Oath of Rebellion

by Solid Shark

Tired of spending a life studying to reach an empty future, Asuna enters Sword Art Online, a world of swords and airships, to gain some measure of freedom. When she is trapped, she throws herself into building a new life for herself, as far from what her parents intended as she can. Meeting a dark swordsman sets her on a new course, in Aincrad's skies...

17. Chapter XVII: Responsibility

Chapter XVII: "Responsibility"

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December 21st, 2032

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Several new airships had begun construction at Koriki Aerodrome, but at that moment, there were no sounds of tools. The bare skeletons of those ships were ignored, with all attention on the completed vessels that dominated the center of the field. Liberator gleamed at the center, flanked by Durendal and Emancipator; ten newer ships surrounded them, wooden hulls freshly polished.

Idling above the far end of the aerodrome, the dark hull of Moondancer waited. Allied yet apart, as she always seemed to be.

The silence was broken, gradually, as the grounded airships brought up their engines one by one. Liberator was first to lift from her cradle into the sky; Emancipator and the newly-finished Ancalagon vying for the next position. One after another, the airships of the Swordmasters' "raid group" took to the sky, engines droning as they assumed a loose formation.

Very loose, Alice Synthesis Thirty thought, watching from the edge of the landing field. Most of these ships were only completed early this very morning. Only the original four can possibly have anything resembling skilled helmsmen. And they would take this "fleet" against the defenses of a Skywall Tower? Madness.

None of them had collided, rising into the air. That was about all she could say for them, as they wobbled in Liberator's wake. She strongly suspected that Moondancer kept a certain distance not simply from habit, but for safety. She'd seen Kirito pilot his ship in battle, and he was far too canny to get anywhere near that disaster in the making.

Alice's fists clenched, and she hated herself for her mixed feelings. She should've been glad that this fleet of amateurs was about to blunder carelessly into battle. They were her enemies, one and all. The more of them that perished in the battle, a battle she knew they underestimated, the better for the Human Empire.

Yet they are just as much victims as anyone. They don't deserve this, most of them. And what a terrible fate it is, to fall because of being forced into battle long before they're ready.

She'd done what she could, within the bounds of her mission, her duty, and her honor. She'd urged Liten to remember that both prior Skywall Tower battles had had unexpected twists, but it would've been treason to give the details she knew. The rest was in the hands of Fate.

"Worried 'bout your enemy, huh? You're somethin' else, Dame Alice."

Alice was not going to jump. No matter how much it galled her that a Swordmaster, of all people, could sneak up on her. Turning away from the sight of the fourteen-ship formation sailing away, she met the gaze of Argo the Rat, self-styled "info-broker" and what passed for the Swordmasters' spymaster. Accompanied as usual by Kumari—the quiet kunoichi wearing brown today, Alice noticed absently—the Rat seemed much more at ease than in their first meeting. Which, if anything, made the Integrity Knight a good deal more tense herself.

"Yours is a tragic situation," she said evenly, folding her arms. She didn't bother to reach for her sword; even without the charm preventing injury within the town, if Argo had meant violence, she would've been a good deal subtler. "And I fear a loss on your part today would empower enemies a good deal worse than you. Don't presume too much, Grandmaster."

"Oh, I don't," the Rat said cheerfully, grin showing off a fang that Alice found oddly unsettling. "I'm not presuming anything. Just… watching. For now." Looking up at the airships as they dwindled in the distance, her mirth faded. "Guess we didn't finish quite soon enough. Timing's gonna be tight."

So, the Rat had deciphered the scheme into which the Legend Braves had been drawn. Alice had suspected as much, but didn't ask. Even if Argo were willing to explain, it would doubtless cost Cor, perhaps more than she had left. Besides… the less I know, the more I can justify not trying to stop it.

She shook off the thought. "At this rate, it hardly matters anyway," she noted, nodding at the shaky piloting, visible still even from their distance. "Most of those helmsmen never touched a ship's wheel before an hour ago. Half of them will be dead as soon as battle is joined."

The fanged grin was back, and Kumari let out a small sound that might've been derision. "You really don't know the rules we play by, do you, Dame Alice? This may be a close copy of your world, but it runs on our rules. They're doing a shakedown cruise before they start the raid. By the time they go in for real… well, I wouldn't throw 'em at something like that heavy cruiser you had, but a regular boss fight? They'll do."

Alice stared at the Rat, wondering if she was being conned somehow. "Absurd. The forces waiting for them will tear amateurs to shreds, 'shakedown cruise' or no."

"Wanna bet?" Another fang joined the first, and there was a crafty gleam in the Rat's eyes. "See, Dame Alice, here's the thing: you don't know programming. Come to think of it, you haven't really scene what a real boss fight is like for us, have you?"

"…No." She'd arrived at the Einsla Skywall Tower just after Illfang's defeat, and had effectively been the "boss fight" at Niian. All she'd seen, of the marionette battles of the spell-world, had been the engagement with Birunam and Eenash, which had been too simple to serve as a useful demonstration. "What are you getting at?"

The Rat jabbed a thumb toward the back alleys of Koriki, where Alice knew she must've hidden her skiff. "Tell ya what, Dame Alice. Come with us… and watch."

---

The "shakedown cruise" Coper—of all people—had proposed had been scheduled for an hour. They'd launched at nine in the morning specifically to give them time for that and still reach the Skywall Tower bright and early, with the objective of actually beginning clearing of the Fourth Island on the same day for once. In theory, the clearing group as a whole would've even had some time to rest in between.

Kirito had considered that overly optimistic, to put it mildly. He hadn't been too keen on launching the raid the same day most of the new ships first took flight in the first place, and taking only an hour for the new crews to get the hang of things struck him as more than a little unrealistic. Even if the crews had a fair few people who'd at least been aboard Liberator and Emancipator in prior battles, piloting was a very different thing from observing. He'd found that out the hard way himself.

So he wasn't too surprised when the raid fleet didn't get even close to the Skywall Tower until just past noon, flying in a ragged formation that halted some distance out. Honestly, he was just relieved that there hadn't been any collisions during the practice. It looked like the DKB and ALF had at least had the sense to pick some of their steadiest people to helm their new ships.

He didn't think he was the only one nervous, despite that. The Legend Braves, he'd noticed, had been unusually fidgety all morning. For all his suspicions of them, they were normally some of the steadiest on the frontlines, so their anxiety spoke volumes. He could only hope that it meant they'd be keeping a close eye on things themselves.

At least their nerves should have a chance to settle before we go in, Kirito mused over his Forest Boar sandwich, glancing over Moondancer's railing at the two airships descending toward the treetops. We can't go in until the ground teams are in place, and that'll take around half an hour, probably.

The plan the guilds had put together involved sending in a team of eighteen Swordmasters on foot, to infiltrate the Skywall Tower itself and take on the Master Treant inside. Based on the beta test, some scraps of info Argo's ninja had uncovered, and the general trend of retail-version bosses starting from the Niian Skywall Tower, the assumption was that whatever new gimmick was involved would be in the aerial side of the engagement. With that in mind, they'd focused on making sure their fledgling fleet was up to par.

Kirito wasn't entirely sure he liked that, but he'd been forced to admit during the strategy meeting that he hadn't found anything to contradict their assumptions. If they were correct, emphasizing air power was probably the way to go—if worse came to worst, they could concentrate fire on the Tower's top floor, evacuate the ground teams that way, and retreat.

Hopefully, he thought, nibbling on his sandwich. Either way, we've done all we can. For now, all we can do is wait, and have lunch. Thank goodness for raid chat, so we at least know when to go in.

"It was really nice of the camp chef to make us lunch," Asuna remarked. Sitting sideways in the deck gunner's chair, she had a napkin spread over her armor to catch crumbs. Kirito had tried pointing out that crumbs didn't work that in SAO, only for her to loftily retort that a Knight should have the habit of dignity. He'd given up then, especially when Kizmel laughed at him.

"We have built up a surprising amount of goodwill with the camp," Kizmel said, between bites of her own sandwich. She was sitting cross-legged on the deck, managing to look as elegant as ever despite wolfing down a boar-meat sandwich while wearing full armor. "I suppose even Trifoliate Knights know when to show gratitude, after their lives are saved. Besides," she added with a smirk, "their mission hasn't allowed them much time for proper hunting. We've probably kept them far better fed than they would've been otherwise."

Both humans shuddered in unison, reminded of the field rations they themselves all too often fell back on. Much as Kirito honestly preferred their solitary lifestyle, he really hoped they'd find a consistent supply of decent food sometime. It was just too much of a pain to go back into town every time.

"Well, whatever the reason, I'm grateful," Asuna declared. She picked up a cup of tea—a very nice tea, one Kirito didn't immediately recognize, that Kizmel had declared a staple among Dark Elves—and washed down her latest bite of boar with obvious relish. "Too bad we couldn't get them to help out with the battle here, but I guess that would be too much to ask."

"Commander Savrak and his men do have their own responsibilities," Kizmel noted regretfully. "Unfortunately, I doubt we'll be able to even ask for much support from my people until at least the Fifth Island. No one nearer has the authority to even consider aiding the Swordmasters' quest, not when the assumption remains that you are all part of Kayaba's plot." She sighed, and glanced around at the rough fleet surrounding them. "At least we've managed to assemble a surprising number of ships ourselves. If nothing else, the rules of the transitory world are clearly convenient for things such as shipbuilding. Ten ships in less than two days?"

"I'm honestly pretty surprised myself," Kirito admitted, giving them another quick look himself. "I think the Fourth Island was the first one that managed anything like this, back in the beta, and that was by grinding for Cor there and heading back to Einsla to buy pre-built ships from the Origia Aerodrome."

Fourteen ships hovered just outside the assumed aggro range of the Sandoria Skywall Tower. On top of the four that had already been around, the ALF had gotten three more built, and the DKB had somehow scraped together the funds for four of their own. Each guild now had a frigate flagship and three sloops, making their fleets roughly even, and three independent groups had also slapped together small ships.

Still nothing that matched Liberator's power, but the numbers would probably make up for it. For now. If the crews can handle it, Kirito thought, just a bit cynically. One of the DKB sloops looked to be wavering a little just hovering in place, and two of the independents were shifting from side to side as if their helmsmen were taking the time for a little practice. Agil's guys seem reasonably solid, at least. Even if Wolfgang looked like he'd rather fight an army of spiders than get airborne.

Asuna followed his gaze to the sleek, tough-looking sloop Agil and his guildmates had built, and suddenly did a double-take. Touching her ear, she said, "Agil? Did you seriously name your ship Pequod, of all things? That's not a very optimistic name, you know!"

Kirito blinked, exchanging a quick look with Kizmel. Mouth full of boar, the elf girl only shrugged, looking blank. Apparently the name wasn't Lyusulan, at least. Not that I thought it was, but you never know.

Amid Agil's laugh, though, he heard a groan from Wolfgang. "Believe me, we tried telling him that. Didn't do any good. And since he's the guy who figured out how to run the damn thing, he got to make the call."

"Uh… Pequod?" Kirito asked, completely lost. "Should I know that one?"

"I'd say you need to read more, Kirito-kun, but you know your Classical Mythology, so I'll give you a pass. This time," Asuna said, tone lofty but softened with a teasing grin. "It's Captain Ahab's ship, from Moby-Dick. It gets sunk at the end of the book."

Kizmel arched one violet eyebrow. "And… you thought this was a good name for a ship, Agil?"

"Well, of course!" the big axeman said, laughing. "It means we're unsinkable unless we run into a white whale, right? And I don't see any whales in the sky!"

Moondancer's crew shared a Look at that, and Kirito had a feeling he wasn't the only one torn between a facepalm, a nervous twitch, and just plain breaking into helpless laughter. So… who gets to break it to him? And when? Not sure right before the raid is a good time….

But Knight and Squire were both giving him pointed looks now, so he polished off his sandwich and carefully cleared his throat. "Ah, about that, Agil… you haven't seen a doomwhale yet?"

There was a brief silence over the chat. Then, quiet whispering, reminding Kirito it wasn't a private channel with Pequod. Finally, Agil said, "You're not pulling my leg, are you?"

"Not at all, Agil," Kizmel assured him, a tiny smile belying her solemn words. "They're not too common this far out, but we did see one the day the Einsla Skywall went down."

"Pretty big, too," Asuna put in, the slight rippling in her tea the only outward sign of the giggling Kirito knew she was holding back. "We only saw it from a distance, but it was bigger than Moondancer. Oh, but Kirito-kun says they're peaceful if you don't attack them."

"Some of them are white, though," Kirito couldn't resist adding. Glancing over at Pequod, he could just barely see Agil through the pilothouse viewports, standing stock-still at the wheel. "So… you might want to be careful. Just saying."

Dead silence. Then, "I told you this was a bad idea!" Wolfgang howled. "These crazy ships are gonna get us all killed!"

No help for it. Moondancer's crew dissolved into giggles, amidst Agil's protests of innocence and guffaws from other ships in the flotilla. Well, Kirito thought, if nothing else, that's a good start to the raid! …I hope.

