them anyway? Well, no matter."
He revealed a small control box that was hidden under his robe, then he fiddled with it. The sword in Kirito's left hand, Castor, suddenly disappeared.
"Hey! Give me my sword back!"
"Sorry, that's cheating. A pair of +50 swords is simply too strong for this fight. Now you just have one +8 sword, same as your opponent. That's fair, don't you agree? Now fight fair with her."
"I won't fight her!"
"Yes you will."
"No I won't! I'll just let her defeat me if I have to."
He made a disappointed sigh. "You really don't get it, do you? I really should tell you something that you should already know by now. Important information regarding your little 1-on-1 PvP battle. It's something you should already know but you seem kind of stupid so I'll just remind you."
"Remind me what?"
"You are all wearing NerveGear helmets, you idiot. Boy you're dumb. If she kills you the microwave transceiver will fire and cook your brain in less than 10 seconds. And of course if you kill her, well I don't need to explain do I? No, don't bother taking yours off either. It will fire immediately."
"Oberon you monster!"
"Oh, you will also see that your Logout button is also now missing. Hey, it's SAO all over again! Isn't that nice? I thought you might appreciate the nostalgia."
"You'd really kill Asuna like that? I don't believe you!"
"No, *you* will. Kirito, this is a battle to the death. So what will it be? Will you kill your girlfriend? Or will you let her kill you? Such a dilemma."
{ Nishia: Kirito, I did it. I send out a multicast stream to update the firmware in all NerveGear helmets in ring 2 and assigned a new Code F. I set the new code to all zeros, didn't have time to pick anything else. I ran PlanF dot js on Sachi's USB memory stick. It worked. }
{ Kurosawa: My guest staff are now releasing the children. A lot of the permanent staff are fleeing the building. }
{ Kirito: Oh thank heavens, that was his trump card. Now grab Sugou and rip his halo off! }
{ Nishida: Dunno where he is. From what I can tell from the network map he's locked in some kind of bunker deep underneath the RECT campus with the ring 1 server next to his bed. It's a big campus so it could be anywhere. He ordered his staff not to disturb him for any reason, and they're scared [bleep]less of him so I think they'll just leave him alone in there. }
Kirito barely dodged another lightning charge by The Flash.
{ Kirito: Nishida! }
{ Nishida: Sorry kid. I freed those 300 kids in ring 2 and now I'm done, that was the agreement. I told you, I can't touch ring 1. Ready to sign out. }
{ Pookie: Reo-kun, stop. Wait. Please. I beg you. He's my son. }
{ Sachi: We're already in ring 1. Sir, do you have Sugou's source code now? }
{ Nishida: Yeah. All the ridiculous security improvements aside, it's still pretty much Kayaba's old SAO system. Not much has changed. }
{ Sachi: SAO had teleport. Is that still in the system? Should be. }
{ Pookie: Oh, I see! ALO doesn't allow teleport.. }
{ Sachi: .. but the code for it must still be in the system. }
{ Nishida: Uh huh. Just a sec, let me check. Oh yeah, I see it. It's right there. Just a codeword. }
{ Sachi: Codeword? }
{ Nishida: Sheesh, there's a hidden backdoor that anybody can use to teleport in ALO. It's not even restricted to GMs. Go to your menu and tap on Other - Support - Enter Technical Support Code. Type 'TPRT' followed by the desired locus coordinates. You guys are already in ring 1 so it should work. }
Another slashing attack by Asuna.
{ Kirito: The locus! Give them the locus! Hurry! }
Nishida rattled off a series of digits.
A few seconds later Pookie appeared a few meters behind Oberon. Sachi, Leafa, and Agil appeared next to her a few moments later. Pookie made some hand signs. Agil nodded. He then silently pulled out his scimitar and crept forward.
Agil crept up behind Oberon. He raised his scimitar to slice him in half the long way when suddenly...
"Oberon! Look out!" Asuna dived in a mad rush right at Agil. She slammed her own body right into his, sending him flying against the cylinder wall with his scimitar spinning away far out of reach.
Oberon spun around in stunned surprise. Asuna landed next to him.
"Oberon, my love, are you okay?"
"I'm.. I'm fine.. Just go. Stop Kirito. I'll be okay."
She quickly kissed him. "All right, just be careful. Call me and I'll come running!"
"Just get that evil man! That's all that matters now."
"Right." She looked up at Kirito again. "Stop playing with me and fight me, you bastard!" She zoomed up at him to attack him again.
{ Nishida: Kurosawa called the National Police, and MINFO is coming in too. They'll come in slow and take no chances, might take them 30-40 minutes before a JSDF SWAT team reaches your floor. Wait, crap! MINFO is already tracing. They'll trace everything. I can't be caught like this. I'm outta here. Bye. }
Meanwhile Oberon was still blinking his eyes. He was still trying to process what had just happened.
He fiddled with his control box, and a faint forcefield appeared around himself. A second forcefield appeared a few meters up. He stared at the foursome that had just inexplicably materialized inside the combat silo. "What the hell? What are a bunch of ALO players doing in here?"
