Chapter II

January 19th, 2025

12:00 PM, Japan standard time

"He said what?" Will exclaimed, anger permeating his voice. "Who the hell does he think he is? Isn't taking advantage of Asuna like that illegal?"

Kazuto nodded. "It is, or at least, it's supposed to be. He's exploiting a loophole in the law…" he replied quietly. Emily and Will sat next to him on the couch in the Kirigaya's living room, as he had just returned with disturbing news from the hospital. "He said the wedding is going to be on the twenty sixth. That's just a week from now."

Emily shook her head. "No way. He can't get away with this, there has to be something we can do," she said determinedly. "What about your friend in the Ministry? Can't you call in a favor with him or something? Maybe get Asuna moved somewhere safe?"

Kazuto shook his head again. "No… Mr. Yuuki would need to agree to the transfer, and since it's clear that he's at least partially in on the plan, he'd never do that. He doesn't know that Sugou and Asuna apparently hate each other, but by now Sugou's probably cooked up some kind of reason why he shouldn't listen to me if I say to move her," Kazuto replied. "Besides, Sugou works for Mr. Yuuki anyway. He'd find out where she was pretty quick, I bet."

Will clenched his fist. "Kazuto, next time you go visit Asuna, bring me with you on the off chance this Sugou bastard is there. I've got some choice words for him, and my mouth isn't going to be the only one talking," he said, and Emily shook her head coolly.

"In that case, you definitely shouldn't go right now, not until things get under control. If this is bad, just imagine how much worse it could get if you disrespected or even attacked someone with that much power," she pointed out, much to Will's chagrin.

"Emily's right, Will," Kazuto agreed. "Right now, I don't think there's much we can do. The only thing I can think of is to find Kayaba and get him to shut down the entire NerveGear network, but we'll have an even tougher time than the Ministry on our own with that."

After a moment, Will sighed and nodded, taking a deep breath to calm his anger. "You're right. Okay," he said quietly. "But there has to be something we can do… are we sure the SAO servers are down? There might be a hidden backup somewhere. What else could be keeping the players trapped?"

Kazuto shook his head. "I don't know… I could ask Kikuoka, but I doubt they'll find anything if they haven't already. Once they realized that the players who haven't woken up weren't just taking longer to wake up than everyone else, looking for a backup server was their first thought."

Hearing this, Will suddenly grinned. "Did they actually dive in to check?" he asked, and Emily's face paled.

"No, absolutely not. You're not-" she said, leaning over a confused Kazuto to grab Will's shoulder.

Will shook his head. "We've got to try. For Grace, Xander, Asuna, and everyone else who's still trapped by Kayaba," he reminded her. "If there's even a chance that diving back in could give us or the Ministry a clue, I say it's worth the risk, especially if we make some changes to the NerveGear."

Kazuto narrowed his eyes. "What sort of changes are you talking about?"

"You both remember the battle in SAO against Ursa and Alna, right?" Will replied.

"The floor where you almost died? Yeah, I still get panicked just thinking about it," Emily replied, and Will nodded.

"Well, I found out after we cleared the game that the reason I suddenly froze up like that wasn't because of something I did, or anything to do with me mentally. At that moment, I froze up in game because the NerveGear had detected external tampering being done, which is why my character stopped moving, and my hp bar allegedly hit zero," Will explained. "As it turns out, what they were doing wasn't simply just unplugging the ethernet cable, like what had happened to everyone at some point when the players were moved to hospital after the game was launched. They were removing the microwave transmitter itself, or more accurately, an amplifier that the NerveGear used to fry our brains."

Kazuto slowly nodded. "I think I see where you're going with this… you're saying that if we remove these amplifiers from our NerveGears, then it should be safe to dive back into SAO?" he asked, and Will shrugged.

"Supposedly, although we still run the risk of being trapped inside the game."

Kazuto shook his head. "Actually, if what you're suggesting works, we wouldn't. With the transmitter's ability to cook us out of the picture, it would hypothetically be safe for someone else to remove the headset."

Emily sighed. "I still don't like this. What if there's something else built into the NerveGear that can damage our brains? Something that none of us know about?"

