A Late Night Reprieve [c]

Pax let out an audible noise of surprise upon realising he wasn't the only one on the roof. No one usually ventured on rooftops in the towns. He actually really fancied them himself. They were a nice reprieve from being forced to talk to people on the ground. Plus, something about being above everyone else made him feel at ease. He looked further down the roof to see a silhouette of a female. He couldn't quite make out who it was from the face nor the figure, but he never forgot peoples' voices.

"Oh, hi, Saint, I didn't think anyone would be up here," Pax choked down his tears for now, "I was just coming up here for fresh air, that's all. The inn's air smells of bread all day long."

Pax was suddenly aware of his dry, cracking throat and stuffy nose. Blinking a couple times, he realised the darkness hadn't been what caused him to not be able to recognise Saint's face. It had been the swelling tears blurring his vision. When had he started crying?

With a sniffle he patted the roof next to where he was sitting, "It's been a while since I cried in front of someone. But, I'm not against sharing a silly roof, really. The real question is if you can deal with the noise."

He chuckled a bit to himself and wiped away a bit of moisture from his eyes. He wasn't going to break out in a waterfall of tears, but he could use someone to talk to that didn't have any reason to judge him for his sins. With a slight sniffle, he looked up to the stars for some kind of answer to the problems they were all facing. Finding none, he instead decided to find comfort in the fact that Kayaba had made stars at all. Regaining a little bit of his composure, Pax laughed.

"It is definitely too nice a night to be wasted indoors," he said with a grin, "but you can't expect a bunch of gamers to fully appreciate the concept, can you?"

"Well, if I'm a protagonist, I won't die nearly as easy, right? Therefore, I must do all the things a protagonist would do! Like sulk on a rooftop alone. Which means you are severely reducing my chances of survival, you know."

Pax gave Saint an awkward smile. He wasn't very good at proper social interactions, really. He didn't know how to handle talking to people about anything serious, but he knew this was weird. Sneaking out on to a rooftop to cry, only to be stopped by someone else who was out on the rooftop in the middle of the night? Maybe he was a protagonist after all. He laughed and knocked on the wooden slats of the inn's roof.

"The game feels about the same, I'd say," Pax mused about the entire ordeal with the game. He was in a very strange mood now. "Some people might say otherwise, because they've been trapped against their will. But in all honesty, it's still beautiful. Too often people let fear cloud what they can see in front of them. I mean, there was always the threat of real life death, it was just never an idea forced upon people."

Pax shook his head and looked around the sky for constellations he could create himself. He stayed quiet as Saint talked and leaned up next to him. He couldn't think of much to say. And then he heard her ask how he was. He stayed quiet for a good minute. His face took on a rather neutral expression as he thought hard on what was actually wrong with him. Self-analyzing was one of the things he was good at. Thinking about it after someone had snapped him from his sulking, he wasn't sad about the people he'd left behind.

"No, I'm not sad because I left so many people helpless," he debated with himself out loud, "Anyone who decided to kill themselves probably were people I couldn't have helped anyway. Maybe I could have helped all of those people who got killed by the weakest of enemies . . . but that would've put me extremely far behind."

Pax closed his eyes and thought about his sister. The two of them were ridiculously close. Why were they trying so hard to win this game? Another question he needed to think on.

"No, this was the best choice of action," Pax looked up at Saint with a fiery smile, directing his next set of words more for her, "I'm fine now. The stars aren't quite the reason I wanted to cry. I was thinking about all of the people who've died already."

He stood up, as his rear end was starting to ache a bit from the stiff wooden slats, "All of those people reminded me of our other younger sister. She died in a car crash right in front of me. One of those, 'if only I'd saved her' things, you know? Kinda ruins my day every now and again. I was thinking of how I could've saved all of those people who've died, but I know I couldn't have done anything for most of them. If anything, bringing my sister along with me so that we could level faster than everyone is the best course of action!"

He laughed a bit and gave Saint a thumbs up, "The sooner we beat this game, the sooner people stop dying! That's why this was the best option for us. We're some of the best gamers in the world, see. Landed ourselves in the top 10th percentile in almost every game we play. That's why we're so hell bent on being the best. If we continue to play this like any other game, we'll beat it before anyone even knows it!"

With a smile, he turned back to admire the stars. He was still a little sad, though. "It would be a hell of a burden to say everyone's relying on me, though. So, I'll tell you now I'm not doing this for anyone but me. That would make me falter beyond belief. No, I'll beat this game for purely selfish reason. To say that I was trapped here. That I became the best. That I bested everything that was thrown at me! I'll be a national - if not global - hero!"

