Chapter III

January 20th, 2025

4:30 PM, Japan standard time

A/N: Just a heads up everyone, but this chapter gets dark about halfway through. If you have a trigger with depression or self harm, skip this chapter. I'm gonna upload it with the next chapter right after it, and I'll try to put enough information there for you to put two and two together on what happens in this chapter if you do have to skip it. I'll also put a trigger warning in the middle of the chapter at the start and the end of the section where the trigger happens for those of you who want to read right up until the trigger section and after it.

"See you in the game?"

Will grinned and gave Emily a thumbs up. "See you there. Let's go get them."

Emily grinned back as she and her friend walked into Suguha and Kazuto's rooms, and with trembling hands, she gently pulled the headset out of her suitcase. She was nervous, as anyone would be, but then she reminded herself they both had taken all the necessary precautions that they could. The NerveGear she now held was as harmless as Will's was, and would do more damage if she dropped it on her foot than if she died in a video game while wearing it. Still, just looking at it was enough to make her arms begin to shake.

Slipping the device on her head, she plugged in her ethernet cord underneath the cord belonging to Suguha's, who was wearing her Amusphere and out cold on her bed. "I wonder what she's playing. She does have this massive poster of a fairy plastered to her ceiling. Maybe that's a character she really likes in Alfheim," Emily wondered, before mentally giggling. "Maybe I'll see her in game."

Lying down on her mattress, Emily took a few deep breaths. If something went wrong, this could be the last time she ever woke up in the real world. "No, I'm going to be fine. Nothing is going to go wrong, we've done everything we can to make sure our headsets are as safe as possible. We're gonna find Asuna, find everyone else, and get them home safely. Then we can go back to having normal lives…" For Emily, she had few wishes as great as to simply lead a normal life again, free from the shakes she felt when thinking about all the horrible experiences in Sword Art Online, free from emotional trauma of watching friends die in front of her as she could do nothing.

Taking one last deep breath, relishing the feeling of real air coming into her real lungs, she sighed and closed her eyes. "Link Start!"

Immediately, her vision was overwhelmed with bright lights and sensory discs. She set her preferred language to English, and prepared herself for the vast array of options for customizing her avatar. It was to her surprise then that nothing of the sort appeared, and she was instead met with the words "Welcome to Alfheim Online!"

Standing in a large room, she was presented with a transparent keyboard and an open box. "To start your journey, player, please enter your gender and the name you wish to be identified as," a voice said from all around her.

"Hmm… I guess Lemonlily will work here. It's what I used in SAO anyway," she thought to herself, entering her old username. Even though she'd always just asked to be called Emily in SAO, she still had never seen fit to change her username to her real name. There had been one time that Asuna had asked her why she chose the name, and her response was much more simple than she'd expected.

"Well, I really like the taste of lemons, and lily flowers are really pretty to me. So I figured why not put them together?" she had explained, surprising Asuna, who'd grinned and explained that when she'd put the NerveGear on, she'd had little to no idea what she had been doing, so she ended up just using her real name and face for her avatar, before they'd all been turned into the real selves by Kayaba's mirror.

Pressing the button labeled F, she typed in the username and entered it and was then met with a circle of nine fairy-like figures in front of her. "There are nine races of fairies to choose from, and your appearance will be decided at random. Please select the race you wish to play as," the voice then said, rotating the circle to show each race. Each one had differently themed clothing, and her eyes were immediately drawn to a little girl in a green robe with golden music notes all over it.

"Well, looks like Will and I are going to need to ask around to find each other after all. And I guess that's the Pooka," she said, grinning as she swiped through the other classes and looked more closely at the Pooka. Seeing it now, she could tell it was wearing clothing that could only be described as armored pajamas, something that she could see herself wanting when she was younger. She grinned fondly, and pressed the button.

"You have selected Pooka, do you wish to continue?" the voice said as the little, armored-pajama clad girl posed cutely. Meanwhile, a warning box opened up in front of her.

"The Pooka race is recommended for players who have experience reading music. If you do not know how to do that, this race will still be possible, but it will be much more difficult," she said, reading the box's words out loud. "Well, I guess Will and I were onto something after all. Good thing we're both really good at sightreading, we'll be able to learn these music spells in a flash."

