Don't own SAO.

Floor 28 was nicknamed the 'Wolf Plains'. It was pretty easy to guess what the floor looked like just from hearing the name.

A large grassy plain covered the entire floor and was filled with packs of wolves that randomly patrolled it. Each pack usually had around eight wolves in it, none with particularly high HP or defence but their attack and agility stats were very high. Then there was the added challenge of having one of the wolves be a significantly higher level than the others, this one being the Alpha.

They weren't that tricky, one just had to make sure they didn't leave their back exposed. The packs had a strategy, albeit a very easy one to recognize. The easiest way to defeat the packs was to have one's party fight back to back so that no openings were ever left open.

It was for this reason that playing solo on this floor was significantly more difficult than on other floors. For once, I was thankful for having other group members with me as I made my way towards the boss floor. I'd trained on this floor before, going it solo then, and like I said before it was difficult. It's why I went to the lower floors for a bit to grind, it's also the reason I met the Moonlit Black Cats. I wouldn't have been on those lower floors and wouldn't have ended up saving them if this floor hadn't been so dangerous for a solo player.

"So can we go over the boss again?" Klein asked aloud as we traveled toward the boss room.

"Awe come on boss, weren't you listening during the brief?" Dale, a member of Fuurinkazan, said.

"Course I was!" The Samurai defended, "Just boss fights make me a bit nervous. Never hurts to reinforce what you know."

"Asuna, you wanna fill him in? You were there after all." Argo said, she had just as much info as Asuna probably did about the boss but the rapier user had hands on experience.

The girl sighed, "Fine. His name is The Lupin Alpha. Looks like your stereotypical werewolf, about three meters tall. No weapon but has some very long claws that you can parry. Very fast, no defencive moves but dodges faster than anything I've seen so far. He doesn't start out with any assist mobs but every time you get one of his four health bars into the red, He'll howl and call four alphas to assist him."

"What about his attacks?" I ask.

Asuna held her chin in a thinking pose, "Nothing like standard sword skills, just has his slash and bite attacks really. But they're really powerful so don't let him touch you. Better to dodge then to block or parry if you can manage it. Although that's not how we beat it. We had our two best shield users block it's strikes with subs to switch out when their HP got depleted from each strike, then had damage dealers and two handed weapons users strike when both claws were blocked. They had to not get too close though in order to stay away from the bite. The rest of us were handling the Alpha's that were summoned. All in all, it took 25 of us to take it down. None of us lost more than half our HP though."

"And we're taking it on with 10 people… great." Klein said bleakly.

"Hey stay confident man! You gotta remember we got the highest leveled player in the game with us. Something they didn't have before." Agil said in reference to me. They'd asked what my level was and I told them. Some thought it rude to ask for someone else's level but I really didn't care, and they were all coming with me on a suicide mission and deserved my trust.

When I told them I was at level 49, they all (Asuna especially) gaped at me in shock. Asuna told us Her leader, Heathcliff (also considered by most to be the strongest player in the game), was at level 47 while she was at level 45. Most guilds had leveling quotas they designated to their members as a safety precaution. You had to be a certain level to be able to join a boss raid. And thus, all guild members knew their conrad's levels. At least that was the way it was done in the larger guilds that fought floor bosses. I had, after all, lied to my guild mates.

"Levels don't mean that much in a boss raid." I said, "Sure my HP will be higher that your's but it takes skill more than high HP to survive."

"Skill is something you have in spades Kirito." Agro said, "Now enough talk for now, the dungeon door is just over this hill."

The boss dungeon was fashioned in a way where it seemed like you had literally entered the wolf's den. Close quarters, a cragley rock tunnel to travel down, the only lighting in the place was provided by holes in the ceiling in the cave where moonlight would illuminate our path. Wolves would sporadically appear from darkened areas of the tunnels, they were dealt with swiftly and with no HP lossage from any of us. It took us about an hour and a half to navigate completely, this area had already been mapped out so we knew exactly where we were going.

Klein and Fuurinkazan were usually at half the boss fights, they were the only guild on the front lines who had yet to lose a member. Agil had been to many boss fights himself as well. Asuna had been to as many as I have if not all of them. Everyone in our party were seasoned players by this point in the game with the exception of Argo.

Argo didn't really do quests or join parties to take on a dungeon. She was, however, very smart which allowed her to survive all fights she'd been in so far. She dealt with information and that was pretty much her entire trade. That didn't mean she was much of a lower level than us however. Level 31. She just leveled up by using different skills that didn't pertain to fighting. In fact she probably had one of the strongest listening and sneak skill in the game.

It didn't take us long to make it to the boss room. A large silver door with a crescent moon depicted on the door blocked our path.

We all quickly went over our gear and supplies. Making sure to have healing potions and crystals in our easy access inventory. Everyone also had a teleport crystal incase they had to make a quick getaway if things got bad. Everyone except me that is.

