Together, they made their way back to the neutral city; the former capital city of Alfheim, Alne as they planned to enter the World Tree to teleport back to the 24th floor of Aincrad to witness a precious moment of a shy boy finally confessing to his crush.

Asuna and Kirito had observed the boy in question’s party for a few days and finally figured out the dynamics of the group. So they were reasonably sure that the girl should accept his confession. When they neared the city parameters, Kirito, as always, casted his illusion magic on both of them to make them seem older, where they were now at the same height as their previous avatars.

The illusion magic which Kirito had just used was a unique magic called ‘Mirrorage’ that he had obtained right after he and Asuna evolved into a new race called ‘High Sylph’. Kirito has to permanently sacrifice half of his mana points for 24 hours just to use it once, the more he uses it in that time frame, the more his MP bar will be halved. Currently Kirito has only a quarter of his mana which will eventually return to normal after a day.

High-Sylphs, an advanced race to the Sylphs that could only be attained by eating the forbidden fruit; The Golden Apple which grows only on top of Yggdrasil where a Faery could never reach.

Three months ago, right after they exited the Well of Rebirth which was located inside the Chapel of Beginnings in Yggdrasil City, the alert menu appeared before them regarding a special quest. As they hadn’t expected to encounter a special quest right after their ‘rebirth’, they welcomed the unexpected prospect, which quickly turned into unease upon further reading the details of the quest.

Apparently while they were using the Well of Rebirth, Yggdrasil took a major damage from a heavy meteor shower and lost some of it’s fruits due to the impact. Kirito and Asuna were partly held responsible for the accident by the Faery King Oberon as Yggdrasil was at it’s most vulnerable state while operating the Well of Rebirth. So they were tasked with the mission of finding the apples as soon as possible. The deadline was until tomorrow morning. If they successfully completed the quest, then King Oberon will grant them an audience with him and they will have the option to be reborn as an Alf. If they failed the mission, then the two Golden Apples shall fall into the hands of Niflheim, if so, then it may very well spell the end of Yggdrasil as they knew it...

It was a compulsory quest, they had no choice but to accept it. They heard rumors about several quests that could let you become the legendary race Alf. But it seems none have managed to succeed in any of them so far as the quests were impossibly hard to accomplish according to some veteran players. And when you invite more players to do the quest, than no rewards were given even if you were to complete it, so it was out of option to get help from their Faery Lord Sakuya or anyone for that matter if they wanted to become Alves...

And so, they ‘chose’ to accept the quest and started their search immediately after they got out of the World Tree. They felt bad about not going to the 24th floor, but this was more important. They didn’t want the city that they came to love, Alne to be destroyed even if it was a game which it was not, at least not to them.

So they searched and searched, flew here and there until it was midnight inside the game but no matter what they did, no matter how much they searched, they just couldn’t find the apples. If Kirito was a Spriggan, he may have used his tracking skills to detect the apple no matter how unlikely it could be for them to find the apples even then, but at least they could have a chance. But now that the both of them are Sylphs, that option was not available. They were beginning to think that getting help was their only choice to complete the quest and save Alfheim as being an Alf was less important then loosing the place they came to love. So as they were just about to contact Leafa and Lady Sakuya to inform them about the grand quest, a flickering ball of purple light, the size of a tennis ball suddenly appeared in front of them which obviously got their attention. It somehow felt very familiar to both Kirito and Asuna but they just couldn’t place it...

As they had no idea how to find the apples, they were more than willing to follow this mysterious purple ball of light. Maybe it had something to do with the quest? They were hoping that it would take them to the location of the apples which predictably, it did.

They found the apple closest to them inside a deep well, while the other they found on one of the floating islands which circled around the World Tree.

When they eventually obtained the last apple, Asuna proposed a crazy idea. “Kirito-kun? What if — what if we kept the apples instead of handing them over to King Oberon? Maybe something even more amazing will happen if we ate the apples instead, the quest doesn’t specifically state that Niflheim will rise if we didn’t bring the apples to the king.”

Was her point, of course, she also secretly had a deep hatred towards the Faery King Oberon thanks to one Sugou so it was understandable that she would not want to give the apples to him or even see him at all for that matter.

