He's sitting in the room, visiting Marzanna, contemplating why she's still unconscious after a month and a half(1), when out of nowhere his Goddess's eyes snap open and she shoots up out of bed. Her gaze lingers on him briefly before turning to her mom, "Sugou kidnapped 300 players' minds to experiment on them to create mind control. He works for Asuna's father in their VR department and is in charge of the game they made called Alfheim Online, which is where the other players are."
Her mom sucks in a breath, "What-?"
She shakes her head, "Call Kikuoka. Now. I managed to get away, and Asuna's covering for me, but if he finds out, it wouldn't surprise me if he tries to cover his tracks by killing all the players he took. And given that he had at least two other people working with him, one of them might do something if he's brought in. And while there was an option to log out the experiment players, it was behind a password, and it wouldn't have helped Asuna and I couldn't guarantee Sugou didn't have some sort of notification of them being logged off set up and had enough time to go get her even if I could log the other players off."
Lily sucks in another sharp breath, then scrambles for her phone as she whips around to look at Kyrie, "Go outside and make sure no one comes in without warning. Close the curtain on your way out, so if you have too, you can follow a nurse inside and explain that Marzanna waking up is currently confidential for the safety of the other comatose players."
Kyrie nods and hurries away even as Lily's phone starts ringing on speakerphone. Message delivered, Marzanna finally takes in everything else enough to remove the NerveGear in irritation, and she's barely set it in her lap before Lily's call is answered, "Sparda-san? Can I-"
She huffs, "Shut up and listen, and I mean to the entire thing, before you breathe a word to anyone else, got it?"
There's a split second pause before his voice comes back, confusion replaced by seriousness, "I understand."
She sighs, "Marzanna woke up." On the other end, Kikuoka sucks in a sharp breath, and Lily glares at her phone, "Listen. She said someone named Sugou kidnapped the minds of the still comatose players and he's experimenting on them. She's concerned that he might send the signal to set off the NerveGear to cover his tracks, and there are at least two other people working with him. You have to be careful about how this is handled."
He exhales sharply, "Understood. Is there anything else I need to be made aware of?"
Lily glances at Marzanna, and she twists her blanket and flicks a look at him, "Sugou didn't take me because he was experimenting on me. He took me because he was making deals. He knew if my family found out we'd be on his ass in a heartbeat, so I was meant to be a hostage. The point being, I don't know if any of them are there, so you might want him to take dad or someone with him for safety's sake. Also, make sure to clarify they're being kept in Alfheim, and therefore they probably need to cut Sugou and whoever was working with him's access. Do not let them try to innocently claim they're just taking care of the servers, since we have no idea who was working with him."
Lily sucks in a sharp breath, then shakily relays, "Marzanna says he was making the sort of deals bound to get our family's attention." He hears Kikuoka suck in a sharp breath of his own over the phone before Lily continues, "She said you should take someone from our family as backup, just in case one of them is around." Kikuoka stutters out an affirmative before she goes on, "She also says they're currently being stored in a VR game he runs known as Alfheim Online, so given we don't know who all is working with him, but we know he has at least some accomplishes, do not allow anyone to have any sort of higher access."
He doesn't know what on earth this business regarding deals is about, but he knows enough to tug Lily's hand closer from where she was sitting beside him even as he leans over and adds, "You also should not do a system shut down. The NerveGear is programmed to send out the signal if it can't get back in touch with the server in a certain amount of time. There might have been a signal sent to the NerveGears that the SAO was beaten and to shut that aspect down, but if it didn't and he programmed this Alfheim to send the same kind of signal to the NerveGear so they wouldn't just die on him immediately and you shut the server down…"
Kikuoka lets out another forceful exhale, then responds in a strained voice, "An excellent point."
Lily sighs, "I believe that's everything?" She accompanies this question with a glance at Marzanna, who shakes her head, then him, and after he also indicates he has nothing to add turns her attention back to the phone, "Yes, Marzanna and Kazuto say that's everything. I'll let you go so you can organize tackling this." Her lips twitch as she continues, "I'll also call my family to get them to fight over who gets to come see Marzanna as soon as we get a signal that you've seized control of Alfheim and who gets to go with you. I'll have whoever is going text you so you can continue to set everything up while you sort out if they're meeting you at RCT or what."
Kikuoka lets out a strained laugh, "Sounds good. If that's all?" Lily murmurs an agreement, so Kikuoka finishes the conversation with a crisp, "Then I will speak to you when I inevitably need to come see Marzanna to get the whole story."
Without another word, the line goes dead. And Lily sighs tiredly. He leans forward, "Marzanna." She turns to him with a smile, so he continues, "Not that I'm unappreciative of this turn of events, but how'd you even get out?"
Her smile gains an edge, "Sugou fucked up." Seeing his head tilt in question, she laughs, "I told you why he took the players and me, but he took Asuna because he wants for her family to go through with their plans. Namely, Asuna's been set to marry him for a while, but she hates him. He can't legally marry her if she's unconscious of course, but after SAO started taking a while, they started making plans to just adopt him into the family on paper while he'd be considered Asuna's husband in every other manner, which suits him perfectly as far as he's concerned."
She sighs, "He was worried she'd object and finally make her opinion of him known to her family though, which is why he took her, because he wanted to ensure she'd be out of the way. He's also got some weird ass obsession with her. Both of which are relevant because he didn't give the other players avatars, they just look like a holographic depiction of a brain over a metal cylinder, but he gave Asuna one so he could harass her every day and he gave me one to torment Asuna with by making her watch him hurt me and shit."
He clutches at the arms of his chair and his teeth feel in danger of breaking from how hard he's clenching his jaw. She sighs, then continues, "Anyway, he had her in this massive birdcage and me strung up across from her, but I guess even with his sadism he got bored of me, or maybe he was planning something else, but he took me down and shoved me into Asuna's birdcage earlier today."
She grins savagely, "He made the mistake of the century giving a beta tester even a little more freedom, given that I'm very used to looking for bugs and the like, and I noticed almost immediately that while he put a blur that stops me and Asuna from directly seeing the code he typed in to open the door, he forgot to put that same blur on the reflection of the electronic style lock, so I got the code when he was letting himself back out."
She shakes her head, "I waited a while to be sure he was gone, then spoke to Asuna about it. And here's another thing, Sugou showed Asuna his menu once, he doesn't have a log out, and he absently mentioned that he and the others who were experimenting on the players log out from a console when she asked about him being trapped. So, after discussing it a little, we came to the conclusion that if we were going to take a long shot chance that he has it unprotected it would be better to shift the pillows around to make them look like they're resting the same even as we used a couple under the blanket to make it look like one of us in bed."
She sighs, "Asuna pointed out that with the fact she's known him longer, she'd be more likely to pull off our bluff, so she stayed behind. I managed to find where they're holding the players and experimenting on them which is how I know about the cylinders. Almost got caught by two people with him, which is how I know he isn't working alone, but I heard them coming and managed to hide behind one of the cylinders."
She shrugs, "Watched them discuss some shit and adjust the cylinders to change the signals they were sending to the player's brains if I understood them right. Then they went over to a floating black cube with an attached keyboard and logged off. I'd watched them do that even more carefully just in case there was a password or something, but there wasn't, so I was able to go over to it after they were both offline and log out."
He huffs out in disbelief, "That's… quite the busy day."
She shrugs again, "I guess so." Then she grins, "So! What'd I miss?"
He throws his head back and laughs.
(1): A month before the Fairy Dance arc.
