.hack//AI buster 2
 Haruka Mizuhara, whose name was misspelled in the translation of the chapter title, is the player behind the wavemaster Hokuto. All the naiveness is a guise so she could find out more about the mysterious Divine Spear of Wotan. Hokuto is really a poor, 30 year-old translator who is interested in Celtic mythology. She lives in a two bedroom apartment, alone. She is depressed because Celtic mythology is first translated into English and then into Japanese. Haruka is haunted by her deadlines which scare her because of her procrastination. Her first avatar in The World, created when Haruka was one of the beta testers, is W.B. Yates, a Wavemaster of unknown level. Hokuto is Haruka's second character that she uses to avoid work and escape from reality. Hokuto was only made to play freely in The World, so Haruka's boss wouldn't find out she was procrastinating. Haruka Muzuhara's Situation is the first .hack//AI buster novel told from Haruka's perspective. It also is used to explain the way that Haruka lives and her feelings for Albireo. This is the sequel to .hack//AI buster and takes place during the first four episodes of .hack//Sign. A few months after the Lycoris event, Albireo, Saki Shibiyama, and the Cobalt Knight Brigade are assigned a case to find and deal with Macha, a catlike NPC; and to monitor Tsukasa, a Wavemaster who is attacking players with a mysterious dumb-bell shaped monster. He meets up again with his partner from .hack//AI buster who he pumps for information: Hokuto, who he now knows is the mysterious web poet W.B. Yeats. During this case, Albireo has begun to suffer a mental breakdown since meeting Lycoris, questioning what he knows about the system and reality itself. He eventually tries to confront Tsukasa when his Guardian attacks four female players (episode 4 of .hack//Sign). The four PKK (Player Killer Killers) that were hunting Tsukasa are Long Arm, but were mistranslated as Heavy Axes in the novel. Their names are taken from the suits in a deck of playing cards and are Hearts, Spades, Diamonds, and Clubs. The names were given by Decipher in the .hack//Enemy trading card game. The subtitles shown while the language is set to Japanese from the English release of .hack//Sign has one of the girls' name as Yossan. Macha stops and warns him to stay away from Tsukasa, but Albireo attacks Macha to get to Tsukasa. Macha calls on another creature and destroys Albireo's Spear of Wotan before Data Draining him, causing his real self to get hospitalized. After the Twilight Incident, Watarai is forced to take blame for it, and retires from CC Corp much to the sorrow of Saki, who cannot understand why he left. At the end of the story, he meets with Hokuto's real-life player after he recovers. He accepts the results of his breakdown as the road that led to Haruka and decides to begin a relationship with her; one that she is equally pleased to pursue. Four years after the Twilight Incident, Saki is the new head of the Cobalt Knights. She has to deal with a vagrant AI that one of her direct subordinates has interacted with. The AI, Lin, tries to defend himself using the philosophy that everything in The World has been granted a chance to live, AI and player character. In the end, Kamui deletes Lin and fires the knight that was playing with him. Rena is using her first avatar, Brigit, who has been fooled by a twin blade who failed to revive her, causing her friend to leave The World for good. Brigit then began to play solo until she is saved by a Wavemaster who talks about the rumors of the .hackers. The story then zooms to approximately the middle of Volume 1 of the .hack//Legend of the Twilight manga, when Rena is meeting with Ouka and Mirelle. Shugo logs on and they head for their new adventures. "Firefly" takes place prior to .hack//Legend of the Twilight and focuses on Hotaru's character. It is the story of how she met the .hacker Sanjuro and how they became friends. With her parents out for the night, a young half-Irish, half-Japanese girl sets up a character on the Japanese server of The World. This character is Hotaru. She enters the game and becomes involved with a fairy NPC that won't leave Hotaru alone until she gives a correct answer to her riddle. She cries for help and meets Sanjuro, who offers to help her on the event. This leads the pair to a new area where they encounter a group of Player Killers which Sanjuro dispatches easily. Hotaru, Sanjuro and two players they saved are treated to a magical firefly display where Hotaru solves her riddle and the fairy NPC flies off to join in the display. Sanjuro and Hotaru exchange member addresses before Sanjuro heads off, wishing that Hotaru's future adventures will be "one of a kind". fr:.hack//AI buster 2