---

The heavy iron doors groaned shut behind them, and Silica was left to focus on her first impression of a Skywall Tower. It wasn't at all what she was expecting, if she was honest. The very bottom of the Tower had a floor mostly covered in soil, lit by windows at regular intervals up the walls. A lot of windows, because most of the Tower seemed to be just one open shaft, only capped high above by what she assumed was the floor of the boss chamber.

She wasn't the only one surprised, judging from the wary look the Dragon Knight tank Shivata was giving the shaft at large. Eyes narrow, he looked distrustfully at the base of the stairs that circled the interior. "This… is the Skywall Tower? I would've expected it to be more like, well, a dungeon."

"The Einsla Tower was." Hafner, the greatsword wielder who led the DKB team—and oddly reminded Silica of a high school soccer player more than a swordsman—stomped over to the stairs himself. "It took a week to map, too. Of course, everything took longer on Einsla, before we all got a handle on how things worked in SAO, but still…."

"We've got a plan," a shrill voice said from behind Silica. "What's it matter what the Tower looks like? We just gotta hurry up and go kill the boss!"

Silica winced at the voice. She'd honestly hoped Joe wouldn't be on the ground team at all, but Kibaou had made a convincing argument. "Sorry to saddle ya with 'im," he'd told her privately, just before they'd all set out for the Tower. "But he's damn good with a knife, an' he's less likely to cause trouble in th' Tower than he is on a ship. Don't worry, Okotan will be callin' the shots, so just hang in there, 'kay?"

Exchanging a glance with the helmeted gaze of the ALF's tank, Liten, Silica hoped the Guildmaster was right. She'd seen Joe's skills with a knife, and he was good, but he also loud and not the best team player. But Okotan's here, she reminded herself, and he's old enough Joe will listen to him. …I hope.

The halberdier was, as far as she could tell, the second-oldest member of the raid group, next to one of the independent team. She knew him mostly as the ALF's main recruiter, but it looked like he'd led teams into combat before. Giving Joe a quelling look, Okotan gestured toward the stairs. "No plan has worked out right so far in this crazy game," he said dryly, "but this time we've planned for overkill. Come on, let's go. Watch out for traps, and get ready for the fight up top."

The stairs were wide enough for four players to go abreast, so the ALF's Okotan and Liten led the way alongside the DKB's Hafner and Shivata. Silica somewhat nervously followed with the jittery Joe and a scowling DKB samurai and one-handed swordsman duo, while the reserve tank and DPS of each team took rearguard. The six independents were the last, on the theory that it was better for the organized guilds to take the lead. There'd been a bit of an argument about that during the raid meeting, but to Silica's relief it had settled pretty quickly.

"Ooh, a Treant boss," she heard from the rear, as they climbed the all-too-long staircase. "I've got just the trick for this one! And I don't even need to worry about setting an entire forest on fire, so nobody will be yelling at me this time!"

This time? The brunette swordswoman—Pitohui, if she remembered right—made Silica at least as nervous as Joe did. She knew some players who were calm in a fight, but the bright-eyed, bouncy girl was the only one she'd met who reveled in it. And that wrist-crossbow-thing she's got makes me nervous. Did she say something about setting things on fire?

"Patience, Pitohui. Try not to exhaust yourself before we even reach the boss. Even with information from the beta testers and the Rat's research, this could still go very badly if we're not careful. In this world, you must never let down your guard."

The rough voice's comment wasn't great for her nerves, either, but it still made Silica relax, just a little. The masked Tengu was probably the most solid presence in the entire raid, from what she'd seen of him. Something told her that whatever happened in the battle, he wouldn't lose his cool for a second.

"Good thing we did get info from quests," Joe muttered, compulsively flipping his knife and twirling it between his fingers. "Beta testers… we can't rely on them. Hogging info and getting themselves killed, the worthless bastards…. Not to mention the Beater."

She still wasn't exactly sure who the "Beater" Joe occasionally complained about was. Kibaou always got a sour look on his face when the name came up. But if he's just complaining about beta testers, he won't know anything about… anything else.

Like the fact that the special antidote potions they were all carrying hadn't been beta advice. They'd come from a strange hermit living in a hollowed-out tree on the western edge of Sandoria, and Silica had been the one to provide the lead. A lead she'd gotten by sneaking out one last time to the Dark Elf camp in the northeast, braving giant spiders in the dark.

"The greatest danger of the Treant guarding the Skywall Tower is poison," Larasa had told her, looking more serious than she'd ever seen him. "Normal antidotes only cure it for a moment, and Nerius breathes out a poisoned fog. There is, however, an old herbalist far to the west who brews a potion that can protect you for an hour or so." He'd smirked then, just faintly. "Just don't expect it to protect you against other poisons. He created it to do one thing well, and only one thing. …I wish I could give you more help, but this may be all I can do."

She'd shrugged it off, telling him—truthfully—that the information was plenty. Honestly, though, she had never expected anything more than that anyway. This was a Skywall Tower boss, of course no NPCs would be involved.

We should be enough, she thought, as the eighteen-man raid climbed far too many stairs, Liten's armor clanking all the while. Everything we've heard says this raid is balanced between ground and airship battle, and what we're going to be fighting is the weaker inner core. Guildmaster Kibaou and the others will be doing the hard part in the ships.

Which didn't stop her heart from pounding like a drum as the group leaders finally reached the hatch-like doors leading to the boss room. "All right," Hafner called out, taking one hand off his sword's hilt to raise a clenched fist. "It's showtime, people. Get ready to fight, and bring down the Wall!"

"Drink your antidotes," Okotan said, planting the haft of his halberd on the top step with one hand while he pulled a bottle from a belt pouch with the other. "It shouldn't start the battle with the poison fog, but once we're in the thick of it, we're not going to want to take the time. We don't know how fast the poison kicks in, after all."

Rustling and clanking followed as they all complied. Gagging was the next collective sound. The hermit herbalist's potion immediately triggered a bright green border around Silica's HP bar, telling her its buff was working, but it was probably the most disgusting thing she'd tasted since getting trapped in SAO.

"Yeah, that's nasty," Hafner coughed out. "Okay, that buff lasts an hour, right? Let's get in there and finish this before we have to take a second dose!"

Maybe not the most inspiring rallying cry ever, but it got a sincere cheer from the raid. Then Hafner and Okotan were pushing on the doors, and everything was bright.

The very top of the Skywall Tower was much closer to Silica's expectations than the lower levels. A single, wide-open chamber, brightly-lit by the floor-to-ceiling windows, plus a huge central skylight. At the far end, there was a throne, which from what she'd heard was what technically controlled the Skywall.

Most of the floor was, like the Tower's base, covered in soil. Somehow, she had a bad feeling about that.

"All right, fan out!" Hafner ordered. "Remember the plan: two in, one out! DKB and ALF first, and Solos take over for whichever needs more healing first!"

There'd been some arguing about that, too. In the end, though, it was decided that three parties were the most that could be spared from crewing the airships, when that was expected to be the main event of the battle. Until more players stepped up to be clearers, compromises had to be made.

It'll be fine, Silica told herself, knife at the ready as the ALF team swept along the east side of the boss chamber. Everything's going to be fine. …But, um….

"Where's the boss?" Okotan wondered aloud, once all three parties were assembled in the chamber. "Illfang was just waiting on the throne when the raid arrived, right? So where…?"

"It's coming," Tengu announced, voice calm but pitched to carry. "Watch the floor!"

Just as all eyes turned to the center of the chamber's floor, it began to shake. A cracking noise accompanied the shaking, and Silica had a brief, horrible thought that the entire Tower was about to break apart. That fear lasted just until a sprout suddenly burst free of the floor, reaching toward the skylight. A sprout that grew, and twisted, and split off into several directions, even as roots erupted from new cracks in the floor.

In seconds, a six-meter-tall tree stood in the center of the boss chamber. Its bark looked half-rotted, its leaves were a sickly green and dripping with a neon-green liquid, and cracks resembling eyes and a jagged mouth marred the side of the trunk facing them.

Skittering from side to side on creepy, mobile roots, four lifebars appears over its crown. Above those lifebars, a name: [Nerius the Evil Treant].

"Here it comes!" Hafner leveled his heavy sword at it, and took one hand off the hilt just long enough to touch his ear. "Oi, Ancalagon! We're engaging, so get ready!"

"We hear you, Hafner," Lind's voice came over raid chat. "The fleet is moving in. Take it down, ground team!"

"We're on it." Okotan twirled his halberd and set himself, polearm taking on a bright yellow glow. "Let's go!"

---

"Ground team has aggroed the Treant. All ships, move in and prepare to engage the outer tree when it appears! Watch out for the adds!"

Pushing Moondancer's throttle forward and pulling the wing-sails in, Kizmel was amused by the grouchy expression on Kirito's face. Even as he kept a firm hand on the wheel, threading the ship between the still-shaky formation of Swordmaster airships, he muttered, "How did Lind get to call the shots for this raid, again?"

"Kibaou's concession to his ego after upstaging him in the Field Boss fight," Asuna said promptly, eyes locked on her monitors and the deck gun's remote targeting system. If all went well, she wouldn't need to expose herself directly in the coming battle.

If, Kizmel told herself, keeping her own gaze on a regular circuit between her controls and the viewports. Even leaving aside the expectation of mobile foes, she thought it best to help Kirito watch for clumsy maneuvers from their own allies. "Also," she said aloud, "Captain Coper was in command for the battle that ended in an unexpected encounter with a heavy cruiser. It is, as you might say, Lind's 'turn'."

"Like Lind wasn't all-in on Coper's antics back then," Kirito grumbled.

"And who would you have preferred take the lead today?" Kizmel asked pointedly. "Us?" The stony silence was all the answer she needed, and she couldn't hold back a smirk. "Exactly. In a choice with no 'good' options, this one at least had the benefit of not triggering any arguments. I, for one, will take what I can get."

Especially, she thought, as the raid fleet slowly but steadily approached the Skywall Tower's airspace, given what little they knew of the Skywall Guardian's "adds". Steel wyverns, the local legend said. I do hope that's not literal. Ordinary wyverns are bad enough; living Cold Iron is the last thing I need today.

Halfway out from the Skywall Tower, nothing happened. A quarter. Kizmel could feel the tension in her friends growing by the moment, and knew they could feel her own heart beginning to pound in turn. According to Kirito, in the beta test, Nerius hadn't grown out to cover the entire Tower until it was on its last legs. With the final version of the transitory world having apparently been "re-balanced" with the expectation that airships would be used earlier and in greater numbers, there was entirely too great a chance things would be happening outside the Tower much sooner.

One hundred meters from the Tower. Tension sang in Kizmel's nerves, not helped by the occasional calls over raid chat from the ground team. So far, things there seemed to be going well, but—

"Hey, you guys seeing this?" Agil suddenly called out. "Those root-holes, or whatever the hell they are—I think they're starting to shake a bit."

"We expected this," Lind said, almost as calmly as he probably intended. "Ground team says Nerius' first lifebar is almost down already. Might be a panic state or something."

"Maybe," Orlando said slowly, from Durendal, "but do tree roots normally glow…?"

There was a general pause as the raid captains mulled over Orlando's observation, but they didn't have long to dwell upon it. One of the holes at the base of the tower glowed brightly, and then something shot from it, searing through the raid flotilla almost too fast to register. It nearly struck one of the solo sloops, the vessel only saved by a last-minute course-correction as its pilot reacted on instinct and panic alone, yanking at the controls to sent it careening away. Kirito let out a muffled curse as he fought the controls. "Artillery?"

A second seared past Moondancer's starboard flank, causing Asuna's console to let out an indignant-sounding beep. "Proximity warning—? Kirito-kun, those aren't weapons, those are adds. They're airships!"

Kizmel finally caught sight of one, her eyes narrowing, and she realized that Asuna was right—they were, in fact, airships rather than projectiles, though they were small enough to be almost mistaken for them. Steel-clad and faster than anything in their fleet, they launched from the holes they had all so confidently assumed were meant for enormous tree roots. More of them launched, flashing through the sky as tense seconds passed, until Lind's voice finally barked an order in response. "Adds! All ships, break and engage!"

"Oh, that's just brilliant," Kirito muttered, spinning the wheel hard to starboard. "Kizmel, help me get some altitude here before one of these idiots gets us killed!"

"Of course!" Trimming the wing-sails and angling them up, Moondancer pulled up and to starboard in an ascending spiral out of the loose raid formation. Not a moment too soon, either, as a sloop promptly veered to port through their previous altitude, arcing just over the DKB's Ancalagon.

Chaos reigned for the next few moments, much to Kizmel's grim amusement. As usual, nothing what was going as planned, but no one had—quite—died of it. Yet. The raid fleet, which had expected to face a giant but stationary target and perhaps hordes of elite wyverns broke apart, all semblance of cohesion lost as individual ship-masters and captains maneuvered to bring their weapons to bear on any opportune target. The first thunderous cracks of cannon fire began to ring out—all of it, fortunately, below Moondancer. As Kirito had anticipated, many of the others had forgotten under the pressure that their battlefield was not simply a flat plane, and only the more experienced guild ships were slowly beginning to adjust their altitude.