Kazuto shook his head. "I'm certain there isn't. The guy I talked to from the Ministry, Seijirou Kikuoka, actually showed me the blueprints of the NerveGear at one point. The only thing that could possibly do any damage was the microwave transmitter's amplifier, and it would've been simply impossible for Kayaba to have the devices mass produced if there was something missing from the designs," he explained. "The only other conceivable way for the NerveGear to do any damage would be to literally overheat and explode while the user is wearing it, and I don't think I need to explain all the dozens of reasons why Kayaba wouldn't go down that route in addition to it simply being impractical as all hell."

Will and Emily both shook their heads. "Agreed. So I think here's what we do. Since my NerveGear has already been tampered with, back while we were still in SAO, it should be easier to break it open and make sure the transmission amplifier is removed. Based on that, I say we go ahead and use mine for the sake of time."

"Agreed," said Kazuto. "What about after that?"

Will thought for a minute. "Once we're sure the transmitter is out of the picture, I'll plug in and start the dive. Just to be on the safe side, however, in the event that I somehow do manage to get into SAO on my old account, there probably won't be a log out button still. In that case, let's set a timer for fifteen minutes. Since the goal of this is simply to see if it's possible to get into the SAO server on an account that was already logged out, if I don't end the dive myself within that amount of time, then it should be safe to say that I managed to get into the old server, and you can pull the headset off of me from outside."

After a moment, Emily sighed. "We're absolutely sure this is how we want to go about this?" she asked, and Will looked her in the eyes.

"I'm sure. I don't like putting my life in jeopardy any more than you do, but I'd rather it be me than you," he replied, resting his hand on hers.

"All right then," she finally answered. "Just… be careful. Don't stay any longer than you have to, promise?" she asked, and Will smiled reassuringly.

"I promise."

"Well, it wasn't easy without giving away the fact that both of you are here, and you have your NerveGears still, but I got a copy of the blueprints from Kikuoka," Kazuto said. It had been eight hours after they'd come up with their plan, and Kazuto had managed to get in contact with the man from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to procure a copy of the schematics used to create the NerveGear.

"What'd you tell him?" Will asked, to which Kazuto shrugged.

"Just that since I was allowed to keep my NerveGear, I wanted to make some modifications of my own to ensure it was totally safe. Guess he bought it, though since owning a NerveGear is essentially illegal without express permission, once we're done with this, it'd be best to get rid of all of ours pretty quick," he replied. "Anyway, let's get to work. According to these schematics, we first need to remove the back bottom panel. It should be right above where the top of your spinal cord is," he said, and Will flipped his NerveGear over.

Sure enough, there was a panel there. Will bit his lip as he held up a small flat headed screwdriver, and he slowly wedged it between the edge of the panel and the rest of the outer layer of the headset. Before long, he was able to pry off the panel, and exposed the inner workings of the device. "Hm. That was easier than I thought. Guess Dr. Charick didn't bother putting this thing back together all the way after I was pulled back in. That, or it was never designed to be taken apart in the first place. Okay, Kazuto, what's next?" he asked, while Emily sat next to him on the floor of Kazuto's bedroom. The black haired boy set the copy of the blueprints down on the floor.

"Let me take a look. If what you were told was true, then there shouldn't be anything there to remove, but in an untampered NerveGear, the transmission amplifier would be right there, with a series of pins locking it in place," he explained. Pointing the flashlight inside the opening of the device, he grinned as the transmitter was indeed gone. In its place was a simple, large piece of rubber covering the wires that were originally connected to the amplifier. "Tch, just like taking apart a monitor. Looks good to me. I think we can seal it back up now," he said, handing the device back to Will.

Will nodded, and he flipped it over before setting the panel back where it had been and ripping off a piece of silver tape. With their plans to get rid of their NerveGears once the remaining players had been freed, they'd decided that it would be fine to use such a temporary means of patching it up. It wasn't like they were going to need them much longer. At least, that was what they hoped.

"All right then. I guess all that's left now is to set a timer, plug in, and fire this bad boy up," Will said, letting out a long breath as he stared at his reflection in the chipped glass visor. "Once more unto the breach, huh…"

Emily opened her timer on her phone and set it to go off in fifteen minutes. She already knew it would be some of the longest minutes of her life, if not the longest.

