Chapter XI: "Too Close to the Sun"

December 13th, 2032

"Mmm…."

Kizmel sank into the water with a contented hum, sliding down the stone rim, letting the warmth soak into her bones. After a long day of battle and work, an open-air bath was just what her tired body needed. Here, she could finally relax, under the comforting light of the Blackwyrm constellation, the great Dragon spreading starry wings across the night sky.

Not that the place had been built open-air. That the roof had been lost along the way was something she was willing to consider a happy accident.

"So… this is what a Dark Elf bath is like, huh? …It's nice."

She lowered her gaze from the stars, and allowed herself a small smile at the sight of her human companions—her friends, she could now proudly say—carefully slipping into the bath at the opposite edge. Kirito, she noticed, was very focused on the bath itself. I suppose he's not sure where to look, she thought, amused. Pity. Asuna is modest enough by her own standards, and I certainly have no objection to his gaze.

Ah, well. They've compromised this much. I have no complaints.

Asuna's simple, white one-piece "swimsuit" did suit her new friend and apprentice quite well, Kizmel had to admit. If one was going to insist on covering up for a bath, it was at least practical, and flattering. It would make actual washing extremely impractical, but she supposed it worked well enough for a relaxing soak.

Kizmel's own violet two-piece—Asuna had called it a "bikini", if she remembered right—was considerably more abbreviated, and in her view more comfortable. But it covered what her friends considered essential, without being oppressive, so she would accept the compromise if it meant being able to relax with both of them.

Though I believe I will ask Kirito later if it concerns him as much as it does Asuna. Certainly Swordmaster fashion seems more open for men.

She kept her observations discreet, seeing no need to tease or embarrass her friends when they'd met her halfway. Nonetheless, seeing how much Kirito's build had developed just in the month she'd known him, she couldn't help a small smirk. Give him just a few more months, and that young man will be quite the lady killer. If, I suppose, they can see past his stumbling tongue.

That was a matter for another time. In that moment, Kizmel was just happy to be able to relax together with people she could truly call friends. Moving a deck gun from Dark Star to their own Moondancer, even with the simplified mechanics of the transitory Aincrad, had been grueling enough. The battle beforehand, coming so close to killing all of them, had made everything so much worse.

But I came out of it knowing them to be true friends indeed, she thought. My fellow Knights, I would've expected to stand by me out of duty. Kirito and Asuna had no obligation to fight that battle. I don't know if any Knight of Lyusula would have stood so strong for a human cause, were positions reversed. She stole another glance at Kirito, remembering the moment the Fallen Elf Captain had attacked them, and how the young Swordmaster had taken a blow that would surely have killed her. I can hardly wait to introduce them to Tilnel.

…Though I hope we'll have lost the whiskers by then. She'd almost forgotten them herself, but she and her friends did still have the indelible marks Master Ganryu had left on them. If Kizmel met Tilnel again bearing whiskers, her sister would never let her live it down.

"You really should've tried the hot spring at Wolkenfelder, Kirito-kun," Asuna said then, inelegantly sprawling in the water. "Dark Elves really know how to do a bath…. You really never tried them in the beta?"

"Hey, back then I wasn't stuck in here," Kirito said defensively. He glanced over at the musketeer, and when she didn't snap at him for it, he visibly relaxed. "And I never thought of taking baths for fun. With only two months, this kind of thing just wasn't a priority." He took a deep breath of steamy air, and submerged himself to his chin. "…I'm starting to see the appeal, though."

"Good to see we're rubbing off on you, for once. Maybe we'll get you some social skills, to go with." Asuna arched an eyebrow in Kizmel's direction. "What do you think, Kizmel? Is it time we added manners classes for Kirito-kun, on top of the Sindarin studies?"

She'd decided not to tease them right then. With Asuna handing her such an opening, however, Kizmel couldn't quite resist. Smiling with a deliberate edge of mischief, she replied, "I'm not sure you would want me to impart Dark Elf manners, Asuna." She lightly tugged at one strap of her bikini top. "Though I certainly wouldn't object."

Flushing bright red, Asuna quickly shook her head. "Never mind!" she said, as Kirito slipped, choked, and sputtered under water. "Forget I said anything!"

They really are too easy. I can hardly imagine any of my fellow Knights reacting this way. The passion that humans bring to their lives is so refreshing.

Kizmel allowed herself to luxuriate in that a few moments longer. Then she sobered, smile fading. "Speaking of your 'beta test', however," she began. "Now that we are formal friends and partners—and you are my squire, Asuna—I believe I owe you an explanation of today's events."

That chased the mirth and embarrassment out of both her friends, as well. "The Wild Hunt," Asuna said quietly, eyes shadowed. "The… Fallen Elves?"

"And the Keys," the Knight acknowledged with a nod. "Some of this, I believe Kirito already knows, but I suspect not all of it. Or so I judge from your surprise at meeting me on Einsla." And Kirito's discretion, despite believing the transitory world to be merely a game, was another reason she was proud to call him "friend". From his point of view, she knew, there was no reason for him not to reveal what he knew of her people's secrets, yet he'd not spoken them even to Asuna.

"The beta test didn't have elves until Sandoria," Kirito confirmed. Scratching the back of his head, he gave a sheepish smile. "Running into you was almost as big a shock as Kayaba's 'tutorial'…. Even past that, there's a lot I don't know. I knew about the Fallen Elves, but not that they had anything to do with the Wild Hunt. For that matter, I don't know what the 'Keys' are really for."

Hm. I would hope that means Kayaba did not penetrate our secrets that deeply, but knowing that man's work, he might just as well have been avoiding "spoilers". That sorcerer knows far more than he should.

"To be perfectly frank," Kizmel told them, pulling her legs up to her chest, "even I do not know the full story. Of the Wild Hunt, I know only that they are the strongest of the Fallen Elves; indeed, I believe it likely we only survived today because the three armsmen we faced were Kayaba's facsimiles of those newly turned, and their Captain still unused to the rules of this world."

Her friends both shivered, and she didn't blame them. She had spent more than a few moments of deep unease, realizing that the Swordmasters stood a chance against experienced foes only because they knew the rules of Kayaba's "game" better those who'd learned on real battlefields.

"The Fallen Elves themselves," she continued after a moment, "are corrupted Sindar, who in ages before the Great Separation were tempted by the Dark God Vector. They stole sap from the World Tree, Yggdrasil, and in punishment were cursed by the Goddess Terraria into the beings you saw today."

"Cursed…?" Asuna whispered, eyes wide.

"The details are a matter of myth even to my people, Asuna," Kizmel admitted. "But it is known they bear no children, adding to their people only by twisting others in dark rituals, and they have none of the blessings of the Holy Trees. They are immortal, but it is unlikely they enjoy it. I doubt Vector's patronage truly compensates for their curse."

She fought off a chill at the thought of what life was like for the Fallen Elves. When she was a child, the Fallen Elves had been little more than stories, the sort of tales told around a campfire at night. Those forsaken by the goddesses, for their great crimes. In those days, she'd had no idea of the terrifying reality. Only upon being knighted had she learned of the nature of the Wild Hunt, and the price they'd paid for their transgressions.

And to think we've drawn the eye of a figure I once believed was only a myth meant to frighten children out of misbehaving.

Asuna made a quiet sound, drawing Kizmel's attention back to her present. "So, um… about the ones we fought today," she began, visibly shivering despite the warmth of the bath. "Their leader… it looked like you knew something about her specifically."

"I do," Kizmel admitted, sinking deeper into the water to fight off her own chill. "Kysarah the Ransacker… be grateful she did not take to the field herself, Asuna. Though she is not the leader of the Fallen, or even of the Wild Hunt, she is said to be frighteningly strong. If half the stories are true, she broke branches and stripped bark from the World Tree, receiving a curse yet also terrible power. She may be stronger than all but the Fallen's greatest general and their king."

That the Ransacker had attacked them at a ruined outpost seemed chillingly fitting. Were she not fairly sure the stronghold was merely Kayaba's invention, she might've thought Kysarah had been the one to destroy it in the first place. Stories do say she might have had something to do with Dark Star's disappearance….

Kirito cleared his throat, jarring her and Asuna both out of the darker turn of their thoughts. "Something you said a bit ago," he said slowly. "Vector. Don't I remember you mentioning…?"

"Lost Children of Vector, yes. As I told you before, why he scatters people from other worlds here is a mystery. And I have no idea why the Fallen Elves he commands would be seeking the Keys, either." Kizmel looked up again to the stars, which some old tales held guarded the deep dark of night against the return of Vector. "I can only guess Vector believes the Keys would break his prison."

"Would they?" Asuna asked anxiously. "Is that why you're collecting them, Kizmel?"

The Knight slowly shook her head. "Truthfully, Asuna, I do not know. I don't know if any Knight does. When my comrades and I set out, we were told only that the Keys were to a Sanctuary, which must not be opened. Why the Forest Elves set out to claim them in this transitory world, I could not guess. The Fallen… well, the Wild Hunt may be the only ones who may travel between this world and the true Aincrad at will. Perhaps they believe they can use the illusory Keys somehow."

She was afraid they might well have been correct. After all, Kayaba's spell-cast Aincrad existed to draw the Swordmasters to the true Archipelago. Who was to say if objects could be made real, as well? Though if Kayaba could achieve that, his magic must be terrifyingly powerful.

Drawing in a deep breath, Kizmel deliberately pushed that away, and summoned a smile for her friends that was only half-feigned. "That, however, hardly matters now. My mission—our mission, now—is to stop them from claiming the Keys. I have the Jade Key, and the Lapis Key was stolen only by great trickery," she reminded them. "Where my fellow Knights fell, the two of you have stood strong. In this world governed by the rules of a 'game', you will be stronger guardians than a dozen Pagoda Knights, and together we still stop whatever plots the Forest and Fallen have set in motion."

Once, that might've been bravado on her part. After seeing what Swordmasters could truly do—after seeing their strength and resolve, even against false and weak Fallen Elves—Kizmel truly believed her mission was in better hands than when it had started.

Succumbing to impulse, she slipped through the bath, sliding between Kirito and Asuna, and pulled them in close to her sides. Ignoring their surprised yelps, she luxuriated in their closeness, in the warmth of the bath, and smiled. I fear the consequences to them, if they continue down this path with me. But for however long they are by my side… I believe my life will be fuller than I ever imagined.