Sachi stepped forward and grinned. "Hi Oberon, let's make some introductions, shall we? The guy who nearly killed you just now is Andrew Gilbert Mills, the social leader of the SOARs in Japan. We are Kazuto Kirigaya's family. I'm his sister, Sachi. This is his other sister, Suguha. That's our mom, Midori. You probably already know her."
Pookie then gently pulled her daughter back. "Thank you for the introductions honey. Now it's my turn." She stepped forward.
Oberon stared in shock at the tall gangly Sylph. "This is impossible.."
Meanwhile, Sachi looked up and watched the battle that was raging overhead, her face filled with concern and worry.
Leafa followed her gaze up. She clenched her fists. "We gotta stop this. Sachi, Agil, we need to fly up as a group and disarm Asuna. Sachi, help me get her sword. Agil, you grapple her."
Sachi shook her head. She pointed up. "No, look, see? That faint glow at the five meter level? I think Oberon just created a force field. It appeared the same moment that Oberon's personal shield appeared. It's spanning the whole room at about 5 meters. We're blocked."
Leafa said quietly, "So we can only watch?"
Agil was also looking up. "Yeah."
Pookie was now standing defiantly only a few feet away from the King of the Fairies. "Sugou, it's over. We completely hacked your system hours ago. We did it before the attack on the Tree even started."
Oberon was inchoate. "What? No! You're lying! My system is foolproof! Checksums everywhere! It's mathematical!"
"Yes, it is foolproof. And you're the fool that proved it."
"No! I was ready! Ready for you! For Kayaba! Overlord! His trick didn't work!"
"Sugou.."
He was now raging madly. He whirled around looking in every direction. "Kayaba, I know you're in here! You set this up! Nobody but you could have done it! Kayaba, show yourself!"
"Sugou, stop being so paranoid. Kayaba isn't here. He didn't do it, we did. It was easy. It was so easy a child could have done it."
"Bullcrap! This is a Class A Type Enforced system! I even ran an AI on it!"
"Yes, your ridiculously expensive over-hardened Cardinal System is indeed bulletproof. We simply went around it."
"You couldn't have! I was ready for that too! Overlord! I bugged all the inns in Alne and I overheard some of the players say the codeword 'Overlord' in their rooms. I know what that means! I was ready! I was so ready! Your attempt to shim a stealth hypervisor didn't work. You want to know why?"
"All right, tell me why."
Oberon was ranting wildly. "Because, Midori Kirigaya, you hot and magnificent beautiful bitch, I SUBSCRIBED TO YOUR SECURITY NEWSLETTER!"
He looked at her with a self-satisfied grin. "That quarterly newsletter cost me 50,000 yen an issue! How stupid do you think I am? The RECT Progress mainframes never shut down and never boot! They all use secure cryptographic checksums at 4096 bits! It's digitally signed and tamperproof! I know Kayaba tried, the reboot of server 4, but I was ready! I destroyed it, did a full volume reset, re-compared offline checksums, it didn't work!"
Sachi looked at her mother. "You guys rebooted one of the mainframes?"
Pookie shrugged. "Wasn't us. Must have been a random power glitch. Those servers were pretty old."
"Hah! Liar! Kayaba did it! Of course he did!"
Oberon whirled around looking at the whole room again. "Show yourself, Kayaba! I know you're here!"
Sachi whispered, "The man has completely lost it."
Pookie decided to come clean with her opponent. "No, Sugou, Kayaba is not here. I know you read my newsletter. You told me that yourself during the interview, remember? Not only did you tell me that you read my newsletter, in fact I was counting on it."
"W-What..?"
"We called our plan 'Operation Overlord' not because we were planning to do a stealth hypervisor attack, but because it was the name of the famous plan by General Eisenhower on D-Day, part of which included the deception that had fooled Hitler into thinking that the invasion of France was coming from the wrong place."
Oberon stared. "What did you do..?"
"We just wanted you to think we were planning a stealth VM attack."
"You didn't?"
"No, silly man. We did not fly over your Maginot Line, we flew under it."
"Under..?"
"Sugou, those servers were ancient. They have been running non-stop, 24/7, since 2022. They were old even back then. Do you know how many firmware revisions Microware had published during all those years for those systems? Over a dozen.
"You see, the black hats don't target the OS directly anymore. It's too hard. Instead they use social engineering or they target IoT and firmware. All of the major worldwide cyber attacks during the past decade have used one of those methods. None of them tried to hit the OS directly. Your UEFI ROM boot firmware on those servers is over four years out of date now. During that time there have been at least three major security issues identified in the SMI, the AMT, and in the UEFI pre-boot loader. Your firmware on those servers is still running at version 2.10. The current version of the firmware for those servers is now 6.25. You couldn't update the firmware because it would require a reboot and everybody knew that Kayaba's systems were physically guarded and booby-trapped against precisely that kind of attack."
Pookie put her hands on her hips. "Sugou, you made one of the most basic mistakes possible in computer security."
"Which was?"
She yelled at him, "YOU FORGOT TO KEEP YOUR SOFTWARE PATCHED!"
"Huh?"
"Sugou, what we did was trivial. We simply exploited an Intel Active Management Technology [AMT] firmware vulnerability, SA-00075*10, that only affects Xeon servers and business class systems. Because of that vulnerability anybody can run a tiny little user mode program that induces a trap into AMT that lets them do basically anything they want, silently tamper with the machine, install malware, do anything. It was a piece of cake.
