Fairy Dance

After SAO

Welcome to Fairy Dance, the arc I skipped in Blacksmith and Warrior, and instead of just saying "Yeah, Jaymes was there, but I'm not writing it" I decided to keep it to its original story.

However, I backtracked and decided "well, maybe I'll write it" as if it happened. Some stories I'm uploading to Wattpad won't reflect that because I wrote Fairy Dance long afterwards, but newer stories do. It's a minor detail so I decided it doesn't matter that much.

In any case, I'm beginning where I would have written the arc in chapter 13 of Blacksmith and Warrior. It doesn't matter if you haven't read it or need a refresher, because I kinda bring you up to speed in this chapter plus make some changes to that chapter for this story.

Enjoy!

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It is a relaxing afternoon for a young man named Kirito. The world around him is as peaceful as untouched nature can be. Birds chirp happily, squirrels scour the ground, the sun gleams its light past white clouds. For the boy, that peace is personified in the girl sleeping in the shared rocking chair. The ginger rests on his shoulder, snoring calmly. This is a peace well-fought for. No monsters, no dungeons, no player-killers, no guilds, and, though he may be wrong to think of this, no red and black swordsman in the mix. Just him, Asuna, their home, and the peace around them.

That world is shattered instantly.

Kirito, dressed in the jacket of the Black Swordsman, finds himself alone underneath red-orange skies and rapidly shifting clouds. He can hear explosions from inside the house and around the forest, his world breaking apart. Worse, Asuna is not present. "Asuna! Asuna!" Everything, including the girl he loves, begins to disappear, leaving Kirito alone and in fear.

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January 19th, 2025

He rapidly raises, his breath rapid as the effects of the dream stir him. Taking deeper breaths, he slowly calms down and brings a hand to his head. Two months it has been since he was Kirito the Black Swordsman, two months it has been since he, Asuna, and a friend of theirs battled the final boss of Sword Art Online and won, freeing the surviving 6,000 out of 10,000 players after exactly two years and seventy-five floors of entrapment in Aincrad.

Of the 4,000 deceased, Kirito has lost plenty of people. The man who inspired the best players to take action, Diavel, died before they reached the tenth floor. The guild he joined, the Moonlit Black Cats, all died to a trap. One of his closest friends was killed by a player-killer. But Kirito lived through all of it to return to the real world, to return to Kazuto Kirigaya.

The NerveGear on his shelf is a reminder of those two years of troubles.

Getting out of bed, he walks up to a mirror hanging on the wall. He looks at the time, 7:15 AM. Looking up to his reflection, he wipes his eyes, but he doesn't get all the tears. "I've...become such a crybaby, Asuna."

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"We really don't look alike..." Suguha Kirigaya rises off her knees and lifts her kendo stick, practicing her swings as her mind thinks of the last few years. Her older brother once was very close to her, even took on kendo, but some years ago, the closeness between them froze and the boy gave up on kendo, becoming a semi-shut-in if it wasn't for him attending school. Then came SAO, with Kazuto becoming one of the 10,000 to become trapped within the game. Their relationship may have iced over, but Suguha felt sorrow over the last two years, not knowing whether or not her brother would die.