On one hand, she knew why they were doing this, and they'd taken all the possible precautions they could. The only other thing they could do that could be safer would be to use Suguha's Amusphere instead, but Kazuto had been adamant that they not involve his sister with their efforts, something that Will and Emily could all too easily understand.

But on the other hand, she was still unnerved by the idea of anyone even using the NerveGear again, especially someone as close to her as Will. Even with everything they'd done to ensure his safety, from making sure the microwave amplifier was fully removed, to securing a piece of aluminum foil over where the empowered microwaves would be transmitted from if the amplifier were still inside the device to block the transmission, the whole idea of diving back into SAO still gave her a bad feeling, even if they were only going in for a moment.

"All right, you're plugged in, Will," said Kazuto. Will nodded, and he slipped the SAO game cartridge inside the device, before putting the NerveGear on his head. It felt familiar, but also foreign, and he truthfully hoped it'd stay that way. "You're good to go. As soon as you start it up, we'll hit the timer. Remember, you're just trying to see if you can get into SAO. You don't need to stick around for anything."

"Got it," Will replied as he laid down on the mattress. Emily kneeled down beside him, and she rested her hand on his.

"Stay safe, okay?" she quietly asked.

In response, Will wrapped his fingers around her hand and nodded. "Always," he replied, looking her in the eyes one last time before laying his head down against the pillow. He closed his eyes, and just as he had more than two fateful years prior, he opened his mouth as the device began to hum.

"Link Start!"

"Okay… so far, so good…" Will thought to himself as the tunnel of lights appeared in front of him. The five disks for his five senses appeared after that, each of them blinking green with a checkmark just like they were supposed to. Selecting English as his language, he was expecting a box to appear for him to enter his old login information into.

But to his surprise, he was instead met with a black screen. "Well then… this is new…" he mentally mused. Suddenly, words appeared, and he read them out loud in his mind.

"Error: Server not found. Rejecting fulldive."

Out of nowhere, the black surroundings were overwhelmed with light, and then he was back in Kazuto's room.

"Well… that sure was quick…" he mused, and Emily gasped in surprise, before collapsing on top of him with an expression of relief.

"So what happened? You weren't out for even two minutes," Kazuto asked. They were now sitting down on the couch in the living room.

"After I said the magic words, everything started as it did before. The tunnel of bright lights, the sensory disks. But the login box didn't appear, and neither did my avatar or the world. It was just this black… void," Will explained. "It stayed like that for a few moments, and then an error message appeared, and the dive ended on its own."

Kazuto tilted his head. "What was in the error box?" he asked. Will told him what was in the error message before it had disappeared, and then he narrowed his eyes in thought. "Well, I'm honestly not that surprised. Did I ever tell you what happened after my avatar disappeared along with Heathcliff's?"

Will and Emily both shook their heads. "No, I don't believe so. Is this to do with how you and Asuna survived after your HP hit zero?" Emily asked, to which Kazuto nodded.

"Yeah. Basically, while everyone else was being logged out, Asuna, Kayaba, and I all met above Aincrad. We watched it crumble to pieces below us, and then Kayaba congratulated us on clearing the game, saying that at Argus' headquarters, the SAO mainframe was in the process of wiping its drives. And then, he left, like he had vanished into the wind. After that, it wasn't long before Asuna and I followed suit in a flash of light, and then the next thing I knew, I was opening my real eyes again," Kirito recounted.

Will narrowed his eyes in thought. "Yeah, that'd make sense. If the game was deleted, then there wouldn't be a world for it to generate, and it wouldn't be able to draw any information from the cartridge either."

Emily sighed. "So what you're saying is… we're back at square one…" she said quietly, and both Kazuto and Will nodded, disappointed expressions on their faces.

The next morning, Will let out a yawn as he sleepily opened his eyes. Late the previous night, he'd walked downstairs and moved to the couch after he felt like Kazuto's bedroom had suddenly gotten much, much colder. As it was so late, he didn't bother to try and wake the black haired boy and ask why it was so cold, and since he didn't know where Kazuto's heater was, he wasn't sure he'd be able to turn it up himself, even if he wanted to. As a guest of the Kirigaya's, it didn't feel okay to take matters like that into his own hands, least of all in one of their own bedrooms.

