Author's Note

Yo, what's poppin' everybody? You may have noticed this already if you've tried to reread this story in the past few days, but I acquired a new beta reader. His name is One More Guy, and he went through all the existing chapters of this fic before getting to this one, but this is the first new chapter release which was given exclusively to him to edit. But anyway, if you didn't notice his edits popping up on TB, I encourage you to give at the very least the last few chapters a reread, especially the Kiriko vs Johnny Black chapter, which got almost totally revamped and improved heavily as a result.

Also, just thought I'd take a moment to plug the vehicle by which I got to know Guy: a Discord server I'm an admin of, Ace Fiction (which is unironically a name pun on the fact that I'm aro ace. So apparently I'm the server's unofficial mascot or something lol). If you're interested in chatting it up with me, TheSilentSwordsman, One More Guy, and my other author friends on that server, then feel free to join at (spaces removed, add "dot com slash" after the first word) discordapp invite / YU8A6Bp

Anyway, read on!

Gun Gale Online: The Swordswoman

Transcendent Bonds

Chapter Twenty: Strength

"Well, I mean, someone has to break the news to the assault team that Diavel is dead," Kiriko replied with a nod. "May as well be us."

"I'll be there to help then. Just message me when you wake up," Argo replied, making her way to the door before lightly touching its handle.

She waited a second. Just a second, to see if anything else needed to be said.

But once the silence of that was up, she quietly pulled the door open and left the room.

I couldn't sleep.

Sure, it may have been a little early to be trying… at first. But I had a feeling I knew exactly what the cause of my unrest was, and that definitely wasn't it, not even from the beginning.

Argo was supposed to tell Sachi that she could come in when she left. But either she didn't do it or Sachi didn't listen… because Argo left over two hours ago, and the door hadn't so much as cracked open since Argo closed it on the way out.

Not that I'd been looking at it much, though – just the occasional glance over my shoulder before the reality that Sachi wasn't coming any time soon sunk in. I'd chosen to lie back down facing the far wall of the room so she wouldn't be able to see that I still was in a pretty sorry state…

But that alone wouldn't have stopped me from noticing her open the door. I would've heard it, seen the lighting of the room change, if ever so slightly. None of that had happened yet. And the longer I waited, the more I came to realize how badly I'd fucked up letting her see me before I entered our room.

Sachi had always hated conflict in the real. Not to mention, she could easily match my intellect if not surpass it. But because she didn't want the girl who bullied me over my spotless grades and test scores to target her as well, she intentionally sabotaged herself to make them fall short.

Her older brother had once explained her behaviour was a consequence of the remarriage that led to her birth. Apparently, her brother's mom found the timing of their divorce to be too suspicious, and had been picking fights with her dad ever since.

In addition to this, I also knew that she had a fear and hatred of death which some people might find obsessive and out of character. No one had ever said exactly why, but it wasn't hard to connect the dots. Her mother ended up contracting a terminal illness and died when Sachi was very young, as I'd found when I searched her mother's name on the net and found an obituary record of her. From there, figuring out why Sachi hated the idea of dying was quite obvious.

And what had happened earlier? The Black Cats were attacked, I had to save them. What happened when I got back from my fight with Johnny? I told them all that the only reason they were even alive was because they were never the real target in the first place – they were just a diversion in order to make sure PoH's real target bit the bullet before I could save him.

No wonder she never came back to the room with me – I combined the two things she hated most into one problem to deal with. She was smart enough to realize that PoH's flimsy promise not to go after them again couldn't be trusted, especially in the wake of what I'd said about my encounter with PoH's ace, Johnny.

Someone who was strong enough to fight me when I had killer intent and survive the confrontation.

Even if he'd ran away, that feat spoke for itself. Especially considering that until that crazy power I got out of nowhere leveled the playing field, he straight up dominated me and toyed with me the whole fight.

Point was, with an ace on my level if not flat out above it batting for his team, all PoH needed to do in order to continue leveraging the Black Cats to take out high profile targets by keeping me away from them was obtain one more strong player. They wouldn't have to be on my or Johnny's level, all they'd need in order to work was to be strong enough to take out his targets.

Because if PoH sent Johnny to hold the Black Cats hostage, there wouldn't be a damn thing I could do about it.

And even if obtaining one more wasn't possible, which was a ridiculous idea considering how lucrative successful PKs were for experience, gear and money, all he'd have to do is not tell anyone who his targets were and he could kill them completely under the radar.

Which actually brought me to one more thing which was just as scary for me as it probably was for Sachi. PoH had known exactly where the Black Cats were, exactly when he needed to. It was almost like someone was informing him of their location.