"Hey!" Agil yelped, as a pair of cannonballs arced over Pequod's bow. "Watch where you're shooting, idiots! That almost—whoa!"

Another pair, from a sloop's bow guns, streaked past Pequod's stern, impacting solidly on one of the enemy ships. Kirito banked Moondancer to port, the angle finally allowing Kizmel a clear look at their foes, the damaged one slowed just enough to be seen clearly for a few moments. It was sleek, about five meters from stem to stern, armored all over in steel, with a pair of cannon muzzles protruding from the bow. Propelled by a pair of flank-mounted thrusters in rotating housings, they appeared to be completely unmanned.

Steel Wyverns, she thought ruefully, reading the name that appeared on the HUD. Not literal, no. But this may be worse.

There were also, by her quick estimate, at least twenty already in the air, buzzing around and through the raid flotilla like bees. "Small," she murmured aloud, "but many, and durable enough to survive a direct hit from light cannons. I wonder…. Kirito, Asuna—"

"Already on it." Asuna reached for the buckles of her straps, adding, "Kirito-kun, keep us steady long enough for me to get to the gun!"

"I'll try," Kirito replied grimly, turned the wheel back to starboard and leveling Moondancer. "Hurry! I can steer with the balancers if I have to, but that's not great for dodging!"

"And," Kizmel put in, as Asuna darted out of the hatch, "we haven't yet seen what those Wyverns have for weapons. I didn't like the look of those cannons—"

Crack-BOOM!

---

Thunder Element cannons, Asuna thought, strapping herself into the gunner's chair with cautious haste. Well, those things aren't really big enough to carry shell-firing guns, and Lament used Thunder, too, so I guess it's not surprising. Better that than Dark!

She still shivered at the memory of the one time she'd faced Darkness fire. Of all the horrors she'd seen in Aincrad, the Wild Hunt had probably been the worst. A large part of that was because of their Darkness-imbued weaponry, which inflicted a debuff that caused a reduction of its victim's maximum hitpoints. The lore itself hadn't helped much, either, giving her more than one nightmare ever since Kizmel had explained the Hunt's nature.

But that's not what we're facing today, Asuna told herself firmly, armored fingers wrapping around the deck gun's now-familiar grips. This isn't what we were expecting today, but it's not as out of the blue as a lot of what we've run into. "Kirito-kun, I'm ready! Take us back into the fight!"

"Roger that!"

Moondancer's bow dropped abruptly as Kirito pushed the airship into a diving bank to port that would take them back into the fray, and from their altitude, she had a good view of the battle going on below. "Chaotic" was the only word that Asuna could think of to describe the sight that played out before her. What little coordination their raid fleet had started out with had fully crumbled under the unrelenting buzzing by the swarm of five-meter-long mob airships. Liberator was keeping a reasonably steady course, as were Durendal and Emancipator, but the three other ALF ships and all four of the DKB vessels were maneuvering wildly, nearly colliding with one another or even independent ships on more than one occasion, prompting an outburst from Agil that made her ears burn.

The near-continuous cacophony of ear-splitting booms from the mobs—interceptors, Asuna figured, designed to sow chaos and move too fast for remote-controlled weapons to track—didn't help matters. Lighting bolts filled the sky as if they'd flown into the middle of a thundercloud, and she watched as three of them converged on Liberator's starboard flank, leaving ugly, blackened scars on its hull.

The clearers weren't taking it laying down, however. Liberator returned fire, three of her broadside cannons answering with shells of their own at the offending ship. One of them clipped the interceptor's port thruster, sending it careening off before it was enveloped in the brilliant explosion from the other two explosive shells. Coper had alternately loaded his guns with explosive and Fire-element rune shells, expecting to fight a flammable tree and possibly armored monsters—they weren't ideal against steel-clad targets, even less so because they could be prematurely detonated by Thunder cannons, but they certainly worked well enough. Asuna saw the proof ot hat, watching the wrecked, twisted husk of the interceptor drop beneath the clouds.

"All ships, maneuver independently, but try to get some distance," Lind called out, even as another interceptor's stern blew apart. "The last thing we need are collisions! Just don't get too far from the Tower—they'll still need our help later. And try not to fly out over the Cloud Sea. If anyone goes down over land, at least there's a chance to survive!"

Huh. Not the most confident leader Asuna had ever heard, but she had to grant he was doing better than he had before. Maybe, she thought, just being in control of his own ship gave him a boost. I know I find things easier to take when I've got control, she admitted to herself, swinging the gun around to track another of the gunboats. This battle doesn't scare me half as much as the high school entrance exam!

After all, she couldn't just shoot a test. Or the teachers. No matter how much she'd sometimes wanted to.

Feeling almost like she was channeling the remembered stress into the guns, Asuna dropped the targeting reticule onto the gunboat's port engine nacelle just as it dove in to strafe Pequod, and squeezed the triggers. Emerald light lanced from the gun's mythril barrels, connecting Moondancer to the gunboat for a split second; her target rocked from the impact, wobbling off-course, its thruster smoking.

Smoking, but not blown away like she'd hoped. Drat!

"It appears Wood isn't the best for battling Cold Iron armor," Kizmel remarked clinically, as Kirito threw Moondancer into pursuing the damaged gunboat at the best speed he could muster. "We'd best look into that later. I suspect these of being Kayaba's work, but what ships the Human Empire does truly have are similarly armored."

"Figures. Well, we'll just to have use what we've got. Kirito-kun, give me a little more power! This isn't a chase, we should be able to spare some from the engines to boost the guns!"

"Just a second—whoa!" Moondancer abruptly swung her stern to port, just barely avoiding a gunboat and the sloop pursing it. Asuna rocked into her seat, but determinedly kept her sights on the gunboat, even as it tried to turn to chase Pequod. "Watch it, will you?! Right, right, power transfer… man, this is hard to do from the helm, how do you even work these controls… got it!"

The deck gun thrummed as more power flowed into it from the twin core crystals, and Asuna didn't even need to look at the displays to know when it was ready. In her fifth battle at the gun's controls, fourth since it had been mounted aboard Moondancer, she was getting to know it intimately.

The instant the gun reached the apex of its new charge, she fired again—just as the gunboat opened up on Pequod.

Emerald lances beat out blue-white by a split second, striking the already-damaged engine nacelle dead-on. It blew apart, throwing off the gunboat's cannons enough for the twin thunderbolts to only blast away a chunk of Pequod's deck railing, rather than burning deep into the ship's hull. The gunboat, listing badly yet still limping along on its remaining thruster, tried to pull up and away, before Moondancer's gun could recharge.

"You're not getting away!" Agil's roar accompanied Pequod's bow pulling up. "Got you!"

Pequod's bow chasers were a pair of ordinary shell-loaded cannons, rather than the core-powered guns of an elven airship or the magic-infused shells of Liberator—yet, at the end of the day, they still launched a significant mass of hard iron and explosives at whatever her gunner deemed unworthy of existing. The simple, humble cannonballs slammed into the gaping wound that had once been an engine nacelle with enough force to punch through and crush the gunboat's core crystal, scattering debris all over the sky.

The gunboat blew apart in a hail of shrapnel that bounced off their keel like steel hail, as Kirito pushed Moondancer into a tight climb to shield Asuna from the makeshift projectiles. And more importantly, Kizmel, she thought with a wince at the deafening noise that reverberated through the hull below her feet, as she swung the turret around in search of a new target. If those penetrated the pilothouse, she'd be in more danger than the rest of us.

"Thanks for the save, Moondancer," Agil called, Pequod rising up to ride their port flank. "Nice shooting!"

"Same to you," Asuna replied, feeling a flush of pride at the compliment. "But you would've been fine. No whales here, right?"

"Hey, no jinxing us!" Wolfgang snapped. "I'm already airsick!"

A sharp crack from somewhere below Moondancer drew her attention, and a quick glance at the raid HUD told Asuna that Ancalagon had just been hit, losing nearly ten percent of her HP in a single blow. The larger vessel responded with a hail of gunfire that nearly deafened her, the DKB frigate spitting plumes of smoke and flame at its offender that desperately weaved through the return fire. The pair of sloops escorting their larger brethren added their own weapons to the mix, weaving a net that not even the speedy interceptor could fully evade, but the smaller guns didn't have the power to bring it down with anything but massed fire.

Literal fire, she realized with a start. "Interesting," Kizmel remarked, as the gunboat was torn to pieces by the massive overkill. "I assumed the Dragon Knights' ships used Wood cores, but those cannons use Fire. Either they have unusual engines indeed, or some way to convert elemental energy between core and cannon."

"Uh… does that matter?" Agil asked. Pequod's guns punctuated his question, cannonballs smashing into the bow of a gunboat that had suddenly flashed across their flightpath.

"I'm not honestly sure," Kizmel admitted, even as Asuna quickly tracked the gunboat and fired, blasting its starboard cannon to shrapnel. "I'm a Knight, not a sailor, and I still have much to learn about airships. It may be perfectly normal, for all I know. The question is…."

"How did Lind find out how," Kirito finished, hauling Moondancer into a turn to pursue the smaller and nimbler gunboat. "Or if not him, the engineer."

"It's probably nothing," Asuna pointed out, despite the slight chill in her own veins. She fired again, and had the satisfaction of blasting her target's engine nacelle clean off. "Wouldn't that be kind of basic for game balance?"

"Yeah," Kirito said grimly. "For normal games, anyway."

---

The Swordmaster ships swung away from the Skywall Tower, mostly as individuals, with only two groups of four even maintaining a pretense of coordination. The gunboats swarmed throughout, Thunder cannons casting jagged bolts at targets of opportunity, further disrupting the retreat. The Chrome Disaster seemed to be a favored target, though her armor was tough enough to withstand the pounding and keep going.

No, Alice thought, watching the ragged maneuvering through a spyglass, not a retreat. They're merely trying to gain space to engage… clumsily. A sensible tactic, but one they wouldn't have needed had they not so foolishly driven straight in before they even knew what they would be facing.

Admittedly, as amateurish as the ship handling was, the Swordmasters weren't simply taking fire without replying. Moondancer was, unsurprisingly, living up to her name and slipping nimbly downward to strike at gunboats where she could, before climbing back above the main action before she could risk any collisions. Another ship—Pequod, Argo had told her—was making an admirable effort to keep up, though her fixed bow guns and clearly inexperienced gunner meant she couldn't hit as reliably.

Durendal seemed to be playing at escort as well, circling below the flotilla to engage the gunboats from another angle. Though her gunner seemed to be nearly on par with Moondancer's, the tactic still left Alice shaking her head. "Wood cannons are a poor match for steel armor at the best of times," she muttered. "Do the Braves truly not understand that airship keels are heavily armored? I'm a Knight, not a sailor, and even I know that."

Sitting casually on the skiff's rail, as if she weren't in danger of falling into the forest below if something even lightly jostled the craft, Argo the Rat gave a casual shrug. "The Braves aren't the sharpest knives around, but ya gotta give 'em points for trying. There's no FAQs here, Dame Alice, and they've prolly been too busy with… stuff… to look into the finer points."

"They have," said a tinny voice behind them, low and miserable. "We have. We always figured there'd be time to look into tactics later, and for now we'd have the gear to just brute-force everything."

"Foolish." Alice watched as a trio of gunboats formed up for an attack run on the ALF's Emancipator and its escorts, light gleaming off their armored hulls like needles in the sky. To their credit, Kibaou's crews at least had the presence of mind to see them coming, and the ALF flotilla moved to scatter and avoid the massed incoming fire. It was too little, almost too late, however, and the gunboats' rippling volley struck the Emancipator just aft of her bridge, while two of the sloops earned themselves gaping holes rent into their bows and sterns that sent them swerving wildly off-course.

To the ALF's credit, the gunboats were flying too fast not to overshoot, and in the instant the two formations crossed paths, Emancipator opened up with both broadsides. Wood may not have been ideal against steel, but the concentrated fire sent two of the gunboats tumbling away. Moments later, they smashed into the treeline and exploded, while the third gunboat had the misfortune of flying directly into the path of the one undamaged sloop's guns.

"Foolish," Alice repeated, even as that gunboat's stern erupted in flames. A subsequent bolt of Fire from one of the DKB sloops blew it apart—at the expense of the sloop nearly careening into the ALF ship it had just aided. She could nearly hear the shouts of outrage even from two kilometers away from the battle. "A real battle would see all of them dead long before they could hone their skills above this… rabble."

"So," the Rat drawled, fangs visible even in the shadow of her hood, "the real Skywall Tower here's got better defenses, eh?"

Alice rolled her eyes. I am not falling for that, Rat. We have a truce, nothing more, and I will not be so foolish as to let you exploit it. "Presumably," she said aloud. "Matters of Tower Guardians were never my concern unless the mission directly involved one. Particularly here, on the frontiers of the Archipelago. My only orders with respect to the Towers were to not waste my time interfering." She spared the Rat a narrow-eyed glance. "But you already knew that."