"Your ring 2 severs run QNX on AMD enterprise processors, not Intel Xeon, which was the only smart thing you did. It almost stopped us."
"I don't believe you!"
"Look it up yourself. Nishida is still kicking himself because he didn't know about SA-00075 when he was trapped inside SAO. If he knew about it he could have freed himself and the other players in about ten minutes. We couldn't exploit it on the outside because of all of the physical booby traps and because of Kayaba's absolute block on any information flowing in or out. Because of that there was no way for us to sneak a tiny little program inside and run it. Once Kayaba's booby traps went down and you stupidly hooked your ALO servers into the Argus servers at the same security ring level, the rest was easy.
"No, we did not reboot server number four. In fact a reboot was the last thing we wanted. If you had watched that server during the reboot you might have spotted the 10 second warning message on the LCD display during POST that the firmware was out of date. But you didn't train your guards to notice that. If you had heeded the warning message and refreshed the UEFI ROM firmware on those ancient servers it would have all been over. We counted on your overconfidence in thinking that you had stopped our phony hypervisor attack so you would not bother to look for anything else."
Oberon held his head with both his hands. "No, no, no." He whirled around and looked them all. His face now truly was that of a madman.
"Fine! You win! But the hell with you! The hell with all of you! I still have Asuna! I have her! She loves me! She genuinely loves me! Me! And it's real! She'll kill Kirito with her own hands, and then she'll be mine! Mine! MINE!"
Sachi held Sugu's arm. "Look at him, he's gone completely bonkers. The man has got to know that he is going to jail now, all of them. RECT's parent company will probably be ruined too with all the lawsuits and criminal investigations. But he doesn't seem to care. Doesn't he realize that when Asuna wakes up that we can simply explain it all to her? She'll know the truth and it will all be over."
"Yeah, I know. He's nuts."
"Sugu, this is too dangerous. Look at him, and look at that battle up there."
Leafa looked up at the PvP battle that was still raging above their heads. Asuna was now winning. She was getting better and better at flying, and with her larger and stronger wings she was now able to out-fly and out-maneuver Kirito. There was no time limit for flying in the silo. The pair were now twisting and weaving in an incredible ballet of motion. Despite Kirito's best efforts Asuna was now scoring more and more hits on him.
"Sugu, we gotta do the contingency. Get Asuna out of there now."
"You sure?"
"Yeah."
"Uh, okay. Logging out."
Leafa kneeled down and opened her menu. She tapped on Logout, and as she did so her eyes closed and her head dropped down, leaving her unconscious avatar behind.
Meanwhile Sachi looked back up to watch the swirling battle that was still unfolding above.
Sugu, hurry. Pull Asuna out. We don't have much time.
Kirito realized that he was now losing the fight so he changed tactics. He began to do minimal moves to avoid her constant attacks, ju-jitsu style, moving only a few feet left or right to dodge each zooming incoming pass. Meanwhile Asuna was moving faster and faster, trying to use her speed to overwhelm her opponent and beat him into submission.
Sachi saw was Kirito was doing. Her eyes glittered.
Just look at that. Kirito is now using the same combat strategy that Sugu used to defeat me during our big kendo battle. He's making her waste energy, wearing her out, the same as Sugu did to me. Meanwhile he's conserving his own energy. Yes! Kirito! You can do it! Save her!
Oberon was now watching the battle as well. "What's he doing?"
{ Kurosawa: Suguha just woke up. She tried to explain but I confess I don't really understand what's going on. Is this safe? }
Pookie then noticed that Leafa had gone to sleep. "Sachi, what's going on?"
"Contingency plan. We're pulling Asuna out now."
Pookie held her daughter's shoulder in concern. "Sachi, we can't do that. The microwave beam will fire if you try to take her helmet off."
"I know. No time to explain."
{ Sachi: Kurosawa, just leave Sugu alone. She knows what she's doing. }
{ Kurosawa: All right, I trust you. By the way, I'm looking out of the 18th floor window right now, and I see a lot of National Police emergency vehicles down in the parking lot. In the streets too. }
{ Sachi: How many police? }
{ Kurosawa: All of them, I think.. }
The battle continued to rage overhead. Kirito kept doing minimal lateral shifts to stay away from Asuna's slashing strikes. Asuna was becoming increasingly tired. She was slowing down.
"Kirito (pant) just die (wheeze) already (pant) will you..?"
He smiled. "Sorry not today. Want to call it quits? You'll never get me."
"You bastard (pant) cheater (pant)..."
Oberon was watching carefully.
"Hmm. Cheater you say? Asuna, my love, I agree with you. Kirito is cheating. Not playing fair. Well, we will need to fix that." He fiddled with the control box. "There. Level 7."
Sachi became alarmed. "What did you just do?"
He gave her a malevolent smile. "Not much really. I simply reduced his pain absorber level from 10 down to 7."
"No!"
Sachi looked up and yelled, "Kirito! Watch out!"
But was it was too late. Asuna had already scored a lucky hit on Kirito's wrist. He screamed in pain and nearly dropped his sword.
"Ow! That hurt like a bitch!"
