ALO: The Rangers
Hello! There will be more chapters of ALO: The Rangers, probably including some non-canon stuff.
Also I decided to revert the 'older Kirito' thing and I am keeping Sinon Kirito's age though she was a year younger in canon.
Chapter 6: Finally Over
(1st person, Sinon, January 23rd, 8:39am)
School was bland, but at least they were so kind as to put on these important news of Sugou being arrested on TV, in the classrooms, why? I have no f***ing clue but it was annoying because I didn't really want to remember the pain of being impaled by a sword or Kazuto nearly getting knifed to death right now. Or ever.
So I tried to ignore the TV where some reporters were talking about yesterdays events.
Thankfully no one had figured out that it was us yet, or that it was Kazuto who cleared SAO.
Starting in a week or two Asuna would also be coming to this school, along with all the children among the 300 players who didn't wake up.
Also we're expecting to hear from the government agent sooner or later.
The teacher droned on about something or other and the class went by as usual.
RECTO Progress had shut down and RECTO had taken a hit so ALO died, sadly but expectedly.
(3:03pm)
We had just gotten home when Kazuto pulled out his phone, and when he saw the caller ID, or after looking over his shoulder, lack there-of, he sighed.
"It's the government guy." he said.
"It's not like that is surprising or something." I pointed out.
"Doesn't change that it's annoying." he answered and picked up the phone, setting it to speaker so I could hear.
"Hello Kikuoka-san." Kazuto said in an annoyed voice.
"Hello Kirigaya-san, I would like to meet with you and Asada-san, anywhere convenient for you is fine." said the agent.
"Why is there so much stuff to do?" I muttered quietly, hoping that the agent didn't hear me, either he didn't hear or he didn't care.
"There is a cafe near my house, you know where I am so it should be no problem for you to meet us there." Kazuto said, probably determined to make as much work as possible for the government agent.
A few seconds later the agent asked "The one nearest to your house?"
"Yes." Kazuto said.
"Alright, I will be there in about 15 minutes." the agent said.
Kazuto hung up and said "Great, and here I thought we could, I dunno, maybe take a break or something like that." sarcastically.
"Oh come on, talking to someone at a cafe isn't that bad." I said, though inside I felt the same way.
"Right... you haven't talked to him, he asks a lot of questions." Kazuto answered, which was true, I hadn't ever talked to him, only heard Kazuto talk to him for a short time.
We went outside and drove to the cafe on Kazuto's motorcycle.
We arrived with about 5 minutes to spare and just took a table and waited there for the agent to come.
5 minutes later he arrived, earning a few glances due to his clothing and sat down at our table.
"Hello." Kazuto said shortly.
"Hello." he answered.
"What do you want to ask questions about this time?" Kazuto asked.
"Is it impossible for you too consider that I just wanted to thank you?" he asked, feigning being hurt.
"No." Kazuto answered.
"Fine, order anything you want, I'll pay for it, I'll tell you after." he said.
We got up and walked over and ordered something that would hopefully take long enough that he would finish talking with us by the time it was done so we could eat it in peace.
We walked back over to the table and he started talking again.
"I wanted to ask about what happened inside ALO and if possible in the parking lot of the hospital." he said and we were glad we chose a table far away from everybody else, because we didn't want everybody to know it was us, publicity sucks.
"Be more specific." Kazuto said coldly.
"How did you beat the world tree, was it not designed to be impossible?" he asked, sounding awkward.
"What kind of answer do you expect us to give? Exactly what happened?" Kazuto asked.
"Ideally." he said.
"I used spells in the game to increase the attack area of my swords and cut through the blockade of guardians while Sinon blocked the thrown swords and a spell was cast on us to protect us from their arrows, we made it to the top with less then 5 percent of our total HP remaining. Then a program which was saved to my NerveGear that was originally part of SAO used an admin card acquired by Asuna by unknown means to open a door designed to be opened only by admins." Kazuto said annoyed and gave me a look that said 'I told you so'.
"Enough accuracy?" he then asked.
"Yes that will do. What about after you made it to the top?" asked the agent.
"We found Asuna's cage which had a normal button that opened the door on and pressed the button to let Asuna out, we planned to go find an admin console so that said program could log Asuna out but Sugou, under the guise of 'Fairy King Oberon' showed up and used magic not yet implemented into the game for general use to restrain us and impaled us, excluding Asuna, with swords, slowly lowering the pain limiter." Kazuto said.
"Then at around the time that the pain limiter reached 5 I remembered that Kayaba had given me his admin credentials for unknown reason and used his admin account to remove Sugou's admin privileges and then removed the swords impaling us."
Speaking of Kayaba, we still needed to do something about that 'seed' he gave us, as the file seemed to be called.