"Guessed," the Rat corrected, turning her own attention back to the battle. "With how you were tryin' to blend in, it wasn't hard to see information means more to you right now than stopping us. At least, this far out."

Maddening woman. Alice couldn't help but suspect she was being played, but how, she couldn't guess. While it was possible the Rat could supply her with false information, the Fuuma couldn't exactly hide the nature of the battles being fought, and no conspiracy could be so pervasive as to involve all the Swordmasters with whom Alice had mingled. There is no obvious trap—beyond, I suppose, throwing me overboard, but she could've done that at any time—yet allowing me to continue to observe cannot possibly be to their benefit. What is the Rat's game?

"It looks like it's going pretty well so far," the tinny, nervous voice behind them said. Timidly, the armored engineer Nezha stepped up to the railing himself, peering through his visor at the battle. "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe… the Forest Elves really were just trying to help?"

"Kales'Oh makes no bargains with humans that don't benefit them," the Rat responded, with an unusual edge to her voice. "Lyusula's got reasons to help us out, even without immediate benefit. Some of 'em might even remember the Last Alliance and do it for honor. Kales'Oh doesn't like outsiders." She shook her head. "Nope, they've got an angle, an' I bet I know what it is."

"And the battle is still young," Alice agreed grimly, reminded that there was a reason she was allied, however briefly, with the Fuumaningun. "Nerius has not yet shown its true self. And I'm sure there will be more of those gunboats even after this wave is—"

BOOM!

---

Though there was no pain in SAO, that didn't mean that players couldn't be disoriented—but Lind was almost getting used to the constant cacophony of explosions rattling the ship's hull, impacts thundering through its armored decks, and the nearly epilepsy-inducing flashes of gunfire and thunderbolts as the two fleets traded shots. Then, for a split second, everything went white and silent, and he had just enough time for the singular thought that this was it, that he would see the game over screen when the ringing in his ears returned, accompanied by a splitting headache as a literal thunderbolt seared right into his vision. He coughed, sluggishly picking himself off the deck. "What happened?! What's our status?!"

There was a loud, rumbling buzz as his hearing finally returned to normal, followed by a muffled curse—from Ancalagon's helmsman, he thought, but couldn't be sure. A split second later, Lind heard a horrible grinding sound just as his vision cleared enough to watch as one of the DKB sloops ground against Ancalagon's starboard flank through the viewports. The airship's HP dropped continuously until the helmsman managed to fling the wheel to port, wrenching the two ships apart.

"I think that was just about every ship in the fleet firing at once," Naga, a short, stocky lancer acting as gunner reported. Shaking the ringing out of his ears, he hurriedly glanced over his displays, checking the status of their own ship and the battle at large. "Half our starboard broadside is down, but I think—yeah, all ships are still in the fight."

Lind nodded choppily. At least it wasn't as bad as it sounded like. "Lind to fleet, spread out and check your status! Helm, get us some altitude. Naga, what about the gunboats? How many of them are left?"

As Ancalagon's bow pitched up, pulling out of the shallow dive the massed explosions had left her in—sending her on a direct course toward Zumfut, Lind realized uneasily—Naga glanced quickly from his console to the viewports and back again. "Most of the remaining gunboats were destroyed in the volley," he said after a few moments. "I'm seeing two left, but a couple of the independents are tracking them—"

BOOM!

A second blast followed almost instantly, and then the dark green hull of Durendal rose up just off Ancalagon's port bow, gun barrels still steaming. A shadow quickly fell over the DKB frigate's deck, and Lind gritted his teeth at the sight of Moondancer's black keel soaring overhead, balancers firing to shove the ship level from what must've been a severe list.

Most of the kills were made by the guilds, he reminded himself, forcing taut fingers to ease their grip on the arms of his chair. Ugh, commanding an air battle is harder than I expected. Maybe I wasn't giving Coper enough credit. …At least we have a little breathing space now.

Enough for him to look at the map display, and get some idea of what was going on. Over the course of the battle, they'd strayed farther from the Skywall Tower than he'd wanted, ending up entirely too close to Zumfut. Whether it was possible for an airship battle to affect a town, he wasn't sure, and didn't really want to find out. Most likely, it would've resulted in the fleet running into some kind of barrier, but even that would've been a disaster for the raid itself.

The four ships of the DKB had at least managed to stay in close contact with each other—a little too close, in the case of Ancalagon and one of the sloops; Lind made a mental note to take time out of clearing to give the helmsmen a chance to train more as soon as possible. He took a little guilty satisfaction from seeing that the ALF ships, while still heading in roughly the same direction as the rest of the fleet, were even more disorganized. He could even hear Kibaou barking angry orders over raid chat, and a glance out the viewports showed Emancipator barging right between two ALF sloops with only a couple meters to spare.

Durendal had sunk down below the altitude of the fleet again; the Legend Braves had been quieter and much less bold than usual, which concerned him a little. Moondancer slipping in an out of formation with casual ease irked him, and Pequod mostly sticking with the Beater's ship didn't exactly endear them to Lind, either. He did, grudgingly, concede they'd been doing their part well enough.

Liberator, at least, was taking up rearguard easily enough. A quick glance out the rear viewports showed the cruiser sparking, engines clearly having taken something of a beating from the gunboats' Thunder cannons, but she was still very much in the fight. While Coper might not have been the greatest captain, he'd obviously learned something from the prior engagements.

Those other two sloops, though…. The remaining pair of independent airships, whose names Lind hadn't quite memorized yet, were zigzagging all over the place, nearly colliding with each other, with the two guild formations, and even with Liberator. They were also visibly scorched all over, their flanks buckled in places. Those two really need work. Better to bring them into the guilds, if only for their own good.

That would wait until after the battle, one way or another. There was still one more thing to check. "Hafner," Lind called out, "how's the battle going on your end? Any adds?"

"Nope," his second-in-command reported, taut voice suggesting he was actively engaged in combat. "Still just the tree. Get ready, Lind, I think we're almost—hey! Watch where you shoot those things! Don't set me on fire—we're almost to the final lifebar. Whatever's going to happen, it's gonna happen soon!"

Had the battle really been going on that long? A quick glance at the clock on his HUD told Lind that it really had: tangling with the gunboats had taken up almost half an hour already. "Understood. We've taken care of the adds out here, so we'll get in position for the state change. Kibaou, are your ships ready?"

"Ready as they can be," Kibaou said tersely. "Lost some guns in that big boom, but we're still in th' fight. C'mon, we gotta get back to the Tower! I'm not leaving my people to the trap!"

"That's the intention," Lind replied, forcing down irritation at the other guildmaster's loud complaints. "All ships, come about and return to the Skywall Tower! When Nerius' final phase begins, we will be in position to rescue the ground team, no matter what!"

There was a chorus of acknowledgments, and the raid fleet swung around in a wide arc. The independent sloops nearly caused a few more collisions in the process, but Lind was pleased to see that otherwise the fleet kept remarkably good formation. On the job training was doing some good, at least, and soon enough they were all headed straight back to the Skywall Tower.

"All right, one more good hit—there! Lind, Nerius is down to the final lifebar! It's—yow, those branches are crazy!"

"Are you all right, Hafner?!" Lind almost came out of his chair, before reminding himself there was absolutely nothing he could do to help his ground team directly.

"Yeah, we're fine, just one hell of a knockback—a flaming knockback, thanks so much, Pitohui—and now the tree's rooting itself in the middle of the boss chamber. That's what the beta info said would happen, right?"

"Right," Lind confirmed, grimacing at the reminder of the information's source. "You've prepared for the poison attack, right? We'll do our part, don't worry—"

"Holy—!"

It took him a second to realize the exclamation came from Kibaou, not Hafner. He returned his attention to the fleet, started to snap in response—and then his mouth dropped open wordlessly, seeing what had prompted the ALF guildmaster's outburst.

They'd known it was coming, from the beta test information—but nothing could have prepared them for the sight of giant roots bursting out of the gunboats' launch tubes. Each thicker than a man, writhing, stretching, and undulating like some kind of living tentacle, they reached out to jam themselves in the ground around the tower. Vines erupted from its base, spreading upward and outwards as they wound their way along the trunk, growing rapidly into leaves and branches before melting together into a makeshift armor made from bark and foliage.

In the span of less than thirty seconds, the Skywall Tower had gone from an edifice of stone to a giant tree, dwarfing even Birunam and Eenash. Above it, hanging in the air, a name: [Nerius the Ascended Treant].

A tree by any other name. A tree holding our ground teams inside it. Kayaba, you freak…. Focus. "All ships, prepare to open fire on Nerius! Remember what level the boss chamber was on, and try to avoid hitting it—don't fire too close to where our people are unless we end up having to break them free!" He waited a few moments, as the larger ships swung to present broadsides and the smaller ones readied their bow guns. "On my mark—!"

CLUNK.

"…What was that?"

The bridge map display abruptly winked out. Helm and gunnery consoles went dark. The thrum of Ancalagon's engines faded. And as a chill began to run down Lind's spine, almost every ship in the raid fleet came to a dead stop, and shouts of surprise, curses, and confusion edging toward panic filled the raid chat.

The fleet was dead in the air. And then, from the highest branches of Nerius' new form, metal-skinned wyverns flung themselves into the air, swooping down toward the helpless ships.

…What the hell is going on here?!

---

"Hey, what the hell's happening?! Why are we losing power?!"

"Dammit! What is this?! Lind, you never said anything about the boss being able to knock out our ships!"

"Don't blame Lind, blame the damn betas and the Rat! If anybody knew, they did! Hey, Beater, your ship is working just fine! What's your secret?!"

Gripping Moondancer's wheel with white-knuckled hands, Kirito tried his best to focus on threading through the swarm of Iron Wyverns trying to eat the ship and not on the chatter. On Asuna swinging the deck gun around and blasting at them, emerald light lancing out every couple of seconds as she fired as fast as it would cycle. On Kizmel, muttering to herself in Sindarin while her hands danced from throttle to wing-sails and back, aiding him in the aerial dance.

On anything but being blamed, again, for everything going wrong. The last thing he needed was flashbacks in the middle of battle.

Arcing Moondancer up and around, he wove the ship as close to Nerius' highest branches as he dared in an attempt to shake off some of the wyverns chasing them. The altitude above the battle gave him a good view of the situation below, and it was looking grim; every ship in the raid fleet with the exception of his own, Durendal, and Liberator had lost all power, all at the same time, as though they had been struck with some sort of magic-equivalent of an EMP. The only silver lining was that none of them seemed to be outright falling out of the sky, suggesting that the lift fields, at least, were still active, even if nothing else appeared to be.

The deck gun cracked again, and Asuna crowed as it blasted one of the Iron Wyverns into a huge tree branch, where it shattered to pieces. Then, "What do we do, Kirito-kun? There's too many of these things. And if the lift fields on those ships go down, too—"

"I see more Steel Wyvern gunboats launching, as well," Kizmel interrupted grimly. "Only six, so far, but we can't be everywhere."

Damn! Spinning the wheel hard to starboard, Kirito threw Moondancer into a descending arc away from Nerius, just in time to avoid being rammed by a gunboat that hurtled out of the trunk. Asuna tried to rotate the deck gun to follow it, but her hasty shot missed completely.

Then there was a terrible groaning noise, felt through the deck more than heard with his ears, and he was suddenly certain a wyvern had latched onto the port propeller shaft and started gnawing on it. Moondancer immediately slowed, the propeller still turning but not nearly as well, and he had the horrible realization he had no idea how to knock the beast off.

"Hey, fleet, this is Hafner! Nerius just spawned two mini-treants! We could use some help in here!"

A raid that had been going as close to textbook as anything had in SAO so far was suddenly going horribly wrong, and Kirito had no idea why, or how to fix it. The intel was almost perfect, he thought, mind racing, whipping Moondancer into a steep turn in hopes of somehow shaking off the wyvern. We knew about the poison. We knew about the tree growing around the Tower. We misunderstood the hints about the Steel Wyverns, but the info was there, and we could've recovered from it. How did things go so wrong?

Because any of that, all of that, they could've dealt with. Even the extra mini-bosses inside the Tower itself. If the entire fleet was still in action.

Plunging Moondancer into a steep dive, hoping to shake the wyvern off their propeller shaft from the sudden acceleration, he watched other wyverns descend on the helpless ships of the fleet. He spotted at least two each chewing on the independent sloops, and the small forms of Agil and the Bro Squad charged out onto the Pequod's deck to repel the strangest boarders one could imagine. To the left, Liberator was trading blows with three gunboats at once, two of her starboard guns sparking and useless, while further below Durendal began to pummel Nerius' base with Wood bolts, to very little effect.

Everything about the raid had been going fine, until it wasn't. Why are the ships breaking down? Is this something to do with how fast they were built? What… what am I supposed to do…?

Moondancer's HP was dropping, and Kirito could feel the ship's distress in his very bones. If nothing changed in the next thirty seconds, they were going to have to retreat, but as far as he could tell, most of them couldn't. The ground team was trapped inside, most of the airships couldn't even move, and even if they were low enough to abandon ship, the adds would surely chase them—

"'Scuse us, coming through!"