"You all can still leave." I said, "You all don't owe me anything, you don't-"

"Shut up dummy." Asuna said. She seemed to like calling me dummy for some reason.

"We're in this with you till the end buddy." Klein said giving me the thumbs up.

I sighed, I tried.

"Fine, let's do this." I pushed the door open.

Like all boss rooms, it was an area with limited space to move in. This one on a plateau made of dark brown rock. There were smaller plateau like pillars that surrounded us, each one you couldn't see the bottom of due to the fog that surrounded the bottom of this room. A large full moon lit up the sky of the ceilingless area we found ourselves in. I had no idea if this place could be called a room. It was more like an arena than a room.

In the center of the plateau was a large furry lump. The top of it moving steadily up and down as if it were breathing. The boss I idly realized. Every boss had a cinematic intro, a time where we couldn't attack it but it wouldn't attack us.

Suddenly, it started growling. I could feel it in my bones as it reverberated around the party, almost causing my teeth to chatter. The boss got up, standing on it's hind legs, saliva dripping from it's mouth as it's amber colored eyes glared at us hatefully. You could see it's bulging muscle under it's long lanky limbs and black fur. Some parts of it's body had patches of fur missing, revealing not skin but red muscle. It was rather gruesome. It almost looked like a zombie werewolf. It also had claws that extended from its fingertips that looked like wolverine claws with how sharp they looked. These were however pure white in color and curved at the end.

Then it howled at the moon, a long terrifying howl that I heard some wolves answer in the background. I knew those wolves wouldn't come until later in the fight though. Then it's name and four health bars appeared over it's head. The Lupin Alpha

I unsheathed my sword from my back and heard everyone else ready their weapons as well.

"Everyone knows their roles, let's do this." I said eliciting battle cries from the party.

Our plan had been a slightly modified version of the original assault teams version. This boss had three points of attack; it's two claws and it's bite. Eliminate the two claws left only the devastating bite attack which had limited reach. We couldn't negate the claws like they did in the assault raid though.

We only had two shield users, Harry One and Dynamm From Fuurinkazan. And while both of them were fairly high ranked shield users, there was one problem with shields. Well blocking in general actually. When one blocked a strike, no matter how high your block skill was, you still took a portion of the damage. Normally not enough damage to matter in the long run, especially if your skill was high enough. But up against a boss monster with an attack as high as this one, it didn't matter how high your skill was. Your HP would deplete plenty fast. It was why they used subs in the raid boss fight, when one of the blocker's HP hit half, they'd switch out for someone fresh and with high HP, so that they could recover.

We didn't have enough people for that strategy to work. Our plan was much riskier. Asuna and I were going to parry each strike. The parry skill allowed one to stop a strike and push it back without taking any damage themselves. However, it was much harder to accomplish.

Picture blocking as like playing catch with a baseball and glove. Where the ball is the attack and the glove is the shield. You simply had to move your glove into the path of the ball in order to catch it, it was the same with a shield where you just moved your shield into the path of the strike. Pretty easy.

Parrying would be like throwing your glove at the ball as it comes toward you in order to stop it. Very hard but possible, especially when most mobs weren't very fast and were easy to predict. This boss wouldn't be like that. He would have very fast strikes and be very hard to predict. Only people with extremely fast reflexes and a parry skill high enough could attempt our strategy. People like Me and Asuna.

Asuna and I were going to parry the bosses strikes and draw it's agro while Agil and Dale (our two handed heavy weapons users) would go in for the high damage staggering blows to the boss' torso and face before he could attack us with his bite attack.

The six others would be fighting the Alpha wolves that the boss called up when his HP hit the red, all the while looking out to see if one of us needed to switch. However, I doubt any of the others would be able to parry the strikes like Asuna and I are going to.

I glanced over at Asuna next to, ready to charge at any second. She really was beautiful, even with the way her forehead was heavily creased as we faced what could possibly be death. Back in the real world, I would have been a stuttering mess around her. But here, after everything I've gone through in the past months. Concepts like beauty just seemed so trivial and inconsequential now. Thoughts of survival, justice, and retribution filled my head most days.

She looked at me, the edges of her mouth turned slightly upward. She nodded at me.

"Attack!" I yelled before charging at the Lupin.

My first strike on the boss was a Sonic Leap sword skill. Something that didn't deal a lot of damage but allowed me to move quickly and attack before they knew what hit them. I almost followed it up with a Vertical before I remembered my role. Parrying, right.

I almost realized this too late, as the First strike from the boss came my way. My sword flashed white as the parry skill activated and drove towards the incoming claws. I deleted them up. Only barely though. Come on Kirito! Focus!

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the other claw coming my way. I ducked, ready to dodge it but it was unnecessary. Asuna was there, parrying the strike away.

