Internecine Warfare

Kayaba told Kirito six thousand people have logged out. He wouldn't lie, right? Instead of months of despair and trying to reach Asuna, the stakes are six thousand players' consciousness being trapped and trying to figure out if Kayaba's dead or still alive! Post-SAO. Titania!Asuna. Battle Pixie!Yui. P.S. Adjusting to real life after two years living in a virtual reality is REALLY HARD.

In the long-distant past, the world was split into the forest elven kingdom Kales'Oh, the dark elven kingdom Lyusula, the human Alliance of the Nine kingdoms, the underground realm of the dwarves, and various other groupings. While there were skirmishes at times, the land was at peace.

But one day, a hundred varied regions from around the world were cut into circles from the earth and summoned up to the sky. The circles were under three kilometres across at the smallest and over ten kilometres at the largest. They were stacked in a conical formation to form a gigantic floating fortress a hundred floors tall.

The castle held its countless towns and villages, mountains, forests and lakes, and never again returned to earth. The magic powers that caused the old civilization to flourish were lost, and with them, the nine kingdoms of man. Most towns reverted to maintaining themselves, and the floors lost contact with one another. A great length of time passed. Legends and tales of the Great Separation still existed among the two elf races, the only people to keep their kingdoms intact from that fateful time.

~ Dark Elven Legends ~

Me: I do not own this amazing world that despite having already been completed years ago and our characters are no longer big on AmuSphere but Augma and GGO's dumped for Underworld Offline we are still in Aincrad.

Kirito: Ha! If you did, I would disown you.

Me: *eye twitches*

For players of Sword Art Online, there was one thing that was always in their sight – their HUD. The slightly curved plane hanging in front of their faces might sound like they were a hindrance during battle, but they were pretty much similar to one's glasses' frames. Right now, Kirito's HUD was still in his peripheral vision, showing his name and level, but it lacked the HP Bar. The blue line that was the visual rendering of his life force, it wasn't there.

Behind it, far away, was an image that he was obsessed when he was still fourteen years old. It was Aincrad. A castle in the sky floating in the blue sky that was bleeding orange hues. Moving his head around, his sight was momentarily blinded by the sunset that suddenly flickered. When the blinding light dimmed slightly, he saw familiar orange tresses of hair blown by the wind, different from the orange sky and clouds.

Asuna. In one piece. Wearing her latest high quality battle gear and donning Yui's heart. Healthy. Standing on a thick crystal floor that he must be standing on too. Except that his legs were tempted to collapse just from—

"Kirito," Asuna called tonelessly, voice quiet as if it was something light enough to be picked up by the wind.

"Asuna," Kirito breathed out.

Both of them sprinted above the floating semi-transparent crystal floor, paying no iota of thought to the idea that maybe they would fall and die once they passed the threshold of what was registered to exist, and met each other halfway.

The wind blew but they barely felt any chill, hugging the life out of each other in the middle of that floating crystal floor away from the steel fortress of a castle. She wasn't crying. Asuna was still strong as hell. The only reason he was holding back his tears was because he had no wish for his sight to be blurry for fear that his wife might just disappear into thin air.

"I'm so glad," Asuna whispered. Kirito ceased burying his face to her shoulder to look at her eyes, intent on not wasting this miracle. "I'm so—so glad. That my last memory of you isn't—isn't." Your horrified face witnessing me shattering in your arms. "But I'm also sad."

"I'm not sorry I died." That was definitely the wrong thing to say, but it was the truth.

Kirito could feel Asuna's nails through his clothes. "I didn't die just to buy you a few seconds to live! I want you to be alive."

"My mind gave up the moment you shattered. Kayaba stabbed me. I'm sorry for giving up."

"No…" Her eyes shined from holding back tears. "I left everyone behind. Fourteen men under my command died. And now they lost their commander and vice-commander and the strongest swordsman."

"I stabbed Kayaba. Asuna. Asuna," Kirito shook her shoulders lightly. "We both shattered."

