"I did my best to live. I lived here…" Were the last words that a young girl spoke, as her body finally lost its battle against a terrible sickness. Her name, though not for much longer, was Yuuki Konno.
Yet as her eyes closed and her senses began to fade, she knew that she was smiling. She wasn't alone in her final moments, for she laid in the lap of someone thought of as family, and surely they thought the same. She saw others as well, hundreds if not thousands of people just like her, although much healthier than she was, all kneeling before her in respect and silence. All of them, who only knew Yuuki for a few weeks at best, treated her not as some child to be pitied or some object to be ignored, but as a fellow person. She couldn't have asked for more. Well, surely there were better circumstances that she could have been in, but nevertheless she was happy.
She didn't know if or when she would open her eyes again, but surely, when she did, she would be somewhere else. Just as Asuna said, she was on her way to the next part of her journey. Gone were the fairies of Alfheim, and gone was the Absolute Sword.
It was almost indescribable, what would happen to the girl's spirit. She felt without senses, saw deep into perfect darkness and heard the silent echoes of a void. But far far beyond, an infinite distance ahead of her, there was the faintest light glimmering in the darkness. She reached for it, even though she no longer had arms, or a body for that matter. It was too far to touch, but surely it needed to be.
She took a step, although without any legs to stand upon. Her spirit moved ever forward, closer to the light no matter how far it was or how long it would take. In this place where there was no time, her spirit thoughtlessly advanced. Whatever that light was, it was her destiny to reach it. In this place where time did not exist, there was nothing to lose nor waste. Her spirit kept going, and the immeasurable distance began to thin by the slightest margin. It kept shrinking, and even if it only shrunk by millimeters at a time, that was fine. In this place where there was no time, Yuuki's spirit could go for as long as it desired.
Closer and closer, and the light became brighter and brighter. She was almost there. Another few steps, steps that clapped against an unseen ground; she heard her own steps. The light that was so far and so small, now much larger and closer. She could see more than just a glow; she saw a form. She saw a shape, one that she was familiar with in her previous life. It was taller than she used to be, and rectangular. It was a plain but shining rectangle, nothing more and nothing less. It wasn't a door; it didn't have a knob nor hinges. It was just a rectangle that shone like a star, but what was the point of it?
What is this? Yuuki thought to herself, and suddenly came to another realization; she could still think.
I'm… still me? I'm Yuuki, Konno Yuuki. But… I'm… I know I died in ALO, I remember that. But then, what is this place? She thought, confused.
"Is this heaven?" She asked, yet without a mouth to open, and a tone of disappointment she shouldn't have been able to have. A blank empty void was hardly what she expected, and nothing like what she'd been told about by others.
Although, the white shape before her remained the object of her attention. Just as she felt drawn to approach it, she felt compelled to touch it, whatever it was, or whatever it could do. But before she could, the light that the rectangle was emitting started to dim. Little by little, it darkened, seemingly fading into the darkness that surrounded it. But even as the light disappeared, the shape remained. In fact, as the glow faded, the block revealed a different color, many in fact.
Yuuki gasped impossibly, as she saw what seemed to be a window into another world. Where the white rectangle had been, there was a landscape, like the rectangle itself was a whole in reality itself. Beyond it, and the void she was still in, she saw a star filled night sky. There were even some clouds, illuminated by a beautiful full moon. The moonlight was shining down upon a ground of white sand, and buildings that looked like they were made of chalk or marble.
It was beautiful, and far closer to what she'd expected to see when she closed her eyes for the final time, and there it stood before her. She was so close, and all she needed to do was step forward. All she needed to do was enter that moonlit place, and emerge from the darkness of the void. And without a second thought, that is exactly what she did. With growing curiosity and intrigue she maybe shouldn't have had as a simple spirit, she pressed forward with a smile.
When she took her first step, she felt a foot land upon the soft pale sand; her foot. Then she stepped with her other foot, and heard the sand move beneath her. She unconsciously held her breath, silent and wiggling her feet as if she were trying to bury them in the ground. And then she jumped, and felt herself brush against the air as she suddenly rose and fell. She hopped in place again, reaching a little higher than before. And thus, an idea quickly formed in her head. She looked out at a nearby stone pillar. It looked to be around three or four meters in height with a flat top that probably supported something in the past. It was close, and she was going to get closer.