"K-Kizmel," Kirito choked out, shivering as if he wanted to squirm away but was afraid of moving too much. "This is, um, a little much…."

"What he said." Asuna wasn't trying to get away, but there was no mistaking her blush. "I know you said mixed bathing is normal on the battlefield, but don't tell me this is normal for the Pagoda Knights!" She hesitated, fidgeting nervously. "…Is it?"

"No, not at all," Kizmel assured her, with a smile that didn't seem to calm either human one bit. "Why do you think I recruited you, Asuna? The two of you have reminded me how to have fun. It's time the Knights relearned it, as well."

Someday, she thought, smirking to herself at the sputters she got in return. Someday, I'll tell them of that old tradition. When they understand more. Then the choice… will be theirs.

December 14th, 2032

Now that's more like it. Next time we're in a fight, we won't just be running away.

Kirito couldn't help a grin, running a hand over the polished wood of Moondancer's wheel. He finally had a chair of his own, as a concession to the simple physics of airship maneuvers, even if his friends had qualified their agreement to it with an admonishment not to fall asleep at the wheel. Better yet, his new chair and theirs had had restraints added, so there would be no repeat of the awkward tangle of their crash landing at Wolkenfelder Castle.

The girls' stations had a few additions to them, as well, to match with the ship's exterior modifications. Sticking his hands idly in his pockets, he stepped out onto the deck, which was no longer as clear as it had been. The gleaming mythril barrels of Dark Star's turret were now firmly seated aboard Moondancer, gunner's chair and all. It could be run from Asuna's station, but it was clearly more effective when she had a clear view outside.

I don't like how exposed she'll be in a fight, but it's my job to keep her out of the line of fire. That'll be easier, now, too, between the twin cores and the new balancers.

Kirito nimbly vaulted the ship's railing, landing lightly on the stone dock in a flutter of leather coat. Turning back to face the ship, he gave the new vents in the lower hull an appreciative look. They'd cut into the cargo space, but the side-mounted thrusters would allow for rotation at a dead stop, finer maneuvering in motion, and balancing when the deck gun was fired.

With all the new features, if they ran into the Forest Elf patrol ship again, the Forest Elves weren't going to enjoy the rematch. All that, plus a ship's stove—powered by Moondancer's core crystal, so no risk of fire aboard—and he thought Moondancer was about the best a ship her size was going to get. At least, he supposed, until the inevitable better gear became available on later islands.

Speaking of better gear….

"We're ready to go, Kirito-kun!"

"That we are, my friend. …What do you think?"

Turning, Kirito raised a hand to acknowledge his companions—his friends, and wasn't that a weird feeling—as they came out of the ruins of the Dark Elf fortress. A cheerful greeting caught in his throat, though, at the sight of the two of them.

Kizmel had dug up a copy of the gear that had been blown up in the Wild Hunt's attack the previous day, to his relief. Though he'd never risk admitting he'd liked the view when the elf girl had worn the Mighty Straps of Leather, there was no denying how awkward it had been to see so much of her dusky skin on display, even without her teasing. Today she was back in her perfectly modest Pagoda Knight armor and cloak, and if she had a mischievous smile, she made no other comment.

What really grabbed his attention was Asuna's new look. Her own hooded cloak had been burned away in the battle, but with Kizmel having officially made her an apprentice and squire in the Pagoda Knights, she'd replaced almost everything else, as well. Blushing faintly, his fellow Swordmaster struck a pose, showing off the purple tunic and black tights and boots of a Pagoda Knights' squire. It was topped with black breastplate and gauntlets a little lighter and with less coverage than Kizmel's, plus a purple cape that seemed to glow even in daylight. A belt holding her pistol on one side and a new rapier on the other, plus her bandolier, completed the ensemble.

Kirito couldn't help but stare. The girl he'd known from the first hours of the death game, his first partner, looked a tan and pointy ears away from being Kizmel's sister. Between that and the knightly aura she seemed to exude, the sight was just plain riveting.

I do not deserve to hang around her. Either of them. One look at this, and everybody else would be howling for the Beater's blood….

Asuna stood there a few moments longer, one hand on the hilt of her rapier, hair and cape flowing in the wind, before it got to be too much for her. "Well?" Her blush didn't quite turn to a glare, but her eyes narrowed dangerously. "Are you just going to stare at me?"

The implicit threat in her tone shook Kirito from his reverie. "Um, it, uh, looks good on you, Asuna!" he blurted. "Really, you look like a real knight now. Diavel would be green with envy."

He realized a split second too late he might've gone a little too far. Instead of snapping at him, though, Asuna blushed again, half-turning away. "…Thanks," she muttered. "I appreciate it, even coming from a rogue like you…."

Kizmel laughed, clapping a hand on her squire's shoulder. "Well, he is a proper privateer now, Asuna. And he's right, the equipment of a Pagoda Knight squire suits you very well. I regret the only blades here merely match your Wind Fleuret, but a member of the Royal Guard, even an apprentice, should not be bearing steel. I believe the blacksmith at our camp on Sandoria should be able to forge you something better."

Right, Dark Elves are burned by "cold iron", Kirito recalled, as Asuna drew and examined her new Squire's Rapier. I guess it'd be bad manners for even a human Pagoda Knight to carry any.

And just where that was going, he had no idea. The beta had never even hinted that it was possible for players to join NPC factions in any capacity. Gain reputation with them, sure, but outright join? That was a new one on him, and further disturbed his entire view of the world.

There being nothing he could divine about that, Kirito turned his attention to the practical. "So. Um. How are the stats for your new gear, Asuna?"

To his relief, she didn't seem bothered by his pragmatic change of subject. "The leather parts are about equivalent to what I was using," she replied, briefly touching her purple tunic. "Though the cape has a Hiding bonus my old one didn't have. And the description said something about a bonus to Agility and another one to Hiding from the… 'set bonus', I think it said?"

Ooh. Finally, something that made sense. "A set bonus is a benefit gained from having matching pieces of gear," he explained, happy to finally have normal gameplay mechanics to sink his teeth into. "The more pieces you've got from a set, the bigger the bonus. With a full set of Apprentice gear, I'm not surprised you'd get some nice perks."

Nice enough he couldn't help feeling just a little envious, really. But only just a little. After all, his own Anneal Blade was likely to last him until at least the Fourth Island, and his Coat of Midnight was so unfairly good he suspected that, with upgrades, it would last clear to the Sixth or even Seventh. Not to mention the Sigil of Lyusula, the ring giving him a minor boost to both AGI and skill growth. He had nothing to be jealous about.

Something about that ever-so-small trace of envy must've shown on his face, from the way Asuna rolled her eyes and Kizmel grinned. Then the elf girl sobered, though, and walked over to him. "Well, I may not have any special armor or weapons for you, Kirito, but… I do have a gift of my own." Reaching into a belt pouch, she withdrew a small object and held it out to him.

Puzzled, Kirito took it. At first glance, it was a round onyx gem, hanging from a gossamer-thin mythril chain, gleaming in the morning sunlight. Looking more closely, though, he saw that its light was internal: a pure white, glowing at the gem's core, and emitting a warmth that registered on a sense other than the normal five. "This is…?"

"A dark star," Kizmel said quietly. "Made from infusing an onyx gem with a fragment of magic power, drawn from the self. The art was almost lost after the Great Separation, but it is still possible with the help of a core crystal." She smiled, looking—to his surprise—just a little bashful. "I had the honor of studying under one of the Dominus Nocte, many years ago. Last night, I assayed the task with Moondancer's crystals."

Later, he would ask what a "Dominus Nocte" was. Right then, Kirito was more focused on the dark star itself, and the feeling of power pulsing from it. It was, he realized, the same feeling he had when awakening Moondancer's second crystal—the sense he'd gotten from Kizmel, during those surreal moments.

"We are friends, now," Kizmel continued. "Appointing Asuna as my apprentice and squire was the most personal gift I could give her," she added, nodding at the musketeer, who smiled shyly in return, "but merely granting you privateer status hardly seemed a match. Will you accept this, Kirito?"

Throat suddenly tight, he nodded wordlessly, and equipped the dark star. In an instant, the pendant hung over his chest, right above the deep, phantom heartbeat he knew to be Kizmel's. In that moment, he didn't even care what the stats were, if any. That it was a gift of friendship—a kind of gift no one had ever given him before—was much more important.

Between that, and the odd little smile Asuna was giving him, Kirito felt strangely warm and tingly.

He hated himself for not being able to get out the words to tell Kizmel how he felt, but the warm smile told him she got the message anyway. Reaching out to clasp his forearm, she said, "You may not be a Pagoda Knight, Kirito, but you are my precious friend and comrade. Even if you cannot find the words, I can sense your feelings."

Kirito was both touched and terrified by the idea, and what it might mean about the world he was trapped in. At length, he finally opened his mouth—to say what, even he didn't quite know, but Asuna suddenly snapping her head up preempted him anyway. "Guys? Someone's coming!"

His first, wild fear was that it was Kysarah, back for a rematch. When he turned to look, though, he instead spotted a small, simple skiff cruising toward the outpost. A skiff with distinctive whisker markings on the bow.

That's Argo's, isn't it? Why is she here? And how? …Right, if anyone else could see past the charm, it'd be her.

When the skiff touched down, though, it wasn't the Rat who leapt down from it. It was a tall, pony-tailed girl in a black catsuit and a mask covering the lower half of her face. The edges of whiskers were visible above the edge of that mask, and Kirito abruptly remembered where he'd seen her before.

Before he or his companions could say a word, Kumari dropped to one knee. "Kirito-dono, Asuna-dono. Kizmel-dono. I bring word from Grandmaster Argo—long-range chat is down, and the situation is dire."

One Hour Earlier

Well, isn't this just a big happy family, Agil thought, leaning against Liberator's bridge. I hope Coper knows what he's doing, 'cause I don't think anybody else here does. Dammit, Diavel, why the hell'd you have to get yourself kidnapped? You built up the raid, then left it like a chicken with its head cut off.

Liberator was cruising steadily toward Niian's Skywall Tower, with a full raid's worth of players on deck. Some of them newcomers to the frontline, including the trio standing with Agil toward the stern, most of them were veterans of the Illfang raid. Including the two color-coded groups who took up most of the bow deck, carefully not looking at each other, except when they thought the other side wasn't looking.