As such, he'd simply decided to quietly walk down the stairs in the middle of the night. Fortunately, it appeared the Kirigaya's left all of the lights off that late at night, and so his eyes weren't seemingly blinded by the bright overhead lights, as they had been anytime he'd left his dorm room at night for any reason. To anyone else it'd be trivial at best, but to Will, and likely everyone else who'd made it out of SAO, they all longed for the days when they could call such things simple, back before they had to worry about dying any time they stepped outside on a nearly daily basis. Without the lights on, his eyes had adjusted to the dark rooms, and he was able to make it to the living room without barely a sound.

As he sat up, he saw that he'd accidentally left his phone on overnight on the coffee table. Curious to see what he'd been looking at before falling asleep on the couch, he picked up the phone and rubbed his eyes as he looked at the screen. It was a news article written in hiragana that he couldn't entirely understand, but he understood enough from the picture of the Sword Art Online box art below the headline to remember what it was: just another article saying that there was still no explanation why some of Kayaba's victims had yet to wake up.

"May as well go back upstairs and grab some clothes for the day…" he muttered to himself, slipping the phone back into his pocket. As he stepped out of the living room, however, he heard Suguha let out an embarrassed squeal from the top of the stairs, which was then followed by a series of frantic footsteps and her door being pulled closed. "Wonder what that's all about," he thought, before knocking on Kazuto's door. "Hey, Kazuto. I'm gonna get some clothes and change in the bathroom. Can I come in for a second?"

To his surprise, he didn't receive a reply at first. "Maybe he's still asleep," he guessed after a moment of silence, only to then hear Kazuto call out shakily from his room.

"Will, get in here. You need to see this…"

Curious, he opened the door and saw Kazuto sitting at his desk. "What's up?" he asked, and Kazuto rolled his chair over to the side.

"Am I seeing things now, or is that…" Kazuto asked, and Will walked over to the computer and took a look at the screen. There was a message from somebody named Andrew Mills, and he couldn't quite understand the entire message. But attached at the bottom of the message was an image, one with a face that, even through the low resolution, was all too familiar to Will.

"No way…" he muttered in shock. "Is that… Is that Asuna?" he asked, and Kazuto sighed.

"I don't know… but an old friend of ours sent me that message last night. It's blurry as all hell, but it definitely looks like her, doesn't it?" Kazuto asked, to which Will nodded.

"It does… where was this taken? And who's Andrew Gills? You said they're an old friend of ours, so you must be talking about SAO, but…" Will asked, trailing off. The name sounded very familiar, but there was something about it that didn't quite mesh.

"Don't worry, I'll reintroduce you to him. But after seeing this, I need to go talk with him and get some more information. Would you and Emily like to come with me?" Kazuto asked, a worried, but also hopeful grin on his face.

After a moment, Will nodded. "Yeah, I'll tag along, and I'll ask Emily when she wakes up."

Kazuto's eyes brightened. "Great. I actually told him you both were here already. Trust me, you'll recognize him when you see him."

Emily stretched her arms and yawned as she and Will followed Kazuto down a long alley. "Hey, Kazuto. Where exactly are we going? You still haven't told us who we're going to visit," Will asked, only to be met with the same excited grin that he'd shown him when they'd left the house. It was almost frustrating, but they both knew better than most that they could trust Kazuto.

Emily lightly poked him with her elbow. "Come on, Will. Quit trying to spoil the surprise for us," she jokingly chided him. Will sighed, and then after a moment, he nodded.

"Hey, it's like I said. You both know this guy, just not in this world. He's an SAO survivor we all know very well. In fact, that's where we're headed," Kazuto reminded them as they walked around yet another corner in Taito Ward, nodding in the direction of a large wooden door painted in red. Mounted on the door was a set of large dice, along with the words 'Dicey Cafe'.

"The Dicey Cafe? Who do we know from SAO who'd be at a cafe?" Will muttered, and Kazuto shrugged.

"Oh come on. Doesn't this area look familiar to either of you?" he asked.

Will and Emily turned around to look at their surroundings again, and as they did so, Kazuto pushed open the door. "Well… now that you mention it, this does kind of look like…" Will started to say, before everything suddenly clicked. "Algade!"

