The Ceremony
“OK, here’s the plan. I’ll go up during the satellite scan to lure Death Gun towards me. If there’s anyone left, they’ll be b-lining it for me once I show up on the map. Since you’re still below ground level, you’ll be safe from the scan, but you’ll need to meet with me in the elevator, and then make it to a catwalk for a safe sniping area. I’ll stay on top of the megastructure to make sure Death Gun comes for me and that you get a clear shot of our arriving friend. Is all that understood?”
Sinon nodded at my explanation as we continued towards the elevator that would lead to both the roof of the megabuilding and the catwalk near the 70th floor. The catwalk was planted on the South East side since the front of the building faced south, towards the desert. Not to mention, nightfall had come earlier than expected. It was 10:30, sure, but nightfall usually only happened around 11 due to the sheer amount of lighting within CCD Glocken. I guess it was a nice change, considering the number of times I had stayed up on light nights grinding for items even though I knew I shouldn’t have.
“Okay, headed up. If you’ve got any questions, or things you just wanna say, now’s the time.”
“Zenith… thank you,” Sinon muttered. My momentum stopped just as my foot was firmly planted inside the elevator. I looked back and simply nodded.
With the elevator doors closed, I punched the top floor of the megabuilding. I could see Sinon’s somewhat placid face staring at me as I began to ascend in the elevator. A part of me thought she believed I was looking at an angel. I’m not an angel, I’m the opposite of that… My classification within the game of death, named only as SAO by myself would be as much truth in that as it would be a simple fairy tale.
They called me… what did they call me? Has it been so long that I’ve simply forgotten? No way, that’s impossible… People at school still let me pass before others because of that name. Are many of them of Christian belief? If so, I must be one hell of a sinner in their eyes. But now’s not the time to think of school, or friends that supposedly act like they’re friendly. Now is the time to make this right. It’s probably my only chance, but I’ll still give it my most grand attempt. I’ll pull out all the stops, even the ones I haven’t revealed up to this point.
My eyes were pulled into a pale red circle in the corner of my vision. There, I saw a camera, clear as day. I then had the idea to send out a message to those watching, just to make sure they knew I was there. I walked over to the camera, lazily sitting in the corner. Then I reached out and managed to grab onto it. It felt like a solid cylinder in my hand, but still nothing short of a solid computer-made object. I looked to the side, then commanded my message into the camera.
“Tonight, things change. It’s not showtime anymore, it’s the finale. I’m at the biggest building in Damsgate, waiting on the roof. Come find me, optical-camo-wearing coward.”
With what I wanted to say done, I tightened my grip on the camera until it shattered, which was surprisingly easy to do. Either way, my message was sent, even though I knew it wouldn’t reach Death Gun within here. I breathed a sigh of relief, but also a tense exhale. I didn’t know how much was on the lineup until this point. My life, possibly. Sinon’s was definitely on the line, because she was using herself as a decoy for Death Gun in a way that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend–not because I’m stupid, but rather… she uses more sniper terms than I’m comfortable hearing in a day. But she’s also just a girl, probably just a couple of years younger than I am. She had no right or need to go through what she did, but it made her an entirely different person today than it would have if she didn’t have that happen to her.
During my planning, she sat me down and elaborated on what she meant when she yelled at me out of nowhere. She said that she shot a man at the age of 11 years old, and had put three bullets in him while he was attempting to rob a post office. When I asked her how she got the gun, I was met with a face that was like a young girl being interrogated again, so I changed my tone. She said that she managed to take it from him after biting his wrist, forcing him to drop the gun, and then…
Within the last fifteen minutes before now, we devised both a plan on how to stop Death Gun, which boiled down to, “go as hard as possible, and be creative,” and attempted to figure out the how of Death Gun’s killings. After nearing giving Sinon a panic attack on how someone could be within her apartment at that very moment and reassuring her in my arms as much as possible, we concluded that there were two Death Guns, the one that pulled the trigger, and the one that killed the target. The reasoning for the target selection was still confusing as all hell, but we assume that it was simply some of the top players within GGO that were on the target list. One of the other outlandish ideas was that Sinon and possibly even I were targeted because of our statistical choices, but we pushed it off the table almost as soon as it was presented.