Not the raid chat, Kirito realized with a start, but some kind of bullhorn. He had just enough time to register that before a shadow flew over Moondancer, and a figure dropped down onto the deck. A ninja—kunoichi, he noticed absently, seeing the curves under the dark bodysuit—who promptly tied a line to Moondancer's rail and swung over the side.

"What just happened?" Kizmel asked, looking and sounding as confused as he was. "Wait—that was one of Argo's ninja. What is she—?"

Her question was cut short by a piercing, animalistic howl, and suddenly Moondancer's limping engines roared with full power as the drag on the port-side propeller disappeared. Realizing what must have happened, Kirito adjusted for the shift in throttle and kept the ship going straight, long enough for Asuna to swing the gun around and open up on the engine of an approaching gunboat as it came in to strafe them, sending it tumbling out of the sky as the gun's report echoed in the ship's hull.

The kunoichi—Kumari, Kirito finally remembered—clambered back onto the deck and dashed to the pilothouse hatch. "Apologies for the intrusion, Captain Kirito," she said breathlessly, slamming the hatch behind herself and clinging to it. "There's no time to explain, but we need you to buy us some time!"

"Time for what?" Asuna demanded, tracking and shooting down another Iron Wyvern. "What's happening here?!"

"It would seem Argo has a plan." As Moondancer finally leveled out from her dive, Kizmel pointed out the glasswood viewports. "Did you know something the rest of did not?"

Argo's skiff—Kirito knew it was Argo's; besides dropping off Kumari, the whisker markings were just too distinctive—had come up alongside Emancipator. Argo herself quickly lashed the skiff to the frigate's rail, and a moment later a figure in full armor clumsily jumped over. He had to duck immediately, when a gunboat fired twin thunderbolts right over his head, but he didn't pause, dashing straight to the hatch leading belowdecks and disappearing.

"Nothing concrete," Kumari said, in answer to Kizmel's almost accusing question. "We had strong suspicions, thanks to informants, but not enough to convince the guilds. All we could do was be ready. I only hope we're not too late."

"Yeah, me, too," Kirito muttered, pulling Moondancer into a climb. "Buy you time? For what? And how long?"

"For Engineer Nezha to repair all the new-built ships." Kumari clung to the hatch, somehow holding herself in place against the ship's maneuvers; Kirito had to admit she was a lot calmer than he was used to from the Fuuma. "He estimated about two minutes per ship, not counting travel time."

Kirito quickly ran the numbers in his head. Eleven ships, two minutes each, plus transit—oh, not good. "I don't know if we can hold these off for half an hour, Kumari!"

"We can't, not against this many!" Asuna was again swinging the turret side to side, firing as fast as the gun could get a useful charge. "Kirito-kun, there's another wave of gunboats coming! Two scouts and a light cruiser aren't going to hold out that long!"

Moondancer's bow swung to face Nerius once again, just in time to stare down six gunboats launching from as many different angles, cannon muzzles crackling with barely-restrained Thunder. Kirito frantically spun the wheel hard to starboard, pushing rudder, wing-sails, and balancers into the turn, while Kizmel fed all the power she could into the throttle, and Asuna opened fire on the first target she could line up. It's not going to be enough, we can't evade or knock them all out before—!

A shadow fell across Moondancer, the very air itself shaking with the fury of a thunderous broadside as another ship cut across their bow. "That would be two cruisers, Moondancer," a familiar, gruff voice said. "Sorry we're late," Captain Emlas added, as Moonshadow came around, fired another blistering salvo from her other broadside, and settled in by Moondancer's starboard flank. "It's time to repay you for saving the camp when we arrived. Let's finish this, shall we?"

---

"I do not have a damn clue what's going on anymore," Kibaou groused. Slashing a Vertical down the snout of an Iron Wyvern gnawing on Emancipator's deck, he continued irately, "Does anybody have a clue? Because this is really staring to get on my—aw, damn it!"

Twin lightning bolts sizzled overhead, just far enough to miss but just close enough to make his whole body tingle and the team he had repelling boarders to hit the deck. The gunboat responsible promptly zipped overhead, diving in on one of the ALF sloops. It fired again, and Kibaou swore bitterly at the hole punched clear through the sloop's deck. Another gunboat was following right behind it, and he knew the next shot would finish the job, and there was nothing he could do about it.

BOOM!

Three Wood-element bolts slammed into the stern of the second gunboat, shattering the core crystal and turning the small vessel into a shrapnel-spewing fireball. Kibaou joined the rest of his team on the deck this time, yelping as the odd pieces of shrapnel smashed into the deck. A few of them dented and pierced his own armor, but it detracted little from the grim satisfaction of the enemy ship's demise, as what was left of it tumbled to the forest canopy below, disappearing with little fanfare.

Even better, the wyvern he'd been hacking at had taken damage from the shrapnel, too. Surging back upright with a roar, Kibaou ripped an Upper through its neck, and slammed a boot into its chest, sending it off Emancipator to explode into azure shards in the air. He whirled around before it finished dying, sparing only a brief glance at the cruiser sailing overhead, before charging back toward the bridge and the pair of wyverns trying to rip open its hatch.

What the hell is that ship doin' here, anyway? That ain't from Silica's buddies. Growling, he joined one of his stockier guild members, a Swordmaster with sword and heavy shield going by Kobatz, in body-slamming the offending wyverns. Got somethin' to do with the blasted Beater, I'll bet. Pain in the—

"I knew we shouldn't have trusted the elves," Kobatz grunted, his sword carving a Horizontal through one of the wyverns. "I knew this ship was too good to be true!"

"Shaddup!" Kibaou snapped back, laying into the other with a wild series of slashes. "If it was them, it'd be just our ship hit, not the rest of the fleet. 'Sides, who d'ya think is givin' us cover right now?"

Besides the Beater, he grumbled. Even as he drove the wyvern away from the hatch, forcing it around and toward another of his men, he caught a glimpse of Moondancer following the cruiser into attacking another trio of gunboats. Almost flying into the upper branches of Nerius' Tower-engulfing form, the two elven-made airships pounded at the mobs with bolt after bolt from their cannons. Wood was a poor element to use against the steel-hulled gunboats, and it took Moondancer at least three shots to bring one down, but it was working.

Working better than my ship right now, dammit. "Hey! What the hell's takin' that engineer so long?!"

"I think he's almost got it, Guildmaster," his gunner reported. "He had to get through some damage belowdecks before he could reach the core, sorry!"

"Whatever. Ain't your fault." Kibaou thrust his sword into the back of the wyvern Kobatz had been fighting, and after a frantic look around realized that it had been the last of them aboard. For now. "Hey, Silica!" he called, stomping to the rail to get a better look at Nerius and the Tower. "Y'all still alive in there?!"

"For now," the young knife-fighter replied breathlessly. "But—Guildmaster, I'm not sure how long we can hold out! With the adds, we haven't been able to rotate out for healing, and—"

She was panicking, and he couldn't blame her a bit. Damn! "Hang on, kid, we'll send help as soon as—what the hell?" Kibaou blinked, staring down toward the mostly-clear entrance to the Tower. Nope, not seeing things. "Hang tight, it looks like you've got help on the way already. Don't die on me, kid, that's an order!"

"We'll do our best!" Silica swallowed audibly, but she sounded just a bit calmer. "Same to you, Guildmaster!"

"Heh. We'll be fine."

I think, he finished silently, wheeling back toward the bridge. Another gunboat shrieked overhead, almost colliding with the Rat's still-moored skiff, before taking a sudden blast of green energy from below. Durendal, he figured, but wasn't quite sure he cared.

First a Dark Elf airship, then a team of Dark Elves heading into the Tower itself. Kibaou was pretty sure he even recognized one of them. He had no freaking clue what was going on anymore.

He had no clue—but as he approached the hatch, he felt a thrum under his feet, and seconds later the engineer burst out of the bridge, nearly bowling him over.

Kibaou almost snarled a curse, but held himself back, just letting the armored man rush back to the skiff. He stomped into the bridge and flung himself back into the captain's chair, relieved to see displays coming back to life around him. "Awright, we're back online! Helm, get us the hell away from the Tower!"

"Did you say away, Captain?!"

"Did I stutter?" Kibaou slammed a fist on his armrest. "Yeah, away! Trust me, I got a plan." More or less….

---

Holding on while eleven ships were repaired by one mechanic was a daunting task, especially for only three ships. Even with one unexpected reinforcement, Kirito hadn't been sure they could do it. Not without taking heavy casualties, anyway. Not with so many gunboats and wyverns swarming around.

Yet somehow, they held on. Against the odds, they held.

"Just one more push!" Lind shouted over the raid chat. "DKB ships and Liberator will take point! Everyone else, keep the remaining interceptors off us! The ground team's done their job, now let's finish ours!"

There was some grumbling over chat, and Kibaou uttered something incomprehensibly Kansai that didn't sound complimentary. Even so, the fleet obeyed. Ancalagon and her three sloop escorts swung in a clockwise arc toward Nerius, their Fire-element cannons opening up on its upper branches as they approached. Liberator swooped in counter-clockwise, bringing her more intact port broadside to bear, Fire-charged rune shells blasting chunks off branches and setting what remained ablaze.

Kirito couldn't say he was happy about the orders himself, but he couldn't really disagree. Moondancer's Wood gun was having enough problems with the steel-hulled gunboats as it was; fighting a tree with Wood… well, it had worked out against Birunam and Eenash, but it wasn't the best. With five ships capable of more appropriate tactics, it only made sense to play escort.

So he spun the wheel, trusting Kizmel's hand on the wing-sails to help swing Moondancer around the outside of the formation, accompanied by Pequod and Moonshadow. Roughly shadowing Liberator, within moments of Lind giving his orders, Asuna swung the deck gun around to track a pair of interceptors slashing down out of the sky at the cruiser. Pequod's bow came up at the same time, and Wood bolts and cannonballs cracked out almost as one, smashing into an interceptor's bow.

The interceptor blew apart, before it could quite bring its guns to bear. Its wingman, though, responded by breaking off its attack on Liberator to aim straight for Moondancer.

Snarling a Sindarin comment on the Steel Wyvern's ancestry, Kirito turned the wheel hard to starboard, hauling Moondancer around just as the gunboat fired. One of the thunderbolts missed; the other punched a hole through the port wing-sail, abruptly turning Moondancer's handling just a little sluggish.

It never got a follow-up shot, Moonshadow rolling just enough to starboard to bring her broadside to bear. In the instant the gunboat passed by, a cruiser's worth of Wood bolts crashed into its flank, blasting half its starboard hull off and sending it into a spin.

"I'm getting really tired of Thunder," Asuna commented, with a calm Kirito knew she wasn't quite feeling, even as she blasted a wyvern that was trying to roast Moonshadow's keel. "Is anyone else's hair standing on end?"

"Yes," Kizmel replied, hands dancing over her controls as she fought to compensate for the damage. "Even though that shot didn't come that close to the pilothouse. I'm not sure I want to know what we're feeling…. But Guildmaster Lind is right. This is almost over."

And not a minute too soon, Kirito thought, sparing a quick glance around the fleet. Somehow, they'd held on as the power-lost ships were repaired, but it wasn't without cost. Liberator's starboard broadside was down to a single gun, Emancipator had lost two out of her port broadside, and pretty much every ship had holes here and there. One of the independent sloops had even been forced to make an emergency landing, with the engineer still frantically trying to get her airborne again.

Not to mention Moonshadow's taken some hits. He glanced over at the Dark Elf cruiser, saw the holes in her bow and the one sparking cannon, and winced. They came here to return a favor. I hope they haven't lost anyone else.

As they circled the Tower-turned-tree, picking off the last of the wyverns and interceptors one by one, Emancipator and her escorts came around from the other side, about twenty meters above. At some point, Durendal had finally climbed up to join them, giving Kibaou's flagship escorts on all sides. All of them were firing as fast as their Wood guns could charge, and Kirito could see why: with Ancalagon and her sloops doing most of the shooting at Nerius, they were also drawing most of the aggro. From the look of things, they'd gotten caught in a veritable cloud of interceptors and wyverns, which the ALF were only just finishing off.

Asuna promptly put a bolt of her own into a gunboat's flank, as the two Swordmaster groups merged and then passed each other again. "Another one down," she reported, with weary satisfaction. "And Nerius is down under ten percent, looks like. Just a little—"

"Oi, Beater!" Kibaou broke in. "Don't forget yer place, ya hear me? Keep the adds off, an' stay out of the way!"

"Well," Kizmel remarked, voice dry as dust. "He's certainly as pleasant as ever, isn't he?"

"Guildmaster Kibaou does not seem to like you very much, Captain Kirito. Is he really that prejudiced against beta testers?"

Kirito twitched violently, barely keeping the wheel steady. He'd managed to completely forget Kumari was still aboard, as quiet as the kunoichi had been. Taking just a second to look her way, he saw she was still clinging to the bulkhead; with her half-mask hiding her mouth, only the sweat on her forehead betrayed her tension. Right, she was the sane one in the old Fuuma, wasn't she?