As she pressed a small circle button, she heard the same voice echo around her. "You will now be teleported to your hometown in Pooka territory. Good luck, player!"

A bright flash of light filled her eyes, and suddenly she was falling towards the ground at breakneck speeds. "Woah!" Emily shouted, but to her surprise, the world seemed to pause mid descent as she fell, and a window opened up in front of her, along with a quest alert titled 'Earning your wings'. "Hold your left hand out like you're gripping a curved device to activate your wings. Move it up and down to descend, and left and right to turn. You can also press the button on top to accelerate, or let go of it to decelerate," she read. "Okay, let's give this a try!"

Following the instructions, she heard a quiet humming noise come from behind her as lime green hook shaped wings formed behind her, and a small device materialized in her hand. Then, a new set of instructions appeared in the box. "Well done! Now, complete the basic tutorial course and land safely on the ground by decelerating and lowering your controller," Emily continued reading. "I guess these are my wings! Well, let's see what they can do! Full speed ahead!" she eagerly cheered, not realizing until now just how excited she was about flying with her own wings. "Woohoo!" she shouted, flying through the tutorial course with incredible speed. She weaved around a pair of floating islands and ducked under a yellow beam, and all the while snatching up numerous floating gold coins. "This is incredible!"

Suddenly, she heard a familiar voice beside her. "Isn't it?"

"Will! How'd you recognize me from so far away, and with a randomized outfit too?" she asked, and her friend laughed as he flew in a circle around her in a light brown tunic and cloak, a shining silver chainmail neckpiece on top of it.

"What, you think I couldn't recognize your voice after all the time we've spent together?" he jokingly shot back as she collected the last spinning coin. "Race you to the ground!" he exclaimed, shooting towards the surface like an arrow.

"Oh, you're on!" she called after him, angling her body in the same way and speeding after him. Suddenly, he pulled up before hitting the ground and grabbed her by the wrist right before she would've crashed.

"Don't go too fast now!" he jokingly chided her with a smile, and she grinned back.

"Tease."

As they slowly descended to the ground from where they were, a couple of people cheered for their acrobatic skills, but one person stepped forward. A young girl, with a long cowl and a mask covering her head, a unique looking dagger at her hip, and troubled looking eyes.

"I didn't think I'd ever see the two of you again…" she mused quietly as the crowd dispersed. "You should both come with me, and quickly."

Will narrowed his eyes. It was hard to tell, but something about her was very familiar, like she was an old friend. But with her hood and mask up, he couldn't be sure. "Who are you? I know you from somewhere, but I can't remember for sure with your face covered like that," he asked, and the girl looked around, and then shook her head. "And why do you need us to come with you? If you need help with something, we just created our avatars so I don't think we'll be much use."

"Not here, please. I don't like taking my hood or mask off in public. I've got a small campsite nearby, and there's something you both should see before the game does," she replied, and with a glance at Emily, Will shrugged.

The girl shrugged back and looked at the girl. It wasn't like they were in danger of falling into a PKer trap, not one that would cost them their lives anyway, and they didn't have anything on them worth stealing either. "Okay, take us to your camp then."

With that, the strange girl flashed them a thankful and relieved glance, before turning around and leading them to the edge of town. On their way out, they passed numerous signs and boards, all advertising a big competition. "Hey, do you know what this competition that all these signs are mentioning is about?"

The girl nodded. "Yes. It's a PvP competition that's held annually at the start of every year in the Pooka capital, or so I've been told at least. Unfortunately, it's only for Pooka players, so I can't join."

"Can't join? Why not, if you want to?" Emily asked.

"I'm an Undine, not a Pooka, but more than that, I was exiled from Undine territory, something that, if you make the same mistake as I did, could happen to you very easily. Now come on, we should hurry."

As Will and Emily followed the girl outside of town, the dark, moonlit sky began to become cloudy, and soon a storm broke above them, bringing with it a slight rain and occasional thunderbolts. "This way," she'd say, guiding them through an occasional thicket or around a thick pocket of trees. Eventually, they came to a small cave in a mountainside, and the girl looked around, before waving them inside as she ducked in. With a momentary glance at each other, and with both feeling slightly confused and concerned, they followed her in, and discovered that she had taken her mask and hood off.

