Monday morning.
Seth woke up and found himself in his old room. He turned his head to the side and saw no one next to him. He knew that he missed Neptune dearly. He wanted to bring her back with him, but Neptune said if she left, then Nepgear would have to take her place as Planeptune CPU and that would be a large burden place on her. She couldn't live with herself if she abandoned her sister just to run off with Seth. Even though she was lazy, she still did most of her duties as a CPU.
Seth shrugged off his feeling and got up to make breakfast for his son. Akikaze no longer slept in the same bed as Seth and stuck to his own. Akikaze had yet to transform in his CPU form since the fight with Rei Ryghts. Seth asked if he had any trouble transforming, but Akikaze said he didn't want to. He promised to transform only in the event of an emergency. Seth finished breakfast and woke up Akikaze so he could get ready for school.
During class.
Seth was not focusing in class right now. He was currently letting his mind wandered off.
"Seth are you alright?" Blaze asked in his mind.
"Yeah, I'm alright." He replied.
"Master we can tell that you're not feeling well, we are bonded together." Flame replied.
"Fine, I'm sad. Jeez I never felt that way before like I did with Neptune." Seth said finally admitting to his feelings. Blaze and Flame wished that they had a cure for Seth, but the only thing that would heal a wounded heart was time. Time Seth did not have the luxury of wasting in this universe.
"That's it!" Blaze suddenly shouted.
"What?" Seth said as he was now curious as what Blaze was thinking.
"Seth the only thing that will help you move on is time, so let's go to another dimension so you can have as much time as you need." Blaze said.
"Are you sure we should be abusing your inter-dimensional powers like that?" Seth asked.
"It will be fine. Now then do you have any preference for a dimension?"
"How about one that similar to this one, but no strange anything. No space wars, no giant monsters, and no superhuman beings. Just a normal universe." Seth said.
"Ok, I got it. I'll start searching and tell you what I find." Blaze said as she went to work. For the rest of the day everything seemed to be normal. Seth was able to hide any sign of trouble, but he swore his female friends could tell something was off.
On the weekend.
Seth was actually pretty excited to finally get a break from all his responsibilities. He had left Misato in control of the lunar base and placed Akikaze in the care of Amelia, Rattle, Gina, and Stella. With everything in check, Seth knew it was time to leave.
"Alright, [B.L.A.Z.E.] open the portal." Seth asked. Blaze materialized her bits and opened a portal to the unknown world. Without any hesitation he jumped into the void between time and space.
Kawagoe City
Seth arrived in a modern Japanese city. He looked around and everything seemed normal. There was nothing out of the ordinary, just that the year here was 2025. He asked Blaze to search for any nearby apartments that he could rent, and asked Flame to start searching for anything odd in this universe.
Blaze found a place with a decent rent and it was close to their current location. Flame found out something odd. In this universe there are a special type of video games called VRMMORPG which stands for Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online Role Play Games. This wasn't like simply putting on a pair of goggle and seeing and hearing the game, no it fully submerge the mind of the player in the game. The first one of these games was called Sword Art Online using the Nervgear device, but the there were only 10,000 copies given out and the creator of SAO decided to trap the players in the game. If they died in the game, then they would die in real life by having the device on top of their heads microwave their brains. Eventually the players were able to break free of SAO and gain their freedom.
Because of this the Amusphere was created. It was able to fully submerge the mind of the user like the Nervgear, but it was unable to destroy the mind of the user and was completely safe. Seth decided that he wanted to try this new type of gaming. He would buy one after he settled into his new apartment. He also had to pick which games he would want to try out first.
About Three months Later.
Seth had settled nicely into this world. He bought an Amusphere and decided to try out Gun Gale Online first, since he was pretty good with firearms and GGO gave out real world prizes. He started out pretty well. Within the first month he was able to buy a couple of weapons he really wanted. The first was a assault rifle and the second was a pair of weapons called Photon swords. The reason that he bought the photon swords was that they were very similar to Seth's lightsabers. He even found a way to curve them so they felt more natural to him. He had found a way to make his engineering mask in this game. Seth had made quite the name for himself. His screen name was Darth Dominus. As of yet had not met another player that uses photon swords so many people were shocked when he came in close and killed them in one strike. He had also learned that photon swords would disintegrate the bullets of live rounds and reflect energy weapons rounds.
