Sword Art Online - Alternative Reality

Valentines Concert CHP. 2

With the teleportation effects fading, the first thing I noticed on the 37th floor was that its usually empty plaza was now packed full. In this sea of people, I saw countless poster items with differing statements of 'Go Yuna!' or "We love you Yuna!", and even "Long live the Music Goddess!"

"Man...Naut is gonna need to get his act together sooner or later..."

Making my way through the crowds, I hunkered down by one of the alleyways near the teleport gate as I waited for Asuna. She would probably take 10 minutes at most, but the last thing I wanted was to get pushed by the human waves towards the massive theater that was half-embedded into a mountainside.

The general mood of the 37th floor could be described as 'classical', greek-based architecture and homes lines the streets, and the restaurant I was hiding by right now was famous for its selections of gyros. The amphitheater where Yuna was hosting her concert was a mix of the open-aired greek ones, but also had rooms in the ceiling as the edge of the mountain acted as a roof. It was big enough to fit at least 1000 people, but I wouldn't be surprised if even the walkways were filled considering just how many people were around here. Supposedly the ceiling rooms were VIP rooms, and Yuna had set it up that Asuna and I had one, so at least we wouldn't be affected by this swarm.

"Hm?"

Sensing a gaze from somewhere in the crowd, I saw 3 hooded figures huddled together, one in blue, one in pink, and one in brown. I couldn't make out what they were saying as they were almost completely blocked by the crowd of players, but I had a good idea of who two of them were, and what they were planning to do. With a quick look around, I went behind some crates and hopped onto the roof of the restaurant as the figures continued to discuss their evil plans. It was the brown one that looked up first and quickly scanned the area after seeing that I disappeared and moved the group over to where I was standing. Her Search skill was probably maxed out, by my Hiding was well into the 900's, and with my equipment, I was at a solid 90% hiding rate, so she wouldn't notice me until the very last minute.

Right as they passed under me I could finally make out a few pieces of what they were talking about, like 'where did he go?' or 'why was he alone?'. Before the rat could rat me out, I silently jumped down right behind the blue-hooded and pink-hooded figures. Right as the rat began turning around and the two in front of me continued looking around in confusion, I yelled right net to their ears.

"So, who are we looking for!?"

"YAAAHHH!"

As the two figures turned around the pink one went straight for a strike to my face, but after a year of taking Asuna's lightning fast jabs and swings, I was easily able to dodge it by moving my head an inch backward, not that I'm too sure if that's something to be proud of.

"G-godammit Ky! You just took 10 years off my life!"

"Mmm, really Kirito, that was completely unnecessary!"

As the blue-cloaked figure removed her hood, I saw the pouting face of our master engraver Sachi, but what caused my eyes to pop-open was the reveal of the pink-cloaked figure who was taking a step back to swing at me again. Blocking her punch with the palm of my hand, I gave an appraising look to the grandmaster blacksmith, Lisbeth.

"Well, it looked like you guys wanted to sneak up on me so I decided to do a little preemptive strike...still, I wasn't expecting...this..."

Liz was pretty against dressing up and using makeup, but the sight before me made me wonder if this was actually Liz. Instead of her usual brown hair and plain beige/white smithing outfit, she was in...well, a pink maid-looking costume with frills, and a cotton-candy pink hairdo. The only thing that confirmed it was Liz was the fire in her eyes that just screamed she wanted to try and kill me.