Chapter 3 – The Girl in the Coffee Shop

Boring was good.

That was the conclusion that Michael had come to, after the past two nights of being shot at, stabbed at, strangled and the VR equivalent of breaking his hand on a 7-foot-tall behemoth of a man. Honestly, he wondered how Koharu put up with their misadventures sometimes – it was aging him something rotten (he was sure ginger hair wasn't supposed to go grey, but he could've sworn he'd gotten grey hairs… at the age of 21.), so lord only knew how stressed she was about it!

Anyway, those had been the past two nights, and tonight, he wasn't planning on logging in, but rather taking his amazing girlfriend to a nice restaurant, having a nice meal, going home and doing what couples do when they have the house to themselves…

Playing games and sleeping mostly.

Still, that was the future, as right now, it was 08:08 in the morning, and Michael found himself in the middle of a routine he so often did:

Wake up at 07:00, shower and wash, have breakfast, head down to the coffee shop at the end of the street to get a small cappuccino, then head back to the flat to start work by 09:00.

He'd been doing this for months now, and so he'd almost got the timings down to the minute for everything – he was so sure of it that he reckoned he could set his watch by it now. Given it was now 08:09, that meant he was waiting for his coffee in a small queue, and despite how impatient he may have been in Aincrad, he'd made an important distinction between Jet and himself; Jet was this almost comically exaggerated character he fell into when the need arose.

He was far more muted in his expressions, and although he was equally as blunt and snarky as his alter ego, that alter ego did his best to be a hero; he did his best to live a somewhat peaceful life. The two personalities were almost diametrically opposed at times, but both were a part of him – one forged in fire, the other forged by the school of hard knocks.

Rubbing his eyes to remove some sleep, he noticed a girl staring at him, a look of disbelief on her face. With long, light brown hair tied back into a ponytail, almost porcelain coloured skin and piercing red eyes, she looked remarkably familiar… yet he couldn't place her at all. It was like his mind had the details of this girl, yet was deliberately skipping over them for some reason… "It's you! You're real!" She almost gasped, and he raised an eyebrow.

Three years of dating had led him to be somewhat less dense than he had been once upon a time – his density now resembled a block of lead, rather than a black hole – but he wasn't sure that the man with an answer for everything that was Cody would know how to respond to this situation!

"I hope so, else I'm wondering how I just ordered coffee?" He joked awkwardly, trying to break the ice.

"No, I saw you in my dreams…" She said excitedly, before realising that people were looking at her strangely. "God, I must sound insane!" The girl shrunk into her shoulders slightly, a flush coming to her cheeks.

Honestly, if he had to say anything, he didn't think she was insane, so much as abysmal at flirting, but that didn't do much for the awkwardness he was now experiencing; the tapping against his leg having sped up significantly in a vain hope that it would accelerate the passage of time and end this encounter… or speed up the coffee machine.

Either or.

"Just a little bit, yeah." He said quietly.

Despite the embarrassment on her face, the girl didn't hide from it and carried on talking. "Heh, sorry. I'm Edith, by the way. Bet you don't get many guys or girls telling you they've seen you in their dreams, do you? Hell of a way to start a conversation!" She joked, clearly trying to recover the situation.

"Michael."

"Ah! You just look like him then. Oh, what was his name? Uhh, Jet, I think?"

Doing his best to prevent himself from doing a David Tennant impression and getting stuck repeating the word "what?!" until either he figured out what was going on, or the inevitable heat death of the universe – whichever came first – he put on a straight face, despite the myriad of questions he now had! First and foremost, what the hell was he doing in this girl's dreams!?

"Strange old world, huh?" He answered, trying his best to pretend he hadn't spent three years living in another world using that as his name…

Edith either didn't catch that, or if she did, she paid it no attention and laughed along. "Yeah! How many people call themselves that, seriously?! It's like a child picking a cool name because it sounds cool!"

Well, that stung.

And he wasn't a child when he'd picked that name, he was a teenager and… actually, that wasn't any better, was it?

"Maybe it was shorthand for another name? Like Alex for Alexander, or Penny for Penelope?" He defended, possibly giving a little more away than he'd intended to with that defence…

"How many names shorten into Jet anyway?"

