Chapter 19: Counter Conspiracy

The silence of churning minds dominated the central room in the apartment as three individuals sat in linked solitude, each of them contemplating what they did and did not know. Despite this, Kazuto and Asuna were both somewhat on the same page when it came to their thought processes; the two of them were awaiting the third resident's verdict.

It was dark outside. The birds were asleep.

Situated on the other chair of the eating table, Hideki's brow furrowed almost furiously in deep and captivated thought, to the extent that Kazuto began to worry for the state of the man's temper. Would he break, as he himself had almost done, and try to strike out like Asuna had? That, Kazuto suddenly decided as he awaited a reaction, was the difference between his issues with SAO in the real and virtual realms. Everyone's way of dealing with conundrums and obstacles in Aincrad had always involved some sort of violence or physical force; in reality, everything was a battle of wills and intellect, with brute strength acting as mere tools.

He hadn't exactly planned on having Hideki come over. After his and Asuna's confrontation with Fuzen, it had been decided between the two of them that her brother had to be informed of these latest developments, and as soon as possible. Despite the president's promise that he would not directly cause adverse effects in their lives, due to a desire to watch them suffer, it was obvious that they couldn't totally trust his word. Hideki may be in some sort of danger. A phone call had been answered by a tired sounding voice, but it become instantly alert when Kazuto mentioned the cancelled project. The words of information which followed, however, left the older man beyond dumbfounded.

"I'll be over in half an hour," He'd said tersely.

Now they waited, having told Hideki everything they knew, hoping for some sort of determined reaction, a declaration of a refusal to feel defeat or remorse, but this desire was promptly crushed by the stricken look on Asuna's brother's face. Kazuto had always felt that Hideki was both a dependable and capable person, and this notion still held fast. Anybody would feel at a loss in such a situation as theirs. But they needed answers now.

Finally, Hideki sighed and pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes as if in some sort of pain. Asuna half-stood to assist him, but her lover thought it wise to stop her; it wouldn't do to disrupt the man's thinking process now.

After another minute of silence, Hideki looked up and met their eyes.

"This is singlehandedly the most disturbing thing I've ever been told in my entire life," He said at last, voice wobbling just slightly. "And while I have much faith in both my sister's credibility and yours, Kazuto, I must first ask you to confirm that none of the things you've told me were exaggerated."

"Nothing was exaggerated in the slightest," Kazuto said firmly. "Everything we told you is true to the bone."

Hideki's expression sagged at the confirmation, and he sat up a bit to lean into the back of the chair, grinding his teeth in agitation.

"I can't believe that Fuzen would do something like that," He said softly. "He's never been the most honest man on the planet, but he would never-"

"But he did, and you are also involved, as unfortunate as it is," Kazuto cut him off, trying to ignore his feelings of guilt and sympathy. If Hideki couldn't be reliable in this situation, the responsibility would fall to him. "I don't know your full history with him, Hideki, and to be frank I don't care. He's responsible for our separation from Yui, and he holds all the cards against us to make sure we can't do anything about it. I called you for two reasons: the first was to assure your safety and the second was to get a feel for the situation. If we sit around unable to do anything, we'll only suffer exactly as Fuzen wishes us to."

Hideki nodded at his words and adjusted his reading glasses. "Yes...of course," He said in ways of apology. "It is indeed unwise to lose one's cool, now. Though I must also apologize for informing you of the top secret project, Kazuto, regardless of the fact that it concerns your daughter. If you hadn't known, none of this would have taken place."

Kazuto shook his head. "No. Something like this would have come down, anyways. I'm sorry for dragging you into it; you haven't done anything wrong at all."

The older man smiled faintly at him before clearing his throat and placing his hands on the table to stabilize himself. Meanwhile, Asuna was still trying to keep herself under control; her verbal assault on Fuzen had not served to alleviate the pressure, but rather to increase it, acting as an incentive to invite more malice. Even though the enemy was not present at the moment, she still felt the instinct to hurt something, as if it would make things better. Thus her current silence.