Aloud, he said, "It's… complicated. I'm not really sure how much of is betas in general, and how much of it is me specifically. We… didn't exactly have the best first impression."

"Understatement," Asuna muttered; from the sound of it, she would've liked to be shooting at Kibaou, not the wyvern she blasted to blue glass shards with an offhand shot. "Sometimes I'm not sure who annoys me more, Kibaou with that chip on his shoulder or Lind and his 'I know best' attitude."

Kirito shivered. She might not have known which bothered her more, but he could take a guess. Kibaou made her grouchy. Lind made her icy cold. Why, he didn't know, and wasn't stupid enough to ask.

"Nerius is down to three percent!" Lind shouted, breaking into his thoughts. "Just a little more, and—incoming!"

Half a dozen interceptors burst out from the depths of Nerius' crown. Even with the damage the fleet had taken, the Swordmasters still outgunned them, but there was no way to bring them all under fire at once. And the longer this goes on, the more it'll launch. No time for this!

Lind was babbling something else on the raid chat. Kirito, mind racing, ignored it, and made a snap decision of his own. "Asuna, Kizmel, we're going. Pequod, are you with us?"

"At least you sound like you know what you're doing," Agil replied laconically. "Go for it, Cap'n Kirito! We're with you!"

The ALF and DKB groups were firing off every gun they still had left, trying to batter Nerius while at the same time suppressing the gunboats. The independent sloop still airborne was swooping and swerving erratically, nearly colliding with other ships but also managing to clip one of the gunboats. The sky was filled with cannonballs, bolts of emerald and orange fire, and explosions. Parts of Nerius' upper branches were merrily blazing.

"Go, Moondancer! We'll cover you!"

The lean, dark hull of Moonshadow swung in behind Moondancer, firing volley after volley of Wood bolts. Kirito couldn't tell if they hit anything, but knowing Captain Emlas had their backs was a relief all the same.

"Let's go, Kirito-kun!" Asuna shouted, bringing the deck gun around to point straight ahead. "We're not letting the DKB get the Last Attack!"

"Indeed not: Kizmel agreed, pulling in the wing-sails and pushing the throttle forward. "We knights have our pride. Let's finish this!"

"Yeah. Let's go!" Kirito spun the wheel one more time, and Moondancer's bow came around to point directly at Nerius' trunk, just above the Skywall Tower's overgrown roof. Battered engines moaning from the strain, they drove in, Asuna firing bolt after bolt from the deck gun as they closed the distance.

Pequod's bow chasers barked again and again, Wolfgang howling an incoherent battle cry. An interceptor flashed across their bows, almost colliding with Moondancer, only to be blasted into a spin by an errant shot from Emancipator. Kibaou and Lind were both shouting over raid chat, sounding like nothing but gibberish to Kirito's laser-focused mind. Blasts of Fire from Ancalagon came entirely too close to Moondancer, but she drove on, gun still firing every couple of seconds.

Wood against wood wasn't ideal. So close to the end, it hardly matter.

Two more interceptors dove in, trying for a ramming attack. Pequod's bow came up, and two exploding cannonballs from her chasers put paid to one. Kirito winced at the Cold Iron shrapnel erupting from the disintegrating gunboat, but didn't let it distract him from the second. Roaring a wordless challenge, he threw Moondancer into a half-roll, propellers, wing-sails, and balancers swinging her up and sideways without deviating from her course.

With less than two meters to spare, the gunboat flashed by under Moondancer's port. An explosion followed moments later; Kirito didn't have time to see what exactly happened, bringing Moondancer back down and then up the other way, weaving through both enemy and friendly fire. Somehow, Asuna kept the deck gun on target the whole time, putting shot after shot between Nerius' branches and into its trunk—

Crack!

Kirito had never in his life been struck by lightning. The shock that ran up his body from Moondancer's deck didn't hurt like a real lightning strike probably would've, but it left him feeling strangely numb. Worse, the ship's engines died at the same moment, stalling her out.

Not good. Not good! We're so close…!

"Got you!"

One final, fully-charged bolt lanced out from Asuna's gun, striking home dead center on the evil tree's trunk. As Moondancer began to lose altitude, Nerius' branches went unnaturally still. A moment later, the fires that had engulfed some of them snuffed out, as if from a giant breath. Then the entire tree turned deep azure, and there was a strange, mournful howl.

Just before Moondancer could fall onto one of Nerius' branches, the entire tree burst apart—taking the roof of the Skywall Tower with it.

Kirito had a brief second to sag in numb relief—the battle was over, and no ships had been lost—before realizing there was still one problem left: Moondancer's engines weren't coming back up. The floor of the former Tower boss room was growing larger frighteningly fast, and he could see players scattering in all directions.

"Brace for impact!"

---

Nezha climbed back aboard, his work on the fallen sloop complete, and the Rat's skiff rose smoothly back into the air. As the tiny ship ascended, Alice spared only a brief thought to the oddity of a group of Dark Elves retreating from the Skywall Tower's entrance, and even less to the Lyusulan ship similarly departing. Her gaze was on the small fleet gathering around the Tower's summit, Swordmasters gradually disembarking on the now-exposed top floor.

"Unbelievable," she muttered, mostly to herself. "Such amateurish tactics, such outright foolishness, and yet they all survived." She shook her head, taking in the wrecked weapons and blasted holes in most of the airship hulls. "Even so, against a real foe, they would have all perished."

"A lot of 'em, probably," the Rat herself agreed, leaning casually against the skiff's rail. "'Course, that's why Kayaba designed things this way. Make it too tough, an' nobody will even try to clear the 'game'. Someday, I gotta tell you about 'difficulty curve', Dame Alice." She smirked then, one fang protruding noticeably. "But even against real Axiom Church defenses? I wouldn't bet on everybody dying. Would you?"

"…No. Not everyone." Because as disorganized and amateurish as the Swordmaster fleet had again proven itself, this time Alice had seen potential among them. Raw, untrained, a long way from being truly skilled, but potential. Though the battle had obviously been "balanced" to give the Swordmasters something of an edge, it had just as clearly had the true threat of death.

Even sabotaged, they pulled through, she mused, as the Rat's skiff climbed up to the fleet's altitude. With help from Lyusula, yes… but making those alliances is, itself, a skill. Today, they may be a barely-organized mob, but given time….

One more thing stood out to her, when they reached the level of the Skywall Tower's former roof: Moondancer, half-crashed on one edge, yet still largely intact. Once again, Kirito and his companions had escaped certain death, and would live to fight another day.

And the Rat allowed me to see it all. To see what kind of threat her people will become, if we allow them to go much farther. Why? What can she possibly gain by showing me this? If she simply intended to kill me before I could report back, there would've been no reason to give me this opportunity in the first place.

Kayaba is playing this world as a game. What game are you playing, Rat?

Again, Alice shook her head. "I suppose the battle is over, regardless. Unless you want to create a stir by dropping me right in the middle of a Swordmaster raid, Grandmaster, I suggest you drop me off elsewhere."

"Prolly a good idea," the Rat acknowledged, with another smirk, and turned to the ninja at the skiff's helm. "Awright, Koutaro, let's—"

"Wait." The shaky but determined voice was accompanied by clanking, and Nezha drew himself to his feet. "Grandmaster Argo. There's… still one thing we need to do. I need to do."

For a long moment, the Rat studied the armored engineer. "Hm…" she finally drew out. "Guess you're right." Her gaze flicked to one of the airships now moored to the Skywall Tower—Durendal, Alice realized. "One way or another, you gotta settle this." She quirked a smile, more serious than her earlier smirks. "You ready for this?"

"I have to be." Nezha glanced toward the helm. "Koutaro-san, please take us to the Tower. We don't need to dock, just get close enough for me to jump."

Jump…? Alice blinked, realizing what the engineer was intending to do. "Are you mad?" she demanded, despite herself. "You know what will happen! And the Legend Braves have every reason to disavow you!"

"Oh, I hope they do." Though his face was hidden by his heavy helm, she had the distinct impression Nezha was smiling. "They only did this for my sake, after all. I don't want them to pay for my crimes. This all started because of me. I should be the only one to suffer the consequences."

As the skiff dropped in close to the Tower, close enough for Alice to hear shouting from some of the gathered Swordmasters, she almost protested. Almost pointed out that whatever made have started it all, the Braves had committed crimes of their own free will. They were, by any standard, at least as guilty as Nezha himself.

But in the end, she held her tongue. After all, why should she be upset if the Swordmasters had criminals acting within their ranks, unknown and free to wreak more havoc? They were her enemies, however sympathetic their plight. In the end, for the sake of the Human Empire's stability, cracks within the Swordmasters were only to be encouraged.

And… how can I gainsay that man's bravery? Enemy or not, I will not question his honor.

Slipping in among the crowd of airships surrounding the Tower, the skiff came to a gentle halt. Nezha gave her a deep, respectful bow. "I know we're enemies, Dame Alice, but… I hope it doesn't always have to be that way. And… thank you. For helping me do the right thing."

Straightening, he saluted her, took a deep breath, and jumped over the rail.

The Rat watched him go, then quirked an eyebrow at Alice. "Y'know, M'lady," she said, with a small smile, just showing a hint of fang, "maybe ya got some real honor after all."

Alice huffed, pointedly turning away. "I don't need to hear that from you, Grandmaster." She tugged her hood lower, folded her arms, and spared one last look at Moondancer, and the black-clad swordsman by her bow. "Perhaps now we can leave? I believe this situation is quite complicated enough as it is."

She pointedly ignored the Rat's snickering. Today is not the day to uncover your secrets, Kirito. But soon… soon.

---

I hate crash landings, Asuna groused to herself, muzzily shaking off the disorientation of impact. At least this time we had seat belts!

The memory of the crash at Wolkenfelder Castle—and the embarrassing position she and Kizmel had ended up in with Kirito—managed to chase the last bit of fuzziness from her mind, and she quickly set to unstrapping herself from the deck gun. Stretching limbs made stiff by the long battle, she dropped down from the deck just as Kirito and Kizmel emerged from the pilothouse, looking none the worse for wear. "You two okay?"

"More or less," Kizmel told her, smiling reassuringly. "Tilnel will be relieved… though I admit, after my third crash landing, I am getting somewhat tired of the experience."

"No argument from me." Kirito walked carefully to the port rail, peering down at Moondancer's hull. "Damn. I think we'll be airworthy sooner than last time, but we're definitely going to want to avoid any more fights for at least a couple days. The hull is going to need some work, and that wing-sail hit got torn up pretty bad in the landing."

"Could be worse." Asuna's shoulders relaxed a little at the report, but only a little. "We could've ended up like most of the fleet did, losing power in the middle of the battle. We're really lucky nobody got killed. Any idea what—?"

"What the hell happened back there?!" A familiar Kansai dialect exploded, making her wince. "Almost every ship in th' fleet! Eleven ships lost power! All at the same time! What the hell was up with that?!"

The three of them turned, almost as one, to look at the gathering of players in the middle of what had been the Skywall Tower Guardian's chamber. Most of the fleet's crews had disembarked, joining the group that had fought Nerius' core; they'd mostly gathered around the two major guilds, with the independents scattered around the fringes. Just about everyone was looking unhappy, but the two guildmasters were the worst, bright red in the face and looking about ready to explode.

"Well, if nothing else, they can't say it was our fault this time," Kizmel said wryly. She inclined her head toward the increasingly rowdy meeting. "I suppose we should at least join in, and not give the impression we're hiding anything?"

Asuna exchanged a pained look with Kirito. Neither of them could disagree, though, and together the three of them carefully jumped down, walking over to join Agil's crew at the fringes. Absently, Asuna noticed Kumari also dropping to the floor, but where the kunoichi went after, she wasn't sure.

"I'm telling you, I don't know!" Lind snapped back at Kibaou, gesticulating wildly with his scimitar still in hand. "Do you think I'd have kept it from the raid if I had known the boss could pull something like that?! I want to clear this game as much as anyone!"

"Maybe you just wanted all the glory!" one of Kibaou's people screeched. A slight man wearing a leather mask, Asuna thought he seemed familiar, but she wasn't quite sure why. "Maybe you paid the Rat extra to hide something, so you could play the hero and take Diavel's spot! Maybe you—!"

"Is he nuts?" Agil muttered. "I think Lind's a glory hound, but hell, Kibaou got his ship back up and running first. If this was him trying to play hero, his plan sucked."

"Are you insane?" Lind demanded, disbelief plain in his expression. "My ships were affected, too! If anyone was hiding anything, it was the Rat!" He tossed a dark look to the south; Asuna realized belatedly Argo's skiff was, indeed, just beginning to leave the area. "I find it very interesting that she showed up at just the right time to—"

"Aw, shaddup 'bout the betas fer once!" Kibaou clicked his teeth, glaring at Lind, and then swung around to look at his own people. "You, too, Joe! This was nothin' ta do with bad intel on th' boss. Not this time."

