I AM BACK! I must apologize fervently yet again for such a prolonged absence, but I had to plan some rather important events and found my time preoccupied by them :( But I'm back now! Enjoy the chapter.

Chapter 5: Time of Need

The old, rusted metal door rattled under Kazuto's assault, but refused to yield.

"Dammit," He swore as he relented in his attack for just a moment to regain his strength. He and Rika were currently standing in the back of a rather shady alley within a massive web of side streets and back roads which often served as quick shortcuts, whether it be for leisurely travel or quick escape and evasion. It had taken Kazuto and Rika hours to hypothesize, GPS, and comb their way through the area until they'd come across this particular entrance which was barred from the inside. Its rather peculiar placement in the back of an alley with no buildings was suspicious enough, but the inability to open the door itself confirmed that this was where Asuna had to be.

As Kazuto resumed kicking at the door in order to break the bolt at the other side, he could not squash the uneasy feeling that they had been meant to find it. After all, wasn't it a bit too obvious? Yet even if it was odd, what was he to do? Leave Asuna to rot? The answer to such a question was obviously undeserved, so he had forced himself to push that thought out of his mind. To his left at the opening of the alley in the street adjacent, the setting sun was bleeding its rays into the asphalt, cutting vision and making the atmosphere seem all the more dire.

Rika, meanwhile, watched her friend go at the door like there was no tomorrow and said, "Ah, Kazuto..."

The boy ceased his kicking only long enough to turn and grunt, "What?"

"The door obviously isn't going to give at that rate," The girl said patiently, although her insides were screaming from worry for her best friend. "We need to find a better way to force it open."

Kazuto took another look at the resolutely standing door and sighed, his shoulders sagging in defeat. "You're right," He conceded, stepping away from it. "But I don't see how else we're going to get through it, and we have to hurry. Asuna's in there."

That was true. Since they'd all awoken from the SAO incident, several of their family members of both sides had insisted they install emergency-use GPS tracking systems on each other's phones. Mind, they were only meant to be used in dire circumstances, but everyone had felt that this surely counted. The GPS was only capable of pinpointing the position of Asuna's phone with an margin for error of fifty feet, however, and while this was of remarkable accuracy, it wasn't enough to know for sure where the cellular device was. In this labyrinth of thin, branching roads, fifty feet was enough to contain three different alleyways. So they'd been forced to search.

Rika sighed with him and walked over to the door, hands wrapped around the area under her chest to combat the night cold which was about to set in. Observing the rusted plate of metal standing in their way, she said, "That's true too, but it's not like it'll just fall over if I kick it like this-"

The blacksmith's assertion was cut rather short when her foot made solid contact with the metal and caused the entire door itself to swing open.

Kazuto just stared at the black opening that yawned out before them and said, "I loosened it for you."

"That's not even possible! How'd it-"

"That's not important right now," Kazuto interrupted, choosing in a rare moment to ignore logic to pursue what he felt was more crucial. "We have to go find Asuna now. We're running out of time."

Rika glanced uneasily into the darkness awaiting them before steeling her resolve. Nodding in agreement, the two of them began to make their way into the hidden chamber.

The moment both of their feet hit the cold stone floor within, the door suddenly swung closed behind them. It was straight out of a cliche'd horror story, but the startling ominous boom and and immediate darkness was more than enough to shock them both. Rika sucked in a quick breath and lashed out with her left hand, gripping Kazuto's within her own cold palm. The boy stiffened at the unexpected skin to skin contact but relented, allowing their fingers to twine together and provide a certain measure of mutual comfort. Meanwhile, Kazuto pulled out his phone and dialed Asuna's number, using the light which emanated from the device to sweep the area.

An abrupt, piercing ringing sound suddenly permeated the atmosphere, causing them both to flinch a second time. A bright light appeared in the center of the room, the white halo it illuminated on the roof above shaking slightly as Asuna's phone vibrated steadily across the concrete flooring. Kazuto gulped and stepped forward, tugging Rika along with him as they approached the abandoned piece of tech and squatted to observe it. Kazuto reached out and picked it up from the ground, turning it over to inspect for any clues which might shed light on the location of its owner.

