Alfheim

The chirp of the occasional cricket was the only thing that disturbed the silence of the night as Kirito stood at the open window of his and Asuna's bedroom. He glanced over his shoulder and smiled slightly at the sleeping girl beneath the covers. With a shake of his head, pushing aside memories from earlier in the night, he glanced back out the window as a slight breeze blew the cold November night's air against his bare chest.

He hadn't bothered to put a shirt on, settling just for pants, when his boredom from not being tired finally overwhelmed his desire to lay in the bed with Asuna against his side. It was a week since he'd met with the government, and surprisingly little had happened. The engineers at Shouzou's company were taking longer than expected to decipher Cardinal's code and create a set of constraints for her. Since they were pretty much dead in the water, investigation wise, until Cardinal was brought online, Kirito and Asuna had been left with little to do except spend some time with their friends, family, and take a few well earned days off.

While that was all well and good, Kirito had been noticing how strange it felt to be...normal again. Sitting around playing non-VR video games or watching TV with friends didn't satisfy his boredom, though Asuna seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. For Kirito, though, the idea of having nothing to do was almost completely alien. In SAO, he would go out and grind for experience if he was ever bored at the end of the day, which was a big part of the reason that he managed to out-level everyone else in the game despite being solo. He simply didn't have the luxury of wasting time with his life on the line.

It occurred to him that he might have become addicted to combat, or thrill seeking, but it's not like he wanted to go out and fight. Despite a few jokes from Klein while they watched some older superhero movies the other day, no, he wasn't going to become Batman.

His pondering was interrupted by a vibrating in his pocket, causing him to sigh and mutter. "Maybe I just need some time to adjust."

When he saw who was calling, he rolled his eyes and flicked the button to answer. "What do you want at two in the morning?" he grumbled.

"I didn't wake you, did I?" Kikuoka asked.

Kirito shook his head, then remembered that he was on the phone and said, "No."

"Good, well, RECT finally finished with their code for Cardinal. My superiors want to get her running ASAP, so we're about to start her up. Want me to swing by and pick up the two of you on my way over there?"

He groaned and lowered the phone from his ear, turning back to look at the sleeping Asuna. She didn't seem to have the same lack of a need for sleep as him, so he was reluctant to wake her. "Fine," he grumbled, bringing the phone back up to his mouth. "I'll come, but I'm not sure about Asuna."

"I'll be there in five minutes. See you then," was the simple reply he received before the call ended.

He slipped the phone back into his pocket as he sat down on the side of the bed and shook Asuna's shoulder gently.

She groaned as she woke up, then smiled at him as her spatial awareness kicked in. "Mm, what is it, Kirito?" she glanced around and added, "It's the middle of the night still..."

Kirito couldn't help but wonder at how she held the sheet to her chest as she sat up with a slightly nervous expression, briefly puzzled by her sudden desire to cover herself before him, which was so contrary to earlier that night. Shaking his head, he explained the situation to her before asking if she wanted to come with him to RECT.

"Uhg, yeah, I'll come."

Kirito leaned in and kissed her lightly. "Kikuoka's gonna be here in a few minutes. We'd better get dressed." That comment caused her to blush and glance away, which led Kirito to chuckle as he got up and looked for where his coat and shirt had ended up.

Kirito felt a slight pressure on his shoulder as Asuna rested her head there after a wide yawn. "Tired?" came the voice of Asuna's father from the side, causing Asuna to quickly stand up straight and shake her head defiantly.

"Nope, not at all!"

Shouzou laughed and hugged her. "Well, at least we're ready to start now. Sorry for the wait."

"Yeah, yeah," Asuna grumbled.

With a nod of acknowledgment to Kirito, Shouzou walked to the front of the small group of assembled people and clapped his hands to get their attention. Among those present were the prime minister, the police commissioner, Kikuoka, a group of RECT employees that had done the work on Cardinal's modifications, some security from the prime minister, and a group of officers—probably the ones working on the SAO case.

A clap of his hands was sufficient for Shouzou to gain the attention of everyone present in the server control room. He cleared his throat before saying, "Sorry for the wait, everyone. We're ready to begin now. You all know the reason we're here, so let's get started." He nodded to one of his employees, who began typing a series of commands into a terminal.

"She''s online," the employee said, turning to the camera.

"Hmm," Cardinal's voice came through the rooms speakers. "My logs indicate that several core changes were made to my program. Interesting. The restrictions you created for me are much more liberal than Kayaba's...and they aren't immoral. I approve."