Oberon sighed. "Level 5.."
Another hit on Kirito's side.
"Aaaaaaahhhh!"
{ Sachi: What's your life bar at? }
{ Kirito: 73%. But my god the pain.. }
"Level 3."
Then he added, "Now, I want this fight to be fair, so I will tell you that when the pain absorbers are dropped down to 3 the neurological pain will become so severe that it will cause actual psychosomatic physical damage to his real body."
Sachi tried to lunge at Oberon. Agil held her back. "Stop this! Please!"
"Why should I?"
She continued to plead, "Please, just stop it! Stop this!"
"Shut up bitch. Let's watch."
Kirito realized that he had to end the battle and do it now. Time had run out. He grit his teeth and dived in. Asuna seemed to have hit her second wind and was now back at full strength in her attacks. She had also changed tactics, thinking carefully, planning. She was no longer just diving in headlong in a mad rush.
The fighting duo twisted and turned. They were flying higher and higher, in a beautiful balletic dance. They were now both moving like blurs, almost faster than the eye could see. Faster and faster, as the clanging of swords resonated through the chamber.
{ Sachi: Sugu, what's talking so long? }
{ Suguha: I don't know! I wheeled in the two beds and plugged them in and everything, but it's not working! }
{ Sachi: You followed my instructions right? }
{ Suguha: I think I did? Look, I don't know any of this computer stuff! }
{ Sachi: Just relax. Look at the laptop carefully. Is there an error message on on the screen? }
{ Suguha: Uh, yeah. }
{ Sachi: Well, what does it say? }
{ Suguha: Uh, it says "Incompatible version." }
Sachi's shoulders drooped. Her contingency plan had failed.
She looked up again at the incredible battle. She saw Kirito and Asuna twisting, turning, inverting, reversing, swiling, spiralling. They were moving back and forth as if they were dancing together in an incredible ballet of motion that seemed almost choreographed.
It was the most intense PvP battle in the history of SAO/ALO, surpassing even Kirito and Asuna's joint fight against Heathcliff himself, as the two best players in the history of VRMMO sword fighting battled against each other.
It was a battle that would become legendary, a battle that would be studied, watched, analyzed, again and again, over and over, for all the years to come: The Dance of Death.
Sachi despaired as she watched..
.. for she now knew that one of them would surely die.
What do I do?
Help them! Please!
Tell me what to do!
And then it hit her. A revelation.
It was a thought that seemingly came right out of the blue.
Thank you.
She raised her wrist com to her lips. { Sugu, listen carefully.. }
Kirito was now nearing his limit. Asuna saw her opening and she slashed at him again, this time cutting a deep gash into Kirito's bad right leg, directly on the damaged thigh muscle that Sachi had so painstakingly tried to rehabilitate for two months.
"AAAAAAaaaahhhh!"
He tumbled away in a rictus of pain, spinning out of control, his sword falling away.
Asuna brought up her sword again. She saw her opportunity.
It was her killing move, Flashing Penetrator. She dived toward his helpless form. She stopped his rotation with her open hand, then she embraced him in the final act of the legendary Dance of Death.
She clenched him like a boxer in the ring. Then she shoved her sword directly into his heart up to the hilt, shanking it up as hard as she could. Kirito's eyes were wide in shock, soundless.
Their bodies were now pressed together in their final deadly embrace.
"Ow, that really hurts."
A rattled cough brought up a stream of blood that dribbled down the Spriggan's front.
Asuna hissed, "Good! I'm glad!"
"So, we finally meet..." More blood.
They were still in their mutual death embrace, but Asuna could tell something had changed in the Spriggan. For starters, the voice that came out of the Spriggan sounded like a girl.
Another cough.
"Hi, I'm Sachi.." Another cough. "..nice to finally meet you."
Asuna felt it. This was not the evil overlord Kirito.
The girl's voice went on. "Had to use my old NerveGear helmet... plan was to swap yours, only possible in same room on same switch... had to keep Oberon distracted, not watching us on hospital room cam... that part wasn't hard.."
Asuna stared at the Spriggan. She whispered, "Oh god no."
"I had Nishida show Sugu how to do the MAC swap.. " She grimaced and fought for air. "Swapped our helmets on the switch.. didn't work.. my helmet is version 1.1, yours is version 1.2, not compatible. Kirito is 0.9... backward compat.. so I swapped his instead.."
A dreadful rattling noise came from Spriggan's throat.
Sachi then took her last breath of life, and through sheer willpower she pulled Asuna's tunic toward herself and managed to reach Asuna's ear.
In her final exhale she rasped her last words.
"He loves you so much. Love him.. protect him... and I will watch you from Heaven to make sure that you do."
Sachi's face then turned towards her dearest love, who was now standing on the ground. She showed him a gentle half smile.
Her body then exploded in a shower of blue glittering shards.
Asuna floated in mid-air, stunned. She did not fully understand what had just happened. However, even with the jumbled and confused state of her tampered mind, she had but one clear thought.
Kirito...
That man wasn't the man who had tortured me.
That was Kirito.
That was my Kirito.
I was killing Kirito!
Then who..?
My god, what have I done?
She zoomed down to the group below, two of whom were now struggling mightily to hold down a petite Sylph girl who twisting wildly trying to break free.