Her eyes widened, "But that means—!" Her breath hitched, and this time her eyes were locked onto something else other than his. He hugged her tighter, as if she would float away, and hesitantly tore his gaze away by looking behind him.

The massive underground dungeon which sole entrance was at the «Black Iron Palace» had been reduced into nothing but massive shards reflecting the sunset's light, and the 78.54 square kilometer that made up the first floor was shattering too. He couldn't see the players, but he could see the trees and buildings falling, the rivers spilling over the tilted landscape, and the mountains and floating islands breaking in pieces before eventually becoming lights of shards. "Is… Aincrad is disintegrating?"

"Currently," they turned around in alarm at the familiar voice and saw a familiar yet also foreign face. "The SAO mainframe that's stationed in the fifth basement floor of Argus headquarters is in the midst of erasing all data from its memory banks. In another ten minutes, this world will be completely erased."

"Erased? A-and everyone?" Asuna demanded. "You're just deleting them?!"

Swiping the air with his fingers, a window appeared. "All of the remaining 6,147 players have been successfully logged out."

That didn't sap any of her anger. "What is this place? Why are we here? We died. Kirito said you shattered too. The other 3,850 players who died before us, what of them?! Damn you!"

The man was still looking at his system menu.

Asuna growled the longer Kayaba ignored her. "Answer me! Why are you doing this? Why did you turn this into a death game?! You—you build the greatest virtual reality technology that would save us from so much cost on demo in healthcare, e-commerce, live and improved public education of so many things. You could have showed the wonders of virtual reality but you just showed the whole world only the dangers!" She couldn't stop herself from slightly laughing hysterically. "So. Much. And you wasted it, for what?!"

Kayaba had kept stoic in the face of his vice commander's anger. Eventually, he dismissed his menu window. "You don't have anything to ask of me too, Kirito?"

"What does Aincrad stand for?"

Kayaba looked a little surprised. "What makes you think it stands for anything?"

"I know why you did you did," Kirito didn't turn to look at Asuna's surprised face staring at him. He simply squeezed her hand. "You want to realize a world where a single sword can take you anywhere in the castle in the sky. You want to create a world and make it real. I don't think – no, I know you don't you care about the players. You admitted as much that you have little to no empathy," Kirito should be angry. And at the time, when Kayaba said it after striking down Asuna, he was.

But then Asuna died, and now he's dead too, and even though they have a chance to still live they only have about nine minutes before they're deleted.

Did everyone else who died arrive here too? The fourteen clearers they lost. The many PKers sentenced to death. The only guild he joined… He was too late to use «Nicholas the Renogade»'s event boss drop, «Divine Stone of Returning Soul» for Sachi. He didn't get to use it for Asuna, having already given it to Klein who saved another player. But for some reason Kayaba gave them the ten-minute-before-deletion waiting period together.

So… there's just no point in being angry.

"You just want people to live in your world."

The man didn't answer him. He didn't need to confirm anything.

Asuna shuddered. "So all this really is just meaningless to you? That four thousand people died? This is just – just some random tsunami?"

Squeezing her hand might give the wrong signal, so Kirito intertwined his fingers with hers. The wind was making him cold now, but her hand felt warm. "What is Aincrad?"

01010011 01000001 01001111

What had happened, Cardinal?

That was not what Kayaba typed. What he typed was the key to enable the limiters on the magnetic wavelength of «NerveGear». Ones of all the remaining players. He took one minute to force 6,147 users to «Logout», and he quickly accessed the package program of «The Seed» for «Sword Art Online». Abundant and packed, not stacked by abstraction because he did not feel the need to hide relevant data to reduce complexity because he never planned to let the core build-up of «Sword Art Online» to anyone else and he had planned for Cardinal to delete «Sword Art Online» in «Argus»'HQ in the event of his death.

The death which he's delaying for a while, because he wished to talk to those two.

How did «Asuna» break out of the forced «Paralysis Effect» he imposed on every «Player» but the one who discovered his plans far too early?

