Chapter 11

"They sure aren't showing much of Big Brother," Leafa noted to

Silica, her golden-green ponytail rustling over her back.

Silica's triangular cat ears twitched as they poked out of her

light brown hair. "Yes, it's quite a surprise. Knowing Kirito, I figured he would be raising hell from the very start."

"Nah, that son of a bitch is crafty, if anything. He might be

hiding out in a safe spot while the crowd thins itself out for him."

That line came from Klein, who was manning the bar counter

in the corner of the room. Leafa, Silica, and Asuna—on the sofa in

the center of the room—couldn't help but giggle a bit.

"Even Kirito wouldn't do something like that…I think," Asuna

added softly. On her shoulder, the palm-sized fairy—Yui the AI,

"daughter" to Asuna and Kirito—flapped her tiny, fragile wings.

"That's right! Papa is sneaking up and ambushing his enemies

so fast, the camera can't even follow him!"

To her left, Lisbeth couldn't contain her laughter. "Ha-ha-ha,

that sounds about right. And he went out of his way to use a

sword in a gun game."

For a moment, everyone visualized that image. The room filled

with cheerful laughter, and Pina, the little dragon familiar,

perked up her ears from her resting position in Silica's lap.

This group of six people and one animal were not gathered in a

real location. They were within the team's favorite VRMMORPG,

ALfheim Online, or ALO for short. Yggdrasil City was a settlement atop the massive World Tree that loomed over the center of

the game's map. The room that Asuna and Kirito rented together

was host to today's gathering.

The 2,000-yrd monthly rent on the place bought them plenty

of space. The large sofa set was in the center of the immaculate

wooden floor, and there was even a home bar built into the wall.

The countless bottles on the shelves had been gathered by the

hearty drinker Klein from the home territories of all nine fairy

races, and even Jotunheim below. According to him, some of

them were as fine as thirty-year scotch, if you didn't mind not

getting drunk from it. As a minor, Asuna wouldn't know the difference.

The entire south wall was made of glass and offered them a

stunning view of Ygg City whenever they wanted, but there was

no view of the night skyline today. The glass also acted as a giant

screen, and it was now showing them a different world entirely—

courtesy of the net channel MMO Stream. It was the livestream of

the Bullet of Bullets battle-royale final, the tournament to determine the greatest soldier of Gun Gale Online.

They had gathered to either cheer on, or criticize, Kirito's sudden and unannounced appearance in this tournament. Unfortunately, the massive axe warrior Agil was not present. It was a

busy hour for the real-life café/bar that he managed. On the other

hand, Asuna was actually diving here from the second floor of

that very business, Dicey Café. It was a convenient location in the

middle of Tokyo for her, from which she could rush over and give

Kirito a piece of her mind once the event was finished.

"Why do you suppose Kirito would go to the lengths of converting from ALO, just to enter this tournament?" Lisbeth wondered, swirling a mysterious emerald-green wine. To her left,

Leafa shot a look at Asuna. Only Asuna, Leafa, and Yui knew that

Kirito was undertaking this GGO mission for the sake of their fellow ALO player, the undine mage Chrysheight—who was actually

Seijirou Kikuoka, Virtual Division official for the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Asuna took Leafa's glance to mean that it was up to

her how to respond, so she took a second to think.

"The thing is…it seems he took on some kind of weird job.

Something about researching the current state of VRMMOs—the

Seed Nexus, in particular. GGO's the only game with a real-currency-conversion system, which is why he's there."

That was exactly what Kirito had told her. But Asuna didn't

think for a second that it was the entire story. She didn't think

that he was lying, but there had to be something he was leaving

out. It was obvious from his facial expression, voice, and demeanor when he explained that he was converting after their recent date.

But Asuna didn't press him for more at the time. There had to

be a reason why he wouldn't tell her. And she firmly believed that

the reason was not a betrayal of any kind.

So she wished him good luck and sent him on his way, then

gathered up their friends to watch the event from their distant

world. But she couldn't deny that in the last few days, something

odd was eating away at her.