Pax had ignored the romance thing entirely. Not that he was embarrassed -maybe a little bit- but the girl reminded him of his own mother. Her hair looked the same when it was tied up and everything. That was saying nothing about that constant soft smile. Pax shook his head and listened carefully to Saint. With every word Saint spoke, Pax was losing more and more of his confidence. Eventually, dread filled Pax to his core. It hadn't dawned on him until just that moment that he would achieve literally nothing without a proper guild. But he wasn't well suited to handling things that involved more than four people. He would absolutely flop.

"Saint," he took a moment after saying her name to arrange his emotions. He could only think of one course of action, "I would never be able to lead a guild. I'm insufferable, and I find that most people I meet are the same. Either they don't try hard enough, or they don't choose to understand what they're doing."

He broke out into laughter and put his hand out to steady himself, but there was nothing there. Falling into a sitting position, Pax blew air out of his nose. "It's like you said, Saint. The people who died to the weakest mobs just didn't respect the game. And here I am, going along like I can be some exception. I'm trying to not respect the game. A fool and his head are easily parted, my mom use to say."

That phrase had several meanings, really. It fit rather well for SAO, though. One wrong calculation from him or his sister and whack, no more head. Understanding that he needed to be more careful didn't exactly remedy his issue of needing a guild to have his prowess fully realised. With a sigh, he recognised that almost every quest on the first floor had been tailored to help newcomers understand that MMO's aren't solo games. With as much as he hated working with people he didn't know very well, even he realised that he'd get nowhere fast by himself, and not much further with just his sister. But he definitely couldn't handle making friends with a rag tag group of noobs who would just die on him immediately. After another moment of silent thinking he made his decision and nodded.

"Maybe I can't do everything solo," he began explaining to Saint, trying to erase the idea that she looked like his mother from his mind, "but I'll have to wait until maybe the fifth floor before I join a guild. I'll do my best to work together with the others when it comes to boss fights. As morbid as it sounds, I don't think I can rely on many people until the weaker ones are weeded out. Relying on someone who will falter easily under stress will likely get me killed. So no, I'll wait until a gnarly bunch of players rise out of the chaos. Then I'll test to see if I'm just sufferable enough for them to allow me into their ranks. Then, I will be an extension of that guild. And that guild will prosper, even if I have to die for it. Well, I won't die, but the attitude will be there."

When he looked at Saint, a fire was burning in his eyes that matched his determination to get out of this hell hole of a game. An objective had finally made itself clear to him.

Pax sighed and made a mental note to clarify things more appropriately whenever talking to people while he was in a state of being drunk on his emotions. As he listened to Saint go on her calm tirade at him, he couldn't help but smile. He knew that she might take it as him not listening, or even finding her words amusing, but no. She sounded exactly like his mother. He hadn't talked to his own mom in roughly a year. She would show up at home for a few hours at a time, and always while he was sleeping for some reason. They had grown increasingly distant for a while, her oversea trips taking away his last remaining parent. In a way, Saint's monologue made him homesick, and a couple tears started welling up again. God, he was being such a baby.

Pax shook his head a couple seconds after Saint finished talking and gave her a serious look, "I don't mean to assume that I'd be some prized member of a guild. Nor do I intend to test them. It's more along the lines of testing myself to make sure none of the members will hate me enough to ruin a mission. I'd hate for something like that to happen. And I don't have enough faith in myself to help a guild's foundation grow. I'm rather abrasive, see. Or rather, that's what most people have found when gaming with me."

Pax let out a light snort at the idea of starting his own guild, "I could imagine people like you starting up a promising guild only to have someone like me ruin it from the inside. I've never played well with others. I'd much sooner do a 1v4 objective game before I did a 4v4. In a 1v4, I've actually never lost. But I've lost plenty of evenly matched games. To be forced to cooperate with a massive group of people would give me an ulcer. So no, it's not that no guild would be worthy of me right now, I think. It's more like, I'd prefer to be disposable. If I'm part of the foundation of the guild and end up doing something to ruin the whole thing? That would be devastating. But if I'm just some renegade mercenary type? Well, that would make it easier for everyone . . ."

He turned his eyes back to the horizon, looking more at the enormous mountain located at the center of the floor.

"That mountain," he pointed at the distant, looming mass of ground, "has a quest on it that I want to do with my sister tomorrow. If she were to go before I woke up tomorrow, I'd be rather upset, personally. Something like that, but on a much larger scale. That's the kind of thing that would happen to break up any kind of guild I enter.

He shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair with a tired huff. Sleep was catching up to him faster than he thought it would have. Then again, he didn't expect to find someone else lurking on the roof. He smiled at the thought of such uncertain circumstances. Little surprises were dangerous, but amusing.