A chuckle sounded from behind them, and they both smiled with happiness as they recognized it instantly. "Well now, I know you said you both lived quite a ways away, but I didn't think it'd take you two whole months to come by and visit!" a man said from behind a bar as he finished drying another cup and set it next to a row of others. He walked out from around a tall bar counter. "Come on then, let me get a look at you both."

"Agil!" Will and Emily both exclaimed excitedly, rushing inside and hugging the tall man. "It's been so long, how have you been?" Will asked as Kazuto walked in behind them and closed the door.

Agil grunted quietly, but he smiled back at the three kids. Back in the early days of their time in Sword Art Online, Will, Emily, Grace, and Xander had all met Agil together in Tolbana. Another of their earlier friends, an ex-beta tester named Diavel, had asked him to join them as a third tank to even out their party. This had been all within the first few weeks of SAO, before the first boss raid meeting, before they'd cleared the first floor, before even the assault team had been formed. And ever since that day, Agil had been one of their closest friends.

"I've been pretty good, but I'm glad to see the two of you are doing all right," he replied, and Kazuto grinned as he looked around the empty cafe.

"So what'd you do that scared off all your customers?" he asked jokingly.

"You kidding? This is just the calm before the storm, man. You should see this place at night. It's off the hook," Agil replied, walking back around the counter to get the three kids something to drink. "Waters all around?" he asked, to which all three nodded. "Coming right up."

"So what's the deal with that picture you sent me?" Kazuto asked, getting right down to business as the three of them sat down at the bar and Agil placed a small cup of water in front of each other them.

"Yeah, that's gonna take a bit of explaining," he said, leaning over to pull something out of a shopping bag. "But before we get to that, there's some context you need to get familiar with," he told them, handing Will a small box, as he was sitting in the middle.

"Alfheim… Online? What's this, Agil? Some kind of video game?" he asked, reading the box cover. Above the words were a pair of fairy-looking creatures with glowing wings, one pair red, and the other green.

"It's an MMO for the Amusphere, that rig that replaced the NerveGear on the market. At any rate, it's a VRMMO, kinda like Sword Art in fact. The name means 'Land of the Fairies.'"

Kazuto narrowed his eyes. "Fairies, huh? Sounds like a cute game," he mused.

"Not based on what I've read. For one thing, it's got no rules against player killing. In fact, I've heard PKing like that is even encouraged. For another, it's got a real hardcore skill system," Agil told them, surprising Emily.

"Hardcore?" she asked, and Agil nodded.

"Exactly. The game isn't level based, but skill based. How powerful your skills are depends on how much you use them. It's taking the whole 'use it or lose it' saying to a whole new level," he explained. "Not to mention, combat depends on your real life physical abilities, and instead of sword skills, you get magic in this game. It may look and feel like SAO at first, but there's a ton of differences, which brings me to the biggest thing. See those winged fairies on the cover?"

Will turned the box back over to look at them. "Yeah, what about them? Those are just NPC's, right?"

This time, Agil shook his head. "Nope. They're two of the old beta testers for the game. And those wings are legit. Get this, people are saying you can feel like you're flying in that game. Well, they're not wrong. You can actually fly, but I've been told that it's a pain to get used to."

"Yeah, I bet," Kazuto replied, with an eager grin. "I wonder how you're supposed to use something you don't have. Maybe the muscles in your back?" he wondered. Then, Agil cleared his throat, and Kazuto sighed, quickly remembering why they'd walked all the way to his cafe. "Right. Getting back to Asuna. What's she got to do with this game?"

In response, Agil pulled out a printed photo from his pocket. Holding out in front of them, he sighed. "Looks real familiar, doesn't she?" he asked.

"You weren't kidding, it really does look like her," Emily said as she looked at the photo, and Will nodded.

"Asuna…" Kazuto mumbled.

"That's my running theory too. I can't be sure, though…" Agil said.

"Would you cut it out already? Where the hell was this taken?" Kazuto quickly exclaimed, and Agil sighed again. Emily and Will both rested their hands on Kazuto's shoulders to calm him down.

"Alfheim Online. That was taken in the game," he told them. "Mind letting me see that box for a second?" he asked Will, who nodded and handed the barkeeper the game. Agil turned it over to show the map of the game's world on the back, and Will and Emily felt a bit frustrated once again at their still limited knowledge of written Japanese. Hearing it was no problem for them, even if what they thought they heard was normal English. Reading it was still another issue.