How did «Kirito» kept his avatar intact to attack him? He should have shattered just like «Asuna» did in 10 seconds but instead he was solid for 58 seconds. He acquired «Asuna»'s «Lambent Light» rapier as a «Player Drop» and equipped it in place of his broken «Dark Repulser» but when his avatar became transparent the equipped weapon was still solid and held in his tangible hands.

And his eyes glowed yellow.

Any program involving changing a «Player»'s characteristics was disabled from Day 1. Any further changes in «Swors Art Online» can only be executed by Cardinal and Kayaba had thoroughly examined what had happened in the «Safe Zone» deep inside the «Black Dungeon» and was positive «Kirito» did not actually mess with Cardinal.

And that was surprising in of itself. Kayaba predicted many things but not for an AI Cardinal had restricted to give a «Player» direct access to the admin console. I knew that he must be a programmer, although I do not know if «Kirigaya Kazuto» is a hacker or developer, from the numerous times he tries to find loopholes and pseudo-cheats in the system menu, but to think that he was fast enough to win against Cardinal's running program to delete the rogue MHCP AI.

The AIs have become interesting too. «Yui» extracted itself from its locked domain by redesigning itself as an immortal object. Did it learn from me? From «Heathcliff»? The «Feathery Dragon» that belonged to «Silica» also somehow registered a player as its «Pride».

Numerous events that should not be possible – that practically override the rules of the simulation – were what stopped him from immediately executing his final phase. He wished to speak with «Heathcliff»'s Vice Commander and newest «Knight of Blood».

He was lucky «Asuna»'s «NerveGear»was still sending her signals of a depthless, dark void of space, an "area" where users who died will wait for 10 seconds for Cardinal to shatter them; 60 seconds for Cardinal to sort through their data to exclude one or three items as «Player Drop», transfer their «Col» to any involved «Player Killer» and calculate the «Experience Points» that should be given to the «Player Killer» if they were killed by a «Player»; and 180 seconds for «NerveGear»'s high-density transceivers to shift from sending five-sensory signals of «Sword Art Online» to emitting high-powered microwaves to shut down the player's vital processes. «Kirito» must have had the devil's luck to have rendered «Heathcliff»'s «Hit Points» to zero so quickly before «Asuna»'s time in life runs out.

It didn't take someone like Kayaba long to create a new area in «Sword Art Online». Kayaba didn't bother adding color or anything fancy. He simply created a flat floor of transparent crystal quite a few distance away from Aincrad, and brought those two there before entering that area himself.

«Heathcliff»'s fastest «Knight» assaulted Kayaba with questions he could see coming. The «Players» ask variations of such questions when they desire to whine or complain about their reality. Where is he? What was he thinking? Was he a psychopath? (Untrue; tests have concluded him to be a sociopath.) Were all those lives meaningless to him? Did he spend years planning this? What was the point of this? Why did he do this to them? Why them?

Kayaba was genuinely surprised when the plot he had been crafting alongside the «Players» as «Heathcliff» was cut so abruptly, but he wasn't as surprised to know that it was by «Heathcliff»'s strongest «Knight». Having been pushed by «Kirito» into using the «System Over Assist» had been quite the error on his part. But once again, he was taken aback, when instead of asking about Kayaba Akihiko, «Kirigaya Kazuto» was asking about his pride.

How flattering. Perhaps he shouldn't enact the heroic tragedy plotline.

Kayaba directed his gaze to Aincrad, watching the 25th Floor crumble. "An Incarnating Radius. The vertical axis represents time and the circular floors represent space."

«Kirito» pursed his lips. "Space time. Purely symbolic or having further plans on your work on computer engineering?" He guessed. Quite the excellent guess.

Kayaba, hands still in his lab coat pockets, turned his back to them. He took four steps forward but stopped short, then tilted his head up. "I simply dream to fly away from earth and live in a world where a steel fortress castle floats in the sky. You two… surpassed the limits of this world I made. I believe it's really out here. Somewhere."

