Meet Me

Summary: With a knot tied in her stomach, BlackRose opened Kite's picture. As she stared at the real life Kite, her cheeks began to heat up and her face turned into a massive shade of red. Who knew he could make her heart beat so fast?

A/N: Okay, I planned this out to be a fluffy one-shot about BlackRose and Kite meeting each other, but it escalated into a chaptered story. So uhm, I guess that's a good thing? Anyways I want to apologize for changing around canon things; I have only played up till the end of the second game, and got the rest of my information from Wiki. I'm just going to pretend the offline party never happened and set this story about a week after everything returned back to normal. Oh, and I changed Yasuhiko's 'real' personality drastically.

I'll be showing both BlackRose's and Kite's POV in each chapter, it's a first for me, hopefully you won't get confused.

One last thing; 1.70 m is about 5'9"

Chapter 1 – You're Pretty

Akira's fingers gracefully glided over the keyboard as she clocked in a few keystrokes. Her pinky finger hit the Enter button and she was logged onto The World. She had gotten mail before from Kite, asking her to come meet him in Dun Loireag, the theta server. She didn't know what prompted him to send her a mail, asking to meet each other. It had only been a few days since The World has been back to normal. Since then, she hadn't really been on The World as much as before, but why would she anyway? It wasn't like she joined The World to play games, she joined to help her brother who was comatose. Then again, Akira couldn't deny the fact that she did enjoy playing it. That was largely due to the fact that she was always around Kite.

Her avatar logged on into the town that was high up in the sky. Her avatar BlackRose stood there lifeless, holding a big heavy sword behind her back. She panned her camera around to find Kite, but couldn't find him – maybe he hadn't logged on yet.

"Hey, there!"

Akira stared at her chatbox and smiled, then typed something back. "I thought you ditched me ;-)."

The orange avatar of Kite walked onto the screen and stopped right beside her. It was strange to be standing next to each other without having any world saving to do. These were peaceful times.

"Want to go run a dungeon?" he asked.

Akira shrugged her shoulders, forgetting he couldn't see her, and replied back. "Sure, lead the way."

As soon as she said that, they partied up and Kite whisked them away to some random dungeon they hadn't been before. It wasn't quite as thrilling when you know The World was fixed and you were only playing a game. Akira's brown eyes stared at Kita's avatar for a while and smiled to herself; but how could it possibly be boring if he was there?

"So, why did you call me out?" she asked after a while of running around on the field.

"No reason :-)."

Akira pouted at the screen. "Missed me already, huh?" she typed while smirking.

Kite didn't respond for a while, and his avatar stood still on one spot. Akira was beginning to think he might have gone away for a second, but then she saw his reply.

"I guess I did."

The girl wasn't sure how to respond to that; Kite was rarely affectionate, so it kind of came as a shock. She then walked her avatar up to Kite so that they were standing next to each other and began to type.

"Isn't it kind of weird? Now that everything is solved? I kind of feel like there's no point getting back on The World anymore …"

"Yeah, I know. But I logged on out of habit. I guess maybe I really did turn into a fat gamer."

Akira giggled softly at the reference. She remembered how she had once told him to go out and exercise, otherwise he'd get fat gaming all day long. She mused on it for a little while, trying to imagine Kite as a fat person, then realized she had never seen a picture of him. Not once, in the entire time they had spend dungeon crawling and world saving together, had she seen what he looked like in real life.

"I wouldn't know if you're fat or not, I've never seen your picture," she decided to type.

"Oh, hehe, I guess you haven't :-)."

She wanted to see him. At times, Akira imagined how Kite would have looked like in real life. She imagined him as a skinny, pale looking guy. Then she would imagine him as a muscular, very tall looking guy, with tanned skin. After a while, she stopped imagining what he looked like and would merely use his avatar as reference. However, it got really annoying to have to think about his avatar whenever Kite crossed her mind, and she really wanted to put a face with his words. So, she decided to ask.

"Do you … have a picture of yourself?"

As Akira typed those words, she realized that not only had she never seen his picture, she also did not know his real name.

"Uhm, I don't have any on my computer," was his response.

The girl leaned back in her chair, disappointed that he didn't have a picture.

"But I can scan one right now."

Her disappointment turned into gleeful giddiness once she read what he typed.

"Hold on for a few seconds, I'll try to find one right now. BRB :-)."

Akira smiled at his own smiley face; he certainly knew when to use those to make her smile as well. She twirled her hair around her finger as she patiently waited for Kite to return with a picture of himself. It was actually a bit nerve wrecking … what if he looked a lot different than what she imagined? Then again, she imagined him as his avatar, which would surely set her up for disappointment. No, he would probably look really normal, just your average looking guy. Who happened to save The World and went on countless of journeys with her. She sighed deeply and continued to stare at his avatar.