My momentary effort to dodge cost me one eighth of my HP. As a strike that I should have been ready to parry grazed my arm. Come on! You're better than this!

The boss snarled at us. Making another lightning fast strike at me, I parried this one too. It was a lot better than my first.

Agil came running up beside me, his large double bladed axe glowing green as he charged up it's uppercut Vertical strike. It landed a solid hit, right on the bosses torso causing the Lupin to stagger back a step. That was the best part about two handed weapons, they had a higher chance to stagger an opponent.

This is how it played out for the next couple minutes. Asuna and I parried the bosses strikes perfectly while the others would come in the moment we had and attack before rushing back away. Sometimes it was Agil who attacked, other times it was Klein or a member of Fuurinkazan. It was almost going too well. Then the boss' first health bar hit red.

The Lupin Alpha snarled at us before loosing a loud howl, calling the Alphas in. The Wolves came from the smaller pillars that lined the plateau where we fought, jumping from pillar to pillar in order to get to us.

The Alpha wolves didn't look like normal wolves. They were large and red in color. Large white spikes stuck out of their back and their tail was actually two tails. Both of the tails red and bushy before turning orange in color at the end of them.

As with everything in SAO, you couldn't just have normal looking animals, they had to be oddly colored or 30 times their normal size.

I didn't take my eyes off the boss to watch what everyone else did. The only change I saw was that it was only Agil and Dale who attacked, their longer reach weapons keeping them as far away from the boss as possible.

It was a whirlwind of parrying. I think Asuna and I even switched places a few times when the Lupin made the move to try and bite one of us and which couldn't be parried and had to be dodged.

I had to hold myself back from attacking the whole time. My role was too important. But it was hard not to. Normally I'd be dodging, ducking, rolling, jumping, and sliding around the boss. That's what I think I did when I faced the Minotaur and when I faced Laughing Coffin. It was a blur, I never stopped moving.

Soon we got another HP bar down. Only 2 to go.

"Argo teleported out!" I heard Harry One call out.

I grit my teeth. She'd already used up all her healing crystals. Argo wasn't a fighter, none of her skills that focused on fighting were very high. I knew she might be forced to get out. Honestly I was surprised she'd come along in the first place. But now there were nine of us.

The momentary distraction was enough to make me miss a parry, causing a strike to land on my chest. I flew back, landing some twenty feet away with my HP at half. The landing was disorientating, no pain but I felt dizzy.

"Kirito!" I heard Asuna call as I tried to sit up.

My eyes widened, no one was there to watch her flank. She was wide open.

"Asuna! Get out of there!" I yelled but it was too late. The Lupin Alpha swatted her aside with the claw that was now free of anyone parrying it. She flew to the edge of the Plateau, landing hard on her back. We weren't in a party so I couldn't see her HP gauge on my HUD. But she didn't explode into polygons so she was ok. I grit my teeth. Dummy (Me)! Why the hell didn't you parry that? Why the hell did you leave her open like that?

The Lupin turned its attention onto Agil and Dale. Coming in snarling and swinging it's claws in a furry. They were forced to try and dodge the strikes, an almost impossible task with the speed that they moved at. They didn't have the skill needed to parry like Asuna and I did.

Our plan was in shambles. This needed to end. I needed to end it.

I rushed in and it all became a blur again. I'd parry one strike, simultaneously ducking under the other. Then bending backwards nearly 90 degrees in order to evade the jaws before charging up a quick sword skill, usually a Vertical, Horizontal, or a Slant. Those had the quickest cool down times and allowed me to get in and out. Combo type skills were more powerful but had a longer cooldown and put you in more danger.

Parry. Duck. Roll. Slant. Parry. Jump. Slash. Duck. Vertical.

There was no order to my attacks, I just did. No plan. No words. Just me. My sword. And the boss.

I don't know how much time passed. I only idly noticed the Boss stop to howl and call in reinforcements. It didn't click in my head that an entire bar of it's HP had been depleted by me alone. In those precious few seconds it gave me, I glanced around and saw that everyone was alive, I was able to see that Asuna was back in the fight, taking on one of the Alphas by herself. Again, I almost missed the incoming slash from the Boss. Focus!

Slide under legs. Follow up with a Vertical. Duck as it spins around in a wide arc slash. Parry the follow up slash. Sidestep the jaws. Slant at the neck. Jump back. Parry left strike. Roll under right. Activate martial arts skill Crescent Moon to back flip kick the jaws closed as they come in.

I didn't know it but I actually blurred some of my movements as I attacked and dodged. The frame rate of the game unable to keep up with me. Something that should be impossible as the game's servers were run by a massive self learning supercomputer.

Then suddenly, it all stopped. The Lupin Alpha reared back and gave one long pain filled howl before bursting into polygons.

AN/: Fight scenes are hard to write. Let me know how I did.