"So at the center of the world is this thing players are calling the World Tree. And at the top of that is this legendary castle. Players are divided up into nine different races of fairies, and the overall goal of the game is to be the first to reach that castle," Agil explained.

"Why not just fly up there?" Kazuto pointed out, and Agil shook his head.

"Already been tried, but there's a time limit on flying," he answered, before grinning. "But check this. These five players decided to try stacking up with the bigger players at the bottom, and they launched themselves like a multi stage rocket."

Kazuto, Emily, and Will all grinned back as they imagined the scene in their heads. "Huh, not a bad idea. It's out there, but it makes sense at the same time," Will mused, and Emily nodded in agreement.

"They definitely get props for clever thinking," Kazuto agreed.

Agil flashed them a smile. "Yeah, that's what I thought too. Turns out, those cats didn't even make it to the bottom branch, and with five of them together they still flew for almost an hour. That's how tall this tree is. But what they did manage to get were a couple photos, and after zooming in as much as they could, this is what they got," he replied, gesturing to the photos of what appeared to be Asuna.

"A bird cage. Kinda strange to put one up there where nobody's gonna see or hear any birds singing," Emily said, and the others all nodded.

"That's certainly one word for it. But with something that human looking inside, I think a better word would be a prison. What or who for, I don't know, but that definitely looks like Asuna. Even so, it could just be a coincidence, or even worse, an elaborate hoax," Agil answered. "See, the devs went and panicked when this happened. They put in this height limit on flying, so no matter how many people you stack up, if you get to a certain height, you'll hit this barrier, and that's it. At first it made sense to me, but then I started to wonder if it had always been there and people just never thought to try that, so the devs never felt a reason to mention it. And with photos that low in resolution, it wouldn't have been hard to shop them and fake the whole thing, or at the very least distract other players by lying about an NPC for a later part of the quest."

Will nodded in grim agreement as Kazuto picked up the box and turned it around. Suddenly, he narrowed his eyes and gasped. "What's up? Find something?" Emily asked, and he showed her the name at the bottom of the case.

"RECT progress. You remember that creep I told you about? The one who's trying to get Asuna married to him?" he asked, and when Will and Emily both nodded, he went on. "That guy's the head of the Fulldive branch there. That can't be a coincidence."

Will narrowed his eyes and rested his chin in his hand. "Now that you mention it, that is pretty convenient for him," he muttered. "This guy wants to get married to Asuna in a way that requires exploiting a gap in the law because she's trapped in a VRMMO, and he's also in charge of the game where a picture was taken that looks like Asuna is trapped and isolated in a bird cage. And if that is Asuna… I can't help but wonder if the others are in there somewhere too."

Meanwhile, Emily looked up at Agil. "Agil, could we borrow this for a little while?" she asked as Kazuto stared down at Asuna's photo, as if he were worried she might disappear again if he took his eyes off of her.

The bartender nodded. "Yeah. In fact, I got three of them here. Kazuto told me that you two were making plans to fly over for school a little while ago, and I had a feeling that once I showed you these photos you'd be wanting to dive in to check it out for yourselves, so I went and bought all three of you a copy. It's the least I could do after you all got us out of SAO."

Emily nodded with a grateful smile on her face. "Thank you, Agil," she said, and the man grinned.

"Don't mention it. As for hardware, I won't ask if you turned in your NerveGears or not. It ain't my business. But if you still have them for some reason, the cartridge looks like it's backwards compatible with your headsets," Agil told them, placing a small paper bag on the counter with two more copies of the game inside of it. "Go on then. The battle's not over till it's over. If she or anyone else is trapped in there, go bring them all home, safe and sound."

"Sure thing," Kazuto told them. The four of them bumped fists with each other. "And when we do, we should all come by and celebrate our survival for real," he proposed.

"Why just celebrate survival? Let's celebrate our victory over Aincrad!" Will suggested as they all cheered in agreement.

The sun was high in the sky as the three survivors of SAO returned to Kazuto's house. Each of them grinned for multiple reasons, and although most of them were different from each other, they all shared one in common. They finally had a chance to save the rest of their friends, and there was no way they would waste it.