"Back!" appeared on the chatbox.

"About time!" she replied impatiently.

"Sorry, sorry :-) I only found one picture, and it's a year old, I hope you don't mind."

Oh no, she certainly didn't mind; she wanted to see him, it didn't matter if he was 4 years old in the picture, or 15, as he was right now. Akira's breath was stuck in her throat as she waited for her mail to come in. She would soon know what he looked like, and it gave her a nervous feeling in her stomach, something which she hadn't felt before. The little chime rang on her computer, indicating mail had arrived.

"Got it," she typed and then proceeded to open up her mailbox.

There it was, an e-mail from Kite, titled 'Picture of me'. Her mouse hovered over the mail and she hesitated to click it. She felt nervous, yet happy at the same time. Why was looking at a picture of Kite so damn important to her? It was only Kite! Akira took a deep breath and clicked on the mail to open it up. She read what he wrote before she clicked on the attachment.

Hey!

So uhm, here's a picture of me. It's a year old, so that's what I looked like when we first met. I'm the guy on the right by the way, the short one. The other one is my friend, Yasuhiko.

Please don't make fun of me ;-)

Akira smiled as she read the last sentence; she wouldn't even dream of making fun of him. Well, maybe just a little. Her mouse was positioned on the attachment called IMGSCAN_ and she knew that would be him. She was just a few seconds away of discovering his true identity. Akira steadied herself then finally clicked on the attachment. It was downloaded to her downloads folder and it immediately popped up.

There were two guys on the picture, standing outside smiling at the camera. There was a tall, dark haired one standing on the left, who held a soccer ball on the shorter one's head. Akira's eyes slowly crawled towards the shorter guy and took in what she saw at a very slow rate. She first saw his spiky light-brown hair; it was as long as his in-game avatar. Her eyes traveled downwards to his forehead. Small and free of acne. Then his eyebrows; as bushy as you would expect from a guy. Then came his eyes … big blue eyes were staring right back at her. Akira could feel her heart beat faster, but she wasn't paying attention to it as she continued to stare at the real life Kite. His nose was long and thin, and he had an adorable smile, showing off all his teeth, which fit perfectly with his personality. He was very skinny, almost scrawny compared to his friend, who was tall and more fit. He was wearing his school uniform, just a plain white shirt, tucked into his black pants. So this was Kite; this adorable normal looking kid.

Akira leaned back in her chair to stare some more at the picture, she had a huge smile on her face that had somehow managed to manifest itself there. She leaned her hand on her cheeks, and then realized it was feeling very hot. She touched her other cheek which was feeling rather hot as well. Akira took off her goggles and looked into her small mirror and saw her own red face staring back. She was blushing! Her face was as red as a tomato! Oh god, this was way too embarrassing. Akira couldn't believe she was blushing, just because she was looking at Kite's picture! The girl blushed even more at the way she worded that; she couldn't possibly be blushing because of that, right?

She placed her goggles back on, seeing his picture in view one more time, and her heart starting to beat faster again, pumping more blood to her face. Akira made herself as small as possible; she couldn't believe that by just looking at his picture she was blushing and her heart was beating faster. She was the tough BlackRose, and yet here she was; blushing like a little school girl in love. Akira screamed out in frustration and finally clicked away his picture. The World came back on view and she saw that Kite had written a bunch of things during her embarrassing picture staring.

"You know, it's rude to stare at people ;-)."

"Hey, are you still there?"

"You're making me nervous here … are you still looking at it, or have you gone AFK?"

"I'm sorry my picture scared you away :-(."

Akira stifled her laughter and quickly wrote a reply. "Sorry, my mom called me," was her silly excuse. In reality, she was blushing at his picture, but she would never tell him that.

"Oh, okay. I thought you found me so ugly you ran away ;-)."

Akira sighed; ugly? No, the real Kite was simply adorable. Not that she would admit this to him.

"Well, I was kind of surprised! ;-)."

"Oh."

What was she typing? She didn't mean to offend his appearance or anything, or even make fun of it ... but it just kind of flew out of her fingers, like a bad habit. Akira didn't want Kite to think that she thought he was ugly or anything ... argh why did she have to word it like that.

"I thought you'd be taller! You're pretty short."

There, now it didn't seem like an insult.

"Haha. Yeah I was pretty short back then, but I grew a lot this year, I'm about 1.70 m right now."

"That's taller than me!"

"Haha, who's the shorty now? ;-). So, do you have a picture of yourself?"