Her brother took note of this and felt his heart break a fraction. She was younger than him, yet she'd gone through so much more. The world was indeed cruel.

Clearing his throat a second time, he deigned to speak. "It is true that Fuzen has effectively trapped all of us under his thumb. Also, I do believe that despite the fact that I was involved in this, he did not call me up with the two of you because he trusts that I will be informed regardless. Which means he will be watching me, as well. Kazuto and I will be under surveillance from now on whenever we are at work; that much, I can nearly guarantee."

"I thought that too," Kazuto agreed. "So I was thinking, wouldn't it be beneficial for at least one of us to quit our jobs at Complexity? And by logic, it should be me; my income isn't nearly so much as yours, so my stake in it isn't so large. It would be best to escape his influence."

Hideki shook his head in refusal. "There are still benefits on our side when it comes to keeping our jobs, which I will explain. And on an emotional level, wouldn't that be bruising for your ego?"

Kazuto smirked. "Does my ego matter?"

A slight smile in return. "In any case, we are in no way obligated to roll over and let Fuzen have his way with us. We have to get around this somehow."

Asuna made a small sound at that, and Kazuto turned to see if she had anything to say. The young woman fidgeted somewhat in a rare case of insecurity, then forced herself to open her mouth and speak.

"Hideki...you don't have to help us."

"And why not?"

"Like Kazuto said, you didn't do anything wrong," Asuna said almost timidly. "And you've never even met Yui. You don't have any reason for it."

Hideki snorted and leaned over to flick his sister on the head. "Stupid," He sighed. "Of course I have a reason."

"And what is that?"

He leaned back and crossed his arms stubbornly. "Nobody messes with my sister."

A look of partial understanding as well as skepticism crossed the girl's face, but in the end she simply nodded and retained her silence, although she did allow a small smile to flit across her face.

Kazuto also smiled at the brief exchange. "I really appreciate your help," He said earnestly. "But I don't know what there is we can do. We can't exactly take Fuzen down legally or even by brute force, because we'd end up facing harm through both routes."

Hideki grinned back at him with borderline childish slyness. "You have a point as usual, Kazuto. Though you did miss a very important fact: Fuzen is immature. I'd always looked up to him, but at the same time I was aware that he holds a childish stubbornness inside of him. He absolutely hates to lose. His lack of maturity is what drove him to keep Yui from the two of you; he feels that you are responsible for the fall of his potential virtual empire. The next action is, then, to keep him from his objective."

"You mean...get Yui back?" Asuna asked, brow furrowing in confusion. "I've spent hours and hours thinking about how we might do that, but I've never reached a viable conclusion. Altering her data to fit with non-Seed games would be suicide on her part, and the servers have been killed. How will we reach her?"

A look of passiveness shadowed the older man's face at this very moment. It struck Kazuto that he was about to make his main point. The subject of apprehension, however, was the possibility that their options were limited. And dangerous.

Hideki cleared his throat and licked his lips once before speaking. "The project I was working on before it was shut down. A way to extract the minds of the SAO victims and place them within pre-grown biocapsules, or as you could say, clones of their true selves. All of the research and breakthroughs have been made; I was about to authorize NPC trials before Fuzen intervened. The technology is there for us. All that remains is the execution."

Kazuto narrowed his eyes. "I thought you might say that. But is there not a serious risk to her well being?"

"Yes," Hideki said earnestly. "There is a twenty-seven percent chance that the consciousness will fail to transfer and the data will simply disintegrate; and since Yui is such an advanced computer, the statistics will be stacked even higher against your favor. Though I must also point out that Fuzen will trash the servers, along with Yui, some time or another. Regardless of what he promises. The risk is great, but if am to be honest I believe it a better alternative."

Kazuto turned to look at Asuna, who quickly returned his gaze. No words were needed; the question passed between them like lightning. Do or don't? Act or wait? Of course, it was wiser to take a partial risk rather than guaranteed destruction, but there was still that fear, the apprehension of willingly putting their daughter's life on the line, even if the alternative was infinitely worse.