"After that Sugou tried to generate the sword 'Excalibur' and found himself unable to do so due to lack of admin privileges. I generated the sword and gave it him before setting the pain limiter to 0 and fighting him, in the end chopping him in half."
"Afterwards we went to the hospital Asuna was staying at and in the parking lot he attacked us armed with a gun and a knife." I felt a bit light-headed and Kazuto held my hand under the table, helping me calm down.
"I told Shino to get help and while he, he failed to hit either of us with his gun before running out of ammo and switched to his knife. I fought him and disabled him by hitting his head against his van sustaining multiple minor knife injuries and he was taking into custody by the hospital security." Kazuto finished.
"I see, do you have anything else to add?" asked the agent.
"He tried to molest Asuna inside ALO, but didn't managed to because first his hand was bitten and then pinned to his body by Sinon's arrow, turning his attention to us." Kazuto said.
"I see. That will be all, sorry for making you have to remember that, but it will go against Sugou Nobuyuki in court." said the agent and I noticed he had been taking notes this whole time.
"In my opinion you doesn't deserve a court hearing." Kazuto muttered.
"What was that?" asked the agent.
"Nothing, nothing." Kazuto answered.
"Well, I'll be going." he said, stood up, and walked away.
Kazuto then added "You owe us by the way!" to the agent who was walking away. The agent just nodded and walked away.
I released a breath I didn't realize I was holding and said "Okay, I see what you meant."
Then added in a whisper "Also, why did you lie about the Kayaba part and not tell him Kayaba is alive?"
"He doesn't need to know. The less he knows the better, not like he would believe it if I said 'the ghost of Kayaba gave me his admin credentials'." Kazuto whispered back.
Shortly after the stuff we had ordered finished and they called our names.
We walked over and got the stuff we ordered, which was just some hot french butter thing, croissants maybe? Yeah that was it.
We bit into them and found that they were surprisingly good.
"Wow this is good." I muttered.
"Yeah." Kazuto answered.
We finished eating them and walked out of the cafe, walking home.
(February 4th, 7:42am)
We arrived at the school gates, only to see Asuna on crutches 'walking along'.
We ran over to her and I said "Finally, rehab most have been boring for you, at least Kazuto visited me everyday."
"Hey! Thank you again for saving me." she said.
"A: Stop with the thanking already, and B: Please be a little quieter about it, nobody here other then our friends here know that he's Kirito and I'm Sinon yet, and we hope to keep it that way." I said.
"Oh okay, sorry, speaking of which, I don't think I know your real name yet." she said.
"Asada Shino, just call me Shino though, we're friends." I said, glad that I had people I could call friends, though nobody but Kazuto new my secret, and it was probably going to stay that way because of the SAO survivors the only one likely to spread it around would be Endou and I had found out that she had joined Laughing Coffin at some point and gone to an insane asylum, good for her, the hypocrite.
"Okay and you were Kazuto, right?" she asked Kazuto.
"Yeah." Kazuto said.
"My real name is Asuna." she said awkwardly. Though I already knew that I couldn't help but laugh slightly, even I had known that I shouldn't make my user name my real name.
"Why would you do that?" I asked.
"Hey! It was my first game, I didn't know you were supposed to make it something other then your name." she said in defense.
"Well now every single person here will know you were the second-in-command of the Knights of the Blood Oath." I said teasingly.
She looked like she hadn't realized yet because she made some sounds and drooped.
"How old are you?" Kazuto asked.
"I'm 15. What about you two?" she asked.
"Both 14 but we got bumped up a class so if you had good grade in your previous school you might be in the same class as us." I said.
"Oh cool!" she said.
"It's not that cool. And I take it you got good grades?" I said awkwardly.
"Yeah, mostly As with a few Bs." she said.
"Same here, he gets straight As without trying though." I said.
"It's not my fault it's easy." he said and I laughed slightly.
"Are you two always like this?" Asuna asked.
"How many times have we been asked that in how many different situations?" Kazuto asked me.
"Maybe 10 or so?" I said, though in truth I didn't know.
"Sounds about right." Kazuto said.
"Are you two ignoring me?" asked Asuna.
"Yes." I said.
"Why yo-" Asuna started saying and then realized that by saying that I had proved myself wrong and said "I just fell for that..."
"Yep, you did. We never ignore our surroundings." I said.
She sighed and said "You two are impossible to deal with."
"We pride ourselves on it." Kazuto said jokingly.
"Do either of you ever say 'I'?" Asuna asked.
"Sometimes, though mostly when talking to each other, or telling annoying government agents what happened." I answered jokingly.
"What's that about government agents?" asked Asuna, curious.