Moondancer's crew weren't the only ones staring in open shock at Kibaou, of all people, defending the beta testers. Though Asuna did notice one young ALF girl—a knife-fighter, from the looks of it—trying not to snicker, which just left her even more confused.

Kibaou snorted, clicking his teeth again. "Don't look at me like that! Yeah, yeah, I'll be th' first ta say the betas still got a debt to pay to th' rest of us. But not today! If it was the boss, everybody woulda been hit. Three ships weren't, in case y'all missed it."

"Liberator, Durendal, and Moondancer," Kirito murmured, nodding slowly. "We were all fine, But none of our ships have anything in common, except…."

"Then it was the betas!" the masked ALF Swordmaster—Joe—screeched. "Everybody knows those ships are all Beaters, and—!"

"Shut up, Joe, and lemme finish," Kibaou snarled, giving the screechy player a clout on the shoulder. "Yeah, there's somethin' fishy 'bout all three. But it ain't the same fishy. Ya know what our ships got in common, though? Every. Single. One. That lost power?"

"I provided the mechanical systems for all them. All eleven new-built ships."

The tinny voice was shaky, but clear, and Asuna had no idea who it was. But in the silence that fell, she clearly heard the clanking footsteps, and soon saw the armored figure who walked right into the center of the meeting. I don't know his voice, she thought, leaning forward for a closer look, but I'm pretty sure I've seen him before. Where was it…?

From the murmuring that spread through the fleet players, she wasn't the only one who thought the armor was familiar. Lind was staring at him, eyes widening, only to suddenly narrow in suspicion. Kibaou folded his arms, giving the man a knowing look.

"The Legend Braves look like they've seen a ghost," Kizmel whispered, almost too low to hear. "Why?"

With a start, Asuna realized her elven friend was right. The Braves, who had been unusually subdued all day, were giving the newcomer, and each other, very strange looks. Almost shifty, she thought. Why?

"Thought so," Kibaou said, nodding slowly. "You're that engineer. Nezha, right? Ya installed th' guns an' engines on Emancipator, an' ran construction of the other new ships. That's what all the ships had in common. And ya just happened ta show up 'just in time' ta fix everything. You."

"Me." Nezha stood tall, and if his armor was rattling, he still didn't flinch from the dozens of accusatory looks he was suddenly getting. "I was in charge of all the mechanical work, and I'm the reason everything shut down in the middle of the battle. All of it… was me."

Silence fell across the assembled clearers, as deathly as when Alice Synthesis Thirty had kidnapped Diavel. Then an explosion of angry voices erupted all at once..

"You could've gotten us all killed, you bastard!"

"I damn near had my head blown off when my ship stalled out!"

"I lost both guns on my sloop! You know how much those cost, dammit!"

"The entire raid was nearly lost!" Lind shouted over the din, his authoritative bark somehow managing to quell the louder bursts of outrage around them. "And why?! Why would you do something like that, Nezha?!"

"Because I made a deal with the Forest Elves," Nezha answered. Though the rattle of his armor was drowned out by the angry shouts, he started to take a step back, only to visibly steel himself. "I made a deal with them for cheap, large orders of parts, and the extra labor to put it all together."

"All those extra shipbuilders," Kirito said quietly, nodding in sudden understanding. "I wondered how they managed to build so many ships in just a couple of days."

"The deal," Nezha continued, raising his voice over the continued arguing, "was to give them all the iron and steel weapons I could get my hands on, in exchange for parts and training. The profits from shipbuilding would go to buying more weapons to pass on, and the surplus was mine to keep. And I knew—I knew—that something could go wrong. No," he corrected himself, squaring his shoulders. "I knew something would go wrong. I just didn't know what, until it was too late."

"He's lying," Kizmel observed, just barely audible beneath the redoubled shouting. "Look at his armor. That's enchanted. I don't know what Kales'Oh expected to gain from this, but the deal was certainly more complicated than he's letting on."

When she pointed it out, Asuna didn't have much trouble seeing for herself. She wasn't exactly familiar with "enchanted" armor, but she could tell something was strange about Nezha's armor. An almost subliminal sheen, beyond the fact that it was mythril. So what isn't he telling us, and why?

"So ya nearly got us all killed," Kibaou said, stepping toward the engineer, fists clenched. "Fer money." He was shaking with anger now. "An' what th' hell did ya spend it all on, huh? An' why, dammit?!"

This time, Nezha didn't flinch, although his next words made Asuna question his sanity. "I have an FNC," he declared. "My depth perception is shot. I could use a gun, but that's no good for a solo. So I spent the Cor I got from the Forest Elves on the best food I could find. If I'm trapped here, and I can't even fight, I might as well be comfortable, right?"

If the mood had been angry before, those words turned it to a rage that Asuna could feel in her very bones. "You nearly got us all killed for that?!" someone screamed. "To get fat and drunk?!"

"What the hell is wrong with you?!"

Asuna swallowed hard. There was no question that Nezha had done something terrible. Even if Kizmel was right, and he wasn't telling the whole story, the evidence that he'd been involved in some kind of plot was pretty conclusive. Or at least, enough to… to get him burned at the stake by a mob, she thought sickly. I know he has to be punished, but this… I don't like the look of this at all.

"Let justice be done," Kirito murmured beside her. "Though the heavens fall."

The creed of the Wolkenritter. Glancing at him quickly, she saw from his pale face, and the tight set of his jaw, that he knew exactly what he was saying. The Wolkenritter's idea of "justice", they all knew a little too well, was brutal and uncompromising.

"There is no law among the Swordmasters, is there?" Kizmel said quietly, her own face about as pale as her dusky skin could get. "Lyusula has courts. Judges. So does Kales'Oh. Even the Human Empire has the Senate and the Integrity Knights, as brutal as they can be. But the Swordmasters are not a society. The only law for them…."

"Is what we can enforce ourselves," Kirito agreed, swallowing hard. "There's a prison, back in Origia, but…."

But who will think of that, when an entire raid was nearly wiped out? Asuna finished silently. And this is a game, kind of. Does the prison even work? I….

"So you lived the good life on our Cor, knowing your 'deal' was going to hurt us all," Lind said, slow and cold, as the hubbub began to run down. "And yet you came here to save the raid at the eleventh hour. Did you have an attack of conscience, or were you just trying to play the hero, Nezha?"

"No." Nezha took a deep, tinny breath. "I… couldn't take it anymore. What I did was wrong. I had to make it right… and to take responsibility."

"How can you 'take responsibility?!" Joe screeched, suddenly shrugging off Kibaou's efforts to stifle him. "Now I get it! You were the one who bought my buddy's good sword for a 'discount' on an airship! He died when he went hunting for wood 'cause of that, you bastard!"

The loud furor among the raiders cut off, like a candle suddenly snuffed out, angry shouts and hollers giving way to a far more dangerous, deadly quiet, simmering rage. The silence made Asuna's blood run cold, and she could feel Kirito's heart begin to race. If the mood had been angry before, now it turned to a chilling fury. Sick horror filled her and a nauseating sensation filled her stomach.

Bad enough what had happened during the raid itself. As close as it had come for some of them, no one had actually died of it. There might've been a chance for cooler heads to prevail, for reparations to be arranged. With the crisis over, she was sure someone would've seen sense.

But… if someone did die because of Nezha… oh, no. Please, no.

The silence was finally broken by one of Lind's people, a stocky swordsman whose name Asuna didn't know. "If… if someone died," he said hoarsely, hands clenching into shaking fists, "then you're not just a fraudster. You… you're a PKer."

PKer. Asuna didn't recognize the term, but she felt Kirito's heart speed up even more, hammering in the right side of her chest. "PKer," he breathed, just loud enough for her and Kizmel to hear. "Player Killer.. …There hasn't been a PK in SAO. No one… would be crazy enough…."

She didn't have time to fully digest his words. The raid—no, the mob, now—broke into renewed yells and outraged cries, as they latched onto "PKer" in a way that reminded her all too much of the near-riot that had coined the word "Beater". Only this time, as far as she could tell, there was no one who could take it all in, and direct it where it wouldn't get anyone killed. Not even Kirito himself, who could only stand there, shivering, even if his face was the mask of the Beater.

That day, when Diavel had been kidnapped, there'd still been hope, and someone other than a player to blame, when Alice had taken the self-proclaimed knight away. Part of the system, as far as anyone knew. Impersonal.

This time, a player had been responsible. Someone they could see. It wasn't even about Nezha, Asuna knew. Not really. He was just the first, tangible person they could blame for everything Kayaba Akihiko had done to them. Something… someone other than impersonal code had wronged them. Someone they could blame.

Not everyone was so far gone, she could see. Tengu stood as impassive as ever, simply observing it all. Pitohui, of all people, was quiet, just watching with rapt attention. Agil and his team were shifting uneasily, not quite disagreeing with the crowd, but obviously not comfortable with the direction things were going. The knife-fighter standing by Kibaou looked like she wanted to cry.

The Legend Braves stood back in the crowd, silent and unmoving.

But it wasn't enough. Too many people wanted blood, and Asuna felt sick that she couldn't think of any way to stop it. She was only one squire. If she tried to intervene, she'd be overwhelmed, perhaps even held up alongside Nezha, and she didn't know which frightened her more. I'm… scared, she thought, ashamed. I… I can't fight that. What could I do? But… but this is wrong! Why isn't anyone stopping this?!

"The dead can't be brought back," Lind declared, his low, cold voice cutting through the furious shouts. "There is no way to make up for your crimes, Nezha. You know that, don't you?"

The clattering of Nezha's armor had finally stilled. After a long moment of silence, the engineer nodded. "I do," he said, his tinny whisper somehow carrying across the roof. "I will take… full responsibility."

Slowly, creaking, Nezha knelt, bowing his head.

"Then pay the price."

Asuna thought her heart stopped at those four, simple, cold words from Lind. There was only one "price" he could mean, and everyone atop the Skywall Tower knew it. In the horrible quiet that followed, the only question left was who would carry it out. There were whispers, whispers she didn't want to hear; she wanted to believe people were coming to their senses, questioning who would have to do the deed. She was sickly sure it was the opposite, that they were arguing over who would have the "chance" to do it.

Then, cutting through it all, "The responsibility will be mine."

At that voice, Nezha finally twitched, but otherwise didn't move. Not when the crowd parted, and not when Orlando of the Legend Braves, clad in shining armor that didn't quite match his usual demeanor, slowly walked forward. Walked toward the kneeling, resigned engineer, and drew his sword. His shining, brighter-than-steel sword.

Asuna heard Kizmel's sharp intake of breath, and Kirito's quiet hiss, and in that moment, she understood. Understood, and cursed herself for not seeing it sooner. The Braves' ship, their armor, their weapons—Nezha wasn't working alone, he was doing their dirty work. That was what it all meant.

And now Orlando was going to make sure no one ever knew. Unflinching, he walked right up to his accomplice, and he was going to kill him. Asuna wanted to shout, to scream, that he was the real villain, but her mouth wouldn't open. Because she was afraid, because she knew the mob wouldn't believe it, she didn't know. But this is wrong! You're supposed to be a knight, you can't do this!

Orlando stopped in front of Nezha… and sank to one knee. "I'm sorry, Nezuo," he said roughly, setting down his sword. "I'm so, so sorry." Turning his head, he called out, "Nezha was our partner. We forced him into this! The responsibility is ours, not his!"

Sheer surprise finally blunted the simmering rage. "You… wha…?" Kibaou got out. "Wha… what the hell?! Then what the hell's goin' on here?!"

The rest of the Braves walked over to join Orlando and Nezha, kneeling in a line and setting down their weapons. "We were trying to save him," Beowulf said, head bowed. "I… we all knew that something might go wrong. Especially after we heard about what happened to the Fuuma."

"But we had to try," Cuchulain said. "He's our friend. He had such a rough start, and then just when we thought we had the solution, that happened. We… we had to do something!"

Rage had turned to surprise, and finally to confusion. Even the twitchy, screechy Joe had gone quiet. "What are you talking about?" Lind finally demanded. "Save him? From what? Make sense!"

"From this." Orlando rested a hand on Nezha's shoulder. "It's okay, Nezuo. Show them." When the engineer hesitated, starting to shake again, the Braves' guildmaster smiled sadly. "You did a brave thing, trying to keep us out of it. You're more a hero than we could ever be. But we won't let you. Show them, Nezuo."

After a long hesitation, Nezha finally raised a shaking hand, opened his menu, and haltingly fiddled with settings. Then there was a bright blue flash, and his helmet disappeared.

Kizmel's horrified gasp might've been the loudest, but it wasn't the only. Asuna doubted many of the raiders understood what they were seeing, but it didn't take someone who'd been getting training directly from a Pagoda Knight to see that something was terribly wrong. Even in Sword Art Online, where hair could be any color of the rainbow, faces weren't supposed to be mottled purple. Eyes weren't supposed to be glowing red from an inner light. Ears weren't supposed to be warped, like they were halfway to becoming those of an elf.