It wasn't distrust of Kirito, but more of a vague premonition.

The feeling that something was going to happen, or was already

happening. It was a shapeless unease, the same sensation she felt

in Aincrad when surrounded by a large group of monsters just

outside of the radius of her Search skill…

Lisbeth's sixth sense of friendship seemed to pick up the worry

that Asuna had kept out of her voice and expression. "A job,

huh…Well, either way, if anyone can grasp the essentials of a

game in no time, it's him…"

"But why's he jumping right into this PvP tournament, then? If

it's just for research, couldn't he simply walk around and talk to

players in town?" asked Klein.

All four of them had this same question.

Eventually Silica suggested, "Maybe…he wants to win the tournament and earn a lot of money so he can convert it back into

cash? I've heard that the minimum value to make use of that feature is really high…"

Yui instantly piped up from Asuna's shoulder with more detailed information. "The rate isn't listed on the official site, but

according to online articles, the minimum value is 100,000 ingame credits, and the ratio is 100 credits to 1 yen, which would

mean 1,000 yen. It seems that the player's registered e-mail address receives a code with the electronic cash already deposited.

The top prize for the tournament is 3,000,000 credits, which

would be 30,000 yen when cashed out."

It all sounded very fluid and comfortable coming from Yui's

lips, but she was pulling down the information and compiling it

from the Net as she spoke it aloud. Her search-and-filter speed

and precision were greater than any human's. Kirito had frequently—and the girls, every now and then—called upon her ability to put together his homework reports.

"Thanks, Yui," Asuna said, rubbing the little fairy's head with a

finger. "It doesn't sound like the cashing-out system itself is very

complex. After all, we already trade electronic cash codes through

e-mail ourselves. You wouldn't think Kirito would need to confirm the process for himself…"

"Though I can definitely see him getting lured in by a 30,000-

yen pot!" Klein japed. Everyone grimaced.

"No, he's not you," Lisbeth remarked immediately. "But in

most PvP battle royales, it doesn't work to hide somewhere and

wait until there's almost no one left. In ALO, they have automatic

Searcher spells that reveal your location if you try to hide in the

same location for minutes at a time, don't they?"

"Plus, it doesn't really fit Big Brother's personality. He's not

the type to sit still while listening to the sound of other people

fighting. He wouldn't be able to resist," Leafa commented, with

the convincing wisdom of one who'd lived with him for years. It

made perfect sense to the group, so they resumed their pondering.

As they did so, the enormous 300-inch screen-wall was positively jittering with flashy graphics. Because it was a gun-based

game, most of the shots came from over the shoulder of an individual player. As the virtual camera followed them, the bottom of

the screen displayed the name of the player being viewed, but

none of the sixteen segments of the screen showed the name

KIRITO. As a general rule, it didn't show players not in battle,

which meant that in the thirty minutes since the event started,

Kirito hadn't been involved in a single fight.

Perhaps he was just being cautious, having transferred from a

world of swords and magic to an unfamiliar gun-centric setting.

But the Kirito that Asuna knew would face his foes headfirst, no

matter the circumstance—he would find a way. Like Leafa said, it

didn't make sense that Kirito would appear in a big event and

hide for thirty minutes. She could see him getting into an immediate battle with one of the heavy favorites right off the bat and

dying with style—but the list of contestants on the right edge of

the screen showed his status as ALIVE.

"Does that mean…his purpose isn't to make a splash in the

tournament…but something more important?" Asuna wondered,

right about the moment that one of the battles on the sixteen-segment screen reached a climax.

The camera was from the perspective of a player named Dyne.

He was set up with a simple machine gun at the base of a rustedout bridge, spraying bullets. But his opponent, dressed in pale

blue clothing, leaped up onto the bridge supports as nimbly as a

cait sith to approach. He fired a big, mean-looking gun like a

criminal in some Hollywood blockbuster, and Dyne was done for

in moments.