She started walking towards it, slowly, unsure if her body knew how to walk. She didn't even stumble once, but instead, she started picking up the pace. Faster and faster, she ran towards the pillar, and just before she could crash into it face first, she planted both of her feet into the ground and pushed as hard as she could. First one meter, then two meters, and she continued to climb. With that single leap she reached higher than she had ever been before, in any game she'd ever played, minus things like flight or animals. It wasn't because of anything like reduced gravity. She could tell that she fell at the same speed as in any game she played. She, in fact, was able to jump higher now than ever before.
Her feet touched the top of the pillar, and she stood tall and proud. She looked out and saw the sky in all of its majesty. The midnight sky and the countless stars, the smell of fresh air and the slight coolness of its touch. It all felt real, more real than the replicated senses of any VRMMO she'd played. She felt her heart, beating fast and heavy. It was pounding within her chest like it was about to explode. With all of her excitement, Yuuki inhaled as deeply as she could, puffing out her chest.
"This is awesome!" She shouted as loudly as she could, and for as long as the oxygen she collected could last. She giggled to herself,, and continued to as she leapt off of the pillar and returned to ground level. Even though she enjoyed the virtual worlds she could visit in her previous life, this was different. How ironic it was, that she could finally feel alive after she wasn't any longer.
She started to run again, and she ran as fast as she could. She darted left and right, through and around some of the other chalk-like structures, letting nothing slow her down or stop her. The rush of energy and wind, she enjoyed it all. She'd felt this exhilarated in very few situations before, but never for this reason. Both figuratively and literally, she was in heaven. She felt free. Or rather, she could only assume she was in heaven. She couldn't remember doing anything too bad to deny her entrance there, but even the idea of a heaven she wasn't ever quite certain of.
Regardless, even her energy started to thin. She ran and ran for several minutes, exerted more energy than she had in so many years, but she started to tire. She felt the exhaustion her new and far healthier body had accumulated, and she was finally forced to slow down and stop. Somewhat fatigued, she breathed in and out with her back arched forward and her hands on her knees. But it was as she looked at the ground between her feet, that for the first time, she actually looked at them. She noticed her feet, her legs, her hands, and her arms. They were… not what she expected.
For a moment, she wasn't quite sure what she saw, and whether she was turned upside down and was looking at the sky. When she looked at her hands and feet, against the floor of white sand, she saw the sky in the shape of appendages. Most of her body, however, was hidden underneath some rather detailed clothing. She was clad in a short but long sleeved dress, and a small cape hung over the dress that made her resemble some sort of mage or perhaps a detective. It bore the same colors as the rest of her form did, and with a quick tug on her sleeves, she confirmed that the rest of her body under her clothes were no different. If it weren't for the thin white trims of her clothes, she wouldn't know where her clothes stopped and where her skin started. Otherwise, as far as she could see, her entire body was colored just like the midnight sky, so dark a blue that it was almost black, and decorated with small white, yellow and blue dots that looked like they were supposed to be stars.
Sbe looked at them, the ones on her hands at first. She could see the little dipper on the back of her right hand. The arm of the constellation extended over her wrist and stretched to her forearm. On her other arm, the palm, there was the constellation of Virgo. It was like a chunk of the sky was carved out and shaped into that of a human body. It was plenty nice to look at, although a question began to surface in her head.
Is this what people in heaven are supposed to look like? She wondered, checking her body for anything else she didn't notice before. Her hair, the ends of it she could see at least, was also like that of the rest of her body.
While her mind hovered over the subject of what she was, she noticed something else that didn't quite seem like it should have been. There was nothing out the ordinary, or rather nothing she hadn't already seen occurring, but at the tip left corner of her vision, she saw something floating. But it wasn't an object in the sky. When she moved her head, it moved as well, proof that it existed only for her eyes. It looked like some kind of rusted metal bar, and it contained a lengthy neon green tube. Underneath it, there was a steel bar of equal length. There was nothing on it, but she had a small feeling that something should or could have been there. Underneath the tube and the bar was a name, inscribed in uneven letters on the rusty placard.
"Midnight Traveler…" Yuuki read out. "Wait, Midnight Traveler? What is this? Why is this thing here anyways?" She started exclaiming. She tried to swipe at it, but to no avail.