"Jethro?" He answered far too quickly, and the fact that Edith was now doing her best not to laugh was another punch to his alter ego…

"You know, if I were called Jethro, I think I would change my name to Jet." Edith grinned, as if she had already pieced him together. "Either that, or I'd use my middle name as my first name instead, something innocuous like… Michael?"

Crap!

She had pieced it together and now; she was toying with him! As long as she only knew his first name, and that he was Jet, it wasn't likely to be a problem – after all, the SAO survivors had been subject to a very thorough procedure to obfuscate the link between their player identities and their real world identities (a difficult task for Asuna and Koharu, both of whom used their real names), and although people had made links between some players and their real world identities, those that got too close found themselves at the end of a cease-and-desist order.

Of course, that didn't help matters when someone tried to brag about their achievements in the game and met with the same issue… or when he accidentally revealed just enough about himself for the connection to be obvious.

To paraphrase The Smiths… bigmouth strikes again, he thought to himself.

Despite the panic going on in his head though, he kept a straight face through it all, as Edith told him about the things he'd supposedly done in her dreams – fighting a purple haired knight, and removing some kind of mind control from them, helping her defend her village from attacking dragons… it all felt very fairy tale-like.

"Umm, Edith? Who are you…" He asked, trying to get a fix on this mystery girl.

"Hm? Oh, I'm just a nobody. Always have been, always will be." She smiled, though she let the sadness at that thought slip through momentarily. Not for long, but just long enough for him to know it was there.

"Nah, nobody's a nobody. Everyone's important in their own little way, right?" He let the mask slip momentarily too, allowing himself to fall into his alter-ego briefly.

"You even sound like him too."

"Small cappuccino for Michael!" The barista shouted, and he went to pick up his coffee, finally. Once that was done though, he paused briefly to consider what he should do. Edith was a mystery, and for all he knew, she was a stalker too (though not a competent one, admittedly), but he couldn't help but be fascinated by why he was appearing in this girl's dreams, despite having never met her…

"I've got a long lunch break later; do you want to continue this discussion later?" He asked, bending the truth more than a little bit – actually, he'd bent it so much it resembled the Gordian Knot, but still, it wasn't like telling her that his "job" was actually looking after an artificial intelligence that was actually his several times removed great-granddaughter, at the behest of a tech company with formerly dubious morals, and that he was technically his own boss when it came to work days, was really coffee shop conversation…

"Yep! I've got a job interview this morning, so… meet here about 1:30?" Edith scribbled a number onto his coffee – her phone number, no doubt – before giving him a wink as she collected her coffee from the counter. "See you later!"

"Sure. Good luck with the interview, Edith." He said as she walked off, coffee in hand, and he came to a horrifying realisation:

He had another girl's number on his coffee cup, and he was going back to his flat, where his girlfriend was probably just getting up and ready to head out herself. Exactly what explanation was there that didn't seem to suggest him being unfaithful – other than the actual one, which just sounded ridiculous instead!

Mind you, given some of the things they'd seen… would it be all that ridiculous after all?

He hoped Koharu had woke up on the right side of the bed this morning, or else perhaps those life insurance flyers they so often got in the mail would prove useful, after all…

/-/

Luckily for him, Koharu had indeed woken up on the right side of the bed and to her credit, seemed equally intrigued by the mystery girl, even deciding that she was coming with him to meet her, until he'd pointed out that she would be at work.

Alice and Beth on the other hand, in a rare display of agreement, seemed less than happy at the story, but thankfully for his sanity (getting chewed out for something by his baby sister and great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter was not on his list of things to do before 9am… nor at any time, come to think of it), they were interrupted by a phone call.

Less thankfully for his sanity however, it had been Dr Rinko, who had explained that RATH wanted Alice back, and tried to worm her way around the question of why, though eventually she'd explained that Alice was unique for more than just being the first true android; the core that powered her was essentially priceless.

