Disclaimer: I do not own Sword Art Online.

Summary: Kirito isn't a criminal. Neither is Asuna. They are NOT the leaders of the most infamous famiglia in Japan, no matter what the rumors say. If anyone asks, it Argo's fault.

This was the most requested story that I put up on my Island of Fairies. I also have a poll up on my profile with more options if anyone wants to vote on which ones I put up or update. The second chapter should be up within a few hours. I am just adding a few finishing details.

0~o~0

Chapter One

Alive

In the immediate aftermath of Sword Art Online ending, Tuski Fujisaki woke up in a hospital to the sound of nurses and doctors shouting back and forth as the waking SAO survivors struggled to pull themselves from their beds.

Two years ago, she might have been content to simply lay their and relish in the fact that they were finally free.

Two years ago, she hadn't been trapped inside of a madman's world and forced to fight for her life. Two years ago, she hadn't been Argo, the Rat, the best info broker in all of Aincrad.

Once upon a time, she had been Tuski Fujisaki, quiet girl in a big school who could never stand out how much she wanted to. But that was then, this is now. And right now, Argo wanted to know how in the world the game was suddenly cleared.

As far as she knew (she knew everything - usually) the clearers had only reached floor 75. That meant that they should have been 24 floors from freedom. 24 floors of suffering, research, and grinding levels.

What in the world happened to the 24 floors?!

Argo prided herself on her up to date information. In Aincrad, she was the source of all of the news that circled the cleared floors. Sure, there were other info brokers, but she was The Info Broker. The Rat. She heard all, saw all, and told all (for the right price). If you needed life or death important information, she was the one you went to.

So the fact that she had no idea what happened irritated her. Badly.

Last thing she'd heard from the clearing group, they'd set off to face the floor 75 boss. The scouting party never returned, so it promised to be a bad boss fight. She'd known there was a high possibility to lose a lot of clearers, but there was nothing to suggest that the game would just up and end like that.

Something else must have gone terribly wrong. Or terribly right. Either way, she still needed to know.

As a nurse finally noticed that she was awake when they came in to check on her, Argo had to pull herself away from her thoughts as she was interrupted by concerned doctors and nurses as they tried to determine how she was feeling.

No one asked her what happened in the game.

She wouldn't have told them anyway.

Silently, she vowed that as soon as she could gain access to the internet, she would track down a few of her contacts. Surely at least one of them would know what in the world was going on.

And then . . . well, she'd go from there.

The world was a big place after all.

0~o~0

It took Argo a good two weeks before the doctors let her anywhere near a computer with a computer connection.

The entire time she was in the hospital, she never once saw her mother or father. It wasn't a surprise, really, but it still made her heart ache with loss. She'd never been all that close with her parents. They were both well known archaeologists and spent a lot of time traveling the world. She, their only daughter, had been a bit of a surprise baby. Her mother hadn't even known that she was pregnant until she went into labor.

In the beginning they had happily brought her with them in their world travels, but as time went on it became much more of a hassle once she had to start school and demand much more of their time. It wasn't long until they'd found her a semi permanent babysitter to watch over her in Japan while they traveled.

They'd been drifting apart for a while, of course, but sometimes Argo wished that she had normal parents who actually would take time to see the daughter that had been in a coma for over two years.

The moment she got her hands on a computer, that was the first thing that she looked up.

Her father was in China at an archaeological dig. Her mother was somewhere in Europe. Both were only contactable through e-mail. Argo didn't bother trying.

She had more important things to worry about.

It wasn't too hard to track down her old contacts from SAO. She did have to hack into the government database to get the names and associated avatar names for each surviving player, but she'd managed. Over half of her contacts were dormant, sadly. It was likely that their families were either preventing them from using the internet, or they themselves just wanted to put the whole thing being them and not look back. Argo wouldn't blame them.

All of the ones that she did contact, however, where just as clueless as she was.

The next logical step was to, of course, spread her reach. Argo proceed to set up her own gaming forum named The Rat. There were a few short lines in the description that only an SAO player would understand and take as proof of her identity.

