Drifter scratched his face and yawned. He had barely gotten 2 hours of sleep last night. It felt like he had just closed his eyes when the alarm he set went off.
The sun had already risen, albeit just barely. At least the view on the 1st floor was better than what Kirito and the others would be seeing all the way up in the 19th. The sun was actually visible from here.
Though, the Reavers were all exhausted, both physically and mentally, so it was unlikely they were already up. Only Drifter was unlucky enough to have to get up this early. Another debt to add to Laughing Coffin's bill.
"Ready, little rat?"
"This is gonna be useless, but yeah. Thanks for comin' with me, Dri-bou."
The spearmaster affectionately rubbed Argo's head. The duo was standing in front of the << Black Iron Palace >>, and they were starting to catch attention from the early-risers. They were two famous faces, after all, and the prison wasn't exactly a tourist location.
"We'll visit Sasha and the kids after we are done. That should cheer both of us up."
"Ya thinkin' this gonna be that unpleasant?"
Drifter talked with the NPC guard, saying they were there to visit a prisoner. When the large iron doors opened, he motioned the info-broker in, following her while nodding.
"Definitely. He isn't going to give us anything but insults, Argo. All I'm hoping is that he lets something slip."
The brown-haired girl stopped, and Drifter almost walked into her. Looking at her inquisitively, the spearmaster wondered what happened.
"You okay, little rat?"
"If... If he does say somethin', or I manage to find out from other sources, what are ya plannin' to do, Drifter?"
Ah. So that was it. He almost smiled. She was scared for him. Drifter pulled his little sister to him.
"If, and that's a big if, little rat, we learn something, then we'll decide what to do. Together. But I know what you really mean. If we discover how many red players there are, and where Laughing Coffin's HQ is, I'll go after them. Let me finish, Argo."
He raised his hands to ward off her objections, and stared Argo down until she stopped talking.
"They are a cancer we need to get rid of early, Argo. Or they will spread and consume SAO. We can't escape if we have people actively working against us. But I don't mean I plan on hunting them down alone."
Argo's glare softened. She knew Drifter had a tendency of taking on huge burdens alone, but it appeared even he wasn't crazy enough to go against Laughing Coffin alone.
"I'll get Agil, Wolv, and Shigio. Klein, Orlando, even Kibaou and Lind. The entire damn Assault Team. Akari and her ninjas. Anyone who understands we'll have to put an end to Laughing Coffin by any means necessary. Even if we can never sleep soundly again."
"Ya didn't mention Kii-bou and the others."
Drifter shook his head and sighed.
"I really don't want to involve them in this if I can avoid it, Argo. Nor you. I know I don't have the right to control any of you, and I'm not that much of a hypocrite to say you are too young after everything we went through. Doesn't mean I can't still try and prevent you from becoming murderers like me."
Usually saying something like that would have earned Drifter a slap. Yuna got really pissed with him when he was all self-deprecating like that.
But there was no blame or guilt in his voice when Drifter acknowledged himself as a murderer. It was just a fact. He had come to terms with it, and firmly believed he killed for the right reasons. He would have to be careful not to lose sight of them if he was forced to take lives again.
Argo felt that, so she didn't scold him. Only Yuna knew Drifter better than her. She could tell when he was suffering, and that wasn't it right now.
"Anyway, all that is just hot air if the red player doesn't tell us anything. So let's see him and get out. This place is cold."
Drifter pushed Argo forward, and they walked down the monochrome corridors, passing row after row of empty cells. There had probably been other prisoners since SAO started, but just for petty crimes like stealing. At the moment, the << Black Iron Palace >> was housing only two inmates.
Drifter and Argo stopped in front of the cell of the first of them. Not Grimlock. They could hear Griselda's ex-husband sobbing further down the corridor. But they were here to see the first permanent tenant of the prison.
Drifter crossed his arms in front of his chest and looked down on the red player. Now, with light shining through the tiny window on one wall, the criminal wasn't nearly as intimidating as yesterday.
He was a short, scrawny man, maybe four or five years older than Drifter. The guards of << Black Iron Palace >> had stripped him of all his equipment save for his starting clothes, so his face was clearly visible, as was the Laughing Coffin tattoo on his wrist.
"Louze. You look like a real piece of shit."
His name was floating above his head, underneath the red cursor. Drifter wished he had known it last night. It was a lot harder to be scared of someone with a name like Louze.
Only then noticing their presence, the red player turned his head. That insane smile was plastered on his face, and Argo frowned. Drifter didn't change his expression.
"Oh, it's just you guys. Can't you ask those ninjas to come visit me? I really want to rip them to pieces. Bite their faces off and-"
"Shut up. We are the only two faces you will see, murderer. Make sure to take a good look, because when we are gone, you will spend the next few years counting cracks on the wall."