Lisbeth was watching the same fight among all of the different

views, and she whistled softly. "Ooh, he's good. Y'know, watching

like this makes GGO look pretty fun. I wonder if you can craft

your own guns…"

Following her experience in SAO, Lisbeth had chosen to be a

leprechaun blacksmith in ALO. Asuna couldn't help but smile.

"Don't tell me you're converting to GGO next, Liz. We've still

got a long way to go to beat the New Aincrad."

"That's right, Liz! Remember, there's going to be that new update when we reach the twenties!" Silica piped up from the other

end of the sofa. Lisbeth raised her hands in surrender.

"All right, all right. I'm just remarking about how every game

has its worthy opponents. I bet that blue guy's one of the favorites

to win it all…"

Just at that moment, the "blue guy" collapsed on screen. The

frame swung around, taking the viewpoint of the blue-clad man

who'd just fallen. The name PALE RIDER flashed beneath the

image.

He was down, but not dead. Fine sparks shot from his damaged shoulder and crawled over his body, a visual sign that the

avatar's movement was contained.

"It looks like that wind spell Thunderweb," Leafa remarked.

She was a sylph warrior.

The salamander swordsman Klein shook his red hair, which

was pinned behind an ugly bandana. "I hate those things. The

homing's way too good on them."

"Because every kind of debuff is bad for you! You need to raise

your resistance skills already."

"Bah! A true samurai doesn't take a single skill related to

magic. You don't do it!"

"Don't you know that for decades, the samurai class in RPGs

has been basically just warriors with black magic?!"

Asuna grinned at their argument and reached out with her

right hand to focus on the window in question, spreading her

index finger and thumb apart. The feed of the prone Pale Rider

expanded and pushed the other windows to the sides of the

screen.

He'd been paralyzed for over ten seconds, but no other player

had entered the frame as of yet. There was only the reddened

earth, the bridge, the river beneath it, and the forest on the other

side, hazy through the dust…

Flap.

All five twitched at the same time. A black fabric came into

view from the left side of the frame. The camera steadily pulled

back so that a new figure came into full view on the screen.

"A ghost…?" someone whispered in a hoarse voice, possibly

Lisbeth or Silica—or Asuna herself.

A dark gray cloak, tattered and waving in the breeze. A hood

that shrouded what lay within in total darkness. And glowing like

floating hellfires, two red eyes. It was eerily similar to the ghostly

enemies that had tormented them so often back in the original

Aincrad.

She squeezed her eyes shut and looked again. Of course, it was

a real player, a contestant in the tournament, not a ghostly figure.

There were two legs sticking out of the bottom of the cloak, and a

very large hunting rifle on the player's right shoulder. This

cloaked man must have been the one who had stunned Pale

Rider. Even in ALO, the magic warrior who ensnared foes with

capturing spells and approached to finish the job with physical

attacks was a very popular build.

Sure enough, just as Asuna imagined, the cloaked man

reached to his waist and pulled out a black pistol. But if that was

supposed to be his main source of damage, it seemed…kinda…

"…Kinda wimpy, ain't it?" Klein said, giving voice to her curiosity. He was scratching at his bearded chin in the way he always did. "No way that peashooter does more damage than that

huge rifle on his shoulder. He should use that, instead."

"Maybe the ammo costs a bunch? High-level spells in ALO

take expensive reagents, after all," Leafa noted. The group went

back to thinking, while the hooded figure cocked the pistol and

aimed it at the fallen player.

But he didn't pull the trigger yet. It seemed he wanted to tease

his opponent—and the viewers. Instead he raised his left hand

and did something unexpected. The index and middle fingers

went together and tapped his forehead, chest, and left and right

shoulders in quick succession.

The next instant, something prickled inside of Asuna's head.

It wasn't a new gesture by any means; she recognized the classic sign-of-the-cross motion. It featured prominently in many

Western films, and even within VRMMOs—some healers liked to

do it as a role-playing motion. Perhaps a proper Christian would

not enjoy seeing the motion coopted in this way, but Asuna was

not a Christian, and it wasn't anger or displeasure that hit her just

now. It was more like her fingertip had caught against a string

that wasn't to be touched…

Her entire body went tense, and her eyes were wide. The

cloaked player finished making the sign of the cross and put that

hand to the grip of the pistol. His right foot drew back and he assumed a firing position, ready to shoot Pale Rider at last…

"Wha—?!"