"Looks fine, but Asuna obviously doesn't have it," Kazuto said, his voice a low monotone. He stood up to continue his search, and as he did, his right hand knocked against something hard and metallic. Rubbing instinctively at the mark which appeared there, he groped with his other hand and felt at the object he'd struck; it felt flat and elongated, like a table, or some sort of metal plate. Probing further, his fingers encountered something more coarse and pliable. Hair. It had to be. In differing situations Kazuto would have retracted himself immediately, but something about the texture of the hair caught him off guard and he stood there, fingers tangled in a potential enemy's hair.

There's something about it though, I just... Kazuto thought feverishly, daring to probe a bit farther.

"Kazuto?" Rika whispered, sounding concerned. "Are you hurt?"

He didn't answer. A memory was beginning to form in his consciousness, a flashback to a time in the past, a time when he'd sat at a hospital bed and helped comb a certain girl's hair...

Kazuto froze.

Asuna?

"Rika!" Kazuto almost shouted, startling his counterpart. "Try to find a light switch!"

"But it's dark in here!"

"Do it now!"

Either she decided to follow his instructions or she'd run out of the room, but Kazuto heard the sounds of scurrying feet by his side. After several minutes of muttering and grumbling from Rika, during which Kazuto waited fervently, there was a dull click.

A single lightbulb hanging from the center of the ceiling flickered weakly to life. Despite its rather paltry abilities of illumination, it revealed so much more. The room was small, the walls, ceiling and floor made completely of simple concrete. The center of the space was largely dominated by two small, squat tables, with masses of twisted wires flowing from underneath their support trunks until they all congregated into a single, desk-sized hard drive sitting off to the right. The computer itself seemed to be of an old model, conceived sometime after the 2020's, considering the manufacturing style. Two thicker wires ran from the CPU and flowed into two rather primitive looking helmets. These helmets encased the skulls of two people, one of which Kazuto did not recognize.

He knew the other, though.

"Asuna!" Rika shrieked, rushing from the light switch by the wall to get to her best friend's side. Her hands immediately reached downwards to rip the old model NerveGear off the girl's head, but Kazuto shot forward and seized her wrists.

"No! What are you doing?" Rika demanded, struggling mightily in his grip. "We have to get her out of here!"

"Just hold on a moment!" Kazuto said firmly, the seriousness in his voice enough to force the blacksmith to pay attention to his words. "There's something we need to check first."

That said, Kazuto released her wrists and stalked over to the computer, tapping a few keys to bring the monitor back to life. Thankfully enough, it had been left powered on and still logged in. He took a second to step back and observe the machine itself; the very existence of the wires was an identifying trait of VR tech from decades ago, before carbon data transfer had dominated that market. The entire processing system itself seemed to be a mash up of different specs in order to create some sort of rag-tag machine barely capable of supporting the World Seed. Eyes flitting rapidly across the dimly illuminated screen, Kazuto brought up the unit's terabyte history and performed a quick scan, confirming that this computer did indeed have the World Seed installed.

Kazuto turned and looked at the two prone figures with prototype full dive equipment laying not five feet from him. If this machine was powering whatever virtual reality Asuna and that stranger were in, then he should be able to dive as well using a third NerveGear. Of course, there was no saying what would occur once he entered the virtual reality, considering this was a world created by yet another crazy stranger. Death could become a very real possibility.

Turning back to the screen, Kazuto brought up the specifications for the full dive tech's purpose. Reading through the intel quickly, he told Rika, "It's a good thing you didn't take that helmet off. It's programmed to kill her if you do."

The former blacksmith's eyes tripled in size and she put a hand to her mouth, staring down in shock at her best friend, now out cold due to her virtual cage. "Oh, Asuna..." She whispered, panic finally beginning to set in.

"No, don't give up now," Kazuto said firmly, a deep rooted fury also evident in his tone. He walked over to Rika and placed two hands on her shoulders. "There's something you have to do for me."