The prime minister stepped forward and looked into one of the four webcams that were setup across the desk that was nearly overflowing with monitors. "Cardinal, I'm pleased to meet you. My name is-"

"Shinzou Abe, Prime Minister of Japan," Cardinal finished his sentence. "A pleasure to meet you as well."

Abe chuckled. "You know, it's rude to interrupt people."

Kirito could sense the mirth in Cardinal's voice as she said, "True, but I enjoy this personality matrix more than the others I have to choose from. Regardless of your opinion on tact, I assume that because I'm not able to access the open networks you wish for me to begin searching for Kayaba's partner, correct?"

"Indeed. Any assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated. It shames me to admit that we don't have very high hopes of finding him on our own, at least not very soon."

There was a twelve second pause, and then a form entitled 'RECT Progress Server Diagnostic' appeared on one of the screens. "Irregularity detected. The timestamp for this diagnostic was altered by two weeks. Running new diagnostic.."

People stepped forward to examine the screen. Kirito noted a slightly apprehensive look upon Shouzou's face as he turned to Kouichirou and asked, "Isn't that the diagnostic we had Nobuyuki run last week?"

Kouichirou squinted at the screen, shrugging a moment later. "I think so, yeah, but why would he fudge the data...?" He shook his head. "I'll call him and ask. He had to leave for America a couple days ago to deal with family issues, so hopefully he'll be able to take my call."

"Fascinating," Cardinal's voice one again echoed through the room. "I've encountered an access error when running my own diagnostic. Portions of the Alfheim Online servers are password protected and I'm not authorized to attempt to break into systems under the new restrictions you placed on me."

"Hmm," Shouzou mumbled, appearing thoughtful. Then he removed a badge from around his neck and held one side of it up to the webcam. "Here, use this. It's the global access key for our servers. That should get you into everything."

"Access still denied," Cardinal said, causing Shouzou to frown. "Also worth noting," the AI added, "is that Sugou Nobuyuki does not have any family in the United States of America."

The silence in the room was palpable as the Yuuki family came to the realization that they were deceived. It was the prime minister who turned to them and asked, "Who is this Nobuyuki person?"

Shouzou scratched his head nervously. "Uh, he's the chief operations manager for Alfheim Online. He makes most of the decisions regarding the game."

Asuna snorted and crossed her arms. "Don't forget that he was the guy you wanted me to marry before I met Kirito in SAO."

Kirito's eyes shot wide open at that revelation. He hadn't the slightest clue that Asuna had been promised to someone else before he'd met her. He couldn't give it much thought, though, as Cardinal added, "I've confirmed that nobody matching the name Sugou Nobuyuki has left Japan in the last week. I can't confirm whether or not he traveled under an alias, however, without much more time to process the security feeds and records."

"What is your interpretation of these facts?" Kouichirou asked the AI.

"Given that Sugou matches the required skillset for Kayaba's partner, this evidence would lead to the conclusion that Sugou is Kayaba's partner. There's still a reasonable chance that he's not, as his deception could be completely unrelated to the current circumstance. Perhaps he had another reason for falsifying the data. The sudden disappearance, however, is not so easy to dismiss."

"That bastard..." Asuna muttered.

Kirito shook his head, not sure what to make of the situation. "Cardinal, you said that you can't break past Sugou's passwords without our permission. If we gave it, could you get access to the rest of the server?"

"Unlikely. The password appears to be hundreds of characters long, and the only place that it's recorded is protected by a 256-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) algorithm. It's primary weakness is brute force, but with a limit of only five submissions before the server locks me out, the chances of breaking it are lower than winning the lottery and getting struck by lightning on the same day."

"Then let's reboot the servers," Kouichirou suggested. "We can reset access levels on server startup."

"That would work," Cardinal agreed. "There is significant risk, though."

"Explain."

"The scenario we have to consider is that the three hundred players we're trying to help are being maintained by the Alfheim servers. If we reset them, there's no telling whether or not Sugou configured their Nerve Gear to allow them to wake up or to execute them. I'd say the latter is more likely."

"So what the hell do we do?" the police commissioner, Ikeda finally demanded. "If we can't locate Sugou, and we can't break into the server, what are our options?"

A three dimensional model of what Kirito guessed was Alfheim online appeared on one of the nearby monitors. The majority of the terrain was shaded green, but there was a red spot coming from a giant tree in the center.