It was fine either way for Kirito as he didn’t have the desire to become an Alf that much anyway as he was feeling satisfied enough with his new avatar already. Tasting the refreshing scent of the virtual wind that could only be sensed by Sylphs, he replied with a shrug,

“I’ve always wanted to taste the forbidden fruit anyway, so either way is fine with me.”

So after they had finished eating their share of strawberry-chocolate tasting golden apple, not unexpectedly something strange happened. Both of them found themselves in a virtual dark room where they could change anything about their character as long as it had something to do with their avatar’s appearance.

As they were in different virtual rooms, they had to use the message system to communicate and eventually, they came to a decision to make their avatars just like themselves back when they were 12-13 years old in ‘real life’.

To accomplish this, Asuna had to exit the game to compile her younger photos along with Kirito’s from both of their houses. As she had run away from her own home because of a serious argument with her mother about why she left her university, she had to secretly get in and take the photos without being seen. Aside from that, everything went relatively smoothly.

She then picked the relevant ones among them and took their photos with her cell phone’s camera and uploaded them to her amusphere. From there, she sent the files relevant to Kirito to his amusphere and then, using the facial recognition mode of ALO, they were able to recreate their younger selves with a few ‘minor’ modifications. They could also customize their wings which was not even available as an option, even for players who pay to customize their avatars, they could only select from a limited amount of choices, even then, they couldn’t even change the color of their wings.

But it was different for Asuna and Kirito as they had nearly unlimited choice in customizing their avatars, so they spent a lot of time trying to come up with the best possible results and after about a few hours, they were finally done.

With the system-assist as a guide, Asuna made herself a white-pink ethereal wing resembling that of a bird’s while Kirito also made himself a similar black one, but his was more on the robust side while Asuna’s was more for elegance...

When they completed their customization, they also noticed some other changes to their in-game characters. Now, they were of a different race called High-Sylph, a race much lighter and more agile than a Sylph, but the benefits didn’t just end there. It seems as a ‘High’ race, they possessed two Faery affinities. One for Sylphs and the other for their previous race. So it was Spriggan for Kirito and Undine for Asuna other than their current affinities. Although their magic were set to default, it was definitely worth it in the long run as they would eventually advance their magic while having the advantage of two different affinities.

And ever since then, it was as if Asuna and Kirito were living their rebellious teenage years that they never had, inside ALO, literally as teenagers again...

At the start, much to their irritation, they had to participate in a lot of raids with the Sylphs as it was seen as their duty but thanks to Lady Sakuya, they were able to come to an agreement on participating only in certain quests like grand or special ones. This kind of privilege was a first, it never happened before among the sylphs so it did cause some unrest but eventually, thanks to Leafa’s standing up for her brother and after getting saved by the duo a few times in their latest grand quests, they quieted down.

Asuna and Kirito enjoyed many things with each other that they hadn’t had the opportunity to do in their lives. Playing games, singing, matchmaking, pranking the bad players and even saving damsels in distress. But one thing in particular that they did together, they enjoyed the most; Dancing. It was not your ordinary dance, no. It was a Faery Dance.

In the three month period, whenever they remembered the death of their one and only child, Yui or the news that Kirito’s health was even further detoriating, they just threw themselves from Aincrad down to the plains of Alfheim... While falling headfirst, they hold on to each other as tightly as possible while spinning faster and faster... At the very last moment, they use all of their power to flap their wings as fast as they possibly could to avoid ‘crash landing’. It was so exhilarating for the duo, almost addicting... They had never felt more alive... The risks of a possible death penalty for their characters was not a welcome one, but that’s why it made it that much more fun to execute the dance. Asuna called it ‘The Mating of the Dragon’.

They were able to pull this through only because of their High-Sylph status. Their wings mustered much more power than the rest but the most notable aspect about their wings was not that they were much stronger, but just like Alves, they didn’t have a time limit either...

This, they learned much later, when they were dancing for a while and wondered why they still hadn’t fallen...

As they had just arrived at the gates of The World Tree, something happened. Something that they had coveted for a long time... Something they thought was possible only in their wildest dreams... Something that could only be interpreted by the duo as, ““Arienai!””.