Sword Art Online: Faithful Hymn

Ordinal Scale, Chapter 3: Their Hell Reborn

"Ah Kirito, thanks for bringing us!"

"Don't think that we're in the clear. I'm doing this for Asuna, not you."

"I... understand that."

With the SAO event battle date and time having dropped an hour ago, Kirito traveled from his home in Saitama all the way to Asuna's home in Setagaya, a 90 minute travel distance by metro. But since they anticipated Kirito wouldn't make it in time in 60 minutes, the black-haired boy began to drive to Asuna's place an hour beforehand.

Right now, Kirito, Asuna and Shoji are on their way to the location where the OS fight will take place. Since Lisbeth had to work on a project together with a project partner and Silica is not allowed to get out so far from home so late, the three young-adults are the only ones left to participate in an Ordinal Scale battle around 9 PM.

Kirito drove on his motorcycle with Asuna behind him. Shoji rode on his bicycle as he firmly held onto Asuna's shoulder, driving as fast as Kirito like this but with much more danger.

"Let's park here, this is close-by."

The black-haired boy tells Asuna and Shoji as he parks his motorcycle against an iron pole, together with everyone removing the helmets from their heads. They didn't hesitate a single second though. As soon as everyone was ready to rush off towards the meeting area, they could see a humongous crowd already. 

"Phew... I think we just made it in time."

"Yeah, I suppose Ordinal Scale really is more popular than I thought."

"That happens when you keep being in favor for FullDive, Kirito!"

"What can I say, traveling to thousands of places isn't my style. It's like Pokemon GO all over again."

"Yeah... and the fact that people actually believed the earth was flat, along with "the incident"."

Kirito raises his eyebrow as he looked confused at Asuna, with Shoji having to maintain his laughter. Shoji actually told Asuna about the existence of the "flat earth society", something that's not being talked about in Japan at all. Since Shoji is from America, he comes across a lot more memes than the usual Japanese person.

"Flat earth? Incident? What is the incident?"

"...We don't talk about the incident, Kirito."

"What the... you can just tell what the incid-"

"No, Kirito, we don't talk about the hollow earthers. Not ever since the incident."

"W-Wha?!"

As Kirito was about to snap, Klein suddenly interfered with five of his Fuurinkazan friends. They popped up out of nowhere, greeting all three youngsters.

"What took you guys so long? Oh, Asuna and Shoji are here, too!"

"Since we had no way of transport, we had to drag Kirito along. Also, I won rock-paper-scissors!"

Kirito slammed his hand against his head as he didn't know how to respond. Shoji didn't think that Klein and his friends would pop up, and asks further about this.

"Taking so long? We didn't announce we were coming, right?"

That's what Shoji says before looking at Asuna for confirmation, but she also had no clue what Klein meant by 'taking long'.

"Kirito didn't tell? I messaged him that we definitely should do an OS raid this evening!"

"Oh right... about that..."

However, Shoji interrupted Kirito as he could see the crowd around them equip their Augmas, activating Ordinal Scale all at once. Shoji, Asuna and Kirito all took out a remote controller to activate Ordinal Scale, before Klein shouted,