The elevator door opened. I could immediately see advertisements that were reminiscent of those staged in CCD Glocken, due in part because of the sheer number and variety of them. Some were even borderline sexual but managed to stay PG-13. I imagined that some of the cameras were flying about the city now, to show off the battlefield that was soon to become. With the open air calling my name, I stepped out of the elevator, and it immediately shut behind me, meaning that Sinon had pressed the call button right as I got out. Good time, I guess.
I walked toward the edge of the building, looking out across the city with 100,000 lights, each individually placed by a human rather than an AI. To call it beautiful was a lie, but the lights were pretty enough to attempt to draw me into them. They didn’t manage, of course, as I had a job to do other than stare at raymarched lights. The past was calling me. I consoled Damsgate with just my eyes before stepping up onto the railing and picking my transmitter out of my pocket. After letting the small hologram appear in front of me, I quickly looked for dots with a light on them. Apart from three that seemed to be missing altogether–but I knew that one of the missing dots was Death Gun–two of them were gone. I hadn’t seen Death Gun shoot anyone within the time since they got to the city on the west side.
“I guess that’s another life taken,” I sighed, a somber expression making its way onto my features. I had to shake it off though, the scanner was disappearing as the satellite in the sky was moving out of view. I said a silent thanks, even though I knew that it would be its final message to those down here on the ground. The satellite above was from the old human era, just as people began to explore the stars in GGO. Not with telescopes, but with ships and carriers and fleets. Most of the docks that once held spaceships were ancient and decrepit now, thanks to the lack of reason for upkeep and maintenance of the equipment. It made for high-level gear, though, like my chest plate and now-missing H&K416.
“Hey, how many’s left?!” Sinon’s voice rang out from behind me, and I quickly turned around to address her.
“Just one, aside from Death Gun. We lost another one, though.”
Sinon looked down with a twinge of regret.
“We’ll make it up to them,” I assured her as I climbed onto the edge of the roof, feeling the wind press against my body. As it tried to tip me off the side of the building, I grabbed onto a pole, which was conveniently placed…
“Now go, the faster you get set up, the better.” And after I heard the elevator doors close once more, I was alone again.
The building I was on had a unique structure that tapered towards the top. From here to the ground, it was a long ramp, and with me being half a mile up, it meant that I would need to do some sliding, riding, or falling…
As I looked out at the vast city, I didn’t see any obvious signs of player activity. Say, shots being fired and the like. So it seemed as if I just needed to use just my hearing, so I closed my eyes and cut off my breathing. The wind was too loud, so I shut it out. The buzzing of lights is too loud, that can go too. Even the minute sounds of clothes flapping had to go. I had to be fully immersed in the sound of footsteps coming closer. Closer…. Closer… Faster, quicker, every step was like a loud drum beating in my ears. Even at this distance, the sound effects of Yamikaze’s feet were instantaneous. The metal slope under my feet was beginning to rock and vibrate with his run up the building. 500 meters left… 450… 400… 350… Then it went down to 250… And just as he crossed 200… an explosion sounded from my left. Glass shattered as a bullet flew through the air and hit Yamikaze directly in the heart. It was a 500-meter shot, sure, but it was a goddamn good one. With that, it was my time to start moving.
I let my fingers slip from the pole I had once grabbed and continued to sense… Death Gun. I could feel his breathing in my ears, despite how far away it was. He was on the ground with the cars of an abandoned but reinstated past, and had fired a shot towards Sinon, but it thankfully didn’t hit… It was time. I would ensure that…
“You’re mine… Death Gun! YOU’RE MINE!!!”
My lungs ripped as my body dropped to the undefinable slope the building was attached to. My mind was coated in blood, anger, fury. I knew what I had to do–ensure that at all costs, Death Gun wouldn’t hurt another soul within Gun Gale Online, or the real world.