Right now he was working as a bodyguard for a group of monster farmers. Also with them was another guard called Behemoth. The two were contracted after this farming group was attacked last week by a group of player hunters. They knew that these players would try to kill them again after they were successful last time.
Meanwhile With Sinon.
Sinon was currently watching through the scope of her sniper rifle Hecate II. She was tasked with giving covering fire for a group of Player Killers that hired her. She was looking at the group of monster hunters and saw that there were eight people in the group. Two of them were wearing hoods so their gear was hidden. She saw that one of the eight had a machine gun called a FN minimi which could do serious damage to the Player killers. She was ordered to kill the person with the FN Minimi first then give them sniper support. Sinon loaded a round into the rifle's chamber and fired at the man with the machine gun. Her round hit. She quickly aimed for one of cloaked figures, but he dodge it by tilting his head.
"Dammit. Objective one completed. Objective two failed." Sinon said to the leader of the player killers. She looked through her rifle scope and saw that one of the hooded figures had a Minigun, and the second had an assault rifle with a Grenade launcher.
"A Minigun!?" Sinon said in shock. She knew that they were in danger. That Minigun would rip her group apart. She saw a bullet line heading her way.
"Shit!" Sinon said as she ran from her location. Where she was, she heard an explosion.
"Was that a round from the grenade launcher? That's impossible! The effective range for that is only 400 meters. I'm 1,500 meters away." Sinon was in shock that someone was able to use a weapon five times outside out its effective.
Sinon quickly ran towards the other members of her team so she could help them from a closer range. This didn't help much. The second the group was about to launch their counter strike, the second masked figure began to charge at them.
"They're mine!" Seth said to behemoth. The man with the Minigun decided to sit back and watch what Seth had planned.
"Is he stupid?!" One of the members of Sinon's team said. They began to open fire on the charging man. Seth brought out the two photon swords which shocked the player killers when he started to block their bullets with the photon swords.
"That's impossible!" One man yelled just before he was slashed in the chest causing his HP to deplete.
"Who the hell is he?!" Seth continued to hack and slash his way through the players until it was just Sinon and him. She fired a round from her sniper rifle, and was shocked when Seth blocked the round. She rushed to load another round in the chamber but Seth closed the distance between them and struck Sinon down.
About two weeks later. With Sinon.
Sinon was walking through the streets SBC Glocken when she was approached by a girl with long black hair.
"Um...excuse me?" The girl said.
"What?" Sinon replied.
"I'm a little new here, could you please show me around." Kirito had converted his ALO account to GGO under the request of Kikuoka Seijirou, a government agent. He was tasked with finding out as much information as he could on a player calling himself Death Gun. This player apparently has the power to kill a player in real life using his gun which was also called Death Gun. There was already two deaths but It was impossible for a player to kill someone in real life with the Amusphere. So now he had to find out who this Death Gun is, but he had no clue on how to buy any gear. So he was forced to asked a player of GGO for help.
"Sure. Follow me." Sinon said to the girl. After introducing themselves to one another they arrived at the main weapons shop. Kirito gained a lot of funds after completing bullet dodging game, and with it he bought a photon sword and a Five-seven handgun. Now the two of them were running late to sign up for the upcoming Bullet of Bullets tournament. They somehow made it to the registration. At the registration booth, someone spoke to them.
"Ah your that sniper girl." A male voice said. Sinon and Kirito turned their heads and saw a man with black hair and white highlights.
"Do I know you?" Sinon said.
"Oh, this might help." Seth said as he put on his mask to which Sinon eyes instantly grew in shock.
"You're the one that deflected my shot!" Sinon said as she remembered being cut down by the photon blade.
"I would love to stay and chat, but I need to get going. Hope to see you in the finals." Seth said as he left the Kirito and Sinon. The two of them quickly signed up and waited for their matches to start.
Meanwhile with Seth.
Seth was placed in section B of the tournament preliminary rounds. He had to win either first or second place to take part in the final match of the bullet of bullets tournament. He saw that his first match was against someone called Kakouton. He had the appearance of a old Chinese General and according to his combat record he liked to use a CQ311 assault rifle. Which was the Chinese copy of the M16A1 assault rifle. Seth knew that this battle would be best if her could close the distance between him and Kakouton. He was transported into the battle map and the countdown started.