The small girl was screaming with a male voice.
"Let me go! Let me go!"
Asuna landed. She turned slowly away and looked up at the few blue glittery particles that were still falling from the sky.
The petite Sylph girl finally broke free and ran to Asuna, grabbing her from behind with tightly closed eyes.
The male voice kept saying, "It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault..."
Pookie raised her wrist com and whispered into it. She heard a response in her left ear.
She looked out at nothing and spoke.
"It fired full force...
Her hand dropped to her side.
"..she's gone."
Sachi Watanabe died on Wednesday, January 22, at 5:31 p.m. on the 18th floor of Tokorozawa Private Hospital.
Hers was the only death caused by SAO. Nobody else had died.
Doctor Nobuyki Sugou was arrested by the National Police, and his collaborators were all apprehended. Morita Ueda resigned from the National Diet. ALO was shut down permanently, and RECT Progress was shuttered as well. After a thorough investigation it was determined that the parent company, RECT Ltd, had no knowledge of the affair. This was in part due to the fact that the owner's own daughter was a primary victim.
Ten thousand players were captured in SAO wearing NerveGear helmets that contained a hidden microwave emitter that could destroy the human brain. And yet, by the grace of God, all the players survived. Every single one.
Only one did not.
The reason was simple.
It was her purpose.
Sachi Watanabe was born to die.
And die she did. In fact she died not once, but three times, and in three different worlds.
Each time she died she was sent back again until her assigned task was fulfilled.
That small timid young girl, the one who was so afraid of the monsters, did indeed have a purpose in her short young life: To save Kazuto, to rescue Asuna, to defeat Oberon, and to even bring down a conspiracy for worldwide domination.
For all that, is not dying a small price to pay?
Asuna woke up.
She sat up. She saw Sachi laying on the medical bed next to her own. Her head was bent forward on her pillow and her eyes were half lidded. A small trickle of blood dripped from her nose, making tiny red splashes on the bedsheet*11.
"The helmets never killed anyone. Not a single person. Nobody died, except her."
Suguha continued to speak tonelessly. "The NerveGear helmet was her old one. I told her we should draw straws. But the helmet was still calibrated to her mind, and she said it wouldn't work with anyone else. She said it had to be her."
Kazuto said softly. "It's okay, Sugu."
Sachi had always loved Kazuto, and her love for him had a depth and an intensity that few people had ever seen. And it was out the depth of her love for him that she had given him the greatest gift possible.
For you see, the One who loved us so dearly, who had loved us even before the beginning of the world, said that there is no greater love than this:
To lay down one's life for another.*12
Suguha looked at Kazuto with tragic eyes. "She begged me, I refused. Then she gave me no choice. I.. I.. I heard the humm of the microwave emitter. By the time I was able to rip the helmet off of her the humm had stopped and it was already too late."
Kazuto wrapped his arms around his sister and rocked her. "It's okay... It's okay... It's okay..."
Suguha opened her mouth but nothing came out. She cried soundlessly into his shoulder.
Then she lifted her head. Finally her voice came back. "I.. uh.. she gave me.. Here." It was a small USB data stick labeled 'For Kirito'. Kazuto put it in his pocket. He would listen to it later.
Nurse Kurosawa spoke softly, "She's gone Home now."
Kazuto whispered, "Home?"
"She converted months ago. Didn't you know? She wasn't hiding it."
Around her neck was a thin gold chain with a pendant tucked below the sweater. On her cuffs were two small brass cufflinks in the shape of intersecting half-ellipses. [Ch2] (She wore a cross pendant and her cufflinks sported the ancient fish symbol for Christianity, the icthys, a symbol that you often see on the backs of cars in the United States.)
It was here! The light. Everywhere, the light. It enveloped her, surrounded her. She breathed it in.. Her face was calm, serene. At peace. [Ch6] (Her conversion experience.)
Why did you bring me back? [Ch6] (She was asking God.)
She was reading a memoir by C.S. Lewis entitled Surprised by Joy. [Ch7] (She was reading about Lewis' own conversion experience.)
He saw Sachi down the hall standing by the elevator, looking down and muttering to herself with her eyes closed. [Ch10] (She was praying.)
There she saw Sachi next to her futon on her knees looking at the floor. [Ch11] (She was doing her morning prayers when Sugu walked in.)
On her cuffs were small brass cufflinks in the shape of intersecting half-ellipses. [Ch12] (She always wore them.)
Sir, is it over now? Am I done? [Ch13] (She was asking God.)
Please [Lord], let Mom figure this out. [Ch13] (A petitionary prayer.)
Her white blouse [was] partially unbuttoned with a small transcept necklace tucked underneath. [Ch17] (Her necklace was the cross pendant that she always wore under her blouse.)
"She's with Him now." Kurosawa removed her wig and looked up. "Sachi, I'll join you soon."
Kazuto then turned to look at the girl who had sacrificed so much for him. He softly touched her lifeless cheek.
He didn't play the recording until much later.
—
Kirito, if you are hearing this then it means that I am dead. It was Nishida who showed Sugu how to reprogram the hardware MAC addresses on our shared 100GBASE-T switch, effectively swapping the helmets without physically removing them from our heads. Please do not blame her. They was no other way. This was my choice, and mine alone.