"Well, I guess you must have a lot of questions… like why I'm here in the first place, Emily and Will," the girl said, surprising the two new players.

"I was right, then. We do know you from somewhere, don't we?"

The girl nodded, still facing the back wall. "It's been a while, and everyone seems to forget about me though, so I'm wouldn't be surprised if you did too…" she then said, before turning around. Both Will and Emily gasped in shock.

"Wait… Koharu?" Emily asked, recognizing her friend from SAO. "Is that really you?"

(TRIGGER START)

Moments later, she gasped as she realized why Koharu had kept her face hidden. Under her right eye, and on her forehead above her left were long scars, as well as a third near her chin. "Oh my- What happened? Are you okay?" she asked, running forward to grab Koharu's hands.

Koharu's only response was to look down in sadness, and Emily pulled her into a hug. "Come here, do you mind if we sit down to talk?" she asked, and Koharu shook her head.

"Not really. It'd be more comfortable, I guess."

Emily glanced back at Will. They'd both met Koharu in SAO, along with another player named Akihiro, and the two players had been virtually inseparable since the first day of SAO. Not only that, but both of them were also beta testers for SAO, and because of the general animosity towards the beta testers, at least among the big two clearing guilds before the rise of the Knights of the Blood Oath, that served only to strengthen their bond to each other. For Koharu to be alone now was both surprising and worrying.

The three of them all sat down around a small campfire as the drizzle outside turned into a steady downpour. "Okay, lets start from the beginning," Emily said, still holding her friend's hands. "What happened to you since SAO? And where's Akihiro? I don't remember ever seeing either of you away from the other before."

Koharu's gaze darkened visibly as she stared blankly into the fire. "Well, like you said, Aki and I were inseparable in the game. I had hoped that would stay the same in real life, if and when we ever escaped," she replied morosely as she used the nickname she had given her friend. "Then, when I woke up in the hospital, I was ecstatic. You both know Aki and I got married on the sixty first floor, during that chaos with Laughing Coffin's leader. Well, I wanted to see if we could get married as soon as possible in real life too, or at least pretend together like we were."

Will nodded slightly, connecting the dots. "But you didn't hear from him, did you?"

With a tearful look, Koharu nodded. "For a while, I thought he was just too busy with his rehab. But then, I heard on the radio my parents had bought for me before SAO that there were three hundred players of SAO who still hadn't woken up, and then I realized what had happened for real. I escaped, but I left him behind in the process," she explained. "The doctors said that I fell into depression after hearing that. My parents didn't know why I was so sad, they said I should be happy to have survived that death game. But they never knew Aki. They never knew how happy he made me. That was when one of the nurses came to check on me, but when she left, a scalpel fell out of a hole in her bag on her way out."

Emily gasped, and she gripped Koharu's hand tighter, having a feeling what was coming next. "At first, I was just curious. I'd never been to a hospital, so I didn't even know what it was. But then I heard another report on the aftermath of the SAO incident and… I accidentally cut myself. I don't know why, but I did, and strangely enough, I felt a little better, like it took my mind off of Aki, and how I may as well have abandoned him… I started hiding that scalpel under my bedsheets where they wouldn't find it. But this game can't hide that. That's why I have these scars now… When they found out, the doctors gave me an Amusphere to use whenever I felt like hurting myself, so that I could just do it in game… but they're wrong! I don't deserve to not feel this pain! I'm worthless without him! Just a worthless, cowardly idiot! I left him for dead, when I promised I'd always be there for him! How do I have any right to be awake when he's not? Who would do that to the person they promised they'd marry if they both survived?!" she cried.

Hearing this, Emily began to tear up, and she pulled Koharu into a tight hug again. "Oh, Koharu, don't talk like that," Emily begged her friend. "Please, don't ever say things like that! You're not worthless, and you didn't leave Akihiro to die! I know you didn't!"