"Hahahaha! Why so grumpy, Broken Spear Drifter? Is it because of yesterday? We were just havin' a little fun. Do you know how many stabs a person can take before they give up? It's really great here in SAO! One stab, two stabs, three stabs, heal! Four stabs, five stabs..."
The two green players didn't even bother interrupting this time. They just let Louze sing-song until he got bored and trailed off. The red player pouted like a child.
"You guys are no fun! I won't talk to you anymore!"
Having said that, Louze turned his back to them. Minutes of silence went by, and the red player sneaked a peek over his shoulder, then put on a surprised expression.
"You are still here! I had no idea you were so interested in little old me!"
The show Louze was putting on didn't fool Drifter and Argo. He was insane alright, as mad as they could get, but the red player wasn't stupid. He knew there was no going back for him. The NPCs couldn't be bargained with or bribed. No one could storm << Black Iron Palace >> and free him. He was condemned to spend the rest of Sword Art Online in this very cell. The rest of his life, if the Assault Team failed to beat the game. Crazy or not, the red player also dreaded this future.
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"We have questions for you, Louze. Answer them, no games, and I'll drop by every now and again. Bring you news from the outside, maybe even some special food if you behave."
"Bah! I don't need your pity, frontliner!"
"You won't have it anyway. How many players are there in Laughing Coffin? What are their names? Who is your boss? Where are your hideouts? Talk or don't, choice is yours. Either way, we are leaving in 10 minutes."
"Boring!"
Louze spat on Drifter's feet, his answer clear. The spearmaster and Argo still waited the promised 10 minutes. Not a second over the deadline, they turned around and left, without a word.
"Kek! You won't even ask why I became a red player, frontliner bastard?!"
Drifter barely slowed down his steps, throwing one last glance over his shoulder.
"I don't need to know why monsters kill. I just put them down."
Louze was stunned by the response for a moment. Then he started laughing, cackling away, apparently having heard the funniest joke in the world.
"Hahaha! Goodbye, Argo the Rat! Goodbye, Broken Spear Drifter! Boss will drink your blood! He will chew and spit out your bones. Hahahahaha..."
...
"Well. That was productive."
Sarcasm dripped off Argo's words. Drifter flickered her forehead.
"Don't be petty, little rat. We never expected anything to come of this anyway. If we still have no leads after a few months, we can come back."
"Hmm. Is yer offer to visit the kids still valid, Dri-bou? I think I need the little balls of sunshine. They're gonna take my mind off things with the incessant questions."
Drifter grinned. That was the Argo he liked to see.
--------------------
18 floors above, a different conversation was taking place. Kirito and the rest weren't present, but they could imagine the contents. And the results too, if the unhappy faces of Cainz and Schmitt when they came out of the inn were anything to go by. The rest of Golden Apple seemed more shell-shocked than anything.
Griselda was the last one to step out of the inn. She seemed sad and tired, but not surprised. Yuna stepped forward to greet her.
"Hey, Griselda. It didn't go well, did it?"
"Ah... As well as it can be expected, actually. I'm still having trouble coming to terms with last night. Golden Apple disbanded."
That wasn't a huge shock, but the Reavers still comforted the older woman. She had put her all in the guild, and it was a huge blow to lose everything like that.
But Griselda was a tough woman. She rubbed her eyes, and when she looked up again, there was a smile on her face. Maybe not a bright one, but it was definitely real.
"I want to talk to Grimlock. After that... Black Swordsman Kirito, if you would allow me to be shameless just this once, I have a request."
The oddly formal way of speaking hinted at what her wish was. Kirito nodded for her to go on. Griselda put a hand on her chest, the other on the pommel of her sword, and bowed.
"Please let me join Reaver's Requiem."
-----------------------
Kikouka put down his phone and groaned. That was another politician demanding he immediately freed the SAO victims. As if he had been trying to do anything else the entire time he was put at the head of the task force.
Yesterday's conflict and the subsequent reveal of an entire guild of murderers had been the largest bomb Sword Art Online had ever dropped in his lap.
His entire office was working overtime to both deal with public outrage and, more importantly, identify the criminal players. If for no other reason than to move them to a more secure location. There had been several calls to 'pull the plug' already.
That was, surprisingly, the one silver lining Kikouka found in this whole mess. He was a mere soldier, and the decision to pull the plug or not didn't fall to him, but to their country's legal system. And while lawyers and judges scrambled to come up with legal precedents, some of the heat was taken off him.
Pull the plug. Kill the red players. Death penalty.