Lind and Kibaou, standing at the heads of the Dragons Knights Brigade and the Aincrad Liberation Front, were practically glowing with anime-esque battle auras, clearly barely able to handle being in the same airspace, let alone on the same deck. The sheer clash of personalities made Agil shake his head.

This is what you two get for being good enough to get your guilds here, but not good enough for one of you to get ahead of the other. Could you maybe aim some of that aggro at the boss?

"You sure you don't want to call in the MVPs from the last raid, Agil?" one of his party members, the shaggy-haired and bearded greatsword wielder Wolfgang, asked him. "I know the rumors going around, but I figured you'd want them in on this. Especially with those two butting heads."

"Eh." Agil shrugged. "This is supposed to just be a scouting op, right? I figure if Moondancer's been out of sight this long, they're busy. No sense interrupting them for just the recon, when their cap'n's a beta—even if this is like Illfang and something's changed, we won't know until the real fight anyway."

What, exactly, Kirito and the girls hanging with him might be up to, he didn't know and wasn't sure he wanted to. The so-called "Beater" definitely had something going on with the game that nobody else did, and that was before getting into the weirdly smart NPC. He had the uneasy feeling there was more going on in SAO than just Kayaba's attempts at playing God.

They need help, I'll do what I can. Unless and until, I'm staying out of that.

Wolfgang folded his arms, casting a skeptical look toward the bow. "You sure this is just a scouting run, Agil? That's a full raid we've got here. More than you had for Illfang. And you know Coper's up to something."

"…Yeah," Agil admitted with a sigh. "Something's up, for sure. But if they were trying something crazy like launching a raid, I think they'd have waited for the Legend Braves to get back." From wherever they'd gone, and that was something else that made him nervous, after what Kirito and his girls had told him. "I'll give 'em a shout if something happens, but until then I say it's better not to distract them."

His shaggy friend turned that skeptical look on him, but let it go. It wasn't like either of them had enough info to go on, anyway.

Aboard ship, there wasn't much to do but wait for them to get close enough to land by the Skywall Tower, and people-watch. The DKB and ALF were two big masses of tension, but others seemed to be taking things more in stride. Agil could see Tengu sitting cross-legged toward the bow, apparently meditating; the unnervingly-bloodthirsty Pitohui was practically bouncing on the deck, working off energy dashing from bow to stern and back. A trio he'd noticed before, of a gray-haired man in red armor, a scholarly fellow decked out like a shogun, and a short-haired brunette in a white coat seemed to just be watching everyone.

Well, a game like this takes all kinds, and that's without the whole "we're all trapped and could die any second". The raiders have way too many spooky people for my liking, though. …Whatever. We should be getting close, now, and… hey, shouldn't we going down by now?

Liberator was quickly closing in on the Skywall Tower, and Agil could hear the engines throttling back. Yet the airship wasn't getting any lower, which he'd kind of thought was a requirement for letting the scouts off. From the way several of the other independent players were starting to look around, muttering to each other, he wasn't the only one who noticed, either.

Lind and Kibaou only glanced at each other, though, and then away with a mutual snort.

That ain't normal. Frowning, Agil pushed away from the bulkhead. "Hold the fort, Wolfgang," he said, already heading for the nearby hatch. "I'm gonna go find out what's up."

Wolfgang waved a hand, more focused on the way Liberator was sweeping into a wide turn to port. "Go ahead. I'll scream if any flying Minotaurs show up or something."

Agil snorted, wishing that was as unlikely as it sounded. Then he was at the hatch leading into the bridge, and without bothering to knock he wrenched it open. Bad form, probably, to just barge in on a ship's bridge, but then he thought it was kind of bad form not to tell the passengers why the ship had changed course.

He was kind of disappointed when Coper, seated in the middle of a bridge that made Agil think steampunk Star Trek, only glanced in his direction with a friendly smile. "Ah, hello! You must be… Agil, was it? One of the DPS from the Illfang raid? What can I do for you?"

"You can start by telling me what the hell is going on," the axeman said shortly. "Thought this was supposed to be a scouting mission. How are we supposed to scout if we don't get off the ship?"

"Oh, I see." Coper chuckled, scratching his head sheepishly. "Guildmasters Lind and Kibaou didn't tell anyone? When their guilds reached the Skywall Tower simultaneously, I suggested a compromise. The disposition of Liberator is deferred until Sandoria, and in the meantime we're not risking a repeat of Illfang."

Agil didn't like the sound of that. At all. "Which means…?"

"Stay and watch," Liberator's captain suggested. "Best seats in the house, and you won't risk a hearing debuff…. Lhan? Proceed as planned. Let's get this done with, and we can be in the first town on Sandoria in time for lunch."

"Aye, sir." The dark-haired woman manning a station just left of the helm flipped two switches, and pressed a key. "Gunners? You are clear to begin. We'll be on target in twenty seconds."

Gunners? On target? Wha? …Oh, no. No, no, no. Bad idea!

Liberator finished the turn, coming to a hover about five hundred meters off the Skywall Tower, and by Agil's estimate about ten above. Bow turned away from the Tower, that left the starboard flank with a clear view—and as a series of thunks ran from stern to bow, he realized exactly what the "compromise" Coper had come up with really was.

Technically, he thought, it might even be possible. He'd had a front-row seat to the proof that Skywall Towers, at least their glass roofs, weren't Immortal Objects. But still—!

"Are you out of your damned mind?!" Agil exploded, starting for Coper. "This is exactly the kind of thing—!"

Fire erupted from Liberator's starboard, a staccato sequence from stern to bow, as the airship's ten cannons went off. Surprised screams and shouts could be heard from the deck, but Agil's attention was only on the shots arcing across the sky. Though Liberator's viewports weren't the weird not-glass of Moondancer's, they seemed to have an equivalent magnification ability, giving him—as Coper had said—the best seat in the house.

Ten heavy cannonballs smashed into the glass walls and roof of the Skywall Tower's top floor, shattering it in an instant. Even from five hundred meters way, Agil could see massive shards flying everywhere, flashing into azure polygons and vanishing long before they hit the ground. What was left behind on the Tower was harder to tell, the cannonballs having exploded on impact, leaving a haze of smoke.

Maybe because it was close to the Minos Mountains and the skyrift above them, there was enough wind to quickly blow the smoke away. Agil soon got a good, long view of what had been hidden by glass and then by smoke: two huge Minotaur-type monsters, one blue-furred with a huge hammer, the other—even bigger—with red fur and a gigantic golden hammer.

The smaller one wasn't mentioned in Argo's guide, he thought distantly. Could make things interesting. Except….

It was ten seconds before anything else happened. Ten seconds of seeing the two Minotaurs stare at Liberator, eyes glowing an angry red. That was apparently how long it took for Liberator's gunners to reload, because then they fired again, a full salvo of ten cannonballs—shells, Agil thought they were probably called, if they were explosive—right at the smaller Minotaur.

No way to tell exactly what happened to it. All Agil knew for sure was that when the fire and smoke cleared again, the blue-furred Minotaur wasn't there anymore. And the red-furred one was looking really, really angry. He couldn't help feeling a spike of adrenaline at the sight of the five-meter-tall bull-man gathering itself, breaking into a run, and taking a flying leap off the Tower.

Holy—!

He couldn't imagine it could've jumped the full five hundred meters to Liberator. It still came a lot closer than he was comfortable with, before the airship's guns boomed one more time. Only three or four shots connected, but it was enough to interrupt the Minotaur's leap, and send it crashing down to the ground.

Apparently even Skywall Tower bosses weren't immune to fall damage. The red-furred bull-man shattered on impact as thoroughly as any player might have. Next to Illfang, a completely anti-climactic end.

Agil's entire body ran cold.

Coper sighed in clear relief. "Well," he said, turning a smile on the axeman. "That's that. Now we've got all the time in the world to get someone down to deactivate the Skywall—"

"You stupid son of a bitch," Agil said, voice made flat and deceptively calm by the ice currently replacing the blood in his veins. "Do you have any idea what you just did?"

Liberator's captain blinked at him, obviously confused. "Spared us a boss fight where we could've had casualties? I'm sorry, Agil-san, I don't see the problem here. With the way those guildmasters are squabbling, taking those Minotaurs on conventionally would've been a disaster—"

"This'll probably be worse," Agil cut him off, stalking right up to the captain's chair. Normally, he didn't like to make a big deal of his height, but just this once he used it to loom over the other player. "First, you just deprived an entire raid of a boatload of EXP. Second, those could've had good drops. Either you or your gunners got it all instead—and something tells me you ain't sharing—or nobody got any of it."

"We can make up for it," Coper assured him, shrinking back a little in his seat. "If we did get Cor from it, I'll see to it that a fair share is distributed to—"

"Third," the axeman rode right over him, folding his arms and glaring, "that was the most blatant sequence-break I've seen in a long time. In an MMO whose only GM literally kills people. Do you really think you could just use Diavel's little exploit to bypass an entire Skywall Tower boss and get away with it, no consequences?"

Because there would be consequences, Agil was dead sure. Especially if Kirito's little speech after Illfang, about the Integrity Knights being Kayaba's moderators, had any truth to it at all. He somehow figured the kid was making up the details out of whole cloth, but it was a fact that Alice had appeared right after the boss fight, because Diavel had done something he shouldn't have.

Which is probably about this ship, and this dunce just painted a target on himself. And since a bunch of us were sitting on the deck when he did it, the next Integrity Knight might not settle for just the perp!

Then, and only then, did Coper's composure start to crack. He swallowed hard, and began, "N-now, now, Agil-san, last time we knew an Integrity Knight had been hanging around for weeks. There's been no sign of any since we got to Niian, so I really don't think—"

"Captain! There's something coming, closing at high speed, and—!"

A bolt of pure white lightning slammed into Liberator's port side, whiting out the viewports and blinding Agil for several seconds. Even when it cleared, alarms were still ringing out, his whole body was tingling, and he could hear screaming coming from the deck, along with no few curses.

He was inclined toward a few unkind words himself, blinking away spots in his vision. Especially when he got a good look out the port viewports, and saw exactly what was speeding toward them.