Was she mistaken? Was this place something other than what she thought it was? Never had she heard even a single story of heaven, or any afterlife for that matter, displaying a random pair of words on a bar with what she could only assume to be a health bar from a video game. And if it was a health bar from a video game, then her appearance, the landscape, everything she was seeing and feeling, all of it was also from a video game, which only served to lead her into yet another question.
"Why the heck am I in another game?" She screamed out to the sky.
She was already dead, that she was definitely sure of. Why was there a health bar in the corner of her vision. Sure, she was used to seeing health bars in the games she'd been to, but none of them looked like this one. It looked mechanical, like it was forged and machined into form. It was foreign to her, and so was the name. "Midnight" if anything referred to her appearance, not herself. "Traveler" seemed appropriate, to some extent. She remembered hearing someone call her that before, when she was alive. But still, who was it that came up with this name?
Her confusion knew no end, and her questions only continued to mount. If she was in heaven, then why did she see something that should belong in a video game? If she was in a video game, then how was she in a video game when she was dead?
Truthfully, the latter felt more likely to be the truth. She didn't feel particularly disappointed, however. She was merely shocked, and a bit curious as well. She too wanted to know more about her situation, but she didn't have any answers, or even the beginnings of paths to answers. And unfortunately, something else was starting to approach, and only more trouble would it bring.
She couldn't feel it, but she sensed something, something coming towards her. As she promptly started to look around the pillars and walls for whatever it was. But she quickly discovered that whatever it was, wasn't a person or a thing. In fact, when she saw it, her jaw almost hit the floor.
In the distance, but approaching quite quickly, was an enormously massive wave of purple and green energy. It was like a mix between a tidal wave and a hurricane, hurdling towards her location. At the rate it was going, it was going to reach her position within a minute or two at most.
Panicked, the first thought she had was to seek shelter. In hindsight, bolting around from place to place like an out of control animal might not have been the smartest thing she could have done. She was still feeling a little sore from that, but she hadn't the time to complain. She needed to find some kind of protection from whatever that giant purple and green wave was.
Unfortunately, tried and searched as she did, none of the chalk structures had enough sides to make or be called a building. They were just pillars, walls and arches as far as she could see, and as she continued to look frantically for anything she could hide within, the wave was only coming closer.
And before she knew it, it was already upon her. Caught out in the open, she could only close her eyes and brace herself against the oncoming storm. She felt wind blowing hard, and heard her dress and cape flapping wildly. Finally, like an ant in a storm, she was swallowed by the wave of colorful energy. The ground trembled beneath her, not too violent that she could lose her footing, and the wind wasn't so strong that she was being moved by it, at least as far as she could tell.
And to her surprise, after only a couple of seconds at most, the storm passed. It was hardly a storm, and more some kind of accelerated car wash. She didn't feel any different, neither hurt nor cold. She felt perfectly fine; a little warmer if anything, and when she opened her eyes, she found the reason why.
The white sand was gone. The Gothic architecture was nowhere to be seen. Even the moonlight midnight sky seemed to have packed up its bags and high tailed it out. It was as if she was in yet another entirely different world. Overhead now, there was a bright blue and sunlit canvas, populated by many large, white and fluffy clouds. The man-made architecture was replaced by various rock formations; some larger than others and some contorted in strange ways. Where there had been sand, there was solid rock and dirt, littered by many small patches of tall and healthy grass. Somewhere in the distance, she heard water moving, flowing quickly and splashing against even more water. It didn't sound too far away, meaning that she might have been near a waterfall, in fact.
And yet she remained, untouched by the transition of the world, and now utterly out of place with her midnight skin and cloth. Compared to the theme of everything a moment ago, she stuck out like the sorest of thumbs. She was a black dot in a colorful picture.
Although,for the moment, it seemed that the wave had affected her as well. Instead of all of the unanswerable questions that were growing with every passing second, and the fit of panic she'd just been through as she searched for sanctuary, there was but one thing in her head. There was just one question she had, and it sat in her chest, growing and waiting to be released with her next breath.
And without warning, it came out of her like a flood. She raised her voice to the skies above, as if addressing the gods themselves, whoever they may have been, so that they would acknowledge her and her grievances.
"WHAT THE HECK IS THIS?!"