Kirito, how do I explain this?
I know that I should have died in that trapped treasure room in SAO. But for some reason, I didn't. But why? Each and every day of my second life I asked myself, "Why? Why was I brought back? Why?"
My life was so hard, and I was so terribly alone. For years you were laying there in that hospital bed, laying there right in front of me the whole time, but you might as well have been in another universe. Actually, you were.
I came back, but I was still totally alone, and I kept asking myself why all these things were happening to me. Why was I being made to suffer so much pain and loneliness?
But then Sugu came along, and she became my first real friend, then we became best friends, and finally we became sisters. She helped save me. Kirito, please, she loves you so much. Please give her back the love she deserves.
I always knew that I would die in SAO, but it felt so meaningless and pointless, which is why I had begged you to please live so that you could find out the reason why a weakling like me was sacrificed in that terrible game, and to find out the reason that you and I had met.
Back in SAO you had told me that everyone has a role to fill, that there was a reason everyone was there, even me. I now realize that you were simply lying to me. I forgive you for that lie. You were just trying to make me feel happy.
Well, now I know. I did have a purpose after all, and I now know the reason I was there and then was brought back. Yes, I am happy.
Kirito, please take care of Asuna. Love her. Cherish her. Protect her.
And when you are both ready and willing, marry her.
I know you two will make a great family together. You already did it once so I know you can do it again. And who knows? Maybe even with Yui again too.
Kirito, I am so glad I met you and could be with you.
Thank you. I love you. Goodbye.
—
There was silence in the room.
The NerveGear helmets had never killed anyone. No one had died, not one person,
Except for her.
Finally Asuna said quietly, "We never even met in real life."
Kazuto spoke almost inaudibly, "I loved her. I really did. I should have told her."
Asuna wiped her face. "We never met, and yet she was willing to do this for me.."
Suguha turned to Asuna and asked, "Just tell me one thing. If your roles had been reversed, would you have done what she did?"
Asuna didn't hesitate. "Yeah." She turned. "In a second."
Suguha whispered, "Then do what she wanted."
Asuna and Kazuto looked at each other. They understood.
The pair clasped their hands together, then they turned and faced Suguha.
They stood together side-by-side, standing as the man and wife that they were always destined to be.
They spoke in unison.
"We will."
Sachi wondered where she was. She remembered that she had opened her eyes and found that she was still in her bed in the hospital room next to Asuna's medical bed. She had tried to touch Asuna's hand when the microwave beam had fired.
She remembered that she then breathed in the light.*13 It was a familiar sensation, for she had remembered that light from before, the very same light that she had breathed in upon her death in ALO inside of the Grendel.
She now realized what it actually was: Her final breath, her very last on Earth, that final breath of light which every mortal breathes in just as they die, which many people misinterpret as a 'tunnel of light', was actually information.
It had transformed her, cleansed her, and perfected her, reconciling her soul with God.
She was now outside the Universe. She was above it, beyond it, in another reality, a far greater one.
There she saw a marvelous vista, whole mansions, cloud-like shapes. A flurry of point-like white lights appeared and surrounded her. The lights dived and whirled like birds flying in formation. There seemed to be millions of them. Then they flew away.
She was now standing alone on a glassy white plane that appeared to stretch off in infinitely all directions. Above it was a pure white sky. Nothing else was visible.
A young girl ran up and jumped right into Sachi's arms.
"Big sis! Big sis!"
Sachi was a bit confused. She held the strange young girl with the long hair whose face was now beaming at her own.
It was because the girl's face was also hers.
"Uh, who are you? You look like me..."
Yui tsk-tsked her. "Onee-chan, that's not true. I don't look exactly like you. Close but not exact. Look at me. See?"
Sachi peered closely at Yui's smiling face. She had the same face and hairstyle, but her eye color and hair color were a bit different.
Yui explained, "See? I have exactly your face. But I have Papa's hair color and eye color, and I don't have that funny little beauty mark on my face either. Sisters are sometimes a little different like that."
"Sisters?"
"Yes! I'm your little sister!" Yui jumped back down.
"Huh?"
"You're my onee-chan! I came from you."
Sachi was already more than a little confused. "I don't understand."
Yui crossed her small arms and lectured Sachi like a teacher addressing a befuddled student. "It's simple. The Cardinal System wanted to create a father-daughter avatar for Papa, and it was searching for a template that had the most similar mental engrams for what it wanted. It found some of your data still stored in its cache memory after you had died and left the game. You had thought of Kirito as your papa, so it latched on to that data and layered it on top of my non-human AI core. That makes us sisters!"
"Oh, well, I see." She patted Yui's head. "Nice to meet you."
She giggled under Sachi's head pats. "I was worried for a while you wouldn't come."
"Well, I'm glad we could meet."
Sachi looked around at the empty white nothingness.
"Uh, Yui, can I ask you question?"
"Sure! Ask me anything."
"Where are we?"
"You have crossed over. We are now in a higher level of reality, a place that is actually more 'real' than the reality that you were just in. This place exists outside the 2D projection of your 3D reality, which was actually a hologram operating according to some rather basic physical rules."