Everything burned away from anticipation. The slope only came back into existence once I made contact with it to get down to Death Gun as fast as possible. But this wasn’t fast enough, it felt like this entire fight was going to take eons. I had to do it, though. Not even Kazuto could drag me out of this fight now.
Furi Soundtrack - The Burst [Unreleased Track]
Death Gun’s metal mask looked up at me, the ruby-red eyes shimmered in the city lights, making him ever so slightly easier to see. I was just a hundred feet from him now and would come to a sliding halt upon contact with the ground, pausing my momentum in front of Death Gun and pulling my lightsword on him.
“Oh, right. I remember now,” Death Gun’s voice croaked as he pulled a thin metal rod from his gun. At first inspection, it looked like a basic cleaning rod, but the pointed tip told a different story. This was an S-Stock, similar to a rapier in most contexts except one–it couldn’t slash.
“Remember what? Speak loud and clear for those at home.” I fired back, ensuring to keep my voice loud enough for the camera to hear.
“The name of your blade. It was demonic, but the perfect title for someone like you.”
“Then speak it! Remind me, so I know it!”
“No…” The cloak simply rasped. “You don’t deserve to know, not anymore…”
“Then I’ll rip it out of you!!”
Carpenter Brut - You're mine (from Furi original soundtrack)
I pulled my lightsword to my shoulder with my arm in front of my neck and charged directly for the cloak. Just before my sword would have been able to make contact, I slash down and to the right, then up and to the left. I managed to clip his thigh with that move, but that wasn’t enough to drown his HP. What I didn’t realize at first glance is exactly what Death Gun had up his sleeve.
In just two steps back, Death Gun prepared for an attack and reenacted a sword skill by hand. This was a feat in itself, but what was truly fascinating was the sheer precision he had over his motions.
When someone attempted a sword skill without the first activation motion, they would often fail the attack entirely, since they didn’t let the system take over. Most players simply let the system take over once the skill was activated, providing no further input on the skill until it was finished and they could continue attacking like normal, but some decided to memorize the motions of certain sword skills to achieve greater damage. But there was a catch, for games that didn’t have a sword skill system, such as ALO and GGO, the visual aftermath of sword skills would appear, but the system gave you no help in execution whatsoever.
That was why this was impressive as all hell, but there were better tricks…
As Death Gun shoved his rapier into my right shoulder, I grabbed the S-Stock and attempted to cut it in half, but was met by a loud, growling buzz from my light sword as it refused to cut through the metal of his sword. In my brief moment of shock, I shoved Death Gun away and forced myself into a stance at the ready.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
“You’re a Veteran now, and even you forgot about that toy’s one weakness… This blade is made of battleship metal, the best you can get in the game…” The sword didn’t like being referred to as a toy and burned the air even hotter for just a brief second.
“You don’t even know how many times I’ve heard suckers call this sword a toy before I cut them in two. And I’ll do the same to you!”
The fight continued without hesitation, but I had to pull up my single trick up my sleeves, something that I was confident that no one else had. After kicking myself off of Death Gun’s chest, I opened my menu once I landed on the ground, and took both my syn-leather jacket and armor-enhanced undershirt off. What was left was a digital bare chest with one major difference compared to other players’ avatars: my body was covered in electronics, traces that came to the surface of my skin, splitting the different core muscles into their sectors. Every muscle group on my upper body was sectioned off by skin-surface traces that all eventually ran to a mechanical spine on my back. I could feel hundreds, if not thousands of pairs of eyes concentrating on my mechanical spine at the same moment.
“Oh my, you truly are demonic,” Death Gun rasped with anticipation. “Now, it’s showtime!”
My only concern would be whether or not I’d be able to handle the effects of the cyberware sitting on my back.
The problem with this spinal implant was that it had a direct effect on my brain, not in the way that it could kill me like the old NERVEGEAR, but in how it could give me dangerous migraines that had the chance to knock me out of VR. I had to make sure that I didn’t go overboard with my usage, otherwise my brain would feel like a bakery.