The girl forced herself to inhale deeply before replying. "What?"

"You know basic algorithm programming, right? I need you to fight the CPU's system while I dive to get Asuna." Kazuto reached into his pocket and showed her an unlabeled mini-chip held in his hands. "After Agil and I released the World Seed, I was able to download all of my SAO perameters onto a couple copy chips. I never thought I'd need them, but it looks like the time has come. Insert this right before I dive and I'll spawn as the Kirito as he was on the seventy-fifth floor. The system is going to fight the chip's functions, though, which is why I need you to keep it at bay until I do what needs to be done."

Rika looked past Kazuto and at the oversized computer waiting for her, the gently humming wires, the dusty screen written in a language that she barely remembered how to understand. Suddenly, the tightness of the room seemed to have grown exponentially, and the CPU looked more like a technological monstrosity than a simple machine. Rika suddenly remembered a time long ago, set in another world, when she'd met a beautiful girl during a time when her smith shop had consisted of nothing more than a blanket and a smelting iron. Life had seemed safer then, even within the death game, but now this was reality and in reality you died forever.

She snapped back to attention when Kazuto shook her roughly, and was almost terrified by the dangerous determination she saw in his eyes.

"Please, Rika," Kazuto said softly.

"I can't live without her."

Rika's throat closed up at the last sentence, because this was yet another curse of reality, as it was a world where people came for a while before leaving forever. She would never have Kazuto, not when he would transcend worlds and slay countless foes for Asuna. The hurt at this sudden, if situationally discursive, revelation drove a needle into her capacity for rationality. For a moment, Rika almost refused.

But then she laughed at herself. Who was she trying to kid? She valued her bond with Asuna higher than anything else, right up there with her desire to be by Kazuto's side. If the latter was not to be an option, then better to preserve what good she already had, and in bounty. Rika reached out and took the mini-chip from Kazuto.

"Okay," She said, "You can trust me."

A minute later, Kazuto was laying on the cold concrete floor of the hidden room, the single light bulb in the ceiling shining harshly into his eyes. Somewhere to his right, he could hear Rika programming the computer to accept a third dive member, muttering slightly under her breath as she recalled the various methods of navigating a hostile system. Maybe he should have persuaded her to take that third-level programming class after all.

"I've got it," Rika called out in the meantime, placing her palms against the chilly steel of the CPU as she stared hard at the screen before her. "Just give me the word, and I'll hit the button. Is your NerveGear ready?"

Kazuto tightened the prototype spare he'd found in the corner and said, "This one isn't really called that, but yes, I'm ready."

Rika rolled her eyes at the offhand comment and slotted the microchip into the computer's hard drive feed, waiting until a notification popped up on the screen that it had been read. Rapidly typing in the full dive activation sequence, she muttered, "Good luck," before sending Kazuto under.

Almost immediately, the computer's anti-infiltration system went to work, fighting to decrypt the microchip's defenses and negate its content. It was fortunate that Kazuto had written his own defense program for the chip, or the computer would have overwhelmed it in seconds. Rika bit her lip in intense concentration as her fingers danced across the old-fashioned keyboard; it was old in the sense that it was concrete, not a projection, but I digress. The scripted numbers that ran steadily across the screen were reflected in the girl's narrowed eyes as she entered the microchip's defense codings and began to write new ones, throwing together random codes in an attempt to stall out the computer's attack. Those were destroyed too quickly though, so Rika found herself having to come up with more complex codes in even less time as the computer continued its relentless pursuit of the microchip.

Please hurry, Kazuto, Rika prayed as she punched in another stream.

The world reappeared before him like a flickering lamp.

First there was just an image, presented too quickly for him to discern what there was to see there, but this image reappeared again and again in quicker fashion, the visuals fluttering before him in a frenzy until solidifying into one, uniform world. Kazuto blinked and looked to his side.

A blade descending towards Asuna.

There was no time to think. Only to act, and trust that his instincts and plans would carry out accordingly. Dropping into a half squat, he reached up and whipped his blade out of its well-worn sheath, arcing it downwards towards the ground until it stopped right before it made contact with Asuna's body.