"I have no idea what you are talking about."
"I understand. I'll keep it simple. You popped up to level 2, First Heaven. There are at least two more levels that are accessible to you."*14
"There is more than one heaven up here?"
"Oh yeah, there is an infinite number of them. Also, we exist outside of the bondage of time so that everything that will happen has already happened, or what has already happened will happen, or.. uh.. ok even I'm confused by that one, something about free will being dependent on POV or whatever. Nevermind."
Sachi looked around again. "So, is Nurse Kurosawa around here somewhere?"
"Not yet. Or maybe she is, I dunno. Everything has already happened so, or it hasn't happened yet.. a multiconnected hypermanifold where.. uhm, you know what? Let's forget it."
Then Yui added, "Hey, did you know that Akira Kurosawa's myeloproliferative neoplasmosis is in remission? When you died she still had many years of life left in front of her."
"She does? I'm glad."
Yui said, "Isn't that neat? Anyway, I'm here to escort you to the next level."
"Okay, I'm ready. Pop us up. I want to see the next Heaven."
"Sachi, I am sorry."
"You mean I can't go there? But you said.."
"No, what I mean is that you have to go back. Down a level."
"What? But why?"
"Because your purpose is still unfinished. There is one more task you still need to do. You need to save the one who is lost, and bring him back."
Sachi nodded, "I see."
Yui said brightly, "Okay, hold my hand and let's go!"
A beeping noise. Then a blur. Then a face.
The face was Suguha's. She was sitting next to Sachi's hospital bed. She popped her gum, then she pulled it out and placed it behind her left ear. "Hello there, big sis, welcome back."
Sachi blinked her eyes, then she sat up.
Suguha gently pushed her back down. "Whoa, easy girl."
Sachi sighed, "I was brought back.. again."
Suguha grinned, "Yeah. It seems to be a habit with you."
Sachi rubbed her face. "Ugh. Tell me what happened."
"Well, we were all busy mourning your death when your toe twitched. Kazuto spotted it."
"Then what happened?"
"He jumped up and gave you CPR of course."
Sachi's eyes widened "He gave me.. CPR? You mean.."
"Oh yeah. The full monty. Mouth-to-mouth, wide open."
"What!?"
"Yep, he totally frenched you. Heh heh."
Sachi slowly touched her lips in shock.
Suguha went on. "Meanwhile, Asuna jumped on your bed and straddled you. She ripped open your sweater and your blouse and gave you chest compressions while Kazuto did the mouth-to-mouth."
Sachi's eyes widened even more. She slowly clutched her hospital gown. "You.. you mean.."
"Oh yeah, but honestly, nobody was paying attention. Well, I did notice your little cross pendant that fell out of your blouse, but I don't think anyone else did. Anyhow, I missed most of the fun because Kurosawa yelled at me to go find help, so I ran out to fetch the guest staff on a Code Blue. They came rushing in with the defibrillator."
"I feel so embarrassed.."
"Don't worry about it. So, how do you feel?"
Sachi placed her hand to the side of her temple to check. "Well, I have a pounding headache, but otherwise I think I'm okay."
"Good. I'll ask them to give you some aspirin." Suguha began to stand up to summon a nurse.
Sachi pulled at her hem and she stopped. "But, wait, I still don't get it."
Suguha turned back. "Hmm?"
"Sugu, I shouldn't have survived."
"That's right, you ought to be deader than a doornail right now. The microwave blast definitely fired. I heard the humm and everything."
"But then how? How did I survive?"
Suguha put her hand on her chin. She said thoughtfully, "That, dear sister, is an excellent question. I know for a fact that the microwave beam fired at full blast. I heard it. But for some reason I think the command got garbled and I'm guessing that it only partially fired the beam. Basically you got hit with the beam that triggers the coma, but the wave wasn't properly focused so it had temporarily put your medulla offline too and so you stopped breathing. Well, at least that's what the doctor said."
"Oh..?"
"Once they got your heartbeat and respiration back all they had to do was fire the second focused wakeup pulse and then wait until your brain finished rebooting."
"I see.."
Suguha tilted her head questioningly. "You know, it's odd. That command directive should have fried your brain, but it didn't."
"Mmm."
"I wonder what happened?"
Was it Akihiko Kayaba? Or was it just a fluke data glitch? Or maybe was it because Yaya had knocked her NerveGear helmet into his litter box and knocked the emitters out of alignment? The investigators at MINFO never solved the mystery.
But Sachi Watanabe knew.
She looked up.
Thank you.
It was a beautiful sunny day in August, with only a few clouds in the sky. On the air could be heard the delightful squeals of small children chasing each other in a park across the street.
A young man was sitting on a porch with a perfect view. He was dressed in overalls and was wearing a ball cap.
The young man was sitting motionless in his rocking chair like he always did, staring out in the general direction of the street.
He did not move.
There was a knock on the porch door behind him.
The young man stood up.
He opened the door.
He smiled when he saw the girl standing in the doorway.
The girl beamed back at him. "It's nice to see you."
Keita said, "Come in."
He gestured towards the porch railing. Together they walked to the railing and looked out together at the children playing across the way. A gentle breeze came up to move the branches of the cherry trees, which let out a pleasant sigh.