Returning her gaze to her brother, Asuna asked slowly, "Will there be residual effects? Any loss of memory or capability?"

Hideki rolled this over in his mind for a bit. "If the transfer is successful, there will be no memory issues. She will have to learn how to walk, however. As well as various other motor functions. Anything intellectually based will be unaffected, including speech, though she will have some difficulty forming words at first."

A moment of contemplation passed as the young couple thought this over, despite the apparent obvious choice before them.

Finally, they glanced at each other a final time before nodding. "We'll do it," Kazuto said.

Hideki nodded back solemnly, understanding the pain of such a decision, and stood up and out of his chair. "There isn't much else we can do today, so I'll be heading home to set things up. I will need a visual reference of some sort in order to properly grow the biocapsule; I'm assuming your NerveGear still contains image files of her?"

"Yes."

Asuna shook her head in disbelief. "It's almost surreal," She said. "Are you sure you can grow a body to look just like our daughter?"

Hideki smirked back at her. "Have some more faith in your brother."

"How will you access the server to extract Yui's data?" Kazuto asked.

The older man's temporary joking mood dissipated. "I'll have to ask some close friends about that," He said, completely understanding that dependence on others could become their downfall. After all, there was a rat in every boat. But what other option did they have?

Kazuto nodded in acceptance. There really was no other choice.

After this, I hope it's all over.

Sand crunched languidly beneath his feet as he entered the small playground, doing his best to maintain a respectable silence despite an absence of other people. The night was warm, as if the sky were a dark blanket enveloping the very planet in a shroud that was both comforting and suffocating. Crossing to the other side of the circle of sand in which the playground was situated, Kazuto sat himself down in the swing and waited, for nothing in particular, as the moon carved its way across the heavens.

He didn't know how long he sat there, waiting for something to happen. Fidgeting under the stress of the need to act where there was nothing to be acted upon. A rough estimate by Hideki's calculations had stated that it would take several months to grow the "Yui Biocapsule". It normally would have taken twelve to produce a fully grown adult, even with accelerated cultivation technology, but due to her relative young age the process could be slashed. But this still meant that they would have to wait, bide their time and pray that nothing of misfortune would take place to ruin their conspiracy against Fuzen. It was a desperate gamble, really; everything depended on avoiding suspicion and discovery.

Shifting his weight backwards, Kazuto began to slowly swing himself back and forth. Briefly, he flashed back to the memory of Asuna praying to God for everyone's safety. It occurred to him then that perhaps the purpose of religion was not to provide comfort or ignorance, but to have someone to rely on, someone who was dependable. Asuna often spoke of the security and peace having a relationship with God brought her. Even if such an entity did not exist, was it worth the delusion if it brought confidence to one self? As much as he hated the fact, Kazuto knew that he had been through much more pain than most. Yet he did not seek the comfort and alleviation of religion that so many less tested individuals already had. Did being pushed to an extreme offer two choices of acceptance? If he had been raised differently or had a different personality, perhaps he would have become ridiculously devoted to a religion, seeking its guidance and protection in the face of such adversity.

But whether I pray to a man in the sky or not, I can never stop relying on myself, Kazuto thought, rubbing at the rust-corroded metal of the swing chain. Regardless of the love and caring God could offer his people, he had also stated in his writings that he would allow his creations to live their own lives. Divine intervention was never to become commonplace. So prayer would remain a placebo effect, more a psychological assurance than anything else.

Not a difference maker.

Kazuto felt the shift in the air beside him but did not turn to address it immediately. It may have been a sense of fear, or maybe an acute laziness, but he did not turn his head to look. After all, he didn't want to know who was standing there.

"Good night," A young voice spoke out, demanding his attention regardless.

Breathing heavily out of his nose, Kazuto turned his head to the left and made eye contact with the small boy sitting atop the monkey bars.

"You tucking me in?"

Takashi snorted and crossed his arms over his chest. "I don't think our relationship is so solid just yet."