Everyone in the room exclaimed at once.

For some reason, the cloaked player had bent over backwards

at an extreme angle. The reason for this came to them a split second later. From outside the frame, an enormous orange bullet

shot past and grazed the hem of the splayed-out cloak, tearing

through the spot where the player's heart had been just a moment

before, then passed out of frame.

Someone must have sniped at the cloaked player from a great

distance away. It looked to Asuna like the shot had come from behind him and to the left. It clearly took tremendous skill for him

to evade an attack at that angle and speed so deftly. Even in an

unfamiliar game, she was certain of that.

The cloaked player regained his balance with an eerie, lifeless

smoothness, and turned back to his left for just an instant. Asuna

felt like his invisible face smirked beneath that dark hood.

Something in her head twitched again.

What? What is this? Is it…a memory? But that can't be true…

I've never been to GGO, or even seen footage of it in action…

The cloaked player raised his pistol again, ready to fire it

straight through Asuna's confusion. This time, he unceremoniously pulled the trigger at the paralyzed foe on the ground.

There was a high-pitched gunshot. An empty brass casing flew

out and skittered onto the dusty ground.

The bullet hit Pale Rider in the center of the chest with a tiny

flash. It certainly wasn't the kind of enormous attack that would

eradicate all his HP at once.

Pale Rider himself bore that impression out a second later

when his paralysis effect finally wore off, and he instantly leaped

up and pointed his large gun at the chest of the cloaked player.

"Yikes, what a turnaround," Lisbeth murmured, and Asuna

could see it coming, too.

But there was no blast, no flash, no clicking of a trigger. The

gun fell out of Pale Rider's fingers and clattered on the ground at

his feet.

Next, he leaned slowly to his right, kept leaning—and fell

stiffly to the ground once again.

Below the smoke-gray visor of his helmet, his narrow nostrils

and lips were visible. His mouth trembled, then gaped wide.

Silent furor shot out from within. Asuna understood intuitively

that this was the shock and fear of the player within the avatar.

"Wh…what the…?" Leafa gasped, her hand to her mouth. Then

something even more surprising happened. The fallen, writhing

form of Pale Rider went as still as if someone hit the pause button, then faded into a crawling static pattern and disappeared.

The visual effect hung in the air for a while after the avatar

vanished, eventually clustering into letters that spelled out DISCONNECTION. They were scattered by a pair of matte black boots as

the cloaked player strode forward, pulling his hand back behind

his cape.

The location of the cameras must have been visible within the

game, as he pointed his gun straight toward the screen. Asuna felt

a shiver run down her back at the sensation that he was pointing

from GGO to ALO—no, from virtual reality to actual reality, at her

flesh-and-blood body.

The red-glowing eyes flickered from the darkness of the hood.

A mechanical voice rasped out of the screen.

"My true name, and that of this weapon…is Death Gun."

The instant she heard that voice, the sound of raw, twisted

emotion shrouded in cold artificiality, Asuna felt the biggest crack

yet in the depths of her memory.

Her breathing stopped. Her pulse quickened. The hidden face

grew to cover the entire center of the screen. The voice came

again.

"One day, I will, appear before, you too. This gun, will bring,

true death. I have, that power."

The black gun creaked slightly. Asuna couldn't prevent a

shiver at the thought of the trigger being pulled, and a bullet flying straight through the virtual screen at her. The cloaked figure

seemed to smile from the darkness, mocking her fear. Again, the

voice came:

"Don't forget. It's not, over. Nothing, is, over…It's showtime."

The last two words were delivered in halting English. The

final, biggest shock of all.

I know him.

She was sure of it. She'd met him before. Traded words with

him. But where…?

She already knew the answer. It was in the floating castle…

Aincrad. Not the safe replica floating in ALO's sky, but the true alternate world that had trapped her for two years: Sword Art Online. The "it" that wasn't "over" referred to the name of that game.