Two children were born in Aincrad. They were of different genders. They grew up to be front liners. They fell in love. They married. They had a child. They lost a child. They died.

"Don't you?"

3,850 users have died, but the data they provided have been an immense help. Time to expire. He briefly wondered if «Kirigaya Kazuto» and «Yuuki Asuna» would ever find out that «Kirito» had guessed correctly.

They weren't sure if the Creator was actually expecting an answer, for the wind blew and Kayaba Akihiko dissolved into another cloud for this disappearing endlessness.

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«00:07:15»

«00:07:14»

«00:07:13»

Asuna closed her menu and wiped her eyes again. She's crying. She badly wanted to cry. But she couldn't afford. Crying meant tears, and tears blur her eyesight and right now Asuna and Kirito just wanted to memorize every single detail of each other before they finally die.

Kirito let out a sob. "Asuna."

"Yuuki Asuna!" She said, a bit too quickly. Kirito was slightly taken aback but his grip – and hers too – didn't loosen at all. They couldn't possibly separate themselves now. His hands were desperate but his shoulders were slack like his body. She wanted to kiss him but she really doesn't want to lose sight of his midnight eyes. "That's my real name."

Kirito's eyes shined and she knew he was etching every character in his memory, the very last minutes. "Kazuto… I'm Kirigaya Kazuto. Although, my original birth surname was different. Hamada. I hacked the citizen registry and I didn't get caught. It's, er, family stuff," he chuckled weakly.

"Family stuff? Maybe mine rivals yours!" She giggled. "Father owns RECT, you know? Super rich and now that I look back, we've a stick up our asses. Oh! We have our own family stuff too! Yui. Y-Yui," Asuna cried harder and closed her eyes in a useless attempt to stop the tears. She felt lips covering hers, and she pressed her forehead against his. When they broke apart, they stare into each others eyes closely. "We'll never kiss each other in real life," Asuna murmured sadly.

"Or freak out our family about already adopting a child," Kirito managed to laugh, and it made her laugh too.

"Freak my mother out by being a badass swordswoman out of nowhere!"

"I wonder if my little sister would even hold back at punching me if she knew I already have wedding pictures," he mused.

"Little sister? I have a big brother, Kōichirō. I bet he graduated by now."

"Her name is Suguha. She's thirteen… fifteen. I-I turned sixteen," Kirito smiled. "I hope she won the national kendo tournament."

"Oh. Darn," she pouted. "I'm a year older. We wouldn't be in the same class or grade then," Asuna laughed. "Wow. We're talking about school. I can't believe it! It's so unimportant for the last two years!"

He grinned. "We might. I graduated middle school in only a couple of years. We might go to the same class and drive everyone sick at how frickin' sweet we are. Like in those stories."

"No way. My mother forced me to an all-girls high school and to use all my time studying." Letting out a sigh, she shrugged lightly. "I bet my mother would be so disappointed if she knew I'm just a vice commander."

"She wants you to be the leader-sort of student?" He smirked mischievously. "You should tell her that you asked me out by pointing a knife at my face."

"Hah! She might be proud of me, finally! She hates weak-willed girls," her mood sombered. "I used to be so weak."

Kirito dropped his arms from hugging her to maneuvering her arms and intertwining her hands with his. "I love you."

«The Ruby Palace» crumbled.

And, horrifyingly, their dangling feet began to turn into tiny little shiny shards.

Kirito's fearful eyes met her startled ones. "K-kiss me."

Asuna cried. "I love you too," and she connected their lips.

They broke into watery laughs. They hugged each other tightly until they couldn't feel each others' shoulders anymore because their arms were gone. Then the feeling of their foreheads' touching was gone. Then they were just—there, they—alone. Where—

Kazuto felt exhausted just by opening his heavy, heavy eyelids.

01010011 01000001 01001111

"So… no one else is awake yet."