Or at least, that was how the accountants thought of it. In reality, it was just very pricey, and when Dr Rinko had told him how much "pricey" was, he probably leant more towards priceless too… most nations could build an aircraft carrier for how much that core cost to acquire even a single one of…

Regardless of which would be more use in a war – Alice or a Queen Elizabeth-class carrier – she'd explained that, in order to train the other two recovered Fluctlights, they would need that core back to power their new bodies, and whilst Dr Rinko had given her word that it would be as safe as could be, he remembered RATH's experiments during SAO, and he told her as much. After a bit of needling, and in her own words, she knew how unpleasant of a process it could be; it was essentially a brain transplant after all, and those… didn't tend to go well in humans.

Or anything, for that matter.

She'd ended the call by telling him they would have some time to decide about whether they would be willing to return Alice… or whether they would have to send someone to pick her up. Honestly, if his phone hadn't been worth about £400, he would have thrown it at the nearest wall in anger.

As it was, he settled for screaming loudly instead, and so, he went to go outside. As he walked over to the door, there was a knock at the door.

Opening the door, he found himself face-to-face with his dad, who seemed halfway between surprised to see him, and surprised at how fast the door had been opened… "Morning son."

And speaking of being surprised to see someone… "Dad?" He asked, mildly stunned at his dad's actual, physical presence.

"Dad?!" He heard Beth shout from the living room before she rushed to the door.

"I just thought I'd check in on you whilst I've got the morning off. I know I've been a bit…"

"Absent." He told him.

"Off with the fairies." Beth called him out.

"Yes to both of those, but I did promise you all that I would make an effort, didn't I?" To his dad's credit, he had been trying to make it up to them all, though to what degree it worked was up for debate. It didn't make up for his absence throughout their formative years, that had been agreed on by all three of them, but the fact he was actually willing to try to correct that in ways that weren't just throwing money at the problem was a good sign the man was serious about it. "Can I come in?"

"Err, sure? You don't have to ask, you know." He pointed out.

"I know, but it feels like I'm still a stranger to you kids, and…"

"Whose fault was that, anyway? Because it wasn't ours!" Beth told him angrily, and he resisted the urge to clamp his sister's mouth shut with gaffer tape. Growing up with just mom there hadn't done much to help her… opinionated manner, and she had grown from being outspoken, to just being a little shit in the worst possible way.

"I never said it was, and I accept it was my fault."

"I will be in my room if you both need me!" She stormed off, and he resisted the urge to say, "that went well."

"She's…" Instead, he searched for a way to call her a little shit, without calling her that. The amounts of time he'd had to resolder parts of Alice's circuitry after she'd pulled "pranks" on her was getting to a level above ridiculous… "Let's just say living with mom on her own hasn't helped."

"Yeah, I can imagine that." His dad quickly changed topic when he spotted Koharu and Alice in the kitchen, clearly looking uncomfortable at the domestic they had just witnessed. "Apologies for that, you two. I suppose you know what our family dynamic is like now…" He laughed awkwardly, and Koharu offered a sympathetic smile.

"Don't worry about it sir, my family aren't much better…" That sympathetic smile soon became a sad one, and he briefly wondered when the last time Koharu had talked to her father had been. She was an adult after all, so cutting ties with the man was possible, but he'd never gotten the impression she'd wanted to do that, and he'd never really asked either.

"Koharu, I've told you that you don't need to call me sir."

"Sorry, I'm still getting used to this."

"And on that note, how is my son treating you? Being a proper gent, is he?" The fact he felt a cold chill run down his spine wasn't lost on him, and Koharu let out a small laugh when she noticed him go bolt upright, almost banging his head on the ceiling in the process…

"He is, yes. We're going out for a meal later, and he's paying…" She smirked at him, and he felt himself sink down slightly. Luckily, he knew that was the case anyway, so it wasn't like it was a surprise to him, but he could've done without the smirking from both of them… "And I should be getting to work now, so I'll see you later. Love you!" She placed a kiss on his cheek, and made to bolt out the door, as if she'd realised what time it was.

"Love you too!" He shouted, though it was mostly at thin air by now, rather than his girlfriend. "So, dad, I take it the purpose of this visit wasn't just to annoy Beth and embarrass me, was it?"

His dad smiled with a degree of pride. "You know, your father would be so proud of you now, right? But no, it wasn't. I was here to offer you a job, with-"

"Pass. I like my job as it is."

"You have a job?" His dad asked, taken aback by the news. "Err, what is it you do?"