"Let's make this quick." Seth as he wanted to finished this match as soon as he could.
The countdown finished and Seth spawned in a jungle type area. He started to move throughout the jungle looking for his target. He found a waterfall and the moment he got close to the waterfall someone shot at him.
"Found him." Seth said as he took cover behind a tree. Kakouton kept firing from his assault rifle until he had to reload the clip. Seth used this chance to change his location. Seth moved towards another nearby tree and began to open fire on the Chinese General.
Kakouton took cover behind a couple of rocks. The next thing Kakouton knew was that he felt a burning sensation in his chest. Seth threw one of his photon swords at his opponent and it landed perfectly in the man's chest. The match was over with Seth declared the winner.
The Next day.
Seth had won other matches needed to enter the Bullet of Bullet final match and was excited to take part in it, but he was also cautious. Blaze and Flame told him about a few recent deaths involving players in GGO and was wondering what caused their deaths. He decided to dig up a little information. After learning that a player wearing a strange metal mantle mask called Sterben was most likely this person calling himself Death Gun, he decided to seek this player out. Seth was shocked to learned that Sterben was also taking part in the Bullet of Bullet tournament. He decided to asked him a few if he could engage him in conversion. If he need to, Blaze and Flame would hack his Amusphere, but in order to do that he had to stay close to him for at least a minute. With his objective in mind Seth readied himself for the tournament.
Seth spawned in a jungle and took out his map. He was shocked to see at how large this map was. He was going to have trouble finding someone if he didn't start moving.
About twenty minutes later.
A satellite scan occurs every 15 minutes during the Bullet of Bullets giving the location of the other players so that they would actually be able to kill each other due to the maps size. Seth was closing in on two players that seemed to be fighting each other. One was named Dyne while the other was Pale Rider. Seth moved towards a bridge where he saw Dyne firing at pale rider, rider was far more skilled. He was easily able to dodge all of the incoming bullets and closed the distance between him and Dyne.
"Dammit!" Dyne cursed as he was forced to reload. As he changed the magazine Pale Rider closed in and shot Dyne at point blank. Now on his knees, Dyne watched in horror as Pale Rider loaded a round into his shot gun and aimed at his head. With a pull of the trigger Pale Rider killed Dyne eliminating him from the tournament. Just as Pale Rider was about to leave he was hit by a stun round by someone.
"What?" Kirito said. He was next to Sinon who he convince not to shoot him right now, and the two watched Pale Rider kill Dyne and were shocked when they saw Pale Rider go down for no apparent reason.
"There's a strange light on his avatar." Kirito said. Sinon looked at Pale Rider and saw something glowing on him.
"A stun bullet?" Sinon said as she saw the wound on Pale Rider. Kirito just then noticed someone on the bridge.
"How long has he been there?" Kirito asked as the person he knew as death gun appeared.
"Silent assassin?!" Sinon said.
"Is that his gun's name?"
"Yeah. It's an extremely rare sniper rifle that comes equipped with a silencer." Sinon stated. As Sterben got closer to the paralyzed Pale Rider he brought out a pistol, Kirito begged Sinon to shoot Sterben. Just as Sinon was about to shoot, a barrage of bullets were fired at Sterben followed by a smoke grenade. Then something charged out of the forest. Pale Rider got up and grabbed his weapon, but before he could shoot, a red photon blade decapitated him. Taking him out of the game. Once Sterben moved away from the smoke the mysterious attacker revealed himself. He was wearing a strange metal mask and had two red curved photon swords.
"Who are you?" Sterben asked.
"Oh, I'm just another player. But if you must know my name, just call me Seth. So Mr. Death Gun, why don't you tell me how you are able to kill another player. I've got a theory, but if your powers are real, then shoot me and end my life." Seth suggest to Sterben, who responded by firing several rounds from his Silent assassin sniper rifle. Seth used his photon blades to slash the rounds before they could hit him. As Sterben could tell that his plan was beginning to fall apart, he decided to run.
"Wait!" Seth yelled as he chased after the masked man. He didn't notice that he had to more people following him.
In the City.