With one command of my brain, everything slowed to a crawl and turned a deep blue.
Blood Machines Theme
Asuna’s breathing was quick as she sped down the hall towards a numbered room on the right. Not thirty minutes ago, Asuna and her group of friends practically interrogated government agent Seijirou Kikuoka, prying him of information regarding the Death Gun that was going around in Gun Gale Online and killed four players by this point, with the most recent shot fired in a desert. That meant that Death Gun had killed four people in Gun Gale Online, and consequently, in real life. They couldn’t pin exactly how Death Gun did it, but perhaps someone could provide some insight.
“Momma, they’ll be okay!” Yui piped up from Asuna’s phone. They had been on call since Asuna left their temporary home in Yggdrasil City for the real world for the Chiyoda Municipal Hospital. Yui’s program was currently hosted on a computer sitting in Kazuto’s room, and even though Yui’s processes weren’t running locally, the processing power required to stay on a phone call was enough to drain her phone battery more than average.
“Are you sure?” Asuna questioned back, almost doubting the confidence in the adoptive AI.
“Mhm, they’re Papa and Zenith after all! They can do anything, even if they’re separated!” This in itself made Asuna smile.
At times, she doubted if Kirito or Zenith could do something on their own, but they often could, even knowing the circumstances. Kirito was all strength and believed that all things–virtual or not–are real and tangible, with only the amount of information differentiating them.
Zenith on the other hand was on the side of morality that was much darker. Dark enough to the point that most people either wouldn’t or couldn’t get close enough to him to listen to his heart and his problems.
Admittedly, she felt sorry for Zenith. He fights on his own so much and he makes it out like everything’s fine, but.. She’s seen his weaker side before. So has Oyogu for that fact. They’ve both comforted him in trying times, but she felt that a test of his wits was coming closer and closer by the day… Maybe it was a test for all of Kirito’s friends, maybe even his family.
With a hasty swipe of a keycard, Asuna’s hair was brushed by a slight wind as the door pushed itself to the side. A nurse tended to two boys on a bed, but one was getting significantly more attention than the other. Upon entering the room, Asuna saw that they both had black hair and that one of them was awake…
“Kirito!”
“Papa!”
Both Yui and Asuna spoke at the same time, with Asuna rushing to his bedside.
“Asuna, Yui..! I’m okay, but I’m not too sure about Thomas..”
Thomas was breathing heavily, almost sporadically, and without proper rhythm. To describe the sight as frightening would be putting it lightly. It was like watching someone battle demons in a coma. Thomas was still awake, and not trapped in such a horrid thing as a coma, but it was not normal to see something like this… Was there an intense fight going on? Was something messing with his PTSD response? Maybe it could be…
“Yui put the MMOTomorrow stream on the TV, we need to see what’s happening in-game.”
“Ai-ai, papa!” Within just another moment, a webpage with multiple camera views of Gun Gale Online’s Northern City on a New Zealand island came into view and the battle that was coming from it.
Within the camera were primarily two players, one covered in black from head to toe, and another with his top removed with red hair and eyes. The one with red hair and eyes was quite obviously Zenith but with a peculiar item on his back.
“What.. is that, on Zenith’s back?” Asuna questioned, curious about the item on Zenith’s avatar’s spine.
“Looking now, mama!” After just a moment, “Player reports confirm that the prosthetic equipment on Zenith’s back known as ‘cyberware’ is called a Vladlenivetch!” The odd word at the end came as a surprise to Asuna and Kirito alike, but Yui quickly clarified that it was based on a Russian name with some characters thrown behind it. It actually had a similar counterpart in another game but couldn’t find any accurate references to its name.
In just two steps, Zenith seemed to blink behind Death Gun, leaving a colored trail behind his path, marking out exactly how he got behind. But at the same, Asuna could hear Thomas’s breathing quicken immensely, as well as his heart rate.
“Player reports dictate that Zenith experienced massive migraines if he abused the item, and due to its invasive nature on the player, once it’s equipped, it can’t be taken off, only disabled!” Yui piped up again after parsing some more information from the chaos of the interwebs.