"One part of it is looking after Alice and teaching her how to adapt to the real world, and the other is just freelance design stuff. Not well paid, but I enjoy it."

"Fair enough, I just know your uncle keeps banging on about how it would be a good time to bring in the "young blood", as he calls you and Gabriel. Honestly, I'm relieved – I don't want you anywhere near GDS, but…"

"Uncle Dracula would string you up if you didn't at least ask?" He asked, although he already knew the answer.

"You definitely didn't hear the name Dracula from me, got it?" The fact his dad was trying not to laugh was a pretty big clue that he wasn't too annoyed at that insult – their uncle was almost inhumanely pale, and to his knowledge, rarely left the office, so the name Dracula fit perfectly…

"Sure I didn't, Dad. Sure I didn't…" He sat back slightly, thinking of a way to break the silence in the room. "Umm, Dad, when you and Mom were, you know, wanting to take things to the next step as it were, how did you, err… ask?"

"Michael, you're 21 and you two have been dating for the best part of four years. If I still need to give you the birds and the bees, then your mother has seriously failed you all…"

"Not that next step!" He rebuked. "The other next step!" He made a gesture into the air, as if to open a menu, before remembering this was real life, not Aincrad! Damn muscle memory…

"You already live together."

"I was going to ask Koharu to marry me! Sheesh, I wondered where I got being dense from, now I don't!" He blurted out in frustration, running a hand through his hair.

Behind them, a shattering glass could be heard in the kitchen followed by Alice either dropping a plate or smashing into a cabinet.

"Shouldn't you go and check, or…"

"Eh, she'll be fine – she's made of sterner stuff… steel for one." He added absent-mindedly, despite the look of complete bewilderment he got from his dad.

"Apologies!" He heard from the kitchen. "I dropped something!"

"Billions of yen, and all they got was a clumsy robot." Now it was his turn to shoot his dad a funny look; though his was less bewilderment, and more annoyance. Alice was still his family, no matter how far removed she was in the family tree, and he wasn't letting anyone insult her in his presence… he had enough of dealing with Beth's jabs and jibes, without needing their dad getting in on it too! "Uhm, sorry. Anyway, about you proposing." He rather swiftly changed the topic. "So, is that why you're taking her out tonight…"

"Not really, we'd kind of planned this a bit back. I was going to do it the other night, but yeah, stuff happened." He quietly left out that stuff involved getting tear-gassed, strangled, repeatedly shot at and flaring up his tinnitus again, and carried on. "So I never did then, and tonight seemed like the best chance to, you know?"

"Well son, I wish you the best of luck with that one and can only hope it goes well for you. Whatever you do though, don't do what I did!" He raised an eyebrow towards his dad. "Oh right, I got drunk trying to get a bit of Dutch courage, and well… I may have thrown up. A lot."

"Very little by way of booze, got it." He took that advice onboard. It wasn't like either of them drank heavily anyway – both of them being, in polite terms, absolute lightweights – but it didn't hurt to be extra certain. "So, why are you here Dad, I doubt it's a social call…"

"Can you go and get Beth; this involves her too."

/-/

After a lot of convincing, he had managed to persuade his sister to leave her room and talk to their father, to which the news he delivered was very much not positive.

In fact, it was what he might have called very bad news, if he were feeling charitable. If he weren't, he'd have rung his little brother, and given him a piece of his mind.

Or possibly wrung his neck. Either or.

As it turned out, his brother had unknowingly been dating someone in the pocket of a rogue government and had blabbed about Alice and where she really was. Even though it was essentially public knowledge, his involvement with it certainly wasn't! To most states, she was on a floating island, defended by a "helicopter destroyer" – something that seemed slightly deceptive when said "helicopters" were F-35B Lightning II stealth fighters…

Naturally, his father had been slightly alarmed to discover this and his brother probably more so, considering he'd been woken up by his girlfriend being arrested by the police on espionage charges, and so they were both being told to be on high alert for anything suspicious.

"Does suspicious include some random girl trying to befriend him in a coffee shop, claiming she's seen him in her dreams?" Beth asked, arms crossed as she lay back into the sofa. Smug little…

"That's oddly specific, and that would be suspicious even without having a spy knowing about your involvement." Their father answered. "Just… exercise caution, both of you. That extends to Koharu as well, you don't know how much they know from what James told that one."