It took a few days, and several survivors who were simply asking for information. A lot of people wanted to know what had happened. No one had been expecting to be released from the game. Friends had been torn apart without getting to say goodbye, guilds, found families, everyone wanted to know.

Who are they, IRL?

No one talked about their real lives in Aincrad. No one used their real names. In Aincrad, it had been like a fresh start. You didn't have to be the person that you were before. You could reinvent yourself.

No one had been prepared for that new life to end. They never got to prepare to meet up outside, IRL. They never told each other their real names.

Argo got a lot of requests for contact information and, after careful research to make sure that the players were who they said they were, she traded information for it.

What were you told happened, when you woke up?

There were varying stories. A lot of people had agents actually come and talk to them, claiming to be part of the government assigned to oversee the SAO incident. Argo had her doubts.

Finally, a week after setting up the account, Agro finally hit gold.

"Is this Argo, The Rat?"

The Private Message came through on a rainy day. She could hear the rain pelting the window outside of her room.

"Yes." She replied. "And who is this?"

The reply came quickly.

"My name is Wisteri. I was part of the raid group against the 75th floor boss . . ."

Argo felt her pulse pick up as she read through the rest of his message, feeling sick to her stomach. The 75th floor boss, the Reaper, had been worse than anyone expected. Argo had known that it would have been bad, but to the extent that Wisteri was describing . . .

It had been a massacre.

But that wasn't what had her heart freezing over.

"We were betrayed.

"Over half of us were gone. We were exhausted and beaten. I have never been in a boss fight that devastating, I was ready to break down right there and go back to the town of beginnings but . . .

"The Black Swordsman stood up and accused Healthcliff of being Kayaba Akihiko. None of us wanted to believe it . . . but he confirmed it. He'd been planning it all along, he said. 'A grand reveal, the greatest betrayal.' He was our strongest player, our hope, and he planned to crush it because . . .

"He was the Boss of the Hundredth Floor."

Argo felt like she was dying all over again. Her throat felt tight as she stared at the next few lines.

"Kayaba offered a deal. We were all paralized, we couldn't move, everyone but Kayaba and the Black Swordsman, Kirito. He said that if . . . that if the other could defeat him, there and then, he would release everyone. He even said that he would deactivate his immortality to make it fair.

"They fought . . ."

Argo clenched her fists, feeling faint.

"Kirito defied the game. I don't know how. I only know that he was dying. We all saw it. His sword was broken, Asuna had fallen, he had no reason left to live but . . . somehow he got ahold of Lady Asuna's weapon and stabbed the commander with it.

"They both died at the same time, shattering into thousands of pixels."

Kirito. Her Kirito. The lonely swordsman who she'd met in the beta who was so quiet and yet so caring. He'd always been a gentle, if sad, soul. Next to Heathcliff in the game, he was the second strongest character. He'd soloed floor bosses, he was practically unbeatable . . . She would have known if he hadn't made it. She had the list of players, surely she would have noticed . . .

She scrambled to pull up the list desperately scanning the names. Surely his name was still there, right? It had to be. It had to.

"I don't know if you already knew this, but I had to tell someone. I don't want what he did to be forgotten. So thank you, for listening."

Argo's breath hitched.

The small space where she knew that Kirito's name was supposed to be . . .

It wasn't there.

Kirito . . . Kirito was gone.

0~o~0

Kirito was never one for drawing attention. He preferred to work alone, and without people being able to recognize him. Oh, lots of people knew him by his titles, but they hardly ever recognized him. The Black Swordsman, the Beater, The Solo, they knew him by his reputation, but no one expected such a weak looking player to actually be that Kirito.

Argo knew this. Had known it. She'd made it a point to keep word of his appearance quiet by setting such a high price on it that no one could even attempt to pay. And they had tried. Everyone and their pets seemed to have a grudge against him in the beginning, but it had worn off after the first twenty or so levels that they cleared. It probably helped that he was one of the strongest players in Aincrad.

She'd respected his wishes then but . . .