"Yes. I'm only connected with the hospital general's SAO's wing. Several SAO victims are taken care of in private hospitals so maybe some of them have woken up, but so far, I've only received your inactive heart notification when you pulled off your ECG electrodes."

Kirigaya Kazuto looked at the pads on his arms, re-attached by the doctor when the boy was found to be awake and walking in the hallway alone. The adhesive gel surrounding the ECG electrode pads should have been sticky and strong with the skin but Kirigaya must have had an easy time taking it off with his very low level of strength at the moment. Kikuoka could see they're the old sort of off white. Two years… and one finally woke up.

"I'd like to know everything that you have gone through," Kikuoka repeated gently. "I know it's terrible of me to dig through bad memories, but we have to know how well your psyche is, what you've gone through, anything to help us in our SAO recovery programs to help you integrate back into society, not to mention your family must also—"

"No."

Kikuoka paused, first due to the use of the most negative expression in Japanese, and second because Kazuto seemed dangerous in a blink of an eye.

I hope we won't get to use the anesthesia trolley anytime soon. He's the first one to be awake. I need to know why.

"What does the public think of us?" Kirigaya asked. "Based on the way you interacted with me, we're just victims?"

He wondered where this is going. "Yes." After a cueing glance, Kikuoka figured he was supposed to elaborate. "Everyone sympathizes with anyone affected by SAO. In this day and age, many people are acquainted with millions of people, so pretty much every SAO victims were known by someone else."

Kikuoka continued, "There was a brief period where SAO victims weren't referred to with the most flattering light, I should say. Largely parents, dismissing this national tragedy as something… silly… and avoidable if only kids stopped obsessing over video games. The PR director of the company that keeps SAO servers running did a good job at quelling that trend. She educated the public that a large number of victims weren't even video game players, but adults and elderlies wanting to try something new or taking a break. That you weren't having fun and games in there, but struggling to fight against very dangerous monsters."

Kirigaya nodded, though it wasn't an actual query. Kikuoka was a little baffled that the boy seems to be able to take in the influx of information easily. He wasn't showing signs of going into hysteria, though he did put up a fight against the doctor and nurses when they found him. Coma patients shouldn't have woken up as if they've had a slightly longer than normal sleep. Perhaps it has something to do with the NerveGear rerouting their brain signals?

"The campaign helped push the company's newer and safer version of VR device – they call it the AmuSphere – and VRMMO which in turn helps people at large somewhat understand the dangers you're going through. She did a great job at keeping the public on your side so that money keeps coming in to maintain the servers and your life support."

"Would she have done half as fantastically if everyone knew some of us weren't killed by monsters, but by people?"

Kikuoka's blood runs cold. That's… of course, he should have expected that. Combat between players were common in Alfheim Online.

Kirigaya watched his expression. "I guess her campaign was excellent at highlighting PvE that you've all simply assumed we've only been fighting against Kayaba Akihiko's monsters. Kikuoka-san, this is why I don't want you to leak anything, or at least not everything, that has happened in SAO. It's a wild, undiscovered land filled with monster that we have to fight. It's also a lawless place – before we managed to get our heads together and form our own communities and laws and system of governance," Kazuto straightened, and Kikuoko really hoped their talk isn't going to be cut short because they formed their own governance? "There was no punishment for killing someone other than being marked red – being marked that you've killed a player."

"And there are people who start thinking there's nothing wrong with it," Kikuoka concluded quietly.

He received a curt nod from the boy. "There's a guild – a group – founded on the idea of killing." Kirigaya's eyes hardened. "They were only a few dozens, less than a hundred max out of ten thousand people, but even if it's only done by just one person you can guess how the public will react. The media always blows it out of proportion. The majority of SAO players are just kids, about thirty are more or less only ten years old. If the public gets wind that SAO players killed another person, knowing that they die in real life too, we're not going to be viewed as victims anymore."

