Catch Me When I Fall

Author's Note: Er... hi? Uhm, sorry for the long wait. You'll probably kill me for this, but I've had half of this chapter written for the past five months. I just finished it tonight. Heh, heh... don't kill me! ;-; I like living. I promise there's going to be lots of drama in the next few chapters, and maybe even some fluffy romance, if my reviewers want it (hinthint). Oh, and by the way... in response to a couple reviews I got... keep in mind, this is after you beat the .hack games. However, if you noticed, the story picked up directly after the defeat of Corbenik, so please note that Mia has not been brought back yet. This story would be taking place before Mia's ressurrection, so Macha being in existance at this time is what actually happened in the game.

Disclaimer: Don't own it. Don't sue. Don't laugh, because I'll kill you. (That was a very short poem, in case you didn't notice.)

Chapter Six – Panic and Heartache

Kite was in near hysteria as he scoured the root towns for any sign of his missing partner, no doubt scaring a few players with his desperate inqueries about if they'd seen the heavy blade. BlackRose did tend to make a scene when she was in these root towns, making it a point frighten the newbies, so it was unlikely that she would have been there if they hadn't seen her. The fact that no one in any of the root towns had seen her in the past few hours was getting close to giving him a heart attack. Yes, it was possible that she was just hanging around a particular field or taking her sweet time clearing out a dungeon, but BlackRose was such an impatient person, she almost never stayed in one place for more than half an hour. She had to have gated in to one of the root towns first if she went to another field, and besides the unlikeliness of that, it just wasn't like her to not show up when she was supposed to meet him. Usually, she was the one always standing and waiting for him, and would frequently give him a good verbal beating if he was more than two minutes late. This wasn't like her at all.

"Yasu- ...er, Orca!" Kite caught himself before he called his friend by his real name, still not quite used to using a different name for a person he'd known for so long. Said blademaster turned abruptly at the sound of his title, a half grin gracing his painted face when he laid eyes upon the red-garbed twin blade.

"What's up, Kite?" he took note of the smaller boy's panicked appearance and frazzled nerves. "Late for another meeting with your partner?" he snickered. The last few times that he'd caught his friend running through the streets of Mac Anu, he was always out of breath and in a rush to get away, muttering something about being late. He found it utterly hilarious that Kite was so wrapped around BlackRose's finger; but even he had to admit, that girl could be downright scary when provoked. He suppressed a shudder at a vivid memory from a few days ago, when he'd volunteered to escort her to a dungeon in Kite's absence, and she'd nearly bitten his head off when they'd reached the second floor, and she had already had to revive him twice. It wasn't his fault, really... how was he supposed to know that she was at level 99? Level 50 was pretty high for general standards, and he hadn't been around for months!

"Have you seen BlackRose? She was supposed to meet me an hour ago!"

Orca's knowing grin widened as his earlier suspicions were confirmed, but at the look of sheer panic on his friend's face, his mirth began to fade. "Are you sure she didn't just forget?"

He'd doubted she could forget, being trapped in this game, anyway, and the look on Kite's face affirmed that he didn't think so, either.

"Forget? Are you crazy? She wouldn't just forget! I-"

"Easy, easy there, Kenji," Yasuhiko reverted to calling his friend by his true name in order to catch his attention while trying to temper his frenzied desperation. "We'll find her, okay? Just calm down, man."

The use of his real name surprised Kite into thinking through his words, and after taking a moment to try and relax, he nodded to Orca. The blademaster nodded back sagely, pleased to see that his friend had a little better grip on his sanity. "Now, where was the last place you saw her?"

She didn't have much time. She knew he was looking for her, and she could only prolong the inevitable for so long.

Where the hell was that damn cat when you needed him!

Another sharp, stabbing pain in the region of her abdomen drove BlackRose to her knees with its intensity, wheezing with the effort it took not to cry out in pain.

She'd been wandering fields for hours now, attempting to locate Macha with the intent of beating some answers out of him. She had taken notice of the strange ability to teleport between fields without using the Chaos Gate, and it confused her- but she decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. She could not afford to run into Kite right now, and she knew that either he or one of his friends would be stationed there, waiting to catch a glimpse of her when she gated out and report back to him about it.

Dammit, that boy was persistent.

Despite the annoyance, however, the thought that he was doing it for her brought a small smile to her lips. He had protected her so many times. This time, she was going to protect him.

In blatant defiance of the steady throb of agony that was gradually growing larger on her stomach, she stumbled to her feet, breathing hard. In the course of the time since she'd left Helba, new spots of raw data code had begun to appear on her body- random splotches of damaged data littered her skin like ugly tattoos, and were continuing to grow larger.

She was running out of time.

"Dammit! I knew I shouldn't have left her... I'm such an idiot!" Kite raved hours later, pacing the littered streets of Net Slum aggravatedly and throwing up his arms to accentuate his words. The term 'worried sick' wouldn't have done him justice... no, Kite was well beyond that. He was terrified, guilt-stricken, and rapidly losing his sanity to desperation. He needed to find her. He wasn't sure he'd be able to keep his head on straight unless he did.

"You couldn't possibly have known anything was going to happen," Wiseman offered.

"That's no excuse! God, I left her alone and defenseless here just to go take a fucking nap! What kind of friend am I!"