Michael sighed. Of course, his life was never going to be simple, was it? Could he not just have one week where something didn't explode, catch fire, cause an international incident or be involved in an international incident, to propose to his girlfriend?

Seemingly, the universe's answer to that was "Hah, no."

/-/

To Zeliska, Jet was a character.

In some regards, he was the stereotypical hero – doing his best to help out, and she had no doubts that had been why he'd agreed to work for her on essentially a whim, when she'd asked him.

In others though, he was rather more complex. Koharu had told her about the few times he'd truly lost his temper in Aincrad, and having heard this, she could see why Laughing Coffin, a group of thugs, murderers and manipulators, had described this man – a joker with a biting sense of humour, but otherwise kind and willing to help everyone out – as a monster.

Because to them, he really was the dreaded – the thing that lurks in shadows as it waited, and showed them no mercy when it found them, and rest assured, much like the passage of time itself, it would find them.

It wasn't a matter of if, it was a matter of when… and more importantly, what happened when he did.

She would've asked the member of Laughing Coffin who wanted to see what a Petrification Potion did to a player's body for his thoughts on that theory… or at least, she would have, had said player not been tricked into drinking their own potion and witnessing the results of their scientific curiosity first hand.

In a moment of realisation, she had asked Koharu an important question – did Jet have a body count? The answer had shaken her to her core, when Koharu told her that there were very few frontliners who didn't.

Jet was amongst them.

"It isn't the anger of an evil man that one should be concerned by. Instead, be concerned by the anger of a good man, because it has taken far more to make him angry." She had read once, and she couldn't escape the feeling that that statement fit her employee and friend quite perfectly.

People like Kirito and Asuna would take a life if they were really pressed, and they might even deem it necessary, but people like Jet were arguably far more dangerous in her mind. Perhaps they wouldn't kill their enemies, but that didn't mean he wasn't willing to use the trick of a genie on them – that they should be very careful about what they wish for.

Had they been found since, that statue of a player tricked into drinking their own potion and left somewhere in the Seed in some unknown world, would probably have agreed with her…

"You seem… more aggressive than usual." Zeliska asked, having watched him take an automaton apart with a zeal that wasn't usually present in her employee's attacks. "Rough night?"

"Rough morning. You wouldn't believe me if I told you, anyway…" Jet explained, the click of his rifle telling them he'd emptied the magazine.

"I'm an open-minded woman, you know. Try me." She told him, as if to convince him she was a safe pair of ears.

"Never say that one in front of Sierra please…" Jet sighed, putting his 805 away.

Having met the American, she laughed at the thought of whatever quip he'd come out with, before both settled down on a rock in the Deserted Wastelands. "Long story short, my brother ended up dating a spy."

"Did he know?"

Jet rolled his eyes. "Not till Somerset & Avon Police did their best impression of the Stasi by knocking the door down, no. Problem is, he told them about me looking after Alice…" He groaned.

"Oh." Alice's existence wasn't a particularly closely guarded secret, all things considered. Clearly she wasn't, given Dr Rinko had presented her to the world in a press conference, but her location was kept relatively close to their chests. Of course, people recognised the girl sometimes, but those could generally be written off out of hand.

A family member telling a spy about her location with a foreign national? Yeah, that was the textbook definition of bad. Like, deportation level bad…

"Yup, so what happens then? I go to the coffee shop this morning, this random girl tells me she's seen me in her dreams and that she knows my gamer tag."

"That's… a little creepy, even without the spy stuff." She admitted. She wouldn't have particularly felt comfortable having such an event happen to her – although her avatar and her real appearance weren't all that closely related, which helped on that one. Jet, on the other hand… had modelled his avatar off himself.

"Yup, and I was supposed to meet her for lunch too. I was curious as to who she was, and now I'm just concerned. Not to mention this whole Madhouse stuff, which I still can't make hide nor hair of."

"I'd take a sabbatical if I were you." She told him – trying to order him to do something was a bit like standing on a beach and telling the tide to go out. On very rare occasions, it might actually look like something had happened, but the rest of the time, it was a fool's errand.