“Shi..neffu… So that’s his name in that game he’s playing, and his avatar is right there, too?” Aki wondered right next to Asuna, looking somewhat mesmerized at the intense action. Or at Zenith’s avatar. Whichever was most compelling was truly unable to be told.
“And, that name…” Asuna muttered, looking at the tag above Death Gun.
“Ster..ben? Isn’t that supposed to be Steven?”
“No, that’s correct.” Aki quickly interjected. “It’s a German word, it means, ‘to die,’ or ‘death.’ We were taught it in medical school. Who would go through all the effort to find such a word..?”
“Someone who specializes in those things…” Kirito muttered. “If I could fight him, I’d be able to remember him, but Zenith is doing it on his own.”
“No, he’s not! We’re here to help him!” Yui shouted, almost forcing the speaker in Asuna’s phone to distort. “Mama, Papa, hold Zenith’s hand!!”
Asuna and Kazuto looked at each other, nodded, and smiled with purpose as they took Thomas’s hand. All eyes then returned to the TV screen, pressure rising with each pressing moment.
Lorn - Set me Free (from Furi original soundtrack)
“You’re wavering, kid! You’ll be dead by the end of next year!” Death Gun growled at me as I continued to dash and try to cut him from behind.
Nothing I tried worked, as it seemed like he could see a subtle path of where I was and guess where I would be heading. The Vladlenivetch was beginning to give me a headache, even as I used it in short bursts over longer periods. To be fair though, this was the longest period in which I had consistently used the Vladlenivetch outside of the occasional fun activity.
“Your soul will be mine, from the first moment we locked eyes in battle in that castle. I knew I’d kill you then and I’ll kill you now!”
It hit me. Who this person was, who I was in the final two years of my past life, and why I got that name in the first place.
I quickly swiped Death Gun’s S-Stock away once he lunged at me, forcing him to cross my previous position and turn around, almost stumbling.
“I remember now… You’re Xaxa. Red-eyed Xaxa of Laughing Coffin! And I remember my name too…”
Xaxa, pronounced like Zah-Zah, was a former head Laughing Coffin member. The details were still fuzzy, but I was sure to piece it back together with help from my friends.
“Do you now? I doubted you ever would since you could never live up to that title again.” Xaxa’s mask hissed at me, but I snapped back with a fiery statement.
“Yeah, I do. My name is Zenith, and my title was the Fallen Angel!”
I held the point of my light sword directly up to the sky, directly above my head–above my zenith if you could call it that.
“I know what I did was wrong, but this is a new me, a new life! As much as I’m scarred, I’ll make it as good as I can, and run the evil out of it!”
I pushed my left foot back and twisted my body so my right side was the only thing that directly pointed at Xaxa. My sword sat in my left hand as my right hand grabbed my pistol in its holster.
“And that extermination starts with you! Right here, right now!” In just another split second, I charged with my Vladlenivetch in use, getting just feet from his figure. Once in range, I swiped in every conceivable direction but felt hard steel block most angles of attack. It was possible that Xaxa read my movements that well, or slashed to block, then attempted a jab that couldn’t pull back in time to block me again. In either scenario, I was going faster than I ever could in Sword Art Online, even including the amount of pure time I had sitting in that bloodstained game alone.
Three seconds had passed already–for me, anyway. From testing, my Vladlenivetch had about a 50% effect on perceived time. That meant that someone who didn’t have the same piece of equipment on their avatar and activated at the same time saw me move 50% faster than if I was doing the same actions without the hardware. One of the only main downsides, aside from the migraines, is that the item took up two of my nine equipment slots, meaning I barely ever carried more than my clothing and guns with it.