To accuse one of my friends of being a spy wouldn't be outlandish in this situation, but it was too narrow-minded of an approach. First off, none of the Black Cats would have a motive at this point, and though Asuna might have potentially had one if she were, I dunno, insane, Argo would've known about it if she'd started tailing me and, frankly, I would've been able to tell. Secondly, all one needed to consider in order to make all of my allies being innocent suddenly be the most plausible theory was the existence of a skill, one crucial to certain types of criminal players' builds.

The «Hiding» Extra Skill.

It was available from level one, and since every player started with two skill slots, that meant anyone who'd been using it consistently since launch day would be at a level of proficiency that you would need a decently leveled «Scout» Extra Skill in order to detect them when they chose to make use of the Hiding skill's namesake function.

And since I'd seen signs of PoH's activity since the first zone, him having an associate with the Hiding skill leveled to such a point was not an impossible idea. The basic «Hide» function only made you harder to spot visually, meaning I still would've heard this hypothetical player tailing us, but one of the mods you could use skill points to purchase at level fifty would nullify that weakness by a factor of the Extra Skill's overall proficiency.

The game had progressed enough that someone who'd been leveling it since day one by using it consistently would have leveled it at least over a hundred, maybe over a hundred and a quarter if they'd really been getting their skill points' worth out of it.

And, coincidentally, I'd met with PoH that day, when he made me see that vision he called a memory and blatantly told me his target. But that in particular really did have to be a coincidence. I didn't see the Black Cats again after that until after Diavel died.

But I couldn't rule out the possibility of him planting a Hiding skill spy just because of that. The literal day before that, I met with PoH as well, when I broke him apart from XaXa… if he were to somehow have been expecting me to arrive when he started talking to XaXa, then him having a spy tail me made perfect sense. If he wanted his plan of using the Black Cats as lure to keep me away from Diavel work out perfectly, he'd need a spy to know their exact whereabouts and a reason to keep me near them. He had both.

The spy wouldn't be able to get in our inn rooms, but in order to keep tabs on their locations in the field, that wouldn't even be necessary…

The sound of the door clicking open roused me from my thoughts, just in time to notice the shift in the lighting against the far wall. Someone had opened the door to my room. For just an instant, I froze, but before I had my wits about me again, I heard the footsteps of someone walking in, followed by the two clicks of someone closing the door and locking it immediately afterwards.

So it's Sachi… I thought, somewhat relieved. I'm glad she's okay, but she probably doesn't want to talk to me right now, considering how long it took her to come in…

My breathing resumed and evened out as I did my best impression of a sleeping person I could. I'd worried her enough for a week in this one day alone as is… the last thing I needed to do to her was let her know I couldn't even sleep.

She seemed to have bought it, walking up to the bed without pause and switching equips to her nightclothes as if she suspected nothing. The irony hit me that at the height of our friendship IRL, she'd have been able to tell I was awake pretty easily… but with how long it had been since we had contact before I met them by chance, I guess she'd forgotten the signs.

Whatever the heck they were.

She never told me how she could tell when I was faking.

As she crawled into bed beside me, she wrapped her arms around my waist, and I nearly choked on virtual air as I tried my damnedest not to give away that I was still awake. I know I was expecting something of this nature to happen anyway, but… not while I was pretending to be asleep! I could both feel and hear my heart's frantic beating as I continued to lie there, hoping beyond hope that she wouldn't find me out.

"Kiriko…"

Crap, crap, crap, she can totally tell! I'm screwed—

"Sorry for making you wait on me. After everyone else went to bed…" she started in a soft voice bordering on a whisper, her word choice leaving it ambiguous as to whether she knew I was awake or not. "I ended up sitting out in front of our room, thinking about everything that happened today."

Was it just me… or did she not sound upset? Like, not even a little bit?

"About how you had to protect us… because we weren't strong enough to defend ourselves."

She was right, but… why was she so calm about this? She didn't sound shaken, she sounded… resolute. As though she had her heart set on something I just couldn't see yet. But what could that thing just out of reach of my prying eyes be, exactly? What epiphany had this day's events made her come to? What had they taught her?

"I won't lie… when you said what you did upon getting home… at first, I was really scared," she kept talking, her voice holding a slightly self-deprecating tone. But then, it changed midway back to that voice so full of calm resolve she displayed just a few seconds ago. "But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it wasn't just fear I was feeling. There was something else there, a feeling that burned even stronger."

Something else…?

I felt the arms around my waist tighten, and wondered just what was on her mind which made her do that.

"I was in pain… because the person I love was in pain much worse than I could possibly imagine, and I had no idea what to do about it," she concluded, dropping quite the bombshell on me.

She was in pain because she couldn't make me feel better? That was the emotion which dwarfed her fear? My thoughts froze for a moment, trying to process this discrepancy between my perception of Sachi and what I was currently witnessing.

But my pain is because of my own failures. My failure to protect Diavel, and also my failure to avenge him after he died. It was a hundred percent my fault! Why did she feel like it was even just in part her responsibility to fix?