"One who desperately needed a good night's sleep, and was probably pressured into taking it, if I know my sister at all," Kazu said loudly. He was sitting on the ground and leaning back against a wall with his staff tucked into his arms, watching Kite with a kind of detached concern. He himself was exhausted from what had been going on, and he had been sleeping relatively well since his sister started with this ordeal- he couldn't even imagine what her partner was going through. "Stop blaming yourself. You know she'd be pissed at you for it."

The twin blade paused, dropping his hands as a heavy sigh assaulted his form. "She would, wouldn't she?" Leaning back against the wall opposite from Kazu, he slumped down to sit with his knees in the air and his head drooping. "I can't help it. I just... she's been such a great friend to me, and all I've ever done is put her through danger and heartache."

The three of them had been stationed at Net Slum for a little over an hour now, waiting to hear back from Helba. The hacker was not easy to track down, so they couldn't afford to miss a meeting with her when she might be able to help find the missing girl. Without a set meeting time, though, it appeared as though the older woman was taking her sweet time.

"You know, she says the exact same thing about you," the young wavemaster said with a smile, interrupting his brooding session. Kite's head jerked up in surprise, confusion etching itself onto his features.

"What-"

"You were always the one she talked to me about when I was in the hospital, in that coma. I don't think she ever realized that I heard her, but I do remember everything that she told me." Kazu smiled as he looked towards the distorted sky. "She always had a new adventure to tell me about when she came to visit, and there was always something about you that she included. She thinks very highly of you, you know."

Kite just blinked, stunned into silence.

"She always had something to say about how brave you were, or how much you helped her," Kazu continued. "From the stories she told me, she always made you sound like a hero." He chuckled here. "Not that you aren't, but I think her opinion was just a little biased."

Kite managed a weak smile in return.

"Sometimes she would talk to me about how scared she was, or how worried she was that I would never wake up- but the next day she'd be back to normal, saying something about how you showed her she wasn't alone in her fear or something like that."

Kite reminisced on a time that he'd been feeling alone and unsure, when BlackRose had bullied him back into believing that what they were doing was right, that he wasn't the only one facing these dangers.

It didn't make sense that she said he had done all those things for her. Maybe, on some unconscious level, forcing her to make him confront those fears had made her do the same..? Whatever the case, Kazu's words had made him more sure of one thing than anything else in the world. BlackRose was a friend worth dying for.

A small chime interrupted his musings and drew Kite's attention to his inbox. He had new mail.

Quickly dredging up an excuse for his sudden jumpiness to his comrades, he opened the mail and eagerly scanned its contents. The corner of the mail window with the sender's ID and picture caught his attention for a brief moment, and his eyes widened in disbelief. It couldn't be... could it?

It was Aura.

How was she alive? He'd seen her die... hell, he'd stabbed her with his own dagger! But the message was clear as day, as was her picture.

Wait... clear as day?

Something wasn't right about this.

After a moment of silent deliberation, Kite came to the conclusion that no, he wasn't seeing things, and yes, that was Aura's name and picture and perfectly punctuated message in the e-mail's text box. The blurred image of the mysterious white girl and the garbled number-letter messages she had sent him before seemed to be her only way of communicating with him through the system before, but he supposed now that the World was back to its original self, she had no need for such.

But that didn't explain why she still existed.

There was time to figure that out later, he supposed, pushing it back in his mind as his heart leapt at the sight of what he'd been hoping for- three keywords. Aura wanted to meet with him.

In an instant he was on his feet, and babbled an excuse to his friends before immediately gating out and bringing up the gate jump keywords he had acquired. If anyone had answers for BlackRose's problem, it would be Aura. Hope blossomed in his chest as he gated into a foresty area in a blur of gold rings, sprinting past monsters and heading straight for the dungeon.

She was there, just like he knew she would be. "Aura," he breathed reverently as he stared at the girl, who floated with an ethereal glow. Something seemed different about her, though... something he couldn't quite place. After studying her for a moment, a gasp of surprise alerted her to the realization that he had noticed.

She was smiling.

And the aura of sadness about her was gone.

"Kite," she spoke urgently, needing to make her point as her smile faded into a serious expression. "I have some things you need to know. But first-" she held out a pale-skinned hand, closing her eyes in concentration as a glow formed about his wrist where the bracelet had once been. In a brilliant flash of light, she withdrew her hand, and the bracelet glowed and pulsed over his arm.

"The bracelet?" he questioned in pure confusion. "But why..?"

The young girl shook her head to stay his question. "That's not important right now."

The red-clothed twin blade waited anxiously for her to continue.

"Kite," Aura whispered, her tone suddenly hushed and urgent, as if she was afraid of someone overhearing them. "Time is running out. Stop her, Kite. Stop her, before it's too late."

"Stop who?" Kite asked, more confused than ever. "What are you talking about, Aura? I don't understand a word of what you're saying."

"Mother. Stop Mother."

Author's Note: Okay okay, sorry for the wait I have a valid excuse, but if I told you, I don't think you'd care. I'm still working hard on this story- I've said before, don't worry; I never leave a story unfinished. The details on how I want this to end are still a little fuzzy to me, so I'll probably require some time to work them out, but right now I'm confident that I'll have this done within a couple months. Pleeeease continue reviewing, wonderful people, I love hearing your input. There is much much juicy angst coming up in the next few chapters, so you can look forward to that!