He'd saved all of them.

Who knew how many people would have died before they reached the end. Who knows how much longer they would have been trapped, wasting away in their hospital beds. It had been two years already . . . some people would have started dying from organ failure if a few hadn't already.

He'd saved hundreds, thousands of people . . .

And they didn't even know.

Kirito wouldn't care, of course. He never cared for fame. But Kirito was gone . . .

They deserved to know. They deserved to know who saved them.

That night, a post was set up on her forum, documenting the life of a brave player who had done his best to survive and keep on living, even when it seemed that the whole world was against him. It told of his love of the game, his dedication, and his drive to see it cleared for the sake of everyone else. She wrote of the hate he invited upon himself to protect the beta testers that wouldn't be able to fend for themselves, the self imposed isolation, the loneliness.

Argo carefully depicted everything that she knew about his battles with the clearers, the fight against Laughing Coffin, his kind tutoring of younger players, and his generosity. She included Asuna and how the other player met, fought, fell in love, and married Kirito. She included their daughter, Yui, who they'd adopted just before the end.

And then finally, she wrote about their end. The Final Fight. The End of Aincrad, where Asuna sacrificed herself to give Kirito one last chance to save them all.

Argo told Kirito's story, from beginning to end, with no regrets.

The survivors needed to know the truth, and she gave it to them. No extra cost.

As she finished, Argo felt her heart shatter into pieces. She'd never been particularly close to Kirito, more passing acquaintances than anything else, but seeing his story laid out before her like this . . . everything she knew, everything she'd heard and learned about him pieced together into a beautiful tapestry that ended before its time.

That night, she fell asleep with tears in her eyes, alone in her big, empty home.

They were free, but at what cost?

0~o~0

Argo felt wrung out and exhausted. She ignored her chiming computer in favor of lying curled in a ball on her bed, contemplating her life.

Aincrad had changed all of them, for better or worse. There was no going back, no undo button. Everything that they had felt, experienced, and learned would stay with them for the rest of their lives.

Argo, even if she'd wanted to, could never go back to being Tuski Fujisaki.

So, what now?

She was an info broker. It was so ingrained in her at this point that there was no way that she couldn't be one. So, what did that mean for her future? She had her contacts from SAO, sure, but most of them were teenagers with little to no influence in the real world.

Slowly, an idea started to spark.

Sword Art Online became the horror that it was because no one knew it was going to happen before it did. But now that it had happened once, who is to say that it wasn't going to happen again? The only way to prevent another SAO tragedy was to know about it before it happened.

Argo sat up, her eyes widening. Her body protested as she pulled herself from bed and grabbed her computer, still stubbornly ignoring the alerts to her forum. She'd look at it later.

She had an idea, but first she needed information. Lots of information. And that meant informants, especially ones outside of SAO.

Argo was no Kirito. Sure, she'd had her claws and her wits, but she could never have been a front line player. No, Argo's true strength was Information.

With knowledge comes power.

She would make sure that another SAO never happened again.

For Kirito, who believed there was hope and beauty even in a trapped world and fought to preserve it.

For Asuna, who reached beyond herself and became a leader that others were proud to fight beside.

For everyone that had fallen in the face of death, never given the chance.

Argo would make sure that they would never be forgotten.

0~o~0

Two days later the story broke.

300 players were still in a coma, trapped in an eternal cage in their own minds.

One of them was Asuna Yuuki.

0~o~0

Argo stared at the image on screen of the young Asuna Yuuki, daughter of the CEO of RECT, the programming company that had taken over the SAO servers when the original company went bankrupt.

Asuna Yuuki, one of the 300 players who had yet to wake up.

Asuna Yuuki, who looked exactly like Asuna the Flash.

Asuna Yuuki, alive.

And if she was alive . . .

Kirito might be too.

0~o~0

Well, here is the first chapter! Not quite all the way there yet, but we will get to the 'criminal family' in the next one. I figured that this was a good place to end it. Hope you all enjoyed! Let me know if you have any ideas of where this is going!

(Updated: 8/17/2019)