Nezha's ears reminded Asuna vaguely of Master Ganryu, but the faint points on his had been clean, symmetrical; and there any similarity ended. Nezha looked infected, and she had a horrible feeling she knew why.

---

No wonder, Kizmel thought, staring with sick horror at the transformed engineer. If there's anything that could drive someone to such measures—drive his friends to it—that would be it. So, we truly were at risk of this, the day Kysarah attacked us.

Those monsters. And Kayaba… why would you allow this? Does your depravity have no limit?

"Nezha told you he has an FNC," Orlando said, into the uneasy silence. "We spent the first weeks of the death game trying to find him a weapon he could use anyway, and we finally heard of a gun that might be good enough for him to play support. But when we ran the quest, we ran into these strange elves. Not like the Forest Elves, or even the Dark. We later found out they were 'Fallen' Elves, part of something called the Wild Hunt." Nezha shivered, and Orlando gently squeezed his shoulder. "They were way too strong for us. We only survived because they retreated for some reason, but not before stabbing Nezha with a strange dagger. It… wasn't long before these symptoms appeared."

"A Morgul Blade," Kizmel whispered, shuddering. She remembered seeing a sketch of the cursed weapon, in a very old book. Even on paper, nothing more than lines of ink, it had exuded menace and left her with a feeling of creeping horror. "I had hoped they were only myth. Slower to transform the victim than what they do in their strongholds, but all the more horrible for it…."

Kirito swallowed hard. "I… heard some stories myself, back in the day," he breathed. "But they were the 'behave or the monsters will get you' kind. I didn't think this was possible in SAO, not even…."

"Not even with the way the game is now," Asuna finished softly. Her left hand was clenched on the hilt of her rapier. "Kayaba… what have you done to us?"

"Damn, that's nasty," Kibaou blurted, eyes wide. "But—but what th' hell's that got ta do with you makin' a deal with the Forest Elves ta wreck everything?!"

"We ran into a group of them on Niian, the day clearing started there," Orlando answered, head still bowed. "That's when they made their offer: what Nezha told you, plus a cure of his infection." He shrugged helplessly. "Of course we knew it was bad, and soon after that, we heard about what happened to the Fuuma. But what choice did we have?"

"You risked the whole clearing effort," Kibaou ground out. He wasn't quite going for his sword, but his arms were visibly trembling as he glared at the Braves' guildmaster. "Fer that?"

Now Orlando did raise his head, looking back at the ALF guildmaster with a steady gaze. "What would you do, to save a friend, Kibaou?"

Kibaou started to answer hotly, only to cut himself off. Kizmel noticed the knife-wielding girl, eyes wide and damp, gently touching the gruff guildmaster's elbow. He glanced at her, took a deep, hissing breath, and clicked his teeth, but said nothing.

I don't know if I would betray my people, if Kirito or Asuna were so afflicted, Kizmel thought, looking again at Nezha's half-transformed face, and wincing. But… I can't say for certain that I would not. There are fates worse than merely death, and even with my oath as a Knight, it would be difficult to watch a friend be so consumed, and do nothing.

"I would do a lot for a friend," Lind said, slowly, precisely. Not quite raising his scimitar. "But you risked everything for one man, Orlando. Was it really worth it?"

"I don't know," Orlando admitted, looking down again. "All I can say is, I'll do whatever I can to atone. Whatever it takes. All I ask is the chance to see if… if it meant something." He opened his menu, poked at it, and a moment later a vial of blue liquid materialized in his hand. "We got our final reward from the Forest Elves last night. I was going to give it to Nezha this morning, but we couldn't find him… I guess now we know why," he added ruefully. "I know the Forest Elves aren't the greatest at keeping their bargains. But I'd at least like the chance to find out this time."

The ALF and DKB leaders looked at each other. Asuna glanced at Kizmel; she could only helplessly shrug in return.

After a moment, Lind gave a grudging nod, and Orlando turned to Nezha. "I'm so, sorry, Nezuo. I only hope this was worth it." He handed over the vial. "One way or another, this is over, my friend."

Nezha held the vial in trembling fingers, hesitated—and downed it in one gulp.

For a second, nothing seemed to happen. Then there was a flash, from Nezha's eyes and mouth, and he cried out. Convulsing, he collapsed.

Amid another babble from the raiders—pain was not supposed to be a thing in the transitory world—Orlando hurriedly rolled Nezha over, eyes flicking around as he visibly checked his HUD. "He's fine!" he called out, sagging in relief. "Asleep, but fine. Well, his HP is, anyway. And…."

He didn't have to finish. They could all see Nezha's skin tone fading back to normal, ears shrinking. Right before their eyes, his Fallen corruption dissipated, like any other status ailment.

Kizmel stared, wide-eyed. "So," she murmured, "even Kales'Oh sometimes keeps bargains. I would never have imagined…."

In her long years as a Knight, she had only known the Forest Elves to treat deceitfully with outsiders. Most of the histories she'd read had told similar tales. With her own eyes, she'd watched them callously lead the Fuuma to death and disaster. But it worked. Nezha is recovering, everyone survived the raid, so this crisis is past. Now we need only finish taking down the Skywall, and—

"All right, Orlando," Lind said, rapping his knuckles on the hilt of his scimitar. "It's done. But. The crime still remains. Your scheme left a player dead, and nearly the entire raid." His eyes were hard. Cold. Kizmel felt a chill go down her spine, realizing he was hardly moved by the truth behind the Legend Braves' actions. Worse, from the murmuring among the crowd, few of the other raiders were in any hurry to forget Joe's accusation.

Blood calls for blood, Kizmel thought sickly. Especially when the victim is merely the vessel for a greater fury. Even after all this, they still want someone to pay.

Worse, she couldn't even take refuge in the idea that it was merely a human reaction. She knew her history. Her own people were hardly innocent of mob violence.

"Now… finish it. Take responsibility, as you promised."

"No!" Asuna burst out, finally breaking her silence. "You can't do this! Killing another player, that's—that's not right! That won't bring anyone back—!"

"Quiet!" Lind snapped, not even glancing at her. "You and your crew have no part in this. Orlando!"

To Kizmel's horror, Orlando slowly nodded. "Yes. The responsibility will be mine… as it always should've been." He took up his sword again, stood up to loom over Nezha's prone body—and thrust the blade straight into his own stomach.

Cries of shock from the crowd showed that, finally, this act had broken the mood. They'd demanded Nezha's blood; no one had expected Orlando to turn his blade on himself. Kizmel was torn between redoubled horror and a tremendous respect, watching Orlando's idea of "responsibility". He was bleeding crimson dust, his "HP" was clearly draining out like water, yet he held the sword in place, unflinching. He was dying where he stood, by his own hand, and yet he showed a gallantry Kizmel had seldom seen among true knights.

"No," Asuna whispered. "No, no, this is wrong. This is wrong. You can't save anyone if you die…!"

"No," Kizmel agreed softly. "But is there any greater honor, than to use your last breath to save another?"

Asuna couldn't answer, only swallowing hard, eyes welling up with tears. Kirito stood still, silent, face white. The other Legend Braves were frozen, seemingly torn between wanting to stop their leader and perhaps thinking they ought to follow his example.

All the while, Orlando stood tall, face set, as his life drained out. Seconds passed; Kizmel knew he would be gone in moments—

"No!" Asuna suddenly broke free of her horrified immobility, stalking across the stone roof. Purple squire's cloak billowing behind her, she pushed right past Lind and Kibaou, went right up to Orlando, and seized the hilt still protruding from his chest. Snarling, she yanked it free, and threw it to the floor. "No!" she repeated, as Orlando stumbled back. Whirling on the crowd, she drew her rapier, thrust it point-first into the stone, and glared at them all. "This is wrong! You all know this is wrong!"

She was shorter than almost anyone else in the raid. Younger than many. Few of them, Kizmel suspected, even had the least idea who she was, as much as Moondancer tended to keep away from other Swordmasters. But standing there, in the armor of a Pagoda Knight's squire, glaring thunderously, Asuna had the raid's full attention. If only, Kizmel thought, lips quirking a little despite the situation, because of her sheer audacity.

"You wanted blood," Asuna growled, hands braced on the pommel of her sword. "Well, you've got it! Orlando was willing to die for his friend! Could any of you say the same? Do any of you have the honor to give your life for a friend? Do you?!"

The sharp question cut like a sword, and Kizmel was glad to see at least some of the Swordmasters shift uneasily, exchanging uncomfortable glances. "Oh, good," she heard Kirito whisper under his breath. "Maybe… maybe we can still…."

Many were clearly taken aback by the pointed question, but Lind soon rallied. Squaring his shoulders, he met Asuna's glare. "The crime remains, Asuna. You know what's at stake here as much as anyone. Word is, you were there when one of the Fuuma died. Someone died because of the Braves' scheme. We can't let that go unpunished, not if we're going to clear this game! If others start doing things like this—!"

"You just did!" she snapped back. "Yes, people have died! Yes, maybe someone died because of the scam—though I notice we've only got his word for it." She looked pointedly at Joe. "Even if it's true? That player made his own choice, too. No one made him go into the field that way. No one made him sell his best sword in the first place. Whatever Nezha and the Braves did, he made a choice. And died at the hands of the system. You? You just demanded a man kill his own friend, and stood by and watched as he tried to kill himself instead! If anyone here is a PKer, it's you!"

That, finally, rocked even Lind back. When she turned her angry gaze on Kibaou, the ALF guildmaster could only look away, not even clicking his teeth.

"Yes," Asuna said, more quietly. "Even if Joe is wrong about what happened, we all could've died today, because of the Braves' scheme. There has to be punishment. But we can't… we can't start killing each other. If we cross that line… where does it end?

"Maybe someday, even a player will do something so terrible that there really is no other way." She swallowed hard, still standing tall. "I don't want to believe it, but I've seen enough to imagine it. Someday, maybe the only way to stop another player will be to kill. But...this? Because they were trying to save a friend from a fate worse than death?" She shook her head. "No. We can't kill for that. Not if we want to be anything but a rabid mob. If you do this, the responsibility will be yours."

Joe looked like he wanted to say something. The knife-fighter girl promptly kicked him in the shin; his yelp was stifled by a glare from Kibaou.

No one else even made a sound, and Asuna nodded slowly. She took one hand off the hilt of her rapier to gesture to Orlando, to the Legend Braves, to Nezha. "They're trying to be knights, just like Diavel was," she said quietly. "They may have failed… but if you—if we—kill them for it, so have we. We wouldn't be knights, we'd be murderers. All of us, because even if it was Orlando's sword that did it, it would be us who drove him to it, and us who stood by and watched.

"I'm not ready to be a murderer. Are you?"

---

Author's Note:

---

Insert standard disclaimer about lousy life here. (With an utterly mundane finish: this might've been ready days ago, but cat claws got to one of the three fingers I actually use to type. Go figure.)

With that out of the way: argh. Battle chapter? Fine and dandy. Most of that went as well as I predicted, when Life wasn't hitting me in the teeth with a sledgehammer. The aftermath? I say again: argh. This was supposed to be about two thousand words, not just shy of six thousand. I had to make some hard choices as a result, which is why the ground battle doesn't get depicted in detail. Between that, the airship battle, and the aftermath, I deemed it the least important—but not unimportant, which is why it's at least going to be discussed in the next chapter.

And then the very end. I am not happy with that. But I could not think of another way to make the endless scene bloody well end. So here it is. It's not, I think, exactly a cliffhanger, since the outcome at this point should be fairly obvious, but I'll be the first to admit it's not the most complete conclusion. But it was that, or rambling on and on and on. It needed to end.

Ahem. That aside. Massive thanks to Saerileth, for once again giving me crucial feedback to make the chapter work at all, and to make future airship battles go smoother. On top of that feedback, as well as providing several excellent paragraphs and turns of phrase, I did learn some things from the experience of writing this chapter, not to mention the arc as a whole, so there's some significant mistakes I made throughout this arc that I should be able to avoid going forward. I think. I hope.

First and foremost, the arc as a whole and the boss battles specifically had no plan whatsoever, going in. The plot threads I might otherwise have adapted from the equivalent point in canon, as I believe I've mentioned before, were all used in the First Island arc, and my blundering with trying to adapt the Second Floor managed to stretch on into this. Well, that's resolved—or will be, in Chapter 18—and I do, in fact, have a central plot thread around which to build the Fourth Island arc.

My deepest apologies for the general aimlessness of the Third Island. I will do my utmost to keep the Fourth from succumbing to that, and I believe I've learned the lessons I needed to arrange that. I can't promise the Fourth Island won't be bloated—this is me we're talking about—but at least it shouldn't be aimless.

…Right, then. I think that's everything to cover at the moment? I hope? Apart from noting, for the benefit of my FFnet readers, that you may want to look this up at AO3. I notice it took weeks for Chapter 16 to be consistently accessible on FFnet, with the way the site was glitching up. AO3 is generally more stable.

So yeah. Thanks to those who put up with yet another excessively enormous chapter, and the bloated final scene. Let me know: good, bad, die in a fire? And I'll see everyone in Chapter 18, the Obligatory Loose End Chapter. -Solid