As they walked past the gates to find Kazuto's mom away at work, they saw Suguha lying on the front deck on her side. "Hey, Suguha! Where'd you go last night?" Emily called out. Suddenly, the girl sat up straight with a bright red face as she quickly grabbed a muffin sitting on a plate and stuffed it into her mouth.

"Hey!" Suguha called out through a mouth full of a blueberry muffin. "Where'd you all g-" she started to say, before choking on said blueberry muffin. Immediately, Will, Kazuto, and Emily all rushed over to help, and Kazuto handed her a juice box, which she quickly drank to clear her throat.

"Tch, what's gotten into you? You're never this much of a spaz. You know those muffins aren't going anywhere, right?" Kazuto jokingly teased, earning him a rough elbow from Emily while Will laughed under his breath. Moments later, he too was silenced by Emily with a glare, and he mimed zipping his mouth shut, to which she grinned and laughed.

Kazuto sat down next to his sister while Will and Emily were messing around. "Sugu… about last night," he started to say.

Emily glanced back at Will with a hinting face, and he nodded in silent agreement. "This sounds like it's between the two of you, so we're gonna go make some plans. We'll see you in the game, Kazuto!" he said. Kazuto nodded in both agreement and thanks, before leaning over to talk with Suguha in private while their two guests took their shoes off and walked inside.

As they sat down on the couch, Will pulled his bag off of his shoulder and looked down at the back of the box while Emily pulled her phone and laptop out. It wasn't exactly like SAO, but it was close enough that it brought out their inner reconnaissance leaders from their days in the death game. Will sighed contently as that very thought crossed his mind, as some of his more satisfying memories of the game were when he got to put together the information on a floor boss based on that floor's quests, hints, and the labyrinth itself to plan out a raid. Ironically, he still felt like the raids themselves were nowhere close to being his favorite parts of the game, because internally, he could never stop worrying about if they'd missed something. It was just planning for them that was so relaxing.

"So, let's take a look at this sucker… From what I can make out on the back of the box, there's nine different races to choose from, and each has their own territory that they control, like Agil said. I can't figure out much more than that," he mused, turning to look at Emily. "What about you? Have you got anything?"

She nodded, handing her phone to him and continuing her search on the larger screen of her computer. "Boatloads. You're right about the number of races, and just like other games, they've all got their own specialties and weaknesses. Looks like this," she paused, trying to figure out how to say the word, as it was written in hiragana, and her translator app for more complex Japanese writing wasn't much help with made up words. "I think it's pronounced Slyph? Anyway, next to these Cat Sith, they're some of the most agile and nimble races. The Salamanders and Gnomes on the other hand are all about brute strength and durability, respectively."

Will nodded, scrolling down her phone and accidentally opening another window by mistake. Unfortunately for him, Emily just happened to be looking at him then, and she snatched the phone from his hands with a faint red line on her face before he could read anything on the window. "Hey! That's for Christmas gifts!"

Hearing this, Will laughed. "We just had Christmas, and you're already planning for the next one?"

"Well, it pays to be ahead of the curve. How do you think I always got better grades than you?" she teasingly asked, and Will sighed.

"Okay, point taken," he said, but they both started laughing again quickly. It really was just like their time planning boss raids. Even as serious as the atmosphere became, what with how people could lose their lives if they made a mistake, they still always managed to find things to joke about, whether they be funny things they heard about in game, fond memories, or just playfully poking fun at each other with harmless pranks, like stuffing grass in the other's hair. "Anyway, going back to this game, what about the other races?" he asked, pulling out his own phone to look as he set the box on the coffee table in front of them.

"Let's see… Spriggans are good at treasure hunting, so I don't think that'll be much good for a rescue. Their camouflage and illusion magic might be though," Emily mused, scrolling through the other classes and muttering different things about them. "It says here Undines have a really steep learning curve, and Asuna's so-called wedding is next week, so I doubt we'll have time to learn the ins and outs for that, even if magic would be a fantastic ability to have mastery over."

Suddenly, Will's eyes widened as he found something interesting. "Hey, check out this race, the Pookas. Apparently they're strong magic users like Undines, but they can use music for casting, while the other eight races use normal incantations," he said, handing his phone to Emily.