"Didn't know we had one to begin with."

Even as he spoke nonchalantly, Kazuto's mind was racing. What could he possibly be doing here, of all times? He had let Takashi go to start anew, despite the boy's attempt on their lives. Had that turned out, now, to be a fatal mistake? Had he come to finish what he had started?

Takashi brushed his wild hair behind his ear and said to him, "Don't worry. I'm not here to kill you."

"...Ah."

The boy on the monkey bars averted his gaze at the response and continued softly,

"I'm here to apologize."

Kazuto blinked.

Apparently deciding it wasn't best to start saying sorry immediately, Takashi cleared his throat and asked, "So...how have you been doing?"

"Fine," The older boy answered blandly, still struggling with the surreality of holding an honest conversation with someone who had tried to kill him.

Takashi frowned almost sadly at him.

"You don't look fine."

Of course, he wasn't actually fine. There were so many things to worry about. Yui. Asuna. His job. Fuzen. Keeping everything a secret from the rest of the family until the time was right. He could almost scream at the injustice of it all. These were burdens meant for wider shoulders. In his final days within Aincrad, he had fought for others, not just himself, but the weight of those obligations paled in comparison to his current ones. He had thought that pain would be lifted once he escaped from the virtual world, but they had only pursued him to strike tenfold.

"I'm dealing with some issues right now," Kazuto answered finally, laughing inside at the massive understatement. "Someone very important has been taken away from me."

Takashi half chuckled at the words. "Hurts, doesn't it?"

Feeling a small stab of guilt at being somewhat insensitive, the older boy nodded and said, "Yeah."

"Is it your girl?"

"No. My daughter."

The younger boy looked genuinely surprised to hear this. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out a card-sized box and pulled a cigarette out of it, as well as producing a lighter to flame the other end, drawing a skeptical look from Kazuto.

"What, you smoke?"

"Yes."

"What are you, thirteen?"

"Fourteen. I'm practically a man, now."

"You're going to die early, kid."

"Want one?"

"Didn't you just hear what I said?"

Takashi hid his box and lighter away in his clothes once more and proceeded to slowly smoke his due. Kazuto still continued to eye him apprehensively, somewhat disturbed by the sight of such a young soul enjoying the ties of drugs, but said nothing.

The younger boy exhaled, clouded air billowing from his nostrils, and he pulled the cigarette out of his lips to speak. "You have to fight to protect what you have," He said softly. "But if you have nothing, you lack the right to fight."

"You can fight for yourself," Kazuto countered.

Takashi shook his head. "Maybe. But when I tried to take your life, as well as Asuna's, I wasn't doing it for my own satisfaction. I was doing it for my brother. As you knew him, Kuradeel. So in a sense, I didn't act for anything. Killing you would have been meaningless."

"Why did you do it, then?"

He coughed briefly before thinking his next words over carefully. "I...I was wrong," He said with some difficulty. "If my brother hadn't been dead, if there was still something for me to fight for, and you had still wronged him, I might have done it. But he is dead and I've come to terms with that. I came here to apologize for both of us, I guess. The brother I knew would never have tried to take another life; the game warped him. It sapped his morals away. When he tried to kill you, he also had nothing. And so he was wrong."

"But I also took a life," Kazuto said, leaning his elbows into his knees and clasping his hands together. "It haunts me, but I was responsible, in the end. How can you find it within yourself to forgive me so easily?"

Takashi smiled and stubbed his cigarette into the metal pole of a monkey bar, twisted the smashed end until all of the sparks had been extinguished.

"You fought to protect what you had," He said simply. "You fought for Asuna, didn't you? And now you're fighting for your daughter. As long as there's something to protect, no wrong has been committed. My brother and I both fought when we had nothing. And for that...I am truly sorry."

And then he was gone, vanishing into the night like a specter of darkness. Kazuto didn't watch him go; because watching would mean he might expect to see the young boy again, and he got the feeling that Takashi had just closed their connections to each other for the last time.