Seth had followed Sterben towards the city section of this massive map and tried to hunt down his target, but the city alone was massive in size. Seth came across another player by the name of Musketeer X and quickly ended her participation in the tournament. This was when Seth encountered that girl with long hair that was with Sinon earlier. He had yet to be noticed. Seth ignited the photon swords and jumped down towards Kirito. Kirito was able to bring out his photon sword just in time to block Seth's attack.
"You know it not nice to follow someone." Seth said to the person with the purple photon blades.
"Sorry, I followed the wrong person." Kirito said as moved away from Seth and brought out his five-seven pistol. He fired several rounds at Seth who easily blocked the bullets. Seth charged towards Kirito.
"I don't have time to deal with you! I have to catch that murder!" Seth said as he charged in which instantly caught Kirito attention.
"Wait! Are you after that masked man as well?" Kirito asked as he was blocked Seth's strikes..
"Yeah, you too?" Seth said.
"That rights. May be we can help each other out." Kirito said as he put away his weapon. Seth lowered his weapons as well.
"If were gonna work together, we should at least introduce ourselves. My name is Seth, pleasure to meet you." Seth said.
"My name is Kirito, likewise."
"Before we go off to find this guy, Kirito, are you by any chance a guy?" Seth asked.
"Yeah, were you confused by my avatar?" Kirito said.
"I thought it was odd the way you moved around was different then a women, but as anyway, we need to quickly find Sterben. He's the one calling himself Desth Gun."
"Sterben is his name, oh crap! I forgot about Sinon!" Kirito said.
"Sinon?"
"She was the blue hair girl that was with me when we sign up yesterday."
"Oh the sniper chick. She's help you as well?"
"Yeah, we better get going." The two of them began to move on their way to meet up with Sinon. As they moved closer to way they were support to meet Sinon they saw her on the ground and a cloaked figure had a pistol pointed at her. Seth instantly reacted by opening fire on Sterben with his assault rifle. Sterben reacted by moving away from Sinon. At the same time Kirito grabbed a smoke grenade and threw it towards Sinon.
"Kirito grab Sinon, I'll cover you!" Seth shouted as he continued to aim at Sterben, who had taken cover behind a stone pillar. Kirito used the cover of the smoke and grabbed Sinon along with her sniper rifle. The pair rushed towards a group of bikes that were nearby while avoiding sniper fire from Sterben.
"Kirito, you know how to drive these things?" Seth asked.
"Yeah, get on!" Kirito said as he put down Sinon in the bike. Seth jumped in and Kirito began to drive. As they sped off, Sterben began to follow them on a mechanical horse.
"Shit! Do something!" Kirito said to Seth as he was busy driving.
"He's mine." Seth said as he brought out his Scar assault rifle. As Seth aimed at Sterben, Sinon looked behind and saw Sterben chasing them. She entered a full blown PTSD meltdown.
"NO! I DON'T WANT TO DIE!" Sinon said as she saw Sterben had out the type 54 pistol out. She grabbed onto Seth and started to tremble. She was shaking so much that she was affecting Seth's aim.
"Dammit, I can't get a clear shot." Seth said as was firing at Sterben. Seth saw that Sterben's next shot was going to hit Sinon in her head.
"Get down!" Seth forced Sinon head down and took a bullet in his right elbow. Seth grunted in pain as the bullet entered his elbow but he was able to fire his last grenade launcher round at Sterben. It missed and hit a truck instead. The truck exploded. Seth saw that Sterben escape the explosion and the trio escape to a cave in the desert area of the map. Inside the cave the two boys had to work on calming down Sinon. She was still trembling. Seth took off his mask and held her hands he crouched down to eye level.
"Hey, Sinon look at me." Seth said while holding her hands.
"My name is Seth and I'm a friend." Seth said not breaking eye contact.
"Friend?" Sinon said as she was starting to calm down.
"That's right." Seth said to reassure the girl. Seth continued to hold the girl's hand as she was calming down. Eventually she calmed down enough to tell Seth and Kirito what happens to her as a small girl. She was at a bank with her mother when a robber, high on narcotics, came inside and held the place up. The robber was about to shoot the female bank teller when Sinon hit the man's hand and took the gun from him. Without any time to think Sinon had discharged the weapon twice ending the man's life. The weapon that the man had was a type 54 black star. Now in real life Sinon was terrified of even seeing a real gun.