Will slid over with a nod and wrapped his arms around Koharu from the other side. "Emily's right. I never got to the point of actually cutting myself, but she can tell you I fell into a habit of hurting myself in SAO too, and quite early on even. Believe me, Koharu. It might feel like it helps, but it doesn't really, not one bit," he told her, hoping he didn't sound like he was trying to lecture her.

"But… But I left him to die! I did! I woke up when he hasn't! He could still be trapped in SAO, or worse!" Koharu explained in tears, but this time, Emily shook her head.

"No, I know he'll wake up, in fact, that's why we're here," she said, and Koharu's tearstained eyes flickered open slightly to look up at Emily from her shirt.

"What? What do you mean? But he's got to be in SAO, and the servers were deleted! Doesn't that mean-" she started, but Emily smiled reassuringly.

"We don't know for sure he's here, but we've got a strong hunch that he and everyone else is here. I know you don't want to give up hope, because you were always the one to tell us not to when we were feeling defeated while planning for a raid!" Emily reminded the younger girl. "That's why I'm telling you now not to give up, because we're not either. We've still got friends who haven't woken up too. Grace, Xander, Asuna, and we also heard from some other survivors the other day that there are other players we know well who haven't either. Argo, Sasha, Silica and the Silver Flags, they and so many others are all still asleep, but we might have a chance to save them!"

"It's just a hunch, but we're almost certain they're all trapped at the top of the World Tree. That's why we're aiming to clear that dungeon before it's too late. And we're not the only ones either. Kirito's here to help us, and you know as well as us that once that kid sets his mind to something, he gets it done. So please, Koharu. Don't give up yet," Will asked her, his voice pleading.

Koharu's eyes widened further as she heard their voices and the emotions behind them. They were here asking her not to give up, yet she already had. But they offered her something she'd forgotten how to feel. They'd offered her hope, and in that moment she knew she'd hold onto it tighter than she had anything else ever before.

With a sigh, Koharu nodded into Emily's new shirt. "Okay… you're right. I can't give up on him now. If I do, then I really will have abandoned him. But as long as there's a chance… I'll keep fighting. I have to…" she said quietly, before slowly sitting up. "But how are you guys gonna get to the World Tree? It's a long trek, and you've got starter gear. There's no way you can make it all the way in just that, even with what you have that transferred over from SAO."

Emily tilted her head to one side. "What are you talking about? These aren't our old characters."

In response, Koharu shook her head. "Not quite. They're new characters, but your old data from SAO should've transferred over. At least, mine did. People thought I was hacking when I opened it in public by accident though, so I got exiled from Undine territory," she explained, before letting a gloomy smile slip. "I don't really mind, though. At least I still get to play the game, and this way I can help you guys out."

Will shrugged, looking at Emily. As they realized the menu opened with their left hands instead of their right after a brief panic and a bout of laughter from Koharu at their confusion, they saw that she was right. All of their skills except for the unique skills they'd had at the end of SAO were still there. What wasn't there though, were their old items.

"Go ahead and delete those too, you'll need the space, and there's no way to get them back. Trust me, I tried," Koharu suggested, remembering the wedding dress she and Akihiro had picked out for her on the sixty first floor, and how it was gone when she first looked for it in her inventory in ALO. With a nod, Will and Emily cringed as they deleted the digital proof of their victories over the bosses they'd defeated in SAO, before reminding themselves that their survival was proof enough.

"What about our skills? I don't see a way to delete those…" Will asked, but Koharu shrugged.

"There isn't, but as long as you don't open your menu around other people for a few months to give yourself time to appear as though you've worked for them, you should be fine. I made the mistake of clearing my inventory at a tavern, so there were lots of people around, and unfortunately they thought I was a hacker, so they had me exiled before I could quote unquote hack their accounts and steal their loot. As long as you don't do that, we should be good. Still, to make a run for the tree, you're going to need better gear, and we don't have the yrd to buy two full sets of gear with your musical instrument weapons."

Will motioned back towards the path to the town they'd spawned in, Orpheusa. "Well, there was that competition those signs were advertising. I didn't get a good look at it, but it sounds like it's a two day long event with a lot of prize money, and it starts in tomorrow. If we could win that, we could easily get enough cash to buy us some good gear," he suggested. Koharu narrowed her eyes in thought.