As a soldier, Kikouka was in favor of it. Whatever mental illness, whatever reason lawyers could come up with to justify the murderers’ actions, it was all bullshit. He had heard the conversation between Drifter and XaXa, and then the one with the arrested red player. They enjoyed killing. The plug should already have been pulled from monsters like them.
Kikouka pulled his head from his hands when he heard a knock on his door.
"Come in!"
"Sir, I have the reports you asked for."
"Leave them on the table and give me the run down."
"Yes, sir. We are trying our hardest to identify the red players, but... It's been tough. At the moment, we only have 6 confirmed suspects, including Red-Eyed XaXa, but we can't connect any to their real life identities."
"What?!"
Kikouka narrowed his eyes. His subordinate gulped, but soldiered on.
"W-We are sorry, sir, but there are still several hundred SAO players we can't properly identify, because they almost never leave private areas, and hide their faces when they do. Err... Also, we had never paid attention to it before, but there are many players who use masks or other concealing items. The members of Fuumaningum are one such example. In all, there's over six hundred players whose real identities are still unknown."
Kikouka groaned, and put his head between his hands again. After a few minutes of kneading his temples in a vain attempt to mitigate his headache, he waved a finger to his subordinate.
"Forget the green players, tell me about the red ones and Laughing Coffin."
"Yes, sir. We have - tentatively - identified 28 red players. I say tentatively because, once again, there was an oversight on our part. The SAO broadcasts don't show the color of a player's cursor. We never found anything wrong with this since, as far as we were aware, Morte was the only red player, and, from the time he revealed himself to when he died, we could still only watch the boss raids. As you know, going over the footage of 7.000 players is close to impossible, so we have been dedicating most of our efforts to the frontliners."
"Hm. I'm assuming you identified the 28 suspects by their interactions with other players and confirmed outlaws?"
"Exactly, sir. By following Red-Eyed XaXa, we got the names of the five who were with him - minus the one Reaver's Requiem arrested. And another they met later."
"Got it. And still nothing on the imprisoned red player?"
"No, sir."
Kikouka groaned softly. This was not a problem they had foreseen. While they could watch the broadcasts of Drifter and Argo when they went into << Black Iron Palace >> with no problems, the transmission of the red player was nowhere to be found, even after carefully combing through all the players.
They could only speculate that the Laughing Coffin member's broadcast was set to [ Transmission Currently Unavailable ]. That assumption was proven correct when they tuned in - or tried to - Grimlock's broadcast, and found it also turned off. From that, they could conclude that players inside the cells had their identities protected, while the visitors didn't. It had to be something to do with them being criminals.
"Why the hell is Kayaba protecting those murderers?! We can't see the cursors, we watch their transmissions, and even when we looked at it from Broken Spear's PoV, the red player's face was blurred and his name blipped out anytime someone spoke it!"
Kikouka smashed his fists into his desk. It was almost like Kayaba wanted the red players to go free!
"Ehem... Sir?"
"What?!"
His subordinate flinched when Kikouka shouted at him, still immersed in his anger towards Kayaba. The task force leader forced himself to calm down and asked again in a more civil tone.
"Sorry, what?"
"We - that is, the team - don't believe Kayaba is especially protecting the red players. Our current guess is that this is just part of his 'no outside interference' policy. At the risk of angering you more... Kayaba is Sword Art Online's god. We are just observers. He grants players free will to do whatever they want, and us the ability to watch almost everything, be it boss raids, their daily life, or barbaric atrocities."
"Your point is?"
"None of the other red players had their faces blurred, we simply can't identify them because they use masks. Nor is any other name censored but that of the criminal in the jail. We think that is the case because he is already a piece off the board."
The leader of the SAO taskforce had been softly thumping his fingers, but he suddenly stopped. Kikouka was a very smart man, or he wouldn't have been given this post. He immediately understood what his subordinate meant.
"He is afraid we would pull the plug on captured red players, because they are the only ones whose identities we can confirm, since << Black Iron Palace >> strips them of all their equipment. He foresaw everything that's happening now in the real world, including the public outrage. But he doesn't want anyone messing with his creation."
"That was our conclusion too, sir. Broken Spear Drifter mentioned before that once imprisoned, red players can't be freed in any way, including by those who captured them. That means the murderer currently in jail will stay there until SAO is beaten, or his real body gives out. He has become a non-entity. Still, Kayaba likely doesn't want him to become a scapegoat for public feelings."
Kikouka stayed silent for several minutes, then leaned his head on the backrest, staring at the ceiling.
"Again... There's nothing we can really do, is there?"
"We'll continue trying to narrow down the pool of suspects, sir, but... No. We don't believe there is."
Kikouka closed his eyes and sighed.
"Motherfucker."