S.A.O Project Alicization - OC/Male Reader Insert

Project Alicization ----- Chapter Sixteen

"Who are you?" Kazuto commanded again. The man shrugged, shook his head a few times, then sighed theatrically.

"Oh, come on now, Kirito. You forgot my face already...? Well, I guess I did wear a mask before. But I haven't forgotten yours for a single day since then."

"You..."

Kazuto twitched. His back went straight. He pulled back his right leg and dropped his weight.

"You're Johnny Black!" he accused, and his hand shot like lightning to grab empty space over his shoulder-the exact same spot where Kirito the Black Swordsman once reached for the hilt of his beloved Elucidator.

"Bwa-ha! Heh-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You got no sword there, bud!" The man named Johnny Black cackled, writhing with high-pitched laughter. Kazuto slowly lowered his hand, though it wasn't a relaxed gesture.

Shi knew that name. It belonged to one of the more famous red players of old Aincrad, the ones who eagerly and intentionally killed other players. He had formed a partnership with Red-Eyed Xaxa within the PK guild called Laughing Coffin, and they were responsible for more than ten deaths between them.

...Xaxa. That name had come up just half a year ago, too. He was the ringleader of the horrendous Death Gun incident.

Xaxa (Shouichi Shinkawa) and his younger brother had been arrested, but their companion got away, according to the report just after the incident. They assumed he had been caught long ago. But that meant the third man, named Kanamoto, must be the man before them now...

"You're still on the lam?" Kazuto rasped. Johnny Black, real name Kanamoto, grinned and pointed his index fingers at them.

"Of course, baby. Xaxa's locked up now, so I gotta do the heavy lifting, right? The last member of the Coffin. It took me five months to track down that café, then another month of staking out the place...They were hateful days, man."

Kanamoto grunted and tilted his head back and forth. "But Kirito, without your swords...you're just a weak little kid, ain'tcha? You look the same, but you sure ain't the swordsman who crushed us all so badly."

"Speaking of which...what can you do without those cheap poisoned weapons?"

"Y'know, only an amateur judges a weapon by what he can see."

With snakelike quickness, Kanamoto swung his right hand behind his back and grabbed something from his shirt.

It was a strange item. A toylike grip jutted out of a smooth plastic cylinder. Asuna thought it was just a water pistol at first, but the way Kazuto tensed caused her to hold her breath. Her confusion turned to fear when she heard his voice.

"That's...the Death Gun...!"

He pushed out backward with his right arm to further distance Asuna from the man, meanwhile pointing the end of his folded umbrella toward Kanamoto.

Even as she unconsciously took a few steps back, Asuna's eyes were glued to the plastic "gun" the whole while. She knew that was not a simple plastic gun but an injector using a high-pressure gas, loaded with a terrifying chemical that would stop a human heart.

"As it happens, I do have a poison weapon. Too bad it's not a good old knife, though."

Kanamoto hissed with laughter as he waved around the tip of the injector, the only metal part on the tool. Kazuto kept the umbrella pointed carefully at him and shouted, "Asuna, run! Go and get someone!"

After a moment's hesitation, she spun and raced away. As she ran, she heard Kanamoto say, "Hey, Flash! You'd better tell everyone you know...that it was Johnny Black who finally took down the Black Swordsman!"