"The day after we rescued you we had to tell an annoying agent what happened during ALO and in the hospital parking lot." I said.
"He is also useful you know, he is the reason we got your NerveGear back and how I found your hospital and how we found Asuna's hospital after all." Kazuto pointed out.
"But yeah he is annoying." he then added.
"You two have exciting lives." Asuna said.
"Didn't you have plenty of excitement in SAO?" I asked.
"I also had plenty of boredom sitting in a cage for two months." she pointed out.
"Good point, good point. Sorry we didn't find you sooner." I said.
"Thank you for finding me at all." she answered.
"Well, after school there will be a party at Egil's cafe, which is called Dicey Cafe, to celebrate the real end of SAO. After that we'll dive into new-ALO, if you want to, which is run by a different company which took over the servers, the company is called Ymir." I said.
"Cool, I'll be there, and I do want to dive into ALO, it sounds fun, I mean when you're not trapped in a cage." Asuna said.
"Great, we'll give you an Amusphere as your 'welcome back from the virtual world' present." I said jokingly.
Asuna laughed slightly and asked "Why does that sound like the exact opposite of what I should want and yet exactly what I do want?"
"I dunno but we should head to class, what is your classroom number, we'll take you there."
"234." she said.
"Let's see that should be on the sec-" I began trying to figure out where it was when Kazuto said "That's our classroom."
"Wait really?" I asked.
"Yes really." Kazuto said.
"Cool. Let's go then!" I said cheerfully.
(1:03pm)
Turns out Asuna doesn't make school any less boring, at least there is only an hour and a half left.
(Asuna, 2:30pm)
The bell rang and Kazuto and Sinon practically ran out of the building, stopping when they remembered I couldn't keep up at a run.
We walked out of the building and to the exit they walk home through and I got dropped off and will be picked up at.
We were met by Leafa and Horum, whose real names were Suguha—though she likes her close (read: SAO) friends to call her Sugu—and Horoku respectively.
After many greetings and telling each other that we will see each other at 6:50, at the party, though the time Kazuto and Shino had been given was 7, the person driving me home showed up and they all walked home.
I had also found out during our chatting that Shino was staying with Kazuto and Sugu because she lived alone before SAO, which means living along at the age of like 13, and so after not paying rent for a year she didn't have a house.
I teased them about it and they said in sync ""We're 14! Get your mind out of the gutter!"" though it was more yelled then 'said'.
I walked over to the car and got in to the back of the car, noticing that my mother was also in the back at the far side.
"Hello Asuna." she said as I got in and closed the door, the driver starting to drive.
"Hello mother." I said as politely as I could, after a year of talking however I pleased and 2 months of practically not talking—and when I did it was rude because I was talking to a person who was keeping me imprisoned—at all I somewhat forgot how to be 'lady-like'.
"Who were those people? You should not talk with such crude and uneducated people of the lower classes." her mother said very sternly.
How DARE she? They did more for me in the year I've known them then she did in my whole life!
"They are not crude, definitely not uneducated, as they both get better grades then me in the same classes as me despite being a year younger, the government owes THEM, and they saved my life countless times, including saving me from the person who I hated and would have had to marry otherwise because you don't care in the slightest what I think about the person you want me to marry so you didn't notice I hated him. Oh and I forgot to mention, they endured the pain of being impaled by swords to save me when they could have run away with the press of a button! Oh and they're the people who cleared SAO!" I said, practically not reeling in my anger towards the end.
My mother was shocked to the point where she didn't answer, either because she was impressed by them, though that was unlikely, most likely it is just because I talked to her that way.
I turned away from her and we sat in silence for the rest of the short drive home and then didn't talk to each other the rest of the day, including dinner.
After dinner I asked Altsu-san, our driver, to drive me to the Dicey Cafe where the party was.
He agreed and we left before my mother could ask where I was going.
We arrived at the cafe and I got out of the car "Thank you Altsu-san." I said and waved goodbye as he drove away.
I entered the cafe and found that everyone, except Kazuto and Shino, were already here.
There was Andrew(Egil)—obviously, he was the owner of the cafe—Tsuboi(Klein), Rika(Lisbeth), Keiko(Silica), Sugu(Leafa), and Horoku(Horum) of the people I knew personally.
There were also Thinker and Yulier whose real names I didn't know, who were the now married—and surprisingly nice—commander and second-in-command of ALF, the Black Cats, some guild Kirito and Sinon saved at some point and trained during their 'forced vacation' which I sent them on with the threat of now making the sandwiches.
Sorry for the cliffhanger but there would have to be one unless you wanted this chapter to be like 6k words long and then it would only be up tomorrow.
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Anyway, cya me oouuttiiyy!