Clang.

The owner of the offending sword started and looked up at him, surprise written across his face. But when their eyes met, he smiled. Red eyes and tousled hair, a countenance consumed by malevolence. In the moment that Kazuto saw into those eyes, he saw an endless agony that had consumed any sense of reason.

Then time continued, and the stranger slid his sword out of Kazuto's block and stepped back, giving the Black Swordsman ample time to move over and stand between him and Asuna.

"It's about time you got here, Kirito," The boy with the red eyes said. "I was beginning to worry that I hadn't made it easy enough for you."

"It was plenty simple enough, don't worry," Kazuto hissed back, readjusting his grip on his sword.

The boy's gaze flicked down at his weapon before looking back at Kazuto. "I wasn't expecting you to have that. How did you manage it?"

Kazuto shifted into a ready stance and hefted his blade. "I have my ways."

The boy smirked at him.

"K-Kazuto?" Asuna said softly, just beginning to recover from her confusion at this recent turn of events. Kazuto allowed himself a brief glance at his lover, but forced himself to look away. It hurt to much to see her lying there, covered in blood, powerless.

"Don't worry, Asuna," He promised soothingly. "I'll protect you."

Her eyelids drooped halfway as she struggled to retain her consciousness.

"Thanks..."

The boy with the blood red eyes laughed sourly and said, "Love. A useful thing, is it not? I couldn't image how difficult it could have been to lure you into my trap without it. Affection is a weakness, Kirito-san. Remember that. You may not know who I am, but I hope you will heed my warning."

"Oh, I know exactly who you are, Takashi," Kazuto interrupted coldly, causing Takashi's eyes to widen. "I must say I'm so sorry for killing your brother, but I would end his life over Asuna's any day. I saw his grave at the memorial, you know. Were you there too? Were you able to pay respects to your dead brother?"

"Shut up!" Takashi spat, his hand flying to the hilt of his own weapon. "You don't know anything about me! You took Aniki without even thinking of the consequences! You're a monster! You're one of them. The people who think that the virtual and real words aren't tied together in any sort of way."

Kazuto frowned in sympathy and sighed. "It's true I used to differentiate between the two, but I've learned something very important. Something that happens in virtuality can very well affect reality. Asuna was the one who taught me that, because she was the first thing I thought of when I woke up after two years. And although I've been impossibly confused about some things lately, I've always known one thing."

He drew his second sword and bared his teeth.

"No one harms Yuuki Asuna."

Takashi's eyes narrowed, and he attacked.

When their swords crossed, the very planes of existence around them bent; for Kazuto's SAO perameters did not originate from this world Takashi had created, and thus conflicted with the system. Kazuto could imagine that Rika's efforts against the computer were also causing some of the distortion. The rocky walls that enclosed around them shivered and flickered when steel struck enchanted steel, the entire system groaning under the strain as it tried to keep up its work. They shared a few deft blows before parting for a brief respite, the visuals returning to normal around them.

Once they had parted, Takashi growled in frustration and leapt, denying the laws of gravity as he soared thirty feet into the air and landed somewhere along the lip of the canyon, out of sight. Kazuto snorted and jumped himself, leaping towards the sky in order to keep up with his adversary.

The moment his jump took him above the highest point of the canyon, something streaked across the edge of his vision and collided with his midsection, sending Kazuto's body jerking to the side to tumble into the choking sand of an endless desert dotted only with sparse shrubs. Kazuto let momentum do its work and rolled with the impact, landing nimbly on his feet. Raising his swords before his person, he was barely fast enough to block and incoming attack from Takashi's sword. Judging from the mortal wound Asuna had been suffering from, Kazuto could figure that pain and death were very real factors in combat here.

Takashi hissed and pressed his attack, whirling from side to side in a viciously unrelenting assault that whipped up a minor dust cloud around the point of conflict, cutting visibility and making the fight all the more difficult. Kazuto quickly realized the advantages Takashi held; being the creator, he was faster, stronger, more agile, and more in harmony with his environment. Only his prior experience and innovation kept Kazuto alive. The dual wielding helped, too. Takashi screamed in fury when his foe refused to relent under the impact of his enhanced blows, his anger reaching up to split the sky open above them.