"It's possible. You'd certainly have the skills to pull it off. But you'd have to learn the basics of casting, and we still need to find you some musical weapons too," she agreed. "Are you guys really in that much of a rush to clear the tree? I get wanting to save everyone. Gods above, I'd like nothing more than to see Aki again, but they're not in any immediate danger, are they?"

Will looked over at Emily, asking a silent question. Emily responded with a nod. If anyone deserved to know about the remaining comatose survivors situation, it was another conscious survivor.

"Well, there is a reason. You see, Asuna is one of the players who didn't wake up, but unlike the others, we're almost positive she was spotted in ALO," Emily said, to which Koharu nodded.

"At the top of the World Tree, right? I saw the picture but figured it was 'shopped," Koharu finished. "Are you saying it's legit?"

Will shook his head. "No, but it was enough for Kirito to decide to dive in, just to check on the off chance it was. Emily and I moved to Japan for the Survivor School, so we tagged along, but we've got no idea what race he's playing as. Figured we'd just wait for him at the World Tree. Even without his dual wielding, he should be pretty easy to spot."

Koharu grinned in agreement, and it wasn't hard to see that underneath all the pain she'd been through since SAO had been cleared, there was still that little sixteen year old girl just trying to be happy again. "Sounds like a plan. Well, we can at least start by getting the two of you some weaponry and seeing about signing up for this competition."

(TRIGGER END)

The damp, foggy forest echoed with the clangs of steel as two weapons clashed again and again, only to then be replaced by two simultaneously conflicting and harmonious melodies. As one faded out and grew quiet, the other would replace it for a time, sending waves of pure sound magic out towards its foe. Then, there was another series of metallic clangs, and then silence. That silence was then broken by two voices chanting different spells, which exploded against each other and knocked over a clearing of trees in a small fireball.

"Not bad," Koharu complemented Will and Emily. "You've got the basics of spellcasting down, and pretty quickly too. You'd be really strong playing as Undines."

Will grinned, but shrugged all the same. "Maybe, but I like the way the Pookas fight, even if it feels like this spear is just a clarinet that I'm swinging around like a weapon," he admitted. "Plus, it's not like we can't use normal spellcasting, just it's more powerful when we cast with our instruments."

But then Emily nodded. "All the more reason to get good at traditional spellcasting too, in the event our weapons are knocked away," she pointed out, and Koharu smiled in agreement.

"Exactly. One of the biggest advantages of traditional spellcasting, even if it's one my kit pretty much ignores, is that you don't necessarily need a weapon to do it," she explained. "With the instrument spellcasting that Pookas use, sure, you can use much more powerful sound magic spells, but instrument spellcasting requires you to have an instrument you can play in the heat of battle, and it's much less powerful with other elements."

"Makes sense. You've gotta have that right balance," Will summarized, and Koharu nodded.

"You hit it right on the head. Never get too reliant on a single skill," she replied, before halfway giggling. "But I don't know why I'd need to remind you both of that," she then added after a moment, a disappointed look in her eyes. Will and Emily walked over and wrapped her up in a hug at that.

"Koharu, it's okay. And we would never have gotten as far as we already have without your help. You know that, right?" Will asked, and with eyes that were starting to tear up from her friend's embrace, the younger girl nodded.

"I understand… and thanks. I just want to see Akihiro again though," she responded quietly into their arms after a moment. "And I thought about your offer, and I'll take it. I don't want to sit here and be sad anymore. I want to actually do something about it."

Will grinned over her shoulder at Emily, who rolled her eyes. They'd both been on board at the idea, but somehow it had still turned into a friendly game of whether or not Koharu would agree to come with them to the World Tree to conquer it. A moment later, Emily pulled Koharu away and smiled at her. "Of course. You're absolutely welcome to come with us. You're a survivor like us, after all, and your friends are up there, just like ours. I can't think of any good reason to tell you that you can't come with us at all!" she told the girl, who hugged her back like a younger sibling would hug her big sister. It had been so long since they'd first met, back in the first few months of SAO, but even after not being in contact with each other since the game was cleared, their friendship was as strong as ever.