Raising a shaky finger to point at the pure white airship—bigger than Liberator—sailing toward them, Agil stared down at the paling Coper. "I. Told. You. So."

Alice Synthesis Thirty glared out Icarus' Lament's viewports at the Swordmaster airship, watching it bombard Niian's Skywall Tower. She was already extremely annoyed, the five-day journey forced by the difficulty of pushing through the Skywalls having thoroughly worn down her nerves. Seeing the Swordmasters casually blasting apart one of the bulwarks maintaining order throughout the Archipelago made her mood that much worse.

Seeing how they were doing so left her gritting her teeth. The Chrome Disaster, she thought, recognizing the ship from records she'd seen in Centoria Cathedral's archives. Personal cruiser of the Wolkenritter's last Grandmaster, and the only Wolkenritter ship to escape the Axiom Church's wrath a century before. I was sent to capture Diavel because of that ship. Are the Swordmasters truly so foolish as to provoke us by using it anyway?

Well, if they were going to be fools, she was going to carry out her mission without regret. It wouldn't stop the Swordmasters' advance, but she was sure it would destroy many of their best warriors.

…Is that man here…?

Alice shook off the unnecessary thought, and placed her hands on Lament's main controls. The ship was mostly automated, and she'd spent much of the journey studying the manual she'd found in the hold. Though she was no expert, she was willing to wager the Chrome Disaster's captain wasn't, either—and Lament was the bigger ship.

Disengaging the "autopilot", she fed power into Lament's guns, and nudged the ship into a more oblique approach. Her instincts as a knight urged a head-on attack; the vagaries of battle between cruiser-size airships demanded a broadside. They don't even seem to realize I'm coming, she thought, disgusted, as the Chrome Disaster fired again on the Skywall Tower. How have they come even this far, led by fools?

One of the more esoteric displays on the bridge—one of Kayaba's "admin tools", whatever that meant—flashed red, telling her the Tower Guardians had been killed. Nothing more stood between the Swordmasters and lowering the Skywall blocking the way to Sandoria.

So they believe. Alice waited a few moments more, as the red circles on the main display began to converge on the Chrome Disaster. If she understood it right, only one gun would be on target, but it was a start. When the circles matched, she pressed the red button on her controls.

As an Integrity Knight and rider of one of the great dragons, Alice tended to favor the element of Fire. Watching a lightning bolt crackle and boom from Lament's starboard bow, smashing into the Chrome Disaster's port and leaving the other ship visibly crackling, she was forced to concede Thunder had its own merits. Even if she did think a full broadside going off at once would probably have blinded her.

To her disappointment, the "admin display" told her the Chrome Disaster had taken only minimal damage from her opening shot. She was not, however, especially surprised; the Wolkenritter's flagship hadn't earned its ominous epithet for no reason. Just as she hadn't been sent with Lament simply to test Kayaba's "gift".

Alice continued the gentle turn to port, bringing the next cannon in line while the first was still reloading. To her disgust, the Chrome Disaster's captain didn't even seem to have reacted to her first shot; though she could see Swordmasters on the deck running around in dazed confusion, the ship itself had done little but slightly accelerate, as if having no idea how to react.

Without Diavel, the Swordmasters are surely no threat. Then I will end this quickly!

The second and third of Lament's cannons came to bear on the Chrome Disaster, and Alice's finger stabbed the firing key again. With a crackle and boom, twin lightning bolts split the clear sky.

If Agil had had any hair, it would've been standing on end after the first bolt of lightning. After the second and third, he could see that everyone on deck who did have hair was frizzing, on top of the screaming and general running around like idiots.

Leaning out the bridge hatch, he bellowed, "Wolfgang! Get everybody below, quick! Anybody topside's gonna fry!" The ALF were half-fried already, by the look of their lifebars. Standing on the port side of the deck, they'd lost that particular lottery. He was surprised none of them had been killed outright.

Wolfgang hollered back an acknowledgment, wading into the chaotic mess toward the bow. Tengu and the guy dressed as a shogun quickly moved to help him corral the two guilds, to Agil's relief. At least some people still had their wits.

Too bad not here, he thought, wheeling back around to glare at Liberator's captain. "What the hell are you waiting for, man?! Get this ship moving, before that heavy cruiser blows us all to hell!" Damn good thing I read the beta stuff Fuurinkazan had about airships. But damn, a heavy cruiser, now? Son of a bitch!

Coper shook himself. "Helm, engines ahead full!" he called out, a tremor betraying his fear. "Lhan, ready the port cannons!" He swallowed hard. "If we can hold out just a few minutes—"

Another pair of lightning bolts sizzled across the sky, but just barely missed; the attacker apparently hadn't expected Liberator's sudden acceleration. Agil wasn't too confident it would last, though. If there was one thing he'd learned fighting Illfang, it was that SAO's bosses were smart.

One more shot whited out the stern viewports; from the way the ship rocked and from the tingle in his boots, that one had been a graze. The enemy ship was already compensating.

Leaning in close to Coper's ear, Agil muttered, "Hold out for what, exactly?" Because he'd tried messaging Kirito after the first shot, and gotten an error message. If Moondancer was going to show up, it wouldn't be from a distress call.

"The Rat was observing us from near the base of the Tower," Coper replied quietly, voice trembling. "She'll have sent one of her ninja to… wherever your friend Kirito's gotten to. And the Legend Braves were supposed to rendezvous with us; they sent word they'd gotten a secret weapon. We… just need to buy a little time—"

Three shocks slammed into Liberator's port side, prompting someone on the bridge to scream, Coper to yelp, and Agil to swear in English. Legend Braves with a "secret weapon"; if Kirito and the girls are right, that's bad news—and we've got amateur hour here. Dammit, Kirito, get your backside here, quick!

"Helm, evasive maneuvers! Lhan, as soon as you've got a shot, hit that thing with everything you've got! Fire at will!"

…We are so gonna die.

Tch. I'll have to tell Uncle Bercouli that Kayaba's "gifts" are more trouble than they're worth.

Glaring at the Chrome Disaster as the ship twisted away from her first full broadside, Alice pushed more power into Lament's massive engine. Despite multiple clean hits and a few grazes, the Swordmaster airship had lost less than a tenth of its "hull strength", going by the admin display. Now it was trying to evade her, however clumsily, making it less likely she'd get in the decisive volley she really wanted.

I'd heard Kayaba was obsessed with "fairness". Clearly, this ship was designed with that in mind. I should've been able to crush the Disaster with my first shot. …Well, they only delay the inevitable.

Pulling around in a wide turn, angling to climb above Lament, the Chrome Disaster's own guns finally fired. A staggered, uncoordinated salvo, half the shells missed Lament completely, crashing somewhere in the rocky plains below. Two more struck the airship's flank at an oblique angle, skipping harmlessly off; the remaining three did strike solid hits, exploding on Lament's deck.

Alice ignored the damage. The heavy cruiser's deck was thick enough—wooden or no—even with Kayaba's evident built-in handicaps, to easily sustain such hits. Explosive shells, she noted, angling the wing-sails to match the Chrome Disaster's ascent. Records say the Wolkenritter ships couldn't channel core crystal energy directly into cannons, but they had some way of containing magic in cannon shells. Either the Swordmasters lack the knowledge, or assumed they would have no need here.

Technically, they might've been right. In the hands of a captain and crew who knew what they were doing, explosive shells and the smaller ship's greater mobility might've turned the tide. As it was, Alice judged Lament would take something of a beating before the day was done, but the Chrome Disaster was going to go down in flames.

Spiraling up and above the still-smoking Skywall Tower, the two ships matched course and speed for a split second. In that moment, Alice dropped her fist on the firing key—and someone aboard the Chrome Disaster apparently had a lucky moment. Their broadsides went off as one, fifteen thunderbolts lashing out against ten explosive shells.

The lightning and explosions briefly blinded her, impact shock rocking her in her seat. Then a shadow loomed in the starboard viewports, blotting out the mid-morning sun. Ducking reflexively, she nudged Lament's bow down, before she could collide with whatever was approaching.

Trailing smoke, the Chrome Disaster sailed overhead, turning hard to port in an arc that would take the ship behind Lament and heading away.

Stifling a curse unbecoming of a knight, Alice glanced at the admin display. That quick look, along with the smoke from Lament and the Chrome Disaster both, told her more or less what must have happened. As closely as their courses had aligned, their respective broadsides had partly collided between them, detonating much of the Disaster's salvo and expending several of Lament's thunderbolts in mutual destruction.

The Disaster had, finally, lost more than a tenth of its durability. Lament had taken nearly half that at the same time.

Lucky shot, Alice thought sourly, cutting engine power to tighten her own turn. But they won't escape. They have nowhere to run, and nowhere they can hide before I can catch them.

For the moment, it was turning into a stern chase, adding to her ever-growing irritation. As soon as Lament was back on the Chrome Disaster's trail, she fed power back into the engine, grudgingly grateful that Kayaba's idea of "balance" at least included the notion that a "boss" should not be so easily escaped. Lament's engine was disproportionately powerful for her size, if nothing else.

The Disaster appears to have taken damage to its own engines. That will help some, as well. Alice grimaced, fingers clenching on her controls. It still bought them a few minutes. Grr… if I were riding Amayori instead of this metal contraption, I could've easily outmaneuvered and destroyed them from the start. Now I have to wait and catch them—

A thunk from Lament's deck startled her, and she turned her attention from the Chrome Disaster to her own ship's bow just in time to see a pair of hatches open up. Underneath were glowing portals, shimmering pools of liquid rather than the swirling clouds of World Gates. Frowning, she glanced down at the admin console, wondering what fresh "surprise" Kayaba's gift had.

[Add Spawn Gates Activated].

Utter gibberish. Yet even Alice quickly understood, when the first lizard-like heads burst from the portals, and wings flapped free.

…I wish someone had told me about this before the battle.

Liberator flew over and past the enemy airship, and Coper sagged in his chair. "Well, that bought us some time, at least. It looks like our engines took a hit, but it'll take time for a heavy cruiser to catch up with us. We'll be safe, for a few minutes anyway."

Unimpressed, coughing, and waving away smoke from a nearby console that had exploded from the last hit, Agil stared down at the younger player. "Bought time for what? I'm still not seeing any sign of the Braves, and unless your pilot and gunners get their act together, we're not taking that thing down alone."