Who is it? Is someone I met in that game controlling the

avatar under that cloak?

Despite her daze, Asuna's mind worked frantically. A sudden

hard sound from behind caused her to leap up onto the sofa. She

turned around to see the source of the sound—a crystal tumbler

that had fallen onto the floor and shattered into tiny polygonal

shards, which were quickly disintegrating. It had fallen out of

Klein's hand as he sat on a stool at the bar counter. His eyes were

wide under the bandana; he didn't even realize that he'd broken

the expensive player-made glass.

"What the hell are you doing back th—" Lisbeth started, but

Klein's hoarse rasp cut her off.

"N-no way… That can't be…"

Asuna stood up from the sofa, turned, and shouted, "Do you

know him, Klein?! Who is he?!"

"I-I don't remember his old name…but…I know one thing for

sure…" The warrior turned eyes etched deep with fear onto

Asuna. "He's a Laughing Coffin member."

"…!!"

Lisbeth and Silica joined Asuna in sucking in a sharp breath.

The name Laughing Coffin was vividly painted into their memories—the red guild that had committed numerous atrocities on

their fellow players in Aincrad.

Asuna steadied herself with a hand on her two friends' shoulders. She asked Klein, "Y-you don't think…he's their leader, the

one with the cleaver…?"

"Nah…it ain't PoH. The attitude and way of speaking is totally

different. But…when he said, 'It's showtime,' that was PoH's

catchphrase. Musta been someone close—another guy real high

up in the organization," Klein moaned. He glanced at the screen

again. Asuna and the three girls followed his gaze.

In the expanded feed at the center of the screen, the cloaked

man had put his gun away and was retreating. He slid away to the

distant end of the frame as smoothly as a ghost toward the bridge,

but rather than cross it, he passed around the far edge of the

bridge girder toward the riverbank. The dark gray cloak melted

into the shadow of the bridge against the bright contrast of the

sun and disappeared.

Leafa's quiet voice broke the heavy silence that filled the room.

"Um…what's Laughing Coffin?"

"Well," Silica started, then proceeded to briefly explain the

threat and elimination of the murderous guild to Leafa, the only

person present who hadn't lived through SAO. When she was

done, Leafa bit her lip and looked right at Asuna her with jadegreen eyes.

"Asuna, I think that Big Brother must have known this person

was in GGO."

"What?!"

"Something was wrong with him when he came back late last

night. I think…he must be playing GGO to settle some kind of

score…"

This time it was Lisbeth who held Asuna's hand as she grappled with shock. She squeezed reassuringly and shook her head,

pink hair bobbing. "But…what about the job he's doing? Didn't he

jump into GGO to prepare a report for someone, or something?"

Yes, that was true. Seijirou Kikuoka from the government's

Virtual Division had hired Kirito for the job. But even as the man

in charge of the SAO Incident Rescue Task Force, Kikuoka

couldn't possibly know the details about the rift between Laughing Coffin and the front-line team. But at the same time, she

couldn't imagine that Kirito's conversion and the existence of the

cloaked player were a coincidence. Something was going on.

Something that caused Kikuoka to focus on GGO and hire Kirito

to investigate it.

Asuna took a deep breath, squeezed Lisbeth back, and said,

"I'm going to log out and try to contact the person who hired Kirito."

"Huh?! You know who it is, Asuna?!"

"Yes. In fact, we all do. I'm going to bring him here to grill

him. He must know something. While I'm gone, Yui will search

all GGO sites and try to find any data corresponding to this

cloaked player."

"You got it, Mama!"

The little black-haired pixie leaped from her shoulder and

landed on the table. Yui shut her eyes and began the process of

extracting useful information from the chaos of the Net.

"Okay, everyone…just hang on a bit!" Asuna cried, leaping

over the back of the sofa with blue hair flying as she called up her

menu window. With a purposeful nod at the group, she hit the

LOG OUT button.

Rainbow light enveloped her body, sending her soul flying

from the top of the virtual tree to the far-off real world.