His emotions must have become tied into the virtuality through the full-dive specs, Kazuto thought as a torrent of rain began to pound around them. If I push him far enough, will I be able to create an environment more in my favor?

The abrupt appearance of the thunderstorm at least got rid of the irritating dust cloud, but it came in addition with the slipperiness that rain brought. As the heavens continued to darken above them and the sand beneath Kazuto's feet quickly turned into sloshing mud, he doubted his ability to alter the world to his favor. The hilts of his swords were slick with rain water, and every slash and hack almost sent his weapons flying out of his hands. At this point, the battle was still at a grinding stalemate, but any longer and Kazuto would be forced to retreat.

Takashi ducked then, and tried to sweep his feet from under him, but Kazuto hopped into the air and sent his foot flying into the boy's chest in a swift kick. Takashi cried out and fell back, hitting the ground heavily. When his body made contact with the earth, the world changed again. The sloshing mud beneath them was quickly overwritten by a sweeping tide of hard, blackened earth, cracked and glowing from the heat of a now-present magma pool underneath the outer surface. The only area, Kazuto realized, to be unaffected by the changes was the canyon, most likely due to the extra attention Takashi must have put towards it to duplicate one of Asuna's own memories.

Random flames began to burst upwards from the cracks in the hardened earth, and one of them leapt up to sting Kazuto's thigh, causing him to grunt at the surprising amount of pain he felt. Takashi took this opportunity to stumble to his feet and reinitiate his attack, forcing Kazuto back several steps before he was able to regain his bearings and defend himself properly. However, his weakened leg prevented any sort of advance on his part.

"Yield!" Takashi yelled, rearing back to slam his blade into his adversary's in a particularly strong blow, forcing Kazuto to cry out and stagger back on his damaged thigh. "Give up! Just die! You can't win, you worthless son of a bitch! How could you still resist me when you have no chance of survival?"

Kazuto could only groan when his injuries screamed under the pressure he was exerting on them. He tried to take a few steps back for a short rest, but Takashi only leapt after him to cover the distance and hacked at his neck, forcing Kazuto to bring his blades up to deflect the blow. The momentum behind the attack was too great, however, and he was pushed back on his weak legs until he stumbled onto the sizzling earth beneath him. Kazuto gasped in shock when the flames under the ground began to lick at his back, and rolled to the left in order to avoid both the heat and the impending attack. Takashi's blade plunged into the fiery earth a moment after he'd moved, and Kazuto forced himself to stagger back up on his feet, panting heavily as he prepared for their next engagement.

Takashi just scoffed and yanked his sword back out of the ground. "Just look at you. You're completely spent. It is the be expected, of course. I programmed this world with the intention of killing you. I can't lose here."

Kazuto just lifted his head and spit a glob of blood and saliva onto the boy's shoe. But before Takashi's face could even contort in rage, he said,

"You don't have to lose...I just have to protect her..."

Takashi frowned deeply at him. "Do you really think you can?"

Kazuto bared his fangs once more and readied his swords.

"I have to."

The skies rumbled when their blades crossed again.

Shit, shit shit shit...

Rika's teeth almost split the skin of her lower lip as she tried desperately to keep up with the system, throwing up ten codes in a minute only to find them being killed faster than she could make them up. She was running out of ideas, too. Maybe she should have taken the third level programming class after all.

Yet another source of stress for Rika was, however, Kazuto's well being. She wasn't sure if he had any sort of HUD in this virtual reality to be knowledgeable about his health level, but Rika was well aware of the fact that his HP gauge had fallen well below the halfway point. Admittedly, Rika didn't know what sort of situation Kazuto was in at the moment, but she knew in any other VR game he had participated in he had been nearly untouchable. It was unlike Kazuto to take so many hits and lose so much health points. So what could be sapping his strength?