Maybe even if they did. He'd finally noticed there was a lifebar display above the forward viewport, giving that crucial detail for the enemy ship—named Icarus' Lament, which he found oddly ominous—and the few hits Liberator had landed hadn't done much. He had no clue how airship combat was really supposed to go, but he kind of doubted bosses were balanced to be sunk by single player ships.

If we get through this, I'm raising hell in the next raid meeting about sequence-breaking.

"Repairs, for one thing," Coper said, and punched a button on his armrest. "Captain to all decks: gunners, begin damage control. Any raiders who know anything about airship mechanics, please assist; otherwise, I'd ask you to stay out of the way." He glanced back up at Agil. "Fortunately, we do have spares aboard, at least."

"Uh-huh." And if repairing an airship in the middle of a boss fight was really that easy, Agil was fully prepared to eat his axe. Whether Coper really believed that himself, he wasn't sure. He was starting to get the uncomfortable suspicion that while Liberator's captain knew more about Diavel's schemes than anybody else did, he didn't know enough more.

The kid is flailing as much as any of us, he just won't admit it. Glancing over at the three other players running Liberator's bridge, he shook his head. Guess I can't blame him for that, though. Those guys are shaking like leaves; somebody's gotta keep it cool, and I ain't the captain.

At least it looked like Coper was right about them having a little time to recover. Over the next few minutes, Agil kept turning a wary eye out the aft viewports, but while Lament was clearly gaining on them, the airship boss wasn't doing so very fast. If the thing hadn't clearly been triggered by the attack on the Skywall Tower, he'd have given it good odds it would eventually tether, letting them escape entirely.

No way we'll be that lucky. He started to turn his head back forward, intending to ask Coper how the repairs were going, only to pause as something flickered in the corner of his eye. Wait. What the hell was—?

Agil turned his full attention out the aft viewport again, and his eyes widened. Lizard-like heads, scaly wings and claws, somehow moving fast enough to be quickly catching up with Liberator— "Flying mobs incoming!" Snatching up his axe, he darted for the hatch. "Coper, get me some backup! We're gonna have company on the deck!"

As he wrenched the hatch open, he heard Coper's shaking voice. "Raiders, this is the Captain! We need two parties topside. Prepare to repel borders!"

I bet he's always wanted to say that, the axeman thought, and then he was out on the deck as the first winged monster dove in. At least he's got some brains, though—no way we'd be able to fight with the full raid groupin this small a space. I just hope those mobs can't hurt the ship!

Shouting a battle cry, Agil spun his axe in a Whirlwind, glowing axehead slamming into the draconic mob's snout. It tumbled away with a hiss, buying him enough time to grin, catch the monster's name—Vanguard Wyvern—and then hurriedly duck away as a jet of flame roared past his shoulder. It missed him, leaving him with just a toasty feeling, but burned right through the open bridge hatch.

Oops! He hurriedly slammed the hatch shut, trying to ignore the scream from inside, and whirled to face the offender.

Offenders, plural. Half a dozen Vanguard Wyverns were swooping in, with another batch trailing them. Three of them were breathing fire at the pilothouse, while another was outright gnawing on the deck. A fifth flew too close to a thruster and was blown away with a hissing squawk, while the sixth—the one that had tried to torch him—was diving right at him.

Not wanting to risk the post-motion freeze of a Sword Skill, Agil smacked the one attacking him in the nose with the handle of his axe, and charged for the bow while it was off-balance. He'd just noticed another lifebar on his HUD, labeled "Liberator", and it was draining ever so slightly every couple of seconds. That made his first priority the wyvern chewing on the deck.

An Overhand skill caught it in the neck, not quite beheading it but definitely distracting it from attacking the ship. That gave him just long enough to steel himself, utter a quick prayer, and charge for the nearest of the three trying to roast the bridge.

Oh, man, I'm glad SAO doesn't have pain!

Agil ended up lunging right through a blast of firebreath, making him uncomfortably hot and sizzling several percent off his HP. It got him in range of one of the wyverns, though—one that seemed to be trying to melt through the bridge's bow viewport and get at poor Lhan. He put paid to that idea with another Whirlwind, the two-hit spin first sending the wyvern into a midair tumble and then slicing one clawed foot off.

The post-motion delay was about when his brain caught up with him, and he realized he'd just rushed into the middle of four very unhappy adds, and not killed even one of them. A distant, semi-hysterical corner of his mind reflected that he didn't have much right to snark at Coper just then.

Not when two Vanguard Wyverns were sweeping their firebreath right at him, and another was lunging at him with a mouth full of way too many pointy teeth.

Those teeth were suddenly rocked back by a thrown knife flying right into the wyvern's throat. A flicker of steel cut through one of the streams of fire as a katana sliced up and out, and a laughing figure streaked through the air to hit source of the other with a Sonic Leap.

Then Agil was free of the post-motion, and he took the time to spin his axe into the wyvern he'd already partly dismembered. "Good to see you guys!" he called over his shoulder. "I was startin' to think I was gonna be alone up here!"

"Fear not," Tengu told him, ripping another lightning-fast slash through his target's chest, "we have no desire to be burnt alive or smashed to earth, either." One more backhand slash, and the wyvern's head flew free of its body, both shattering to blue glass. "Be wary, more are coming!"

Yeah, noticed! But Agil was a bit more confident, with a little backup. Between Tengu's katana—with no Sword Skills, which both impressed and mildly terrified him—and Pitohui's raw, reckless enthusiasm, they had a good start at clearing out the first wave before the second quite arrived.

By the time the second group did, more players were up on deck and waiting for them. Lind and Kibaou had each gotten their personal parties up, and a couple of independents he vaguely recognized had come along with. He was a bit too busy trying to pry a wyvern's teeth off his axe's handle to get a good look, but he thought one of them was the guy in Shogun cosplay, and the other a girl with a scythe bigger than she was.

Specifics were hard to make out in the next couple of minutes, with swords and other blades flying in all directions, and more wyverns than Agil wanted to think about swooping in and around. All he knew for sure was that there were way too many teeth, and firebreath was officially not his favorite thing to deal with in SAO.

"Hey, watch it! We're handlin' the port!"

"It doesn't matter who is on which side! We need to defend the ship!"

"An' if ya knock one o' my people over the side, you're goin' over next! Watch where ya swing that thing!"

I'll take it over Lind and Kibaou, though, he thought ruefully, cutting off a jet of flame with a Whirlwind that went clear through the fire and sliced the wyvern's jaws in half. Risking a glance toward the bow, he could see the DKB and ALF jockeying for position as much as fighting the mobs. They were keeping the wyverns off the ship, but as much through sheer confused movement as anything else.

Flapping wings and a screech were all the warning Agil had before teeth suddenly sank into his shoulder from behind. Swearing, he tried to wheel around to bring his axe down on it, but the wyvern only turned with him. His HP was already down five percent from the bite, and the more it wrenched around, the worse it got. Wishing he had the rumored Martial Arts skill, the sudden flare of heat—telling him the thing was about to breathe fire while biting him—prompted his fingers to loosen on his axe anyway—

A bellow, and a heavy sword sliced clean through the wyvern's back, just barely missing Agil in the process. "Damn!" Wolfgang called out, shaking his shaggy head as the mob broke apart. "This battle's crazy! I knew those guys were nuts, but this is too much!"

Catching a glimpse of Lind and Kibaou backing into each, bouncing, and snarling at each other instead of the wyverns trying to eat them, Agil could only nod in rueful agreement. "Next time, I'm getting the battle plan in writing. I don't know who's supposed to be in charge here, but I'll take a signed document from anybody just so I have somebody to yell at!"

Another wyvern's head sailed by, accompanied by an annoyed hiss. "Bickering children," Tengu muttered, even his stoicism apparently sorely tested by the competing guilds. "And where is Moondancer?"

"Dunno," Agil admitted, pausing to take a breath. "Last I heard, they were looking for upgrades—and I hope they found 'em, 'cause we could really use the firepower right now. That cruiser's gonna catch up any minute now, and we're lucky nobody's been knocked off the deck yet—"

A crackling boom sent a shock through his feet, set his skin tingling, and rocked the entire ship. Oh, hell! It's here!

Icarus' Lament was in position to target Liberator again, and closing fast on full broadside range. And maybe it was the distraction, but it was in the moments right after the thunderbolt struck that the girl with the scythe missed with some kind of spinning Sword Skill, screeched, and was struck full in the face by a diving wyvern. Over-extended and off-balance, her back slammed into the railing, she tipped over, and with a wail toppled over the side.

No!

Knowing it was way too late, Agil flung himself toward the falling player. Time seemed to slow, giving him a perfect look at her terrified expression—and halfway there, another boom deafened him.

Blinding green light flashed up and back, missing Liberator by a meter and smashing right into Lament's bow.

If she was never involved in an airship battle again, Alice thought acidly, it would be too soon. Normally she would've considered her own situational awareness to be second to none, but that was when riding her beloved Amayori. On the bridge of a heavy cruiser, keeping track of everything was just that much harder, more confusing.

If she hadn't been trying to keep track of the bewildering displays, the Chrome Disaster's movements, and the battle aboard the Disaster's deck all at the same time, she never would've been caught by surprise. With all that going on, her first clue that another ship had entered the fray was when the Wood-magic bolt struck Lament's bow from below.

The interloper soared up, catching the one Swordmaster who'd been knocked off the Disaster's deck, and arrowed toward Lament. At an angle the heavy cruiser's guns couldn't reach, to her intense frustration. But they have only one cannon, and they're smaller. This changes little.

So Alice thought at first, but as the new ship came closer she found herself frowning. It was a patrol ship, from the size and single turret mount, but not one she recognized from the aerodromes of Einsla or Niian. Not something the Swordmasters could've bought locally, and not another leftover Wolkenritter ship….

Another emerald blast lanced out, licking away at Lament's hull in the instant before the patrol ship flew past. In that moment, Alice realized what it was.

Wooden hull, Wood-magic cannon—that's an elf ship. Forest Elf, from the look of it. Her frown deepened. Why would the Forest Elves involve themselves? Lyusula I could understand, but so long as we stay out of the forests, Kales'Oh has never cared much about the Axiom Church.