Akira stared a bit at his words before she realized he was asking for a picture of her. Suddenly, she felt very, very self-conscious. What would he think of her? Would he think she was ugly? Would he hate the way she looked like? What if she wasn't what he imagined and would be disappointed at her real self? Akira violently shook her head to clear her thoughts; she shouldn't be thinking such things. Kite would never think or say something like that; Kite was a nice and reliable friend. Yes, a nice and trustworthy friend who's opinion she valued very highly. Akira groaned out loud; she was totally insecure about her appearance and what Kite might think of her. He had it easy; he looked really cute and there was nothing wrong with him! She? Well, she was just an average looking girl. Average height, average brown hair, average brown eyes, average weight, leaning to the skinny side, and very wide hips.

She couldn't possibly compare to his adorableness.

"I'm sorry, I don't have any on my computer, and I don't have a scanner either."

Okay, that was a big fat lie. She had a ton of pictures on her computer, which were mostly just herself and her friend, Risa. Yet, she couldn't stop herself from typing those words; it was like fear overtook her and wrote herself in a big hole. Well, now what?

"Oh, okay."

Great, he had gotten out of his way to scan a picture of himself and send it to her, while she told him a blatant lie to avoid showing a picture of herself. What was she so damn afraid of? She was BlackRose! Tough and not afraid of anything! She nodded with determination and began to type.

"I'll ask my friend to send a picture of me tomorrow, she has all of our pictures on her computer ;-)."

"Okay :-)."

Akira sighed and had almost slapped herself silly for being such a chicken. She shouldn't worry about her appearance, there was no reason to. Especially when poor Kite went out of his way to send a picture of him, it was only fair she returned the favour.

"Now that we're talking about this subject, what is your offline name?"

Akira hung her head sideways. She never told him? Well, apparently not. "Akira," she wrote. "What about yours?"

"Kaitou. Strange how we never managed to say our real names, huh?"

"We were too busy saving The World!" she replied and giggled a bit. So his name was Kaitou. How interesting. Wait, his name was Kaitou? Didn't that mean he basically wrote his own name in English, resulting in Kite?

"Wait, did you name your avatar Kite because that's how your name is spelled in English?"

"Haha, maybe."

"You're so silly."

"Thank you, Akira :-)."

She smiled when he said his name. It was the first time he hadn't called her BlackRose.

"Now, what are we dawdling here for? We haven't even entered the dungeon!"

She then ran away from him, in search for monsters. Kite would have to wait until tomorrow to see her real self.

When they were done dungeon crawling, Kite had to log off because his friend, Yasuhiko was planning to play soccer with him. Akira was left alone, and she figured she should log off as well. She took off her goggles and blankly stared at her screen. She moved her mouse to go to her mailbox and opened Kite's mail again. She opened his picture and stared at Kite … no wait … Kaitou for a few minutes. She didn't know why she was staring at him, but a part of her really wanted to look at him a little while longer. Maybe to confirm that he was indeed a real person, a person she could meet outside The World …

She clicked his picture away when she found out that her cheeks were heating up again.

Kaitou grinned at his friend Yasuhiko; he was in top-form and lively as ever. He sure did missed his friend all this time.

"Come on Kaitou, pass the ball!" he yelled at him.

The brown haired boy kicked the ball over to him, and then absentmindedly stared at his bedroom window, which was located high in an apartment right across the grassy field. He was wondering what BlackRose might be doing right now. No, that's not right, he knew her real name now, so he should call her Akira.

His cheeks turned slightly pink for a bit when he remembered that he had sent her a picture of himself. He was actually extremely nervous, for reasons he couldn't phantom why. He worked up the nerve to send her a picture of himself, and then slowly began to feel like he was about to explode the longer she took to reply. He didn't want her to dislike him, or be disappointed with the way he looked like. Kaitou knew he looked scrawny in the picture, even though he had grown quite a lot, but he was still nervous. He wanted her to like him, that is all. He swallowed when he realized that his picture was now in her possession and she could see it whenever she wanted to … and that made him really nervous as well!

However, soon he would know what she looked like as well. He couldn't wait to see her picture.

Suddenly, Kaitou was delivered a blow to the head with a soccer ball and he was promptly thrown to the ground.

"Sorry!" yelled Yasuhiko. "Geez Kaitou, what were you spacing out for?" said his friend as he came jogging towards Kaitou.

Kaitou rubbed his head, feeling a painful throb. He picked himself up from the ground and dusted off his pants. Yasuhiko came closer to him with two darkly arched eyebrows.

"Thinking about something?" he asked out of the blue as he picked up the soccer ball.

"Uhm, uhm," stuttered Kaitou. He couldn't really tell his friend he was thinking about a certain heavy blade wielder.

"Oh, you're thinking about The World," said Yasuhiko with a grin.

"Uh, sorta."

"Admit it, even after all these weird things that happened, The World is still a really cool game, am I right, or am I right?"

Kaitou shrugged; without BlackR—Akira it was pretty boring.

"Hey Kaitou, did you get a girlfriend while I was out?"

Kaitou's eyes almost bulged out. "N-no! Why would you think that?"