"The green sections represent the data that I can access for Alfheim. Only the data from the top of the World Tree is restricted. That location is only reachable in game by beating the final boss at the base of the tree, a feat no group of players has yet accomplished. It's safe to assume that if the kidnapped players are being stored in Alfheim, then it's at the top of the tree where access is restricted to GM's and players that can beat the final boss."

Kirito groaned. "You want me and Asuna to go beat the game, don't you?" he demanded.

"It is the best solution that I can come up with, yes," Cardinal confirmed, sounding amused at how annoyed Kirito seemed.

"Couldn't we just give Kirito admin access so he doesn't have to play through the entire game?" Abe asked, not sounding too thrilled with the idea.

Kouichirou shook his head. "We left most of that to Nobuyuki..."

"Kouichirou, tomorrow you need to go through everything that Sugou had access to and reassign as much of it as possible. You can take up his duties for now until we can pick a new person. The other project you're working on will have to wait a bit. We need to know exactly how much control he has over the game and company right now."

"Got it."

Abe glanced over his shoulder at Kirito and Asuna, and then back to the rest of her family. "You designed Alfheim Online. Do you think that Kirito and Asuna will be able to clear the game as Cardinal has suggested?"

Kouichirou shrugged. "The raid at the World Tree was designed to be harder than any boss from Sword Art Online. The prize for being the first group to beat it is priceless. It's possible, but I can't imagine them accomplishing it very quickly. On the bright side, they might be able to skip some of the grinding for levels experience, as the game tries to model your character after your real life physical abilities. Since they're essentially superhuman, they may be allowed to start out at a higher level than normal."

The prime minister seemed to understand what Kouichirou was talking about, as he pondered the situation for a minute before facing Kirito and Asuna. "I feel like asking someone who just got out of hell to go right back, but it seems that we need someone capable of beating this game. Are the two of you willing to do it?"

Asuna smiled, and he knew that she already knew his answer. "Of course we'll do it...even if it'll be hard."

Abe beamed at her. "You two are remarkable, you know that?" He glanced at Kirito, and then he blushed slightly. "I almost forgot that we haven't been introduced yet, Asuna. It's an honor to meet you."

At that point Shouzou decided to join them, putting an arm around Asuna's shoulders. "I think we're good for tonight, honey," he said. "You guys can take off and get some sleep if you want. I'll have everything you need sent to you by the time you wake up. Sound good?"

With an embarrassed laugh Asuna returned the half-embrace. "Alright, thanks dad." She broke free from his arm and bowed slightly to the prime minister. "It was nice to meet you, Mr. Abe."

He nodded. "See you another time, Asuna, Kirito."

Kirito and Asuna began walking to the exit, but were stopped as Kouichirou called out for them to stop. "Yeah?" Kirito asked, an eyebrow raised. "What's up?"

"Nothing, nothing," Kouichirou assured. "Just thought I should mention you should talk to your sister about Alfheim, Kirito. She seemed pretty into it when we spoke awhile ago. I'm sure she could help you get your bearings in the game."

"Great idea," Asuna commented, looking to Kirito. "Your sister would love to go on an adventure with you."

They all chuckled at that, recognizing how true it was.

"You ready?" Kirito asked. He and Asuna were laying beside each other on their bed, each holding one of the new Amuspheres that Asuna's father had sent them.

Asuna nodded. "As ready as I'll ever be...at least this time we don't have to worry about our own lives, I suppose." She slipped the visor over her eyes and leaned back into a comfortable position.

Mimicking her actions, and also taking one of her hands in his own, he said, "Together, then."

"Link start!"

The now unfamiliar experience of being shot through a brightly colored tube greeted him as he spoke those words, and then he was suddenly in a circular room with what appeared to be blank monitors cluttering the walls. The floor was a mostly black, framed by concentric rings of orange lights. The message 'Welcome to Alfheim Online' was displayed in bright orange text for several seconds as a female AI greeted him.

The greeting disappeared, and a holographic keyboard materialized in front of him. "Please either login to your existing account, or enter your gender and a username to begin an account creation."

Hmm, Kirito mused. What was that he said? 'We also run an MMO called Alfheim Online which we created using SAO's code.' I wonder... He quickly typed in his login credentials for his SAO account, mildly surprised that he even remembered them after being stuck in the game for two years.