Castle Aincrad, Floor 15

January 20th, 2023

Koharu and Akihiro shuffled through the dense, muddy undergrowth of the treeline, their target straight ahead of them. "There it is, Koharu," Akihiro said, gripping his sword sheathed at his hip. Koharu nodded, her right hand on the curved dagger she'd bought from an NPC weapons vendor that morning. "Looks like we found the place that quest was talking about."

"Are you sure it's safe? We both heard about that PKing trap those frontliners fell into a few weeks ago. They dressed themselves up as NPCs to lure them into a clearing for a monster PK," Koharu asked, looking over at Akihiro, who was staring at the village in front of them for any signs of movement.

"No, I'm sure it's a legit quest. I talked with Asuna about it a few days ago when we were looking for the main quest of this floor, and with real NPC generated quests, they appear in your menu like normal. Player created quests have a little asterisk at the beginning. It's a small detail, but it's a dead giveaway if you notice it," Akihiro explained. "Open your menu and you'll see what I mean."

Koharu nodded and flicked to her quest menu. Sure enough, this quest was written without the small, romanized star, while the next quest down, a resource gathering quest they had accepted from a player in the town, did. "Huh, look at that," she mumbled, closing the window. "All right then, let's clear out this village. I'm ready when you are."

Akihiro looked over at her with a small grin, and it was clear that despite the dangers they faced in this game, he was starting to enjoy himself. "Okay, let's move. Watch my back?" he asked, and Koharu giggled, covering her mouth with one hand.

"Of course, I'm right behind you," she replied. With barely a sound thanks to the quest exclusive boots they were wearing that dampened the noise of their footsteps, they darted from the treeline to the side of one of the houses and got their first in person look at the monsters that had, in the lore of the quest at least, driven the NPC villagers from their homes to the starting town where the teleport gate had been built.

"Orcs…" Koharu muttered under her breath as they peeked through the spiderweb coated windows, raising up onto her tip toes to see through the glass, her feet digging into the mud underneath her.

"And big ones too. I doubt they'll be able to move around well in the trees though, so what do you say we draw them away and then take them out?" Akihiro suggested, but Koharu narrowed her eyes. Even through the dirty windows of the house, she could see the small plaza on the other side of the building, and something looked off.

"Hang on, doesn't it look a little empty in there? The NPC said these things took over the town with overwhelming numbers, but I don't see more than ten in there," she pointed out, and Akihiro looked back up through the windows and saw what she was talking about.

"The others are probably out on patrol or hunting, which would explain the footprints we saw at the beginning of the quest," he answered, flashing her a reassuring smile through his helmet. "Don't worry, like you said there's not that many there, so we might be able to take them all out before the others get back."

"Okay, let's do it," Koharu replied after a moment, pulling her dagger off of her belt as Akihiro slid his longsword out of it's sheath and fastened his shield to his left arm. Together, they skirted around the raised foundation of the house, and saw a small group of orcish giants lumbering around the main plaza of the town. With naught but a glance at each other, both players simultaneously threw a throwing pick at one of the orcs, the metal projectiles embedding deep into the beast's neck and up into it's head, bringing it down with deadly accuracy.

The other orcs in the plaza whipped around to look at the interlopers, and they all let out a hideous roar before charging at them, wielding all manner of crude weapons from wooden clubs to jagged swords, axes, and pikes, red arrows pointing down on each of their heads. Due to their size, however, the large monsters were only able to run down the narrow pathway in pairs, making their assault much more manageable.

"Well, we've certainly gotten their attention! Let's draw them away!" Koharu called out as she sidestepped around a heavy, overhead axe swing and counterattacked with a swift jab into the orc's wrist. It squealed like a stuck pig, angrily pulling it's axe from the ground and swinging at Koharu again, only for the attack to again be dodged by the player's smaller size and greater mobility.

Akihiro narrowed his eyes as his heater shield deflected a powerful sword cut off to the side. As his opponent tried to pull the blade from the stone bricks where it had gotten stuck, he stabbed his sword into the orc's gut and then kicked off of the open wound to stand next to Koharu. "To the trees!"