"Because you act like you're a puppy in love. You can't fool me, we've been friends for years after all. So tell me, what is she like?"

A blush started to spread across his cheeks as Kaitou fumbled around trying to find a way to answer his friend. Blac—Akira wasn't his girlfriend!

"Oh that's disgusting! You're blushing!" said Yasuhiko with a sneer. "Boys don't blush!"

"Well, then stop embarrassing me! I don't have a girlfriend!"

"Fine, fine. You couldn't possibly have a girlfriend before me, that would be unfair. I'm way cooler than you."

"I think with me saving your ass, everyone sees me as the hero and completely ignores you," retorted Kaitou with a smirk, his blush fading away.

All Yasuhiko could do was snort loudly and bounce the soccer ball off of Kaitou's head. Kaitou glared back at him, and then stared at his bedroom window yet again. Tomorrow couldn't come soon enough.

When Kaitou returned home, he instinctively went onto his computer and checked out his mailbox. It was a force of habit; during the Twilight incident he checked his mail every day for new clues. It was hard to get rid of that habit, even when he knew he wouldn't be receiving such mails anymore. He was pleasantly surprised when he saw a mail from BlackRose. A smile was plastered on his face as he clicked on her mail and opened it up.

I figured I'd surprise you and send you a picture of me now instead of tomorrow. So yeah uhm, this is me!

P.S. don't make fun of me either ;-)

Kaitou's eyes simply stared at his screen, his hand resting on his mouse, and his breathing going haywire. He did not expect to see her this soon, he was building all his expectations up for tomorrow, but now she had suddenly sent the picture already? Well, this was certainly unexpected. A feeling of anticipation and nervousness started to build up in his stomach. Not as much when he sent his own picture though, that was far worse. He was excited to see her, so he clicked on the attachment that she sent along.

The picture opened up in a new window, showing a girl who was making a peace sign at the camera. She had a broad and devious smile on her small face. She had short brown hair, much like her avatar BlackRose, as well as brown eyes which – he could have sworn – sparkled at him. It was a bust-up only picture, and thus he couldn't see below the waist. His eyes wondered over to her chest and felt too ashamed to continue staring at that area and thus looked up at her face again.

"So … this is Akira."

Kaitou looked to his left to make sure his bedroom door was closed, then scrolled his mouse wheel to zoom in on her face. Akira's face was now in full screen on his monitor. This way he could really look into her eyes and study every little detail on her face. From her pudgy little nose, to her slightly roundish cheeks and her protruding forehead. He noticed she had long eyelashes that made her seem more feminine and seductive. Kaitou swallowed as he shook his head to prevent himself from thinking wrong things about Akira. He continued to stare at her face, kind of in a dream state. He never realized that Akira could have been a really beautiful girl. Then again, somehow he imagined her to be more 'skanky' because of the way her avatar was. Yet here she was, a pure beauty smiling at him mischievously. She really was pretty. Well, to him at least. Then again, he really shouldn't be having these kind of thoughts about his friend.

Kaitou clicked the picture away and started to type a reply.

Hey, I just got your mail.

I must say, you're very pretty. Don't show it to anyone else ;-)

Kaitou hovered his fingers above his keyboard. Was this too informal? Was it too weird? He reread his mail again and hung his head down in shame; he sounded like a possessive stalker or something. Especially that last part – but he really didn't want anyone else to have a picture of Akira! It took them about a year to finally share this kind of information with each other, so he didn't want her sending pictures on a whim to other people as well …

The boy sighed as he tapped his finger on backspace a couple of times and rewrote his mail.

Hey, I just got your mail.

You look nice :-)

There, that one seemed less possessive and stalkerish. It didn't make him look like he was preying on her looks for one. Kaitou clicked the button to send the mail and hung back in his chair. He looked over at his clock; it was 11 PM, very late. He still had school tomorrow. The boy turned his computer off and headed off to bed.

However, it was very hard for him to fall asleep when all he could do was imagine Akira in his head. He finally had a face to put in his head, and now, that was all he could do. He started to fantasize about seeing her in real life, to see her smile mischievous at him, then start yelling at him for being late or something. Kaitou smiled to himself as even in his mind Akira was already yelling at him. Then all of the sudden, his mind brought him back to that one mail she had sent about a week ago. The one saying how they finally made it through … the one that she signed off saying that she had fallen in love with him, only to say she was joking afterwards.

Kaitou felt a mixed amount of emotions when he read that sentence. He was stuck on the 'I think I might have fallen in love with you' part for a few minutes, before he continued reading and realized she was joking. Why would anyone joke about something like that? More importantly, why was he thinking about this now? This was just embarrassing stuff he shouldn't be thinking … Kaitou turned on his side to face the wall, determined to not think about her anymore.

He utterly failed as her face popped right back up in his mind.