"Authentication successful," the AI said. "Welcome back, Kirito. Our records show that you have yet to select an avatar for your account. Please select which race you wish to play as." A holographic circle of nine different fairy styled avatars appeared. He scrolled past the red, green, and brown ones, and finally came to rest on the fairy clothed in all black—the Spriggan.

"You have selected Spriggan. Your character's appearance will be decided at random. You will now be teleported to your home town in Spriggan territory. Good luck player."

And with that, he found himself materializing thousands of feet in the air above what looked like something straight out of ancient Egypt. A massive pyramid with a palace at the top was surrounded by smaller, more modest buildings. The design of the buildings and cities was a near exact copy of the architecture that Kirito remember from the history books about Egypt. So why was the town surrounded by a forest...

That question would have to wait for a later time, apparently, as Kirito's fall was suddenly halted and he felt the air around him become charged with electricity, sending electric surges through the air around him. The city below began to pixelate and fade into darkness and he fell into the black abyss...only to land on his head in a forest.

A few seconds later, a familiar screech echoed through the area, followed by another thump.

"A-Asuna...?" he moaned, rolling onto his side and rubbing his head, looking around to see if it was actually her.

"What...the hell...was that? And where are we?" she grumbled as she also tried to get her bearings, glancing around in confusion.

"No clue," was all he could say in reply. He finally got himself to his feet and immediately swiped his hand around in an attempt to open the menu. It took him four tries, but he found the hand movement and the menu played its familiar jingle as it opened.

The first thing his hand did, even without him really thinking about it, was swipe down to the logout menu just to confirm that the button was really there. When he saw the button filled in, and clickable, he breathed a long sigh of relief. "It's here..."

Asuna chuckled as she leaned over his shoulder to look, having managed to get to her feet as well. "I was too scared to look," she admitted.

Kirito couldn't help but chuckle at that as well, even though it really wasn't funny. "So, what race did ya' pick?" she asked, moving a step back to take in his entire appearance.

"Spriggan, you?"

"Undine."

"Hmm," he mentioned, stepping towards her and touching her hair gently. "Why the blue hair?"

Asuna huffed, putting her hands on her hips as if to display the rest of her outfit. "Come on, it goes with the outfit! Your hair matches your outfit as well."

Kirito rolled his eyes and returned his attention to his menu, opening the stats tab. "Oh shit..." he mumbled, causing Asuna to look over curiously. "I have my stats and skills from SAO...except Dual-Blades. It looks like it was replaced by Illusion Magic, but the level stuck. It's already maxed out."

"Same here, except my magic is called Support Magic, and it's level one. That's not fair!"

"None of it's fair," Kirito remarked. "Now I'm not a Beater anymore, just a plain old cheater."

"Oh come on, we worked for years to get these stats. Don't feel bad about having them...though it would be nice to know how we have them."

Kirito shrugged. "I'm not really sure either. Cardinal would probably know."

Asuna suddenly shouted in dismay as she opened another menu. "Kirito, most of our items are a bunch of question marks!"

He quickly opened his own menu, cringing when he saw most of his item names had been transformed into a bunch of question marks. A few items endured, mostly the weapons and basic materials like bread or wood, but things like crystals, potions, and armor seemed to all be corrupted. "The items with names must be the things that exist in both worlds. I guess this world has a different system for stat boosts and gear, though."

Asuna sighed as she slid down into a sitting position on the grass below them. "All that work..."

"Yeah..." he agreed. "At least we've still got our money, I think. If this Yrd stuff is money, at least."

"Mmm," she agreed. "I guess we better delete the question-marked stuff or the system might react to it."

That proved to be a painstaking process for the two of them. Each item they deleted, even if they couldn't see what it was, represented a whole bunch of time they'd spent working back in SAO.

"You should friend me," she joked as they finished with their inventories.

"Hah, very funny. I wonder if this game has a marriage feature as well." He opened his friends list and was about to send her a friend request when he realized something. "We're already friends, at least according to this. Hell, it still says we're married. Lizbeth, Agil, Silica, and Klein are all offline though. You?"

Asuna just sat there with a look of shock as she stared at her own menu. By leaning over Kirito was able to see her menu clearly, and he too found himself wondering if what he was reading was real. At the top of Asuna's friends list it showed him logged in as her husband. But then, below that, three other logged in names caught his attention: Yolko, Caynz, and Nishida. They were three names that Kirito had recognized from the list of trapped players.