Sighing and staring up at the stars, he had to wonder about the boy's mentality. To be so satisfied with having nothing; it would have driven him crazy. How could such a young person decide that he had nothing left? Kazuto was years older than him and had yet to give up on what he wanted.

Maybe there really is nothing for him.

Yet despite this, Kazuto felt that Takashi had somehow totally avoided another side to his philosophy: One may fight to protect what he has, but one may also fight to take back what is his. What did Takashi want? Was it happiness, was it vengeance, was it family? It made him almost uneasy to let the young boy walk away without the intention to pursue any of these things.

There are many ways to die.

Be deceased a beloved, perish an enemy, die a mystery. It now came to his attention that death left very much to be desired; everyone would meet their end one way or another. The only control they had over that was how they would go out. That, he realized mournfully, was and always would be the difference between Yui and human beings. Even if she one day walked among them as an equal human in both capability and capacity, there would always be the one time she did not have control over her fate. As much as Kazuto disliked cliche'd sayings, her life was in his hands. In the end, Kazuto knew that he had a personal vendetta in this besides his daughter. The result of their foray, whether it was successful or not, would decide some very important things for him.

He had to be convinced that trying was worth it. He had poured his heart and soul into escaping Aincrad, yet it had followed him into reality and continued to plague him. He had always been a firm believer in the virtue that hard work could produce endless results; misfortune was simply a coincidental obstacle which could be simply crossed. Recent events had, however, weakened his faith in this. So much effort had gone into securing the well being of the people he loved; yet they all sat in perilous positions even as he stood here. If Yui were to die, if the transfer were to fail, it wouldn't just mean that he would have to accept that some things were beyond his control; no, he would be convinced that no amount of effort could produce a guarantee of anything.

I guess I'll start going to church, then, if that happens.

And so, the true battle of wills began. Kazuto had to muster his courage at first to return to work; he was readily convinced that burly men could jump out from behind every last corner within the Complexity building, ready to handcuff him and send him to prison in the name of president Fuzen. This never took place, however, and Hideki was similarly unaffected, and so Kazuto began to gingerly place some faith in Fuzen's promise to keep them around, if simply to watch them "suffer."

This was also part of his motivation to return to work. In an act of defiance, he would not show that his confrontation with the man had affected him deeply. He performed his duties with as much precision as before, and then some, in an effort to flaunt his supposed fortitude. There were a few instances where Kazuto saw Fuzen watching him from behind a window or another cubicle, and the young man would return the president's dagger like gaze blankly, as if to say, Is there anything you need, sir?

Still, they had to be careful. Overly inciting Fuzen's wrath may result in their discovery. In order to carry out the growth of Yui's biocapsule without interruption, Hideki had had the proper equipment moved discreetly to one of the company's warehouses by the sea. According to him, nobody ever paid attention to what went on there, since it was mostly meant for storage of materials for projects years later. As long as Fuzen wasn't specifically looking for something, their operations would remain hidden.

"It will take around two hundred days to fully develop the clone," Hideki had told him over the phone one late night. All three of them had also changed their phone numbers, giving the excuse of needing newer tech to their relatives, for fear of their calls being bugged as well. Kazuto had been slightly skeptical about going so far, but Hideki had been insistent. If Fuzen thought it necessary, he would do it without hesitation, he said.

"Two hundred days..." Kazuto murmured, keeping his voice low as Asuna was sleeping on his lap. "Just over six months, at around the start of our second year of college. What do we do once it's done?"

"My colleagues and I will secretly extract Yui's data from the SAO servers stored within one of the chambers of the upper floors. You don't have the clearance for that, so you'll have to leave it to me."

Kazuto smiled regretfully. "I'm leaving pretty much everything to you, you know. I'll owe you big for this one."

"Heh, no kidding. Once this is over, first round of drinks are on you."

"I don't drink."

"Not yet."

"Heh."

"Enjoy the monotony while you can. In six month's time everything is going to change, whether for better or for worse."

Kazuto was quietly enjoying his lunch on the college grounds one afternoon when an unexpected social gathering took place.