"Sinon, I'm sorry to hear that happen to you, but you had to do what you had to do. If you didn't shoot I'm sure that man would have killed you and the others in the bank." Seth said.
"It's easy to say that when you've never killed anyone!" Sinon said clearly in anger. "Who would ever want to be next to a person that taken someone's life?! Why are you even holding the hands of a murder?!" Sinon said as she tired to pull her hands away, but Seth refused to let go.
"Sinon, how do my hands feel?" Seth asked.
"What the hell are you saying, let go of me?!"
"Sinon I'll let go once you've answered my question. How do my hands feel to you right now?" Sinon gave in.
"They're warm alright!"
"Sinon do you realize that you're holding the hands of a man that has taken dozens of lives on the battlefield." Seth's words instantly caught the ears of Sinon and Kirito.
"I was order to take the lives of my enemies. I really wished that there was another way, but I had to do it."
"How can you act the way you do? Don't the lives you've taken weigh a heavy burden on you?" Sinon asked.
"It does weigh a lot of my mind, but I can't allow it to slow my down. I have to keep on living for the lives I've taken." In reality, the amount of lives Seth has taken most likely number in the hundreds of thousands, but if he said that the two people listening to him most likely wouldn't believe him.
A couple of minutes later.
Now with the blue hair sniper calm and cooled the trio had to try and figure out a way to learn Sterben's true identity. Kirito said that he almost remembers Sterben's avatar name in Sword art Online. They realized that Sterben's pistol didn't actually have the power to kill someone in real life as Seth was fine after being shot with it. Kirito had a theory that Sterben had people in real life that injected them with a drug in real life that would kill them as the Amusphere left a person in a coma basically. They also realized that there was another player still in the match. Yamikaze was the Second place winner of the bullet of bullets tournament last time. He was clearly a threat, and most likely try to eliminate them. He was a player in the tournament. They decided to split up. Seth would go after yamikaze and Kirito and Sinon would go after Sterben.
Seth was now in the middle of the desert and awaiting Yamikaze's arrival. He decided to speed things up by firing his last few rounds into the air. Seth heard the sound of someone charging. He saw something pushing up a ton of sand into the air.
"He's faster then I thought." Seth said as he prepared himself. He ignited his two red photon swords and blocked a barrage of bullets that came from Yamikaze.
Meanwhile with Kirito.
Kirito had moved towards Sterben and was already fighting the murderous gamer. He was starting to remember the raid he helped in to capture the laughing coffin guild members where he took three lives. He remembered that one of the members had a skull mask with red eyes, but he just couldn't remember the name.
Their battle started once Sinon and Sterben shot each other's scopes off of their sniper rifles making them useless. Kirito now engaged the fellow SAO survivor with his photon sword, but was shocked when Sterben brought out what appeared to be a Estoc type of weapon. It was made out of Starship metal and was able to clash with the photon sword. Now the two entered a close-quarters battle and entered a bind. In the bond Sterben noticed the look in Kirito's eyes.
"You can't remember my name, that to be expected considering, you never heard it." Sterben's words instantly cause Kirito to remember that he confronted a player who was captured in the raid and told him didn't even want to hear the person speak to him. Kirito was sure that he may have heard the player's name before the raid.
Back with Seth.
Seth was doing a good job at blocking all of incoming bullets, but launching a counterattack was completely out of the question. That's when Seth suddenly remember that he still had a grenade and a smoke grenade left. He threw the smoke grenade towards Yamikaze.
Yamikaze thought nothing of the smoke and moved out of the smokescreen. Once out, he narrowly avoided a photon sword. Thinking the danger was over Yamikaze aimed at Seth. He didn't expect a second photon sword to be coming his way.
"Impossible! You predicted my movements!" Yamikaze yelled just before the photon sword pierced his body ending his participation in the tournament.
"Alright that he's finished I need to regroup with Kirito." Seth said as he retrieve his photon swords and now moved to join Kirito and Sinon.
Back to Kirito.
Kirito was taking a lot of damage and was still no closer to figuring out who was the person that was playing Sterben. He was trying his damnedest to try and remember who this person was in Sword Art Online and he was sure that it had something to do with those red eyes. Now he started to remember the briefing he had before the beginning of the raid. One of identified members of Laughing Coffin was a person person that wore a skull mask with red eyes. Red eye Xa-Xa.