Well. She supposed that was a matter for another time, something to discuss with Uncle Bercouli when she returned to Centoria Cathedral. In the meantime, the ship was clearly working with the Chrome Disaster, and that meant swatting it took priority over determining why it was there.

And I can swat it, she thought grimly, angling Lament's bow a little further to port to bring more of her guns to bear on her original target. Either it gets where my guns can reach it before I finish the Chrome Disaster, or the wyverns will deal with it. It can't stay behind me indefinitely, and even together the two of them can't destroy Lament before I destroy them.

Though Lament had taken more damage than Alice would've liked, and the Disaster had apparently managed to repair itself some during the chase. The Disaster's engines were still clearly balking, and she would not give it another chance to escape, however briefly.

In range!

Lament's cannons fired in time with the Disaster's again, not quite full broadsides crossing the air once more. As before, some shots from both destroyed each other, but this time Alice was watching carefully, and she didn't allow the Disaster to fly away in the confusion. She matched their course change, and noticed with grim satisfaction that her enemy seemed unwilling to make overly drastic maneuvers. Probably, she thought, out of fear of throwing Swordmasters right off the deck.

In the next few minutes, that risk disappeared, the Swordmasters vanishing belowdecks. The Disaster still wasn't free to move as it pleased, though, as that left the wyverns still spawning from Liberator free reign. Though the Forest Elf patrol ship swooped in to help, using its deck gun with surprising precision to burn some of them away, that just left that ship right where Lament's guns could reach.

It was a battle of attrition. Yet it was one Alice was confident her ship would win, as she pounded the Disaster and fired on the patrol ship whenever it was foolish enough to come within reach. Lament was taking damage, down by almost half the hull strength reported on the admin display, but she had the measure of the Chrome Disaster now. It could no longer repair itself—and a new option had just lit up on her display.

[Overload Ready].

She smiled to herself, and let Lament's cannons fall silent. If she understood the words on her display correctly, if she but waited another ten seconds, she was going to be able to strike the Disaster with an overwhelming blow. So. Kayaba's notion of "fairness" has its advantages. Suffer enough damage, and the ship's offense becomes more powerful to compensate.

The crimson words on the display turned green, and Alice's finger reached for the button. In a moment, the Chrome Disaster would be a memory, and with luck the patrol ship riding its flank would go down with—

Lament's aft viewports flared emerald, and an alarm screeched through the bridge.

"I guess now we know what the Legend Braves were up to," Kirito remarked, with a calm Asuna could tell from the beat in the right side of her chest was forced. "Unless either of you think the Forest Elves would be helping out in a boss fight themselves?"

The newly-minted squire shook her head, staring out the glasswood at the ships swooping around ahead of them. "Kinda doubt it," she admitted. "They chased us, but otherwise let the Fuuma do their dirty work." She turned her attention to her console, which was starting to light up with what she thought were battle-specific displays. "Kizmel?"

"Taking a patrol ship against a heavy cruiser?" The dusky elf huffed. "Not unless they were repaying a significant honor debt. Those of Kales'Oh are many things; suicidally reckless is not one of them." She glanced over at the two players. "Kirito? You would know this world's aerial battles as well as any of us. Now that we are going to them, instead of running away…."

Kirito grimaced; Asuna could see his fingers tightening on the wheel. "I only ever participated in boarding actions during airship battles, but…. Bring up raid chat; that'll give us voice communication between us, and when we're close enough it should automatically link with Liberator and the Legend Braves."

It took Asuna a few moments to find the option in her menu. They hadn't needed it during the Illfang raid, and since then she hadn't strayed far from her teammates; she made a mental note to check with Kirito later exactly what she'd need to know for boss fights in general, in case there was something else that had been missed.

After helping Kizmel set up hers as well—getting some relief from the tension from the elf girl's lingering wonder over "Mystic Scribing"—Asuna returned her gaze to her console, and the additional details that had popped up on it. Liberator had taken enough damage to make her wince. The patrol ship—whose name came up as Durendal, more or less proving who was running it—had been luckier, but it clearly couldn't take as much to begin with.

The boss ship is down by almost half, she noticed, glancing up long enough to catch an exchange of explosive shells and lightning bolts. The name… Icarus' Lament? I don't like the sound of that. Don't I remember "Icarus" had something to do with King Minos…?

"Icarus?" Kirito mused, when she asked. Watching as Liberator dove and ducked around Lament, sliding over to port—harried, torched, and gnawed on by some kind of wyverns along the way—he frowned. "I… think that has some connection to the Minotaurs? His father built the Labyrinth or something, didn't he?"

"Oh, right." Something about that—and the "Lament" part specifically—nagged at her, but the battle ahead distracted her before she could put her finger on it. Liberator emerged from beneath Lament, climbing up to bring her cannons to bear even as Durendal descended on the other side, bracketing the boss ship.

What happened next was a little hard to see, what with both player ships opening fire simultaneously, but it seemed clear Lament triggered both its own broadsides at the same time. All three took a pounding, with Liberator dropping low again as if to evade.

"Faster," Asuna whispered. "We have to be faster… Kirito-kun!" Lament's hull was down to just under fifty percent, she realized, and the instincts a month in Aincrad had already begun to hone screamed at her. "I think there's about to be a—what was the term—a state change!"

Kirito dropped one of Kizmel's favored Sindarin curses. "We're almost in range. Asuna, get ready!"

She didn't need to be told twice. Unbuckling her straps, she lunged for the hatch and out onto the deck, leaping right into the deck gun's seat. Even with her urgency, though, she took the precious couple of seconds to secure the gunner's straps; the last thing she needed was to fall off during the rough maneuvers she knew from too much experience already.

Strapped in, Asuna focused on the battle ahead. Liberator was rising up to Lament's starboard again, and as she'd feared something was clearly off. The enemy ship's guns must've recharged, but they weren't firing yet, despite the perfect angle. "Kirito-kun?"

"I see it," he replied, voice as loud and clear as if he were speaking in her ear. "We're just about in range—now, Asuna!"

She reacted instantly, squeezing the gun's grips. Focused energy from Moondancer's twin cores lashed out from the turret's barrels, slamming into Lament's massive thruster. The heavy cruiser's exhaust flickered for a moment, the whole ship faltering for just a second.

"Nice shot, Asuna!" Kirito crowed, with a boyish enthusiasm that made her grin (where he safely couldn't see it). "Solid critical… Kizmel, let's get in closer!"

"Understood." She could hear the satisfaction in the elf girl's voice. "Between the three ships, I believe we can turn the tide."

Another voice cut in before Asuna could respond to either of them. "This is Captain Coper, aboard Liberator. Moondancer, we appreciate the assist. That thing came out of nowhere after we took out the Tower boss. The Legend Braves came to help, but—"

"We'll discuss that later," Kirito replied, voice shifting to the colder tone he used with most other players. "Fall back, Liberator. Us smaller ships can hit that thing from better angles than you can. Try and keep the adds off us if you can, but get clear of Lament's broadsides."

"…Understood."

Lind and Kibaou are really going to hate us after this one, aren't they? Asuna mused, as Liberator began to descend and decelerate, while Moondancer rushed up engage at closer range. Well, it's their own fault for jumping the gun—eep!

There were still wyverns clinging to Liberator, and some of them broke away as Moondancer flew in. Which, given that Asuna was currently strapped in place, was really not something she wanted to see just then. Before she could even try to swing her turret around to bear, one of them dove in from her right, mouth opening to breathe fire—

Kizmel's shield was suddenly there, catching the flames and shedding them harmlessly. Then her saber was flashing out in the brilliant white glow of a Linear, sending the draconic mob tumbling away. Not dead, but definitely out of the way, with Moondancer still sailing ahead.

"Kirito can reach my share of the flight controls," the elf girl explained, before Asuna could ask. "You need me more here." She grinned fiercely. "Keep the pressure on!"

Asuna flashed a quick smile of her own, and returned her focus to the reticule in front of her. The turret had recharged, and she shut out the world around her and even the sounds and flares of Kizmel fighting to keep the mobs off her. Her vision narrowed to the ship ahead of her, and she fired again, trying for another engine hit.

Lament swung a few crucial degrees to port at the last moment, the thruster sliding out of her crosshairs. The emerald bolts instead scarred the heavy cruiser's flank, leaving a scorch on the port wing-sail. The maneuver also nearly made Moondancer overshoot; she heard a grunt of annoyance from Kirito as he hauled their ship around to match the enemy's turn.

The awkward move kept them riding Lament's port, just barely above the arc of the bigger ship's cannons. At the same time, it left them almost directly parallel with Durendal, bracketing the cruiser between them. Asuna could just barely see Durendal's gunner, an armored fellow with a helmet covering most of his head; at their distance, she could just make out him nodding to her.

Okay, then. Let's hit this thing togeth—eep!

Being just above Lament's cannons was probably all that saved them. Veritable sheets of lightning erupted from both flanks, too low to hit either ship directly but more than large enough for the fringes to sizzle them. Asuna's hair stood on end, electricity crackled and danced over her controls, and a quick look at her HUD told her Moondancer had taken ten percent damage just from the graze.

Worse, it hit the turret with some kind of Delay debuff. It took another five seconds before it let her fire again—which she did, with a furious snarl, barely a moment before Durendal did the same.

The good news was, the core crystals seemed to give the elf-built ships a degree of magical reinforcement to their timbers, which Lament seemed to lack. The bad news was, Asuna was pretty sure that wouldn't be enough to save them from too many direct hits. Even one from that big blast might take us out all at once.

Fortunately Kirito had clearly learned a few things from chasing—and being chased by—the patrol ship now claimed by the Legend Braves, and the Braves' own helmsman was clearly a quick study. After that overloaded blast, they both kept as high above or below Lament as they could between shots, mostly keeping them out of the cruiser's firing arc when not firing their own turrets. Preferably above; as tempting a target as the cruiser's keel was, the first shot Asuna landed there did almost nothing. She supposed it made sense that it would be heavily armored there.

The tricky part, she soon learned, was that Lament's broadsides had longer range than either elven deck gun. Staying close enough to hit while also keeping away from the cruiser's guns meant being so close that compensating for any sudden movements was that much harder. Something whatever algorithm was running the boss ship seemed to recognize; she heard Kirito mutter a complaint about the lack of a predictable pattern when it suddenly dove, nearly colliding with Moondancer.