Rika swore again under her breath when the microchip's third wall of defense crumbled before the CPU's anti-virus purge methods. Kazuto had set up five initial firewalls, but three of these along with several weaker ones she'd put up herself had been obliterated. Now only two of these initial walls stood between the computer and the microchip. If the chip's content were to be negated, Kazuto's avatar could be ejected from the dive, and that was the best-case scenario. It could be very plausible for Kirito's abilities to simply disappear from the system, leaving Kazuto as powerless as an ordinary human in a virtual reality. Then he'd be truly doomed.

Asuna too, the former blacksmith thought fervently, flicking her eyes in a cursory glance at her best friend's own health bar. Asuna had had about two-thirds of her health when Rika had initially begun her programming, but she must be bleeding out somehow because the gauge had been slowly dropping for the past several minutes. Now she was at one-third. She didn't have the administrative authority to view the stranger's health gauge, assuming he even needed one, but Rika wouldn't be surprised to see that it was full. After all, this world had been created by him; he would have every advantage.

But I can't just leave everything to Kazuto and hope he comes out of this alive, Rika thought. If he gets skewered in there he dies here, too, and I'll lose both of my best friends. But what else could I do from here? I'm preoccupied enough with this coding...if only there was a way to immobilize the attacker instead, rather than defending...

A lightbulb went off in her head.

"Attack! Of course!" Rika exclaimed, turning her focus back to the CPU screen. The wires intensified their humming as she entered a different view field, this time searching for the stranger's full-dive specs. It wasn't exactly covert information, so she was allowed to see it without a password. Rika brought up the intel and scanned it quickly, searching for a specific category.

Security level: Omega.

She sighed in relief. The highest level of full-dive security, Alpha, was nearly unbreakable and could only be bypassed by the most skilled of hackers; beneath that was sub-Alpha, which was also beyond her abilities, but Omega...maybe. If she could find a flaw in the system's defenses, she could disable the stranger's NerveGear and force him to wake up. By pulling the only admin from the game, she should be able to initiate a total shutdown of the VR and pull everyone back to reality, where she and Kazuto stood a much better chance of survival.

Nodding to herself in determination, Rika began to hack.

This is ridiculous, she realized suddenly. I've never been a tech junkie. How am I managing this?

Something in Kazuto's back popped when he was thrown across the floor and down into the canyon he'd woken up in, landing at the bottom with a rather painful thud. Groaning loudly at the pain lancing up his spine, he plunged a sword into the earth and used it as a makeshift crutch to pull himself back up. The current situation felt entirely new to him; in all his years of VRMMORPG gaming, he had very rarely been met or outmatched by other players, so the severity with which Takashi was batting him around at the moment was jarring. Of course, everyone had been playing on the same level in those other VRs. Here, everything had been purposefully stacked against him.

"K...Kazu...kun..." Asuna croaked weakly. She'd managed to drag herself to the wall of the canyon and lean against it, but she hand't been able to move since. The first bursts of blood that had risen from her body had dried by now, and it caked her skin and clothes, adding to the rather pale quality her skin had taken. Her hand covered most of the sword wound to stem to bleeding, but Kazuto could see the injury there, and it made him furious beyond reason.

He offered her a small smile. "I'm okay, Asuna," he called out to her. "I'll save you, don't worry. I dedicated my life to your here, remember?"

Whether she got the reference or not, he had no idea; all Asuna could muster was a minute twitch of her index finger.

Turning, Kazuto waited until Takashi landed softly in the dust as well, sword still drawn. Kazuto had by now figured out that Takashi's ebony blade was indestructible, and had given up trying to break it long ago.

I didn't have a plan to begin with, Kazuto realized suddenly. I just rushed in here without thinking. I acted confident in front of Rika so she would help me, but I really didn't know what I was going to do. Now I'm here, health probably almost gone, Asuna in equally worse condition, and Takashi's probably immortal himself. What am I going to do?