"I could, but I know myself. I'd got bored and make things worse somehow. Mind you, all the stuff with Alice, I might well end with my door knocked too long anyway even if I do take a sabbatical."

"Why's that?"

"Rath wants her back. Basically, they want to use her core to get the other Fluctlights used to a physical body."

"Isn't her core her brain essentially?" She asked, a sense of horror from the question.

"Yup. I told them where to go shove it." Jet admitted, sighing. "Alice might be theirs, but she's still my family, and I don't look too fondly to having my relatives cut up for scientific curiosity."

"Understandable." She hummed. Jet had explained his connection to Alice once before, and to say she was just as lost after the explanation as she had been before, would be a fair understatement. In brief summary though, she'd taken that Alice was essentially a distant relative of his, her fluctlight having descended from copies of himself and Koharu kept inside a simulated Aincrad, and her first thought after understanding that... was to ask him why he seemed to be so nonchalant at the possibility that someone had created a literal copy of him, purely to simulate how he might act in the events of Aincrad...

He told her that it never bothered him because he chose not to ever think about it. Ever.

Deciding that discussing the labyrinthine workings of Jet's potential family tree was not something either of them probably wished to do right now, she changed the subject... "Still, if you are insistent in staying in the firing line, I got some news from a source of mine. The Madhouse have been hired to guard a train heading from the Old North to the Arctic Wastelands."

"There's trains in GGO?" Jet asked, his interest both piqued and his confusion increased, no doubt.

"Yup, since the last update. No one uses them, they're slower than just teleporting, you can't fit weapons on them and they're about as bulletproof as paper mâché, so most people tend to just use other land vehicles instead." She explained. Honestly, the trains included should've been far faster than they were in game, but given they'd been modelled off US locomotives that Zaskar had somehow had access to… it checked out that they were slow. The US was not a country well known for its rail network, after all…

"Huh, the more you know." Jet quirked his lips. "Any ideas when that train'll be?"

"Sorry, they couldn't tell me that."

"Guess that gives me and Alice something to do today anyway." Jet sighed.

"Jet, just… keep yourself safe please. I know you want to get to the bottom of all this, but if there's actual spies involved, then it's a very different level of threat. The Madhouse could steal your stuff in game, but whoever's looking for Alice IRL… there's no telling what extremes they'll go to, to get her."

"Trust me, I know. I'm taking precautions already."

"Good. I wouldn't want my best employees being found dead in a ditch somewhere."

"Best? We're your only employees…"

"And by default, my best too." She gave him a reassuring smile, or as close as she could get, given the circumstances, before she remembered something he'd said a few sentences ago… "Wait, did you say you were supposed to meet that girl for lunch?" She looked up at her HUD – 15:35 – and sighed.

"Yeah, why?" He asked, the look of blank confusion on his face that he usually had when he'd done something that made perfect sense to him… and only him.

"You stood her up then." She explained in simple terms. Jet may have been complicated in many senses… but this wasn't one of them. He was very much a man, and like many of the men she knew, he was dense as a brick.

Endearing, but still dense.

"I mean, I ended up being a little busy with all of this, so I just sent her a text telling her I'd meet her at some point, and that something had come up..."

"Men…" She grumbled against her hand. "Still, I may as well help you with this. Come on, I know a guy…"

"I'll go get Alice."

/-/

Their brief expedition to "Zeliska's guy", as Jet had named him, passed without much to note; other than a rather angry looking Delinquent that was soon dispatched by the trio with extreme prejudice. Considering said Delinquent was a ten-foot-tall monster that more closely resembled a traditional devil than any existing life form, she'd always wondered how such creatures had come to exist on the Earth in the 29th Century – although more likely, it was the dev team deciding they liked the look of something and throwing it in the game without revamping it to fit the aesthetic of the world…

Regardless, they had enough information for the Concord to launch their assault on the train, which at least in Jet's mind would involve a two-pronged attack on the train – a group would infiltrate the train as it passed through a marshalling yard halfway through its journey, whilst the other would essentially jump on the train as it approached Atlantropa Viaduct, a large… well, viaduct that crossed over the Mediterranean Sea, itself now a very big dam instead.