"Red eye Xa-Xa! That's your name!" Kirito shouted now that he remembered. Sterben cursed as his cover was blown. He was going to have to pay for his crimes, but not before he could take Sinon life. If he could just kill her then his partner in real life would take her life, but before he could attack again, he was shot in the knees by a SMG.
Seth arrived after picking up Yamikaze's gun and now used it to give Kirito a little extra help. With Sterben down on his knees, this was Kirito's chance to finish off this whole nightmare. With once slash, Kirito depleted the last of Sterben's health points ending the terror of Death Gun. With the threat gone, the trio decided to regroup.
With everything over the group decided that they needed to figure out a way to ended everything, but they also needed to figure out where exactly are they. Seth and Sinon were shocked to learn that they were living in the same apartment complex and where just one floor away from each other and the fact that Kirito was at a nearby hospital.
Seth said that he would check on Sinon in a bit, even though she was adamantly against it, but he insisted. Kirito said the he might check up on her as well. While they were talking, Seth brought out both of his photon sword and ignited them into Kirito and Sinon. The two looked in horror as the red photon sword exited out of their bodies.
"You bastard." Sinon said before she turned into light particles. Kirito said nothing as he disappeared and Seth was declared the winner of the bullet of bullets tournament.
Back in the real world with Sinon.
Sinon or rather in real life her name is Asada Shino, awoke from the Amusphere feeling good that she was able to help stop Sterben, but fearful for her life. She checked every nook and cranny of her apartment but found nothing so she guess whoever was in her room was gone now. She was a little spooked when she heard the doorbell ring. She approach the door very carefully and look for the peephole. There she saw her friend Shinkawa Kyouji. It looked like Kyouji what's holding something in his hands. It was a cake.
"Shinkawa?" Shino said to her friend.
"Hey Asada-san, sorry about what happened in the match but I brought you this cake to cheer you up. Can I come in?" Kyouji asked.
"Sure." Shino said as she allowed Kyouji into her apartment.
"Man that was a one battle, but I'm sure you'll do better in the next tournament."
"Thanks." Shino said.
"Um..Asada-san?!" Kyouji said.
"Yes?" Shino said.
"Hou told me to wait, didn't you?"
"Shinkawa?"
"You told me that if I waited, you'd be mine someday, right?"
"Huh?"
"So I..."
"What's gotten into you?"
"I'll stay with you forever. You don't need to rely on anyone else. I'll protect you forever, okay?" Shino saw a crazed look in Kyouji's face. She knew she had to run, but before she could act, Kyouji embraced her in a tight hug.
"Asada, I love you. I love you, my Asada. My Sinon."
"S-Stop it!" Shino said as she kicked him away.
"No Asada... Don't you betrayed me as well."
"Shinkawa?" As Kyouji got closer to Shino he pulled out some sort of syringe filled with Succinylcholine that would stop the heart of anyone if a large enough dose was injected into the body and it didn't take much to kill most people. Just as Kyouji was about to press the syringe next to Shino someone broke down the door of her apartment.
"Do not move a single muscle, raise your hand slowly." The voice said. Shino looked towards the person that broke down the door and saw a familiar face. She couldn't believe that Seths avatar looked exactly like he did in real life. Seth saw that Kyouji was about to try and inject Sinon with the drug in the syringe. He used the force to stop Kyouji movements and aimed his Taser at the boy and shot him. A current of 50,000 volts entered his body causing him to twitch violently. He dropped us a range and fell to the ground still twitching.
"Sinon you alright?" Seth asked the teen. He was answered by a crying teenage girl running towards him and hugging him saying how scared she was. While comforting the girl, Seth called the police on her cell phone and sure enough they came and took away Shinkawa. Later another man came to the apartment and found a two people near a bed. The girl was laying on the bed while the man was sitting on floor holding the girl's hand as she laid down.
"You by any chance Kirito?" Seth asked.
"I'm guessing your Seth?"
"You got him." Seth said as he extended his hand. The two boys shook hands because they meeting the first time in person and introduced themselves to each other. Seth Was intrigued by the young man named Kirigaya Kazuto.