"That's when I realized it. I want to get stronger," she kept going, passion in her voice that I'd never heard from her before, especially about anything resembling this. "Both as a player and as a person. Strong enough to stand at your side, and support you. To not be a liability in battle like earlier, and to be able to pick you back up when you're feeling down."

After hearing that, I couldn't stop myself from thinking she was far from being just a 'friend' sticking around out of convenience. She was truly there for me. Did I even deserve her?

Unaware of my inner thoughts, she continued to speak in that low, soft whisper of hers. "I know it's a little cowardly to say all this to you when you're sleeping, but… someday I'll work up the nerve to tell you for real, just you watch—"

She froze mid-sentence.

"Kiriko?!" She blurted out in an exasperated whisper, surprised to find my hand on top of hers.

I couldn't stay quiet anymore. I couldn't pretend I didn't hear her – that her heartfelt sentiments didn't reach me. Not after she made it so clear to me how she really felt about me.

Not after she made it so apparent just how much she cared.

"No need," I told her, smiling even though I knew she couldn't see it. "Because I heard every word of it already. And I can't tell you just how much it all meant to me."

I… no one had ever cared that much about me. Not even my own family. I may have been close with my "sister" for a time, but… that didn't compare to this. Sachi cared about me so much that she now aspired to overcome one of her own most powerful vices, her fear of death, just for the sake of feeling like she measured up to me.

After what I did to her… she shouldn't even want anything to do with me. And yet here she is… loving me this much.

"To be brutally honest… I don't understand it. The meaning and depth of this emotion called 'love,'" I admitted to both myself and to her, squeezing her hand within mine.

"I can't help it. I've never experienced it before. I don't know what it's like to fall in love or to be loved. But…"

The me of the past ran away from it. When Sachi confessed to me, I felt afraid. Scared of a world which I didn't think I could comprehend. I grew up with a fake, superficial family where I couldn't tell whether they cared about me or hated me. And because of that, because my aunt lost boyfriend after boyfriend. My cousin didn't understand why her mom and I couldn't just get along. I never felt loved in the home. Even my sister, who was the closest person to me for most of my life, felt more like a friend than a family member.

When Sachi told me she was in love with me… I thought I understood what that meant. My aunt's boyfriends all said the same thing to her. And yet, they all left her high and dry, never to be heard from again.

In the same way, I couldn't rid of a hunch deep down. The hunch that told me Sachi would just... discard me after she got tired of me. The feeling of indistinct emptiness I harbored every time that thought of losing the best friend I'd ever had surfaced pushed me away.

But…

This love of hers that she felt for me, even after I cut her off, even after months on end of us not even talking to each other a single time, remained a constant. It didn't go away. And rather than try to leave me, she did everything she could to remain by my side. She tried to give up on her love so I would feel comfortable around her again.

And when I fell to my lowest point, despite not knowing how to help me, she still cared so much that she wanted to overcome one of her fatal flaws just for the sake of feeling like she could stay with me, even though I never asked her to go that far. Such a desire might have been misguided, sure, but the mental strength needed to make such a choice…

"But you know what? I'm okay with learning what it's like to experience it," I continued, interlacing our fingers. "And I'm okay with you being the one to teach me, Sachi. But there's one thing I want to set straight."

"What is it…?" Her query came in a soft hum, just above a whisper.

I could hear the fear in her voice, feel the tensing of the muscles in her arms, as if she were afraid I was going to drop some sort of upsetting bombshell. Too bad for her…

Because I had no intention of doing anything like that.

"If you truly want to get stronger, that's great and I won't stop you," I started, turning around in her arms to face her and resting my forehead against hers as my hand came up to cup her cheek. As she began to blush from the contact, I continued. "But don't feel like you have to do that to stay at my side. That's total bull, you're fine for that as you are now. We clear?"

She silently nodded. Well, about as well as one could nod when their forehead was touching that of someone else. Satisfied, I turned back around, resting my hands on hers again. "Good. Now let's get some sleep. We've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow."

After setting an alarm via the menu, I fell asleep in her cozy, warm embrace.

Author's Note

I was originally gonna put another scene after this, but the longer I thought about it, the less I could justify doing it and taking away from the emotional impact that this scene would have on its own. Then as I was in the midst of internal conflict about this, Guy finished beta reading it and was like, "The fuck's the matter with you? You need to post this on its own." And here we are. (Guy: Can confirm)

Also, fun little side note about when Guy first got his hands on this chapter: much like with the KiriArgo fluff last chapter, Guy's initial read of this was followed by intense fanboying over the fluff. And this fanboying was coming from a dude who loves drama, so that's gotta mean something. Either way, was fucking hilarious to watch unfold. XD (Guy: I DO NOT CONFIRM. Damn it…)

Anyway, yeah. That's about all from me. See you next time!