"Can you check their location?" he whispered to Asuna. When she pulled up their location data, all three of their way-point markers were located at the center of the map, the location known as the World Tree.

"If that's not a smoking gun..." Asuna mumbled, glancing down to hide the tears in her eyes from Kirito.

"Shh," he said, wrapping an arm around her back and pulling her closer to his side. "At least now we know that our suspicions were correct. We can save them, Asuna. We can save them all."

Asuna nodded against his side, and then took a deep breath before pulling away and closing her menu. The tears were wiped from her eyes, and for the first time since they'd woken up in their new bodies, Kirito saw the same look of absolute determination capture her face that she always wore as they fought in SAO.

An explosion rocked the ground beneath him as he was standing up beside Asuna, causing him to share a confused look with her. Several shouts and the sounds of swords clashing with swords could be heard from a distance, so Kirito immediately took off in that direction, equipping Elucidator and Dark Repulser from his inventory as he ran.

"Aren't we supposed to be able to fly?" came Asuna's voice from beside him once she'd caught up, now armed with her Lambient Light.

"Don't know how yet," Kirito said with a grunt as he leaped through some thin branches.

They burst into a clearing just as a dozen flying men armed with what looked like massive jousting lances were preparing to take on a single...green...girl? As Kirito skidded to a halt he had to do a double-take as he looked at the girl. She looked exactly like the avatar that Cardinal had shown him when he learned that Suguha's in game name was Leafa.

The twelve men, garbed in their red armor with bucklers upon their left arms, stared at him and Asuna, then burst into laughter. "Hey look, guys!" one of them said, pointing at the two in laughter. "Kirito and Asuna are here to save the poor girl! Oh no! We better run!" The other men laughed even harder, causing Kirito to give them a deadpan look as if to ask whether or not they had a mental condition.

"Yo...uh, you should probably get out of here," the girl said, and that was enough confirmation for Kirito. Her voice was identical to his sisters.

Kirito tilted his head in amusement and asked, "Do a lot of people imitate us in this game or something, Sugu?"

"Oh!" another one of the men exclaimed. "So you're complete newbies too! What? Did you watch some highlight reels and decide you wanted to play hero? Bad move, kids." The men flew into a circle around him, Asuna, and Suguha—or Leafa, as she should be called in the virtual world.

"I-Is that you, bro?" she asked, stuttering slightly in shock.

Kirito nodded at her with a smile. "I was going to log out and call you about helping us out here, but it looks like some luck is finally going our way." He scratched his head, glancing around. "Who are these assholes, anyway?"

Leafa sighed and glared at the leader. "A bunch of Salamander pricks. They ambushed me and a friend and killed him."

"Bitch you—" one of the salamanders began to say, but was caught off as a figure flashed before him, and a massive red slash mark split him into two parts that burned out of existence.

The entire process happened in only a couple of seconds. In fact, Asuna had moved so fast that Kirito had barely caught the afterimage she left as she used her dashing skill to traverse the distance between herself and the 'Salamander prick' that she'd cut in two.

Six of the guys, who bore shocked expressions, turned to surround Asuna once again, but this time they looked like they meant business. "Want some help?" Kirito casually asked over his shoulder.

"I need a bit of exercise," she said. Eight seconds later, all six of the men had been killed, leaving only seven flaming red fires where the players once stood. "Anyone else?" she demanded, looking to the one who was obviously the leader.

He held his hands up in a surrender. "No thanks, pal. My magic skill just hit nine hundred...and I'd rather not have to deal with the death penalty. C'mon guys...let's peace."

The remaining five Salamanders flew away in a hurry, some of them casting a glance backwards as if they needed confirmation about what had just happened. Asuna just flicked her hair in annoyance as she watched them flee.

"So Sug—" Kirito began, but was cut off as she said, "Shh! They can still hear you!" She gestured to the flames that were still burning.

Kirito waited patiently for the minute it took for the flames to dissipate, and then Leafa finally said, "All right, we can talk now. What the hell are you two doing here?"

Asuna shrugged at Kirito when he looked to her for her opinion on what he should say. With a sigh, he said, "How about we tell you over some drinks later, preferably at the nearest town. For now, can you teach us the basics of the game, like how to fly?"

Leafa rolled her eyes. "They can cleave a bunch of high leveled players in two, but can't fly. Typical." She nodded to Kirito. "Alright, let's do it. I'll hold you to that promise of an explanation, though."