He had been plunged in deep thought beforehand, as he slowly munched on the small meal Asuna had prepared for him earlier that morning. He always insisted that he could make his own food, feeling both guilt and embarrassment at having her do it instead, but she never relented.

He was currently thinking about the next two hundred days. While he understood that there was nothing he could do while they all waited for the biocapsule to grow, it wasn't so instinctively simple. At least he would be able to visit the warehouse once in a while, to check her progress; though he wasn't so sure about seeing his daughter suspended in a test tube with life support.

"Hey, Kazu-kun."

Kazuto glanced up and saw Asuna smiling down at his position on the bench. Taking a moment to appreciate the beauty of her expression, he returned the gesture and swallowed before saying, "Hey."

She plopped down on the seat beside him and scooted close, opening her own lunch as she did so. Reaching with a pair of fresh chopsticks, she plucked a small piece of meat up and held it before him. "Here."

Kazuto frowned. "You already made my lunch; you don't have to feed me too."

Asuna huffed and narrowed her eyes at him, obviously offended. "You don't have a choice, okay? Eat."

He rolled his eyes in mock exasperation and slightly unhinged his mouth so Asuna could push the little morsel inside. After chewing and swallowing appropriately, he sighed and said teasingly, "You're so domineering, Asuna."

She blushed at his word choice and replied, "I'm just proactive."

Kazuto coughed in the opposite direction and added, "You always pin me down during the night, too..."

Asuna's flushed reached the tips of her ears and she stuttered, "Lies!" Before slapping her lunch box closed and turning away with a disgruntled humph.

"Don't have too much fun without me!" A voice called out.

They both looked up to see Takanashi jogging slowly towards their bench. Pulling out his own meal, he huffed, "I refuse to be left out of such social gatherings," Before taking a seat beside Asuna and digging into his lunch.

"Say, Asuna," The shoe-expert mentioned as he ate, "I like your new hairstyle."

She blushed again, albeit more slightly, and said softly, "Thanks."

"You're welcome," Takanashi said earnestly before stopping short and adding, "Kazuto's glaring at me now, so I'll stop."

"Lay off him, Kazuto," Asuna scolded as she elbowed her lover in the ribs, causing him to cringe slightly. Apparently, she was still miffed about his comment about her being domineering. "At least he noticed that I changed my hair."

"I was waiting for the right opportunity to capitalize on it," He shot back strategically, or at least that was what he thought, because this didn't lift Asuna's mood one bit.

"My, you youngsters seem to be having some fun."

"You're only ten months older than me, Hitomi," Asuna sighed as the "older" woman sat down on the bench next to Kazuto, effectively filling it up completely.

"I have fifty year's experience," Hitomi retorted as she dug around for her own food. "You, on the other hand, are twelve with six year's experience. So why is Kazuto hear all irked?"

"I'm not irked," The man snorted. "Asuna is being unreasonable."

Hitomi looked at Kazuto's lover with raised eyebrows, asking for an explanation.

Asuna blinked when she realized that her grievances sounded more far-fetched when she had to explain them to someone. "He failed to compliment me on my new hair style."

Hitomi glanced at her head and said blandly, "Oh, I didn't notice," Which made Asuna's forehead twitch irritably at the obvious jab.

Kazuto closed his eyes and crossed his arms in an arrogant manner and said, "Besides, my compliments come in physical actions. Words are flimsy."

Hitomi snickered. "So you compliment her in the bed instead?"

The couple simultaneously blushed.

Now that the chapter's over, I must offer my gratitude to you guys. Our Love Incarnate now has over 100 Reviews and Followers! :D Thanks so much for making this my standout work so far. I've had great fun writing it and we aren't done yet! Thanks to all of my readers, as well as Nornichica for being #100, and Ai Mamorou, King Ognik, TRIX19, starburst98, and StephanieHeartfilia for the frequent feedback, as well as everyone else who took the time to leave their thoughts here. It might not be obvious, but you've all helped me develop this story accordingly.

~Shrrg