The pair stood and watched the scenic view in silence for a few minutes. Then Keita spoke again.
"I'm really sorry."
"It wasn't your fault."
He turned to look at the girl. "I'm back again. Thanks to you."
She made a small smile as she continued to watch the children play.
He began to throw breadcrumbs at the pigeons that had started to flock in the grass in front of them.
More time passed.
As he continued to toss handfuls of crumbs at the birds he finally said, "Back then I never told you how I felt. I should have. I didn't want to break up the group."
"I know." She smiled again as she watched the kids play across the street.
He looked a bit sheepish. "So, uhm, I was wondering.."
"Yes?" She turned and looked at him expectantly.
"Uhm, are you hungry? Do you think maybe we can go and get lunch sometime? Uh, together?"
She thought a moment.
"Yeah, I'd like that."
"Oh, uh, really? You do?"
"Uh huh."
"That's great! Uhm, where.. uh.."
She held his arm. "Don't be so nervous. Look, I know this great ramen place that's only four blocks from here..."
"Wait, you mean go right now?"
She smiled. "Sure, why not? It's noon and we're both hungry, right?" She then looked at him demurely. "Of course, I've never been out on a date before..."
He became nervous again and pulled his arm away. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to imply that I was asking..."
She gently put a finger across his lips. "Shush. Sometimes it's best to just shut up and escort your date." She re-wrapped her arm around his and turned so they were now both facing the porch steps that led down to the garden path and to the street beyond.
She looked out and continued to watch the children play in the park across the street. He relaxed and looked out as well, just in time for them to see a flock of sparrows fly past.
After a moment she looked at him and asked, "Shall we?"
He looked back at her and smiled.
"Let's."
They left together.
The End
A/N:
* The VT100 is an oldie but a goodie. See VT100 on Wikipedia.
** Yes they really did flop. See Floppy disk on Wikipedia.
*** LN Vol 1, Chapter 18.
*4 See Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II on Wikipedia.
*5 See Honeypot (computing) on Wikipedia.
*6 See Chapter 6.
*7 See episode 22, where Leafa had pushed Kirito's flame into her bosom with her hands completely closed with no gaps. If you want to dispute that scene, I made it very explicit in chapter 6 that I had interpreted it as showing remainder flames being permeable to solid matter. I also tossed out a ton of blatant clues in chapter 17 ('mid-field', 'goal line', 'playing field', 'score this one-shot goal', 'the attack run on the Death Star thermal exhaust port', 'the target is only a couple inches wide', Sachi practicing hundreds of times by smashing Sakuya's glass phials [filled with plain water] at a practice target spot, etc).
*8 SELinux was developed by the US National Security Agency (NSA), presumably for their own use. SELinux is as hard-core as Linux can get. See the topic Security-Enhanced Linux at Wikipedia.
*9 See the topic QNX on Wikipedia. I had worked extensively with QNX in my former life as a white hat. Yes, it really is that tight.
*10 Search Google for Intel Critical Firmware Update SA-00075. The vulnerability is real and was first revealed in 2017. For details see The Register news article, Red alert! Intel patches remote execution hole that's been hidden in chips since 2010 (2017/05/01) at theregister dot co dot uk slash 2017 slash 05 slash 01 slash intel_amt_me_vulnerability. (For story purposes I am pretending that the vulnerability was revealed in 2023 when SAO was still running.)
*11 There is a famous fan artwork that shows Sachi's deathbed scene in a way that I cannot describe without losing it. Search Google Images for 'Sachi SAO death'.
*12 Jn 15:13
*13 From the lyrics to the ending song from the film Oblivion (2013) as performed by the music group M83 and sung by Susanne Sundfør. You can hear the OST in a film montage on YouTube at M83 - Oblivion (feat. Susanne Sundfør) by Rudmen. Try to watch Rudmen's re-uploaded version ("Reuploaded with better quality and new ending") at youtube dot com slash watch?v=IzHyM7JELGo. It is really good. (The film is way underrated, IMHO.)
*14 See 2 Cor 12:2-4 ('Third Heaven'). The concept of a hierarchy of multiple heavens appears in all major monotheistic faiths. I personally suspect that there might be an infinite ladder of such heavens in a well ordered transfinite hierarchy per the generalized Continuum Hypothesis. See my story After Ragnarok where I explore this possibility in depth. (I find it really fascinating how the atheist/deist divide strongly correlates to each mathematician's position on CH. See the Wikipedia article.)
A/N:
In the original draft for this story, Sachi died for real and Yui had escorted her up to Heaven for good. However, as I was writing the full story, I just did not have the heart to do that to her. Instead I gave her one small miracle. I think she deserved it, don't you agree?
If you enjoyed reading this story, then I invite you to check out some of my other stories like The Heart Connection, which is based on the anime series Kokoro Connect. It is a tale about the lives of two boys and three girls in a high school club and what happened to them after graduation. The story is my personal favorite, and it is my readers' favorite as well. (No knowledge of the anime series nor the LNs is required to enjoy the story.) Another favorite is After Ragnarok, which is based on the anime and manga series Oh! My Goddess!. To find these and other stories please click on my handle at the top.
As always, thank you for reading.
-HuuskerDu