Out of the blue abyss, a solid red line appeared to streak across my vision. It didn’t come from my gun, nor did it come from Xaxa’s. It came from Sinon. Why was she going to shoot? Was she going to shoot? Not with the fact that she had already been spotted long ago. Perhaps… No way… Was she using the Bullet Line to act as a deterrent of some sort? Holy shit, that’s something that Kirito would have thought of, let alone her! She couldn’t shoot due to my and Xaxa’s proximity, but I was confident in her ability to keep her muzzle trained on him, just to give me the slightest edge over him!
“You can’t win, and I’ll seal that fate once I kill the girl!” Xaxa spouted at me and hit me with an unsuspecting gut punch. It knocked me out of my Vladlenivetch effect and forced me to the ground. As I looked back up towards Xaxa, his form began to fade away, and I could see a smirk under that ugly mask of his… What was I going to do in such a short time span? I couldn’t get up and charge at him as that was likely to boot me out of the virtual world and end up killing Sinon.
I felt a temperature change in my right hand. My hand had left the holster of my pistol after falling, but it quickly snapped to the blood red grip and pulled the gun, and with five quick trigger pulls…
BANG BANG BANG!! BANG BANG!!!
Xaxa dropped to the ground, giving me a chance to get up and charge, and as my sword slice his body in twain…
“You’re mine,” I muttered into his ear, his soul, his effort, his passion for negativity; it would all be transformed into my benefit, and filtered through time and hope to bring positivity into my life.
As Xaxa’s torso dropped to the ground, I ran my light sword through his jaw and past his forehead, just to ensure he didn’t let out any further smug remarks. My lightsword actually pierced the ground, causing a bright red glow to come from the space that once occupied part of Xaxa’s mask and head.
I looked up towards the catwalk to see that… Sinon was gone. She was more than likely coming down to see me as I stood here without a shirt. Realizing how embarrassing this probably was, I quickly swiped my inventory open and put my shirt and jacket back on with the press of two buttons.
Once I had gotten comfortable in my clothes again, I saw Sinon and her hexagonal body armor in the side of my vision and managed to smile at her.
“Took you long enough to get him,” she giggled, coming within just a few feet and looking up at me.
“Hey, can’t rush the fight of a lifetime…”
We both had a good laugh over that comment and looked up towards the sky.
“You know, ever since I saw you in this battle royale, something about you always caught me as…familiar.”
“Oh? What do you mean?”
We locked eyes again as Sinon got just one step closer, which caused me to lean back ever so slightly.
“Your eyes… they’re actually red, aren’t they?”
For some reason, this question seemed to stand out to me. To a certain degree, something about her seemed to stand out as familiar in almost the same way.
“Why do you put your hair up like that anyway? Looks funny both here and in that alley.”
“So that was you!”
I just put my hands up in a surrendering motion. “You got me..” Another good laugh, and then we looked at each other again.
So this was the girl in the alleyway. She looked frail on the other side, and much stronger here, despite her previous breakdown that seemed to shatter something that distinctly separated her from her real-life problems.
“Say… you wouldn’t happen to live in that same area I saw you in, would you? I’m just nearby in a hospital that Kirito was also placed in.”
“A hospital? Why?”
“Monitoring and security purposes; so we don’t die if we get shot. Oh, speaking of location…”
I had to make a dicey and rude request of asking for Sinon’s address and information, not as a means of harming, but to check on her condition as soon as I was out of my Amusphere. She surprisingly obliged, but stated that I had to get there within minutes of getting back to the real world, or else she’d never talk to me again. That was a risk I was worth taking, to be entirely honest. On top of that, she told me her name, “Shino Asada.”
“Well? Now you’ve got to tell me who you are as well. I didn’t just give up my identity for nothing, did I?”
“No, no… My name is Thomas Kirigaya, but my birth name was Trenor. I’m… adopted, for the time being. Once I leave, I’ll get my old name back. Oh, and I live with Kirito at…”
It was said, and it was time to get the hell out of here.
…By blowing both of us up. Yeah, so Sinon gave me a grenade and activated it. With sublime confusion on my face, as I stressed with it in my hands, I felt her arms wrap around me. And…
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
We won the third Bullet of Bullets, but I would soon realize that the fight wasn’t over.