"Is this common knowledge to SAO victims? All of you in there?" Kirigaya affirmed. "I and everyone hope they will be awake soon. The SAO Recovery team is supposed to talk to you all about it. I can order my team to not keep it off public records for now, but I don't think it's going to be easy to guarantee the victims themselves from talking about it. Or—worse, brag about it."

Kirigaya shook his head. "I know them. I know a lot of them, not all of them, but they all know me. I can convince them. And I know every member of that killing guild. In SAO, our avatars reflect our real life appearances, so I can identify them for you. But," Kirigaya bit his lip, "please don't misunderstand, but don't arrest them."

I want to know why they would all know and respect you enough to give you the power to convince them. "I thought that's why you brought it up, other than not wanting to cast negative light on all SAO victims. If they're murderers, they shouldn't be released."

"On what grounds would you arrest them? Present the case that they murdered a player knowingly? That's a leak, and a weak case by law. There is no evidence but SAO victims' words. The system itself allows PvP kills. They could argue they never killed a human, but a bunch of codes. That it's just a game." His hands stopped clenching and Kazuto exhaled, tired. "Please let me in the SAO Recovery team."

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"You've just woken up from a coma and this is what you do? I can't believe it. Honestly, I admire it. You're a good person, Kirigaya-san."

Kazuto shut his eyes and tries to shut out the screams.

His body ached. As far as he knew, coma patients don't get the power to just walk out of their hospital room and be so coherent with their train of thoughts and chain of words especially at the level of artifice he employed. Also, shouldn't his joints be frozen? And he didn't really remember what the sympthons were, but shouldn't his brain send white static through his body causing it to, bleed or lock or something? Although, the NerveGear does block those signals and rerouted it to receive fake signals so maybe that played a role?

And what about everyone else? When he miraculously digested the fact that he's actually freaking alive and HE AND ASUNA ARE ALIVE (she better be awake too or Idon'twanttoeventhinkaboutit) and he moved his stiff, heavy, skeletal body out of the room with the intention to find a bloody hospital staff and ask where her room is, at the time, he didn't register that he was the only one outside.

Wasn't he late by more than ten possibly twenty minutes?

But the hospital was quiet. He was the only one trudging and nearly crawling in the middle of the hallway. Forcibly pulling out the EKG electrodes connected to him had alerted the hospital and Kikuoka Seijirou, the director of SAO Recovery team, that "another one has died" – and two nurses found him alive and awake and walking.

He made a mental note to find out the male and female nurse, plus Dr. Mikoto's addresses to anonymously send them a gift or something because thank heavens they were quiet and didn't explode into loud motherhen mode. They did a full check-up on him, fixed him up, and he won at convincing them to let him sit a little straighter instead of putting him to sleep, and that's when Kikuoka arrived.

"You're a good person, Kirigaya-san."

A good person? Yeah right. If only he knew my main motivation are to find Asuna and cover my own murderous hide. I'm the only one to know this is a Pyrrhic victory.

Kayaba wouldn't lie about six thousand people logging out, right?!

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He didn't find Asuna.

Asuna found him.

Wheelchair-bound, her red tresses of hair much longer and looking much less healthier, paler than normal, skeletal and gaunt but what does he care she could be a shriveled prune and he'd still love her.

His single hospital room's door opened and her appearance took his breath away and apparently in the speed of light she slammed the door shut and rolled her fancy wheelchair to be closer to his bed. "I love you so much I can't believe we're awake but my parents are here and they're treating me like I've only been a damsel in distress during this entire two years and I hate being seen as weak again so act," she rushed.

"They think you've just been a damsel in distress?" Kazuto was confused. Asuna was never a useless helpless damsel. Even when she was suicidal she nearly skewered him with a barely durable blade.

The door opened and three people came in shouting her name.

Kazuto pulled on his facial muscles to smile beatifically. "I'm glad to see you're alright, Vice Commander."

Love the tone of this story? Check out my Aincrad story Virtually Colorless! And if you want to read a TRULY EPIC Sword Art Online fiction, read the completed work of Johnny Wycliffe titled SAO: The Century Voyage.