Their towering foes right behind them, Koharu and Akihiro made for the open edge of town that separated the houses from the swampy, muddy forest, sending more throwing picks behind them to make sure the monsters would keep targeting them. At the last minute, however, Akihiro looked back at the forest and saw something terrifying, and he grabbed Koharu by the shirt and skidded to a halt, pointing his shield in front of them and his sword back towards the village as more orcs, dressed in hunting livery, poured from the treeline, cutting off their escape and surrounding them.

"Damn! The hunters are back!" he exclaimed, blocking a sword slash meant for Koharu with his shield, only to be blindsided by a powerful strike from a metal studded club that sent him and Koharu flying away as their healthbars took a significant hit.

The duo laid on the ground, dazed from the impact, as more orcs gathered around them and scattered their weapons off to the side, before picking them up and dragging the semi-conscious players back to the plaza, binding their ankles and wrists to large, wooden shafts.

Koharu groaned as she slowly woke up to see the orcs lighting a pair of large fires, and her mind immediately snapped awake. "Aki? Aki, wake up!" she called out to her friend, who groaned and stirred, only for both of them to be hit in their jaws by powerful punches from their orc captors. Koharu let out a pained cry as blood leaked from a cut on her cheek from the orcs metal reinforced gauntlets.

"You've got to be kidding me, are they really going to roast us over a fire?" Akihiro worried, while Koharu tried fruitlessly to wriggle herself free from the rope.

"What do we do, Aki?" she asked, panicking as the fires now roared hungrily, the orcs beginning to let out guttural chants and growls around them.

But for once, Akihiro's quick thinking failed him, and he couldn't think of anything. If he could just get his arms free, he could use an unarmed sword skill to break the wooden beam and free himself. But it was pointless, the ropes were too tight for either of them to do more than vainly writhe around. A larger orc with two healthbars appeared between the bonfires, wearing a large, fanged skull on his head, along with the name "Orc chieftain".

He let out a menacing growl and said something to the other orcs in a dialect incomprehensible to the two players, and moments later, they were hefted up roughly and carried over to the fires. Koharu's squeezed her eyes shut in terror as Akihiro began furiously trying to free himself again, still with no success, and they both braced themselves for a slow, painful death as the fires drew closer and closer with each massive step, the orcish chanting growing louder and more excited at the prospect of fresh meat.

"I'm sorry, mom and dad… I couldn't do it. I'm going to die in this game…" Koharu mentally apologized, even though she knew that her parents couldn't hear her in the game. But then, like a knife cutting through the chanting and the crackling flames, the two players heard a voice.

"Take them!"

The orcs suddenly paused, and Koharu felt herself drop as pig-like squeals and the sound of weapons clashing erupted all around her and Akihiro. Before she knew it, a long, curved sword had severed the ropes securing her to the wooden post, and as she opened her eyes to look around the plaza, her dagger was thrust back into her hands by a pink haired girl clad shoulder to toe in black, skin tight ninja armor, and a silver katana in her hands. A stockily built boy with a two handed warhammer had returned the Akihiro's sword and shield to him, and he fended off another attack from his former captors. Meanwhile, two other players wearing leather and silver armor fought off a horde of orcs, their backs to each other as one soaked up hits with a pair of bladed shields, only to spin around as her partner attacked with a double bladed spear.

"You both okay?" the pink haired ninja asked, a black cloth covering her mouth as she blocked a two pronged pike with her sword and flipped around in the air to wrest the weapon from the attacking orc as she cleanly sliced his head off.

Koharu looked over at Akihiro, who nodded in relief as he got to his feet and helped their rescuers fight off the rest of the orcs, giving Koharu the courage to do the same, and before long, the six players had cleared the village of all of the orcs, receiving a quest item in the form of the orc chieftain's fanged skull helmet.

"Thanks for the save back there," Akihiro said as they walked back to the town with another portion of the quest completed. "We've seen you four on the front lines, before, haven't we?"

The one with the double sided spear nodded. "Probably. I'm Will, and this is Emily, Xander, and Grace, my friends in the real world, and my party in here," he replied, motioning to the double shield user, the war hammer user, and the pink haired ninja. "I recognize you two from the assault team as well. You're Koharu and Akihiro, right?" he asked, to which Koharu nodded.