"Really? Let me take a look. Pookas… masters of the art of performance, the Pooka warrior combines the song of music with the dance of battle to become deadly offensive attackers, and also powerful supportive party members. With their wide access to all manner of buffs, more support-inclined players can spread those buffs to the rest of their party. But solo Pookas can easily be just as dangerous by applying multiple buffs to themselves in just a few seconds. Seasoned Pookas can even bottle up their performances for later use," Emily said, reading the class description on the official Alfheim Online website. She then grinned excitedly. "Sounds like our kind of race!"

"It does, doesn't it? I wonder how that works though. Like, is it just for vocalists, or can instrumentalists like us do this too? I don't know how I feel about swinging a clarinet around like a club…" Will muttered with a shudder.

"Well there's more to it, it seems. Have a look," Emily reassured him, handing his phone back to him and pulling up a fullscreen image of the map of Alfheim, along with different routes around it. She then pulled out a copy of the photo of Asuna that Agil had handed them with the boxes. "So, we know these photos were taken at the World Tree."

Will nodded as he read the article about the unique way Pookas could wield weapons, grinning excitedly like a rookie explorer about to tackle the world. He then turned to look at Emily. "We'll need to pick a race that can get there quickest, since we don't know how big or time consuming it'll be to traverse this map," he finished, and Emily nodded.

"Precisely. I'd say that narrows our choices down to the Pookas, since we'll already, in theory at least, have a good grasp on how they function in combat, but also the Cat Sith and Sylphs, since it sounds like they're the fastest to move around," Emily surmised. Will pursed his lips in thought.

"Yeah… I'm gonna be honest, I think the Pooka is our best bet. Not just because we should be really good at it since we're IRL musicians, but also because unless I'm looking at this back cover wrong, it doesn't look like the Pooka capital is any further from the World Tree than any others, and plus all of them can fly anyway, so that'll cut our travel time down significantly," Will suggested, as they heard the sound of someone running up the stairs in a hurry. "Whatever we pick, it'll definitely be best if we all pick the same thing. I don't know what Kazuto's gonna pick, though. We may just have to look around in-game for a character named Kirito, since I doubt he'll go for the Pooka."

Emily nodded. "We could always explain to him that he should go with the Pooka, but I think it might be a bit too late for that," she said with a grin, motioning with her head to the staircase. Will laughed in agreement.

"Okay, so we're in agreement to go for the warrior musicians?" he joked, and Emily nodded with an eager smile. Even as terrible as the death game had been, neither could dispute Mrs. Kirigaya's claim that good things had come from it as well. And though Will always felt there was more he could do to prepare for the boss raids, they both equally enjoyed the simple, aimless exploring they used to do on the lower floors during their days off from the Knights of the Blood Oath.

"So that's settled. I guess next we need to figure out a path to get to the World Tree, get ourselves some equipment, which will be more expensive thanks to having to by musical instruments and these 'song bottles', but that's nothing a little quest grinding can't solve I don't think," Will said, mentally checking things off of a list.

"Yeah, but for now I think our best bet would be to just dive in and get a feel for our surroundings in the Pooka Territory. Let's go as our normal appearances so we can recognize each other easily though, agreed?" Emily proposed, and Will grinned.

"I'm never gonna understand how you can just read my mind like that."

Emily grinned back. "What can I say? I've spent enough time with you that I can read you like a book," she giggled, causing them both to start laughing.

A/N: And we're back! We've got a longer chapter than normal, but I didn't want to split this up and make you guys wait even longer for us to finally head into Alfheim, which we're doing next time! I'll be honest, I'm really excited for that, just because to my knowledge the Pookas have been barely explored at all. Literally all I could find were their general aesthetics, and the fact that their a race known for their musical skills. And as for their territory, I couldn't even find a name on their capital, just that it was themed like a massive carnival tent. As a result, I'm giving myself pretty much free rein on what to do with them, and BOY OH BOY, these ideas are REALLY COOL, if I do say so myself. Trust me, you're gonna love them, and if you don't... well, okay then. I'm always looking for ways to improve, so it's a win win for me either way!

I hope you enjoyed this little upload spree of mine, and I hope you'll all check out the other new chapters for my other fics that I've uploaded today!