Worse, it seemed to be learning. Five minutes into Moondancer's engagement, Asuna had the satisfaction of landing a direct hit on one of Lament's port guns. It blasted to bits in a very satisfying explosion, and as Kirito dove, she took a moment to send a grin Kizmel's way. Just as the elf girl shredded a wyvern and smiled back, a crackling boom sounded and a lightning bolt smashed into the deck, nearly flinging Kizmel clear off.

Snapping her head back around, Asuna was startled to see Lament rolling, wing-sails and balancers acting to tip the cruiser in a way she never would've dreamed safe. With the aft-most port gun gone, only one had been able to fire on Moondancer. The starboard—

A fusillade of lightning bolts lashed out at Durendal, sending the ship into a tailspin. Not destroyed, not even quite down for the count, but definitely out of the fight until the helmsman could recover. Making things worse, it looked like their gunner was suffering from a Stun.

So was Kizmel, Asuna realized in sudden horror, and another wyvern was swooping in. Breathing fire as it stooped, there was no way for the elf to even raise her shield or dodge, much less fight it off.

Borrowing a Sindarin curse herself, Asuna awkwardly yanked out her pistol and fired a hasty pair of shots. The first one missed; the second was a clean hit to the heart, sending it tumbling. But another one was coming for her, Kizmel was still stunned, and there was no time to reload even if she could while strapped in.

Fine! The boss is going to be creative? I can do that, too!

Way too close to fire the deck gun, even if she could aim at such a small target. But she could swing the turret around and smash the barrels directly into the wyvern, knocking it flying with a comical squawk.

Then Kizmel was back on her feet, stabbing the first wyvern in the throat. "Much obliged, Asuna! Keep it up!"

No time to do more than nod. As Moondancer climbed back up, just a second ahead of another electrifying broadside, Asuna hunched forward, locked her gun on target, and fired again. Almost down to twenty-five percent. Durendal should be back any second, and Liberator might be able to do a little more. We weren't planning a boss raid today, but it looks like we can do it.

Another overcharged blast crackled by. Moondancer's starboard propeller choked, sputtered, and died for a couple of seconds, before groaning back to life. Lament's bow swung at them, like it was trying to physically hit, forcing Kirito to pull a frantic, ascending spiral to port.

…I think.

Alice was beginning to get used to airship combat, she thought. If she'd had this much practice as of the start of the engagement, it was likely she would've destroyed the Chrome Disaster long before either elven airship could've intervened. If it ever chanced again that she would have to command a ship in battle, it would go much worse for the Swordmasters.

I should hope not, though, she thought sourly. Lament's once-pristine hull was buckled in places, four of her guns had been blown away, and engine performance had fallen severely. As it is, I think it's time to consider a retreat. It galls me to concede the field to the Swordmasters, but at least my honor is not at stake here. I'm a knight, not a sailor, and Kayaba's games are not my responsibility.

She'd learned what she'd come for, about the price of Kayaba Akihiko's "gifts" and about the skill of the Swordmasters. It was time to escape before her ship blew apart around her—a fact made brutally clear by the next blast from the Forest Elf ship, destroying a third starboard cannon. Fortunately, the running battle had taken them close to the Skywall over Sandoria, and Lament's core crystal was still intact. The ship was still in good enough shape—barely—to reach the Skywall and push through, beyond the Swordmasters' reach.

They can bring down the Skywall now, but they'll have to return to the Tower to do it. By then, I will be well away from here. Alice abandoned offense, much as it pained her, and swung Lament's bow toward the flickering Skywall. Even if the Chrome Disaster caught up again, she would make it.

Before she could redirect power from the cannons to the engine, though, a voice crackled from the console. "Alice, can you hear me? Hold out a little longer. I'm coming to get you. Don't worry about the ship; it's expendable now."

She grimaced, but nodded with some satisfaction. Not who she would've preferred to come for her, but at least this meant she could end the battle honorably, having done everything she could. "Very well," she said, hoping the systems were still working well enough for the other Integrity Knight to hear. "But hurry. If the Chrome Disaster catches up, this battle will be over uncomfortably soon."

"I'm nearly there. Give them everything you have, Alice."

Oh, I intend to. Allowing herself a cold smile, Alice fed the power that would've gone to the now-destroyed cannons to the main engine and balancers, and swung Lament in a hard turn to starboard. As she'd hoped, it apparently surprised both her attackers, the elven ships scrambling to pull up and away.

Rolling Lament as far as she could without losing too much lift, she set off all her remaining guns at once. To her deep satisfaction, she scored several direct hits; the Forest Elf ship was even clear down to half its hull strength. The darker ship was managing better, but even it had lost around a third.

Her satisfaction was dulled a moment later, when the Dark Elf ship pulled a turn she didn't think it could, and fired an emerald bolt through one of the breaches in Lament's deck. For reasons she could not fathom—probably, she thought darkly, another of Kayaba's whims—the entire port broadside exploded.

Rolling back to level flight, her hands clenched on her controls at the sight of the Chrome Disaster soaring back into view. My ship's hull is down to a quarter. The monsters have stopped spawning, and most of the cannons are gone. …Fine, then.

Alice pushed herself out of her seat, and squared her shoulders. The Dark Elf ship was flying very close, as if trying to see just how helpless Lament had become. "Very well," she muttered to herself. "If you want to see… I will show you. If Kayaba's toy cannot stop you, I'll do it myself."

She got two steps to the bridge hatch when another voice unexpectedly rang out. "Final phase initiated," the cool female voice said. "Beginning Desperation Attack."

Before she could even begin to wonder what that might mean, the viewports were suddenly obscured by a wash of blazing red. The entire deck, from bow to stern, erupted in flames. In moments, the whole ship would be engulfed.

…Kayaba…!

"Holy—!"

Another time, Kizmel would've been impressed by Kirito's pronunciation of Sindarin epithets, and his ability to so easily mix them in with curses from his native tongue. At that particular moment, she was a bit too busy hauling Asuna inside Moondancer's pilothouse, and keeping the both of them upright through the airship's sudden wild maneuvers.

Not that she at all questioned the way Kirito frantically spun the wheel. Indeed, the moment she was strapped back into her seat, she threw her efforts into synchronizing the wing-sails and engines with his piloting. That was the only sane reaction when an airship over three times their size spontaneously burst into flames at close range. Especially when their own ship was just as flammable.

That was before Icarus' Lament started launching fireballs in all directions.

"Now I get it!" Asuna groaned, as one of those fireballs sailed past no more than two meters from Moondancer's port flank. "Icarus—he flew too close to the sun, and his wings melted!"

"Melted, yeah," Kirito retorted, throwing Moondancer into an ascending starboard spiral. "Not ignited—and those wings were feathers and wax, not wood!"

"Do you really think Kayaba let the little details get in the way of a showy boss?!" Another ball of flame scorched by, this one close enough to graze the port railing and set it smoldering. "And did we ever install any kind of fire extinguisher on the ship?!"

Kizmel made a mental note to ask her friends for more details about the mythology Kayaba seemed to be using for inspiration. Later. In the meantime, she kept her attention on balancing the engines and wing-sails, all the while trying to ignore the subliminal burning sensation that was beginning to itch at her. None of them had been struck directly, there was no reason at all to be feeling it.

Unless the core crystal awakenings tied us to the ship as well as each other, she thought grimly, sparing a quick glance at the burning cruiser falling below them. I may have been more right than I knew when I told them we were breaking new ground. As soon as I reach a decent library, I'm doing the research I should have years ago.

If there was one bright side to the situation, it was that Icarus' Lament was losing hull integrity without any further input from Moondancer or the rapidly-fleeing Durendal. Setting itself on fire was evidently an act of desperation, which harmed the "boss" as much as any Swordmaster ship that got too close.

"I believe our part here is done," she said aloud, as Lament's HP dropped near ten percent. "As much as I might appreciate the—what did you call it, 'Last Attack' bonus?—the risk is much too great now." Moondancer's spiral took them back over the enemy ship, and also afforded them a look at Liberator, Coper's steel-clad ship just then returning to the fight. "Captain Coper faces less risk of bursting into flames."

As if to punctuate her suggestion, half a dozen more fireballs burst from Lament. Two of them never came near to hitting anything, sailing off toward Sandoria's Skywall; Moondancer and Durendal took one hit each on the keel, provoking an indescribable sensation in Kizmel's teeth.

Two more spattered against Liberator's hull. The light cruiser lost a sliver of its hull, but less than what a single fireball had done to Moondancer. In return, Coper's ship swung in a sharp turn to port, firing off three explosive shells the moment her guns came to bear.

All three of them exploded short of Lament, prompting an exasperated hiss from Kirito. "Too hot, I guess… well, that thing will burn up on its own if we just stay close enough to keep aggro, I guess. This last phase is more about staying alive than DPS…."

He trailed off, gaze fixed on Lament. At the same time, his heartbeat seemed to pause, then rapidly speed up, drawing Kizmel's eyes and Asuna's. "Kirito-kun…?"

Kizmel snapped her head around to look at Lament, just in time to see a figure step out onto the burning deck. Through the magnified view of the glasswood viewports, she could make out long hair, along with golden armor that seemed molten in the light of the flames—

Moondancer was suddenly diving, darting between fireballs to get in close to the other ship. At the same time, Kirito tore himself free of his straps, leaving a startled Kizmel to hastily grab the wheel, and bolted for the deck. Before the stunned eyes of the Knight and her apprentice, he gathered himself, and the instant the gap was narrow enough he hurled himself over to Lament's burning deck.

For a moment, the elf could only stare. "Did—did he really just—?!"

Asuna's eyes closed, and her hands clenched on her console. "…He's impossible!"

The moment his boots hit Icarus' Lament's deck was the moment Kirito's brain caught up with him, and he realized he'd just done something very, very stupid.

The entire ship was on fire. Including the deck. Even if that specific part of the ship hadn't been, enough of the rest was that it would soon explode. With him on it. Sooner still, if Liberator managed to get cannon fire through—they probably had no idea he'd just jumped aboard.

And Alice… doesn't know me. She's just as likely to—

As his coat started to smolder, seconds away from catching fire, and his HP started dropping from Fire damage, Kirito heard a voice ring out. "MaRue Kruz!"