"You look tired, Kirito-san," Takashi said drily, flicking his wrist and sending his ebony blade lashing out towards him. Kazuto tried to will his weak muscles to raise his own weapons in defense, but his slackened grip caused the dark blade to slap his Elucidator out of his gloved hand. The black sword spun out of his grip and clattered against the rocky side of the canyon, falling to the floor amidst a puff of dust. Kazuto almost sighed at this latest development and raised the sword Rika had forged for him in both hands.

Takashi smirked and hefted his own blade, whirling once to put momentum behind his upcoming blow. Kazuto forced himself to summon energy he didn't have and brought his Dark Repulser up to block the attack. The edges of the two blades met in a shower of sparks, and Kazuto was forced to widen his stance in order to prevent himself from folding over. Takashi did not pull his weapon away and instead pressed harder, fruitlessly at first, but slowly forcing his adversary lower and lower. A half minute later, Takashi had used brute force to bend him into a sort of half-squat, and Kazuto's arms trembled under the sheer weight he was trying to support.

Sighing in exasperation, Takashi drew his foot back and sent it crashing into Kazuto's shin. The Black Swordsman gasped and finally buckled, falling face first into the dirt while Takashi kicked his Dark Repulser away. In one last desperate attempt to survive, Kazuto attempt to tackle him around the midsection, but Takashi kneed him back into the ground, where Kazuto watched him, eyes full of hate.

Takashi stared down at him and hefted the point of his weapon.

"Goodbye."

The sword descended.

"I GOT IT!" Rika shrieked, jerkily punching in the final code string as quickly as possible while avoiding any mistakes; that would be detrimental. In the time Rika had spent trying to hack the stranger's full-dive specs, the computer's attack had punched through the second wall and was halfway through the first when Rika hit the last key.

[PULL OUT SEQUENCE INITIATED], flashed a message on the screen. It blinked there for several seconds while the humming of the wires grew exponentially, until the very air seemed to reverberate with the vibrations. The NerveGear around the stranger's head began to whirr, and Rika could only watch, praying for the best.

Pshee...

That sound. Kazuto could recognize it. It aroused enough curiosity in him to open his eyes from when he'd closed them to take the impending blow, but what he saw then told him the pain wasn't coming just yet.

Takashi was literally disintegrating into polygons before him, the glowing shapes multiplying across the boy's skin until they split apart and dematerialized into the air. Takashi was frozen during this process, and his eyes seemed to burn right through Kazuto's, who saw a world of pain and insanity in them.

Then he burst completely, and the small swarm of polygons fluttered up towards the sky until they'd all gone.

Kazuto went slack, then, falling like a sack of potatoes to the floor. He stared up at the sky for a moment, contemplating how lucky he'd just been. He couldn't really explain what had just occurred, but he could assume it had to be Rika's doing.

Asuna, he thought.

Asuna.

Flopping over on his stomach, Kazuto half dragged, half crawled his way to his lover's side. The girl's eyelids fluttered open when he drew near, and they softened at the sight of him, something that made his heart throb. Sure, it had hurt like hell, but in the end Asuna was safe, and that was all that mattered. Pulling himself up beside her, Kazuto leaned against the canyon wall with Asuna and reached out for her hand, intertwining their fingers while ignoring the feeling of slick blood.

Asuna slowly tilted her head back and stared at the sky, then asked, "What's happening up there?"

Looking up as well, Kazuto noticed that the sky was fragmenting and falling apart, as if it had really just when a cleverly disguised glass dome. "Takashi's gone, so the world is falling apart. Don't worry about it. We'll be out of here soon, too."

Asuna sighed in acknowledgement, burying her face into Kazuto's collar. This simple contact was all that was needed to break the last of the man's calm, and he held her tightly, feeling the tears begin to flow.

"I was so worried..." Was all he could muster. It felt lame in comparison to his true emotions, but that was all he could say. Unless...

Placing a small kiss on Asuna's forehead, he whispered,

"I love you, Asuna."

Despite being half-unconscious, Asuna felt a warm flame bloom inside her heart at those words. He finally said it.

And as the world collapsed around them, she smiled and let the warmth consume her.

"I love you too, Kazuto..."

Please review for more!~