(II) Hearts of Light: Mythical Magical Online

Chapter 16: Written in the Stars

Chapter 16: Written in the Stars

Max Jure looked around the room awkwardly as the others laughed around him. He squinted as he looked at Lukas. "Wait, how old are you guys?" he asked. The three stopped laughing as Chris came back with a towel over his head. They all stared intensely at the confused kid, causing him to break a sweat. He is voice quivered for he began to feel uneasy, "uh, I'll start then. I'm Maxwell Jure, but people call me Max. Last time I remember, I'm sixte-"

"You're nineteen, Max," Lukas interrupted him with a stone face gaze.

Max smirked and tilted his head, shifting over his somewhat long dirty-blond hair. "N-no, I'm sixteen. Just got out of SAO... right?" he said, shaken.

Violet shook her head, looking away from him instead of at him, "you've been... asleep. SAO ended a month before your birthday and it's been two and a half years."

Max laughed nervously, "...so you're saying, I spent the last two and half years just sleeping? Funny, Sword Art already took two years of my life..." his voice began to break as he laughed. "W-where's Theo and everyone else?"

"They... they got stuck in another video game. More people are dead," Porter stared deep into his eyes with such seriousness, Max stopped laughing.

Silence seized the room. Max stared at Porter with even more discomfort. He heard nothing else but his own breaths and the whirring of the computer Chris had behind him. Max then began to laugh once more, his voice even more broken than before as he began crying. "H-how do you know all this?" he asked as tears flooded his eyes. They fell onto the sheetless mattress he sat on. Max clenched his toes, rubbing them against the sparkly wooden floor boards. "W-where am I?"

Chris muttered without looking at him, "New York. You're in New York. We're... special agents, working for the government. We've been tracking all the American players who went and participated in Sword Art Online, and to not give too much away, people have been going missing. We can't tell you much about why we're here, but you can get to know us all you want. I'm twenty-two." Max looked up to him as he leaned against the wall next to the computer. Chris had his arms crossed and his shirt off, exposing his muscular body.

Porter smiled, "I'm sixteen."

"Twenty-one," Lukas put his hand up to get his attention.

Violet hugged him tightly before wiping away his tears, "I'm eighteen."

Rubi sprinted as fast as she could through the jungle region. She stopped to catch her breath, and looked to the two large trees to the right and left of her. She smirked and knelt down to the floor, creating a wired trap with her Lines of Cornelia. She stepped back to look at the small tripwire she made, and nodded as she heard them coming. Rubi whistled and climbed the tree, waiting to strike them from above.

"Hurry up Tyler! I'm sure she went this way!" Celes shouted as she ran the same way Rubi did.

Leyasu grunted, "I'm trying! Stupid branches and shit in the way." The two ran faster as they heard rustling ahead of them.

"We're going to lose her!" whined Celes.

Leyasu grunted, "she's not our priority, we have to find the statue. We can do so much with that thing."

"Still, if she finds it instead," Celes sighed deeply, "Tharza will have our heads on a silver platter."

Leyasu stopped to mutter to himself as Celes kept running, "I don't think following her leadership is the right thing to do here Rache."