"Yeah, we are. How'd you know we were in trouble though?" she replied, and Emily shook her head.

"To be honest, we didn't even know anyone else was out here. We were just grinding experience in the woods to take on this quest tomorrow when we heard the sound of fighting nearby and decided to check it out," she told them. "I'm glad we were able to help you two out of a sticky situation, but what are you two planning on doing now? You're not just going to throw yourselves back into the fight, are you?"

Koharu pondered the question as they walked. "I'm not sure," she said, looking at Akihiro. "What do you think?"

Her party member shrugged. "First things first, we should stock back up on supplies before we do anything. After that though, I don't know what else we could do besides level grinding, and Koharu already knows how I feel about that," he said with a sigh.

"Well, if you want, you could party up with us," Will then offered with a smile. "Strength in higher levels is all well and good, but if you ask me, strength in numbers is even better," he explained, opening a window and sending a party invite to Koharu and Akihiro. "What do you say? Want to help us clear this floor?"

The two friends looked at the invite, and then at each other, before grinning excitedly and pressing the accept button. "We're in," Koharu announced.

A/N: All right, that's another chapter done with the first of many flashbacks to SAO! And we've got Koharu and the protagonist character from Integral Factor too, because why not? I'm definitely not in the camp of "all the SAO side games are canon," but I started playing Integral Factor a few months ago, and I just fell in love with the game and it's original characters. Of course, this also raises quite a few issues, as for those of you who have played it, you will probably recall that it makes… ahem, quite a few changes to the original SAO storyline. For one thing, the protagonist, I.E, YOU, actually save Diavel from Illfang on the first floor, Sachi and the Black Cats survive the trap on floor 27, again thanks to you and Koharu, as well as some help from Asuna, and there's a bunch more after that. Now, some of these will be canon in this story, and others won't, and I'm going to address some of those now.

First off, Diavel is still dead. Sorry, but he ends up dead no matter what version of the storyline you're following, and that was a change in IF that I didn't like all that much anyway. The same goes for Sachi and the Black Cats, Yuna, Corbatz on Floor 74, and everyone else who died in the canon storyline, but didn't in IF. Sorry in advance if you really like these characters, but taking their deaths out of the picture really messes up other characters' developments. Speaking of the characters in the game, in this timeline, those characters who were introduced after Aincrad like Leafa, Yuuki, and Sinon, weren't in SAO. In Integral factor, as far as I remember it's never actually explained in detail how they got there, but since that really screws up the canon timeline, we're just going to pretend they were introduced when they were originally, I.E the Fairy Dance, Mother's Rosario, and Phantom Bullet arcs, and that they never made an appearance in SAO. And for the last bit of characters, PoH still attacks Koharu and Akihiro on Floor 61 as revenge, but it's not as personal. While I think Koharu and Akihiro were still definitely part of the Laughing Coffin raid, I'm changing the reason that PoH attacked them later from it being personal as he thinks they were the catalyst for ruining his plans of a mass player killing between the clearers and LC, to something more along the lines of he just wants to get back at the assault team, Kirito, Asuna, etc., and he knows how much they all care about Koharu and Akihiro, and how devastated they would be if they weren't just killed in battle, but actually had to die in order for the boss to be cleared. Speaking of, PoH is still sane after that floor, but his attack on the assault team after the boss fight failed, so we're still gonna see more of him and the rest of the Laughing Coffin survivors.

Secondly, in this timeline, SAO was cleared on November 7th, just like it was originally. The Arcana system taking over in IF and overriding the Cardinal system out of nowhere just felt to me like a poor way of the devs saying "Hey, you know this in app currency you can use for loot boxes and cosmetics? Yeah, that's actually part of the game. Also this game needs to be longer." So in other words, anyone who died in Integral Factor after Floor 75 is still alive. (Not that I would know if they died anyway, I'm still stuck on floor 77 of that game because of the massive level spike after Floor 61.)

At any rate, that clears up most of the changes. If you've got any questions, let me know and I'll try to sort them out, but I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Buckle up, because next time, I'm FINALLY getting to show you all just what I've been cooking up for the Pooka combat system, and it's pretty different from the way other races fight in ALO, so I hope you're excited!