She didn't envy that second group, having to jump onto a moving train over a big reservoir… unlike herself, who was just getting off a very stationary train. If the Tokyo Subway at rush hour was almost like a circulatory system for the city, then she was amongst the millions of blood cells that passed around it on her way home…

Despite how impressive it was, that didn't mean she liked commuting. Far from it, and as sociable as she may have seemed in GGO, that was Zeliska. Midoriko was very much an introvert who would rather be huddled up at home in a pile of blankets than huddled against the masses on the Subway, two of which were rather too close for comfort.

"Midoriko Hoshiyama?" The smaller of the two men, the one to her right, asked. Both wore pressed black suits and had a visible earpiece, a look that she called "Alarm Bells" – namely as it set off the alarm bells in her mind. These two couldn't have looked shadier if they had tried!

"Who's asking?"

"We are." Despite the train still being five stops from her station, she made to disembark from the train and carry on on foot, hopefully avoiding the goons on the train.

No such luck, she realised as they followed her through the crowded corridors of the station, and out to the surface.

"If you don't stop following me, I am calling the police!" She threatened.

"I really wouldn't advice that, miss." The taller man retaliated with a threat of his own, his tone deeply ominous. "We'd rather not hurt you, but we have been told to bring you with us under any circumstances…"

She frowned as her phone rang… and rang… and rang… before the call went through. "Yes, poli- oh for…" Unfortunately, it hadn't gone through to an operator, but rather a queue in the system.

"We warned you, Midoriko." The shorter one told her, as she felt a jabbing pain in her arm, like a pin or…

A needle.

In the brief moments before her limbs felt heavy, she tried not to panic, and come across calm and defiant… "What the hell did you just inject me wi-" That moment of defiance didn't last long as her eyelids fell shut, and her legs gave way beneath her.

"Hey! The lady said no, so leave her the fuck alone!" A man shouted, having decided to step in on her behalf. She recognised the voice, but in her essentially unconscious state, she couldn't think as to who it was before she slipped into unconsciousness…

/-/

If you'd asked Michael, Cody was a notorious womaniser, and in his own words "a pain in the ass". One thing Michael never added was that he had a knack of being in the right place at the right time, and tonight, having left the shop a bit later than usual, he'd had to get a later train and throughout the journey, he'd noticed a pair of men hassling a woman – the woman seemed more angry than concerned, he'd admit, but he was always one to be on the safe side, and so he'd followed them out of the station, phone at the ready in case things went south.

Almost as reliably as the trains, things did indeed go south; he'd noticed them jab her with something, and in that moment, he'd decided to kick up a stink.

"Hey! The lady said no, so leave her the fuck alone!" He shouted at the two men, one of whom was now manhandling the woman.

"This is none of your business, go away." They told him bluntly.

"The hell it isn't! You just drugged her!" He leant down, making it look like he was tying his laces, even though really, he'd picked up a brick from besides him, and hidden it in his hand.

"Go away before we have to deal with you as well." The fat one threatened.

"Oh, is that a threat?" He asked, feigning ignorance at what was quite clearly a threat.

"Yes it is." The taller one told him.

"Good. Just so we're clear for the record…" The men looked at each other quizzically, before the fat one received a brick to the forehead…

As the fat one fell to ground, the taller one lunged at him, and the fight was on. In that moment, Cody wished it was a Saturday, and not a Wednesday…

Saturday night was alright for fighting, or so he'd heard…

{Author's Comments}

So, this is going to be adding a little more context to things going on in An Englishman in Castle Aincrad currently - namely around Eydis/Edith, and if one question you have is "Jet has met her before, why is he surprised she recognises him?"... well, it's a good question.

And the answer is very much a "wait and see" one. I will get to it eventually...

As for the release schedule with this... there probably won't be one. Given I'm now working on four stories simultaneously, plus uni work too, my release schedule for everything has essentially gone out the window. I'll try to keep updates coming frequently, but at best it'll be two a month for the foreseeable.

As always, if you've enjoyed this or want to give any feedback, I'm usually on the SAO Fanfiction Discord server: https: double slash discord invite / VU8TGDUJr7 (just copy that into your browser, remove the spaces and replace the double slash with two slashes.)