Ice whirled into existence, chasing away the fire across a five-meter circle of the deck. In that sudden cool, clear space, Kirito came face to face with the girl he'd spotted from above, with her long blonde braid, golden armor, and brilliant blue eyes. Brilliant, cold, and piercing, with none of the warmth he remembered from years long past.

Alice Synthesis Thirty stared back at him, left hand out to maintain the spell she'd just cast, right resting on the hilt of her golden sword. She didn't draw steel, to his surprise, but her gaze was as cold as the ice she'd summoned. Icy… but, he thought, glinting with just a hint of confusion. "Swordmaster Kirito," she called, eyes narrowing. "Why are you here?"

Good question. "Because… because we need to talk, Alice," he said, fumbling for the right words. It doesn't help that I don't even know what I want to say. "I told you last time that it wasn't over."

Her right eyebrow arched in clear disbelief. "What reason have I to exchange words with an enemy of Aincrad?" She tossed her head, gesturing with her chin at the flames surrounding them. "And you're as much a fool as the Swordmasters aboard the Chrome Disaster, if you think this is a good time to 'talk'."

The sad thing was, he couldn't disagree. Even with the ice spell holding back the fire, Kirito's coat was billowing in the heat, and he knew Lament wouldn't last much longer. And he just knew his friends were calling him all kinds of stupid, back aboard Moondancer.

"This ship is going down," he said, forcing strength and confidence into his voice. "There's no reason for you to go down with it, Alice. I call a truce, until we're both clear. My ship can get you away from here, and I can guarantee the other Swordmasters won't attack for that long."

Alice stared at him, her other eyebrow rising. "You cannot be serious. Why should I trust Swordmasters? What possible reason could you have to give your enemy aid, however briefly? You must think me a fool to even consider your offer, 'Kirito'."

Harsh, and perfectly logical. Still, she hadn't drawn her sword, and her spell was keeping the flames away from him as well as her. Kirito had to believe that meant she was willing to listen, at least a little. Whatever she is, she's definitely not just a mindless program, or an enforcer for Kayaba. Either one would just treat this as a boss fight, and skewer me.

"Maybe I am a fool," he admitted, and boldly—foolishly—took a step toward her. "But I'm a fool who doesn't want to watch anyone burn to death. And…." He swallowed, squared his shoulders, and looked her dead in the eye. "And once upon a time, I was called 'Kazuto' here."

Only days after their last meeting had he remembered that the Alice he knew wouldn't have known the name "Kirito" at all. His nightmares had blended past and present, but he'd last seen Alice Zuberg years before he ever created his favorite online handle.

For a long moment, he hoped against hope that his old name—his real name—would get through to her. Alice only stared at him, though, without even a spark of recognition in her cold blue eyes. Finally, she frowned, shaking her head. "If you expect that to mean something to me, you're wasting your time—and mine."

Flames roared higher outside their chilled circle, and something deep within the ship exploded. In that moment, the Integrity Knight finally drew her golden sword, and leveled it at Kirito's chest.

"This ship is going down," she said coldly. "And I have no time for Swordmaster games. Explain yourself, 'Kirito', or I will cut you down and take you to Centoria Cathedral for a proper questioning."

Kirito shivered, despite the heat, and swallowed hard. He knew she could back up that threat. He'd gained a couple of levels since their last meeting, but she was still well beyond his ability to even scratch—her cursor was a pitch black, with a golden aura he assumed reflected her beyond-elite status. If she chose to attack, he would lose, and he didn't really want to think about what the Axiom Church might do to him.

But she hadn't attacked yet, and he daringly took another step forward. "I need to know what's going on," he said. "There's something here that I don't think either of us understands—"

A roar, as from a huge animal instead of the flames. Something huge swooped down, landing hard on the deck to Alice's left—a dragon, Kirito realized. A very angry dragon, mouth open as if about to breathe fire on him—and its rider was leaping down, landing in a crouch, shining sword in hand.

Thrusting his free hand out, the newcomer snarled, "MaRue Rom."

Cold air and a wall of ice snuffed out the fire across nearly half of Lament's deck. Kirito's hair and coat whipped around in the breeze from the competing temperatures, momentarily blinding him. When he could see again, though, he finally got a good look at the new arrival, and he felt his blood go cold.

Silver and blue armor, with a sword resembling pale blue ice. Wavy, light brown hair, above deep green eyes—eyes that burned with angry recognition.

Kirito's vision wavered, superimposing memory over the present. Memory of a boy who'd been there that fateful day, and done nothing to stop the crime the adults were committing. The ice in his veins burned away, replaced by fiery rage, and his hand snapped up to the hilt of his Anneal Blade. "…Eugeo…!"

Without conscious intent, his sword blurred out into the pre-motion for a Sonic Leap, and then he was flying across the deck—only for Eugeo to casually snap his blade up to block. The boy who'd become an Integrity Knight didn't even bother with a Sword Skill, only the strength of his arm and his shining sword.

It was enough to stop Kirito's attack cold, and fling him back. He hit the deck hard, rolling clear back into the wall of ice. "You were warned never to return to Aincrad," Eugeo called out coolly. "You should have listened, Kazuto."

Moving on pure fury and reflex, Kirito bounced right back to his feet, lowered his sword, and leapt back in with the low charge of a Rage Spike. I don't care if you're an Integrity Knight now, he thought, in the split second it took to cross the few meters of deck. That just makes it worse—!

Eugeo's sword slashed out, catching him in the chest. He was thrown back again, but this time he'd anticipated it, and twisted in the air. He landed on his feet, swung his sword up behind his right shoulder again, and lifted his left arm. He tensed his arm to launch his grapnel—

Eugeo flipped his sword in his hands, and stabbed the deck. "Enhance Armament."

Ice erupted around the blade, raced across the deck, and froze Kirito and his grapnel in place. Cold far deeper than that of the spells the two Integrity Knights had cast locked him where he stood, and began eating away at his HP and the durability of his grapnel.

…The Blue Rose Sword, he thought, finally recognizing Eugeo's weapon. So… that's what it's for….

Gritting his teeth, Kirito glared at the Knight in silver and blue. "Eugeo," he growled. "What have you done?!"

"My duty," Eugeo replied calmly—though Kirito could see anger flickering behind his green eyes, belying that calm. "Cleaning up the mess you left six years ago. You were told never to come back, Kazuto. You were a fool to join Kayaba's scheme."

Kirito struggled against the ice, rage rising at the realization of just how far beyond him the Integrity Knights really were. "I'm not Kazuto anymore," he hissed. "It's Kirito now. I'm not who I was back then!"

"And neither am I. I'm Eugeo Synthesis Thirty-Two." Eugeo raised the Blue Rose Sword in a mocking salute. "I will undo your crime, 'Kirito'. And I will start by—"

Emerald light lashed out, smashing into the ice so close that Kirito saw another sliver of his HP vanish from the impact. The ice took it harder, shattering completely—along with a sizable chunk of the deck.

A moment later, Asuna landed next to him, pistol in one hand and Squire's Rapier in the other. "Kirito-kun," she hissed. "We're going to talk about this later!"

No time to respond, or take advantage of his freedom, even if he could've done anything worthwhile. Eugeo clicked his tongue, and swung around to the blonde who'd watched the confrontation in baffled silence. "Alice, we're getting out of here," he said, already gripping his dragon's harness. "Leave the Swordmaster to burn!"

Alice cast one last, indecipherable look at Kirito, but didn't hesitate. She jumped for the dragon herself, letting Eugeo pull her securely onto its back. Then the massive beast pushed off with all four limbs, jumping backwards off the deck and vanishing from sight.

"The ship's about to blow," Asuna said quickly, putting away her weapons. With none of her usual hesitation, she wrapped an arm around him and pressed tight. "Kirito-kun, we have to go, now!"

Swallowing his fury, Kirito sheathed his own sword and put his arm around her in turn. Raising his left arm, he launched his battered grapnel at Moondancer's rail, hauling them both up and away. Almost too late, from the way the flames—no longer held back by magic ice—licked at his boots.

As soon as they were both back on the smaller ship's deck, Moondancer leapt into motion, soaring away from Lament. A boom shook them as they fled, and Kirito turned back to see the cruiser's hull blasting apart in a series of explosions. Flaming pieces of hull flew everywhere, the first airship boss of Sword Art Online consuming itself.

Ahead of Moondancer, Durendal and Liberator were waiting. Aboard her, Kirito could feel Asuna's glare, and a sense not quite physical told him Kizmel wasn't too happy, either.

Behind her, just visible through the smoke trailing Icarus' Lament's shattered, falling hulk, he could see great wings beating the air. He imagined he could see gold and silver armor, gleaming in the light of Lament's death throws.

…Eugeo…!

Author's Note:

Well, that first scene was a tad grimmer than I originally anticipated. That's what I get for reserving an info-dump for it…. Cheerier group bonding coming soon, though.

The airship battle was a lot rougher than I'd hoped, but it was the very first; teething problems were probably inevitable. (That it was the first such battle for everyone involved probably didn't help, either.) Hopefully by the next one I'll have a better idea of what I'm doing. I definitely need to consider the issue of what happens when people go overboard; in a regular naval battle, swimming is at least possible. Here, not so much—and I don't think it believable for that not to have been taken into account by Kayaba/actual airship personnel (depending on how one views Aincrad's nature…). Got some ideas already, I'll get it figured out.

Speaking of gameplay mechanics, for the record, I'm maintaining the special powers of various weapons to some degree, but vastly toning them down compared to Alicization canon. None of the insane Bleach-knockoff powers supplanting genuine swordsmanship. (Alice's discount-Senbonzakura being waved around like a torch instead of using her sword as a sword always drove me nuts, and some of the others weren't much better. Kirito's Night Sky Sword growing branches? Seriously? Nope, not here.)

As I've mentioned before, I intend to get back to work on Duet now, having left that hanging for… well, way too long. That said, I'm hoping to work on Chapter 12 of Rebellion more or less concurrently; there's some long-awaited events coming here as well, after all.

Hm… I think that about covers things? I kinda expect to get some hate mail for how Eugeo is handled here, though I'd think my opinion of him is probably well known by now…. Well, love it, hate it, want it thrown in a volcano (maybe me along with), let me know how this big freaking battle went. Until next time, whichever story I see you all in. -Solid