Little Underworld
For those of you who somehow liked my original first chapter, sorry, well I could understand how you would like it as I basically transcribed the anime and the anime was awesome. I'm going to delete the other story now.
Anyway, I decided to rewrite this, and instead, I'm going to have Kirito drop in (heh heh heh heh...) somewhere around the time that Perseus got beat up.
I was told Kirito at the end of Alicization was about comparable to Izayoi in physical abilities so I'll be using him, minor spoilers will be in this story for the SAO light novels. I myself haven't read to that part because I can't read Japanese and it isn't translated yet.
Warning: LOTS of Alicization spoilers. Like seriously, lots. You should probably read the light novels first, unless of course you don't even care for SAO and are just reading this for the Mondaiji Tachi part.
Italics in speech means they are speaking English not Japanese.
Chapter 1: Wasn't I In Underworld?
(1st person, Kirito)
Fighting is over for now right? Sort of, now I'm falling from the sky after reading a strange letter that came out of nowhere.
Once I read it there was a blinding flash of light and here I am.
Let's just hope whoever felt like dropping me out of the sky planned for my survival...
I oriented myself so that I was feet-first, though from this height if I was in a body that even resembled a normal body, I'm dead meat.
On the plus, I'm still wearing my Underworld clothes so I might have my Underworld survivability, in which case if I land feet-first I might survive.
As I fell through the clouds I looked around, starting with down.
There was a lake beneath me so I should survive, that's nice...
Other then that on one side were endless rows of domes.
The other way was what looked to be the edge of the world, so this obviously wasn't Earth, or Aincrad, and it didn't seem to be the SAO world at all because my hand, for example, didn't look like it was made of polygons.
Splash.
I swam up to the surface of the thankfully deep lake and looked around.
The lake seemed to be surrounded by forest, and there were 4 people hiding in the bushes, though some of them weren't doing a very good job...
Well, given that this seems to be a fairly real body, I can probably get sick, which means I should probably get out of the water.
I swam over to the edge of the lake and climb out.
Oh well, let's ask the people in the bushes what they know.
"So, when are you planning to come out?" I asked while facing the bushes.
I could hear them bickering saying "What were we expecting to happen?" asked a male voice, belonging to the one best hidden.
As they stepped out 4 people were visible.
There was a boy with blond hair and purple eyes, and headphones that looked like they'd seen better days.
There was a shy-looking girl with short light brown hair wearing a strange looking neckless that had a piece of wood with carvings.
There was a girl with long dark brown hair that reminded me of Asuna in the way she carried herself the 'rich girl' part that is, she was wearing a red dress.
And finally, there was another girl that had long blue hair and bunny ears...
"Um... hi?" I said carefully.
"Hi!" the bunny person said cheerfully and the 3 others all looked at her.
"Hey, Black Rabbit, do you drop lots of people in this lake with no warning?" asked the blond.
"Just you 3 and him." the bunny person referred to as 'Black Rabbit' answered.
"I feel sooo special." I said sarcastically.
"So care to explain why I'm here and where 'here' is? Or..." I asked.
They walked forward and I instinctively reached my hand back to draw my sword, remembering that I don't have it and being surprised when I find myself grasping the handle.
I drew the sword and flourished it, ignoring the surprise on the faces of my 'welcoming party', it felt similar to how it felt in Underworld, which means that most likely I have the same capabilities as in Underworld, in other words, far more then human. What about sword skills? I'll check later, don't want them to think I'm attacking them.
I put the sword back in its sheath on my back and spoke "Well? You gonna explain or just stand there?"
"R-right." stuttered Black Rabbit.
"Just let one of us explain, I know you're the servant of the founder or whatever but your explanation sounds more like advertising." said the blonde coldly.
"Izayoi-san, you're cruel!" pouted the bunny girl.
"Doesn't change that it's true." he said.
"Okay, well, I'm used to talking to people so I'll explain then." the rich girl said.
"So, are you gonna be done arguing any time soon?" I asked.
It took a while, but eventually they managed to tell me what 'Little Garden' was and explain about the gift games and whatever else.
So this was basically a playground of the gods, with extra people with superpowers.
These superpowers were called 'gifts' and of the bunch, I'd the gift of the boy, Izayoi, was most impressive. It was basically ridiculous strength combined with some power to destroy gifts, whatever that means.
The rich girl's, Asuka, gift was 'Authority' and it allowed for her to basically order people to do things and had two possibilities, one of which was that she would be able to bring out the full potential in gifts and the other was the ability to control the people around her. She wanted the former.
The shy girl's, Yo, gift was the strange neckless around her neck and let her talk to animals as well as obtain the powers of the animals she befriended.
And finally bunny girl, who's name was apparently Black Rabbit, well she had a list of gifts that would take a long time to enumerate.
When asked what my own gift was I answered "I'm not sure. You probably wouldn't believe me if I explained why not anyway."
"Care to explain anyway?" asked the blond as we walked.
"Have you heard of STL?" I asked.
"What is that?" he asked.
"Never mind, have you heard of NerveGear at least?" I asked.
"That project with no chance of success?" asked Izayoi.
"Pretty sure it succeeded... I got trapped in a world created by it, along with ten thousand other people." I said.
"Well then you must come from the future relative to me by at least a few years, little Miss over there comes from just after the war and cat girl comes from the 23rd century." Izayoi explained.
"Okay, that makes no sense, but it would probably not be as confusing for me if I wasn't summoned from inside a video game." I said.
"Oh?" he asked, smirking slightly.
"This is a video game body, though it is hard to call it a video game if the non-player characters are just as human as the players." I explained.
"How is that possible? AI technology couldn't have gotten that far in a few years." Izayoi said.
"Back to STL, here's a hint, it stands for Soul Translator. It can also create artificial souls." I explained.
"Souls?" Izayoi asked.
"What you don't believe in souls despite being in a world full of gods?" I asked jokingly.
Before he could reply I said "Not souls in that sense exactly though, the proper name is Fluctlight, it is basically fluctuating photons inside micro tubes that make up what the person's consciousness, the machine is able to copy them and put them in an artificial medium called a Light Cube or just read from it, it can also feed information directly to it. The use of this and some other complicated stuff allows the creation of a world that might as well be real, using memories to create the objects and such. Though the way it works it means if someone wishes for something enough it comes true, with limits. Mostly that it can't revive someone because once they die, their soul is deleted, no way to bring it back."
"That's a complicated device, sounds like something people would want to get their hands on if it was known about." Izayoi said.
"Oh, well, it was sort of a not-so-tightly kept secret and, well, because some people wanted it I apparently spent 6 months time from my perspective and like 3 hours real world time as a limp vegetable." I said.
"How is it 6 months inside the game and 3 hours real world time?" he asked.
"FLA, or Fluctlight Acceleration, it basically allows the acceleration of the Fluctlight and thus the person's subjective time. The world I was in runs at 1000x speed."
"And because of all that, I have no idea which parts of my abilities there got carried over to here." I explained.
"Why don't you check?" he asked.
In response I did so "System call, generate luminous element."
To my surprise, on the tips of my fingers appeared 5 glowing white points.
"System call, generate luminous element? That's an interesting format for spells in a game." Izayoi said from next to me.
"You speak English?" I asked.
"Some. You?" he asked.
"Quite a bit." I answered.
"System call, disperse element." I said and the points of light vanished.
"That swords on your back, can you use them?" he asked.
"Yeah." I answered, gripping the hilt of the Night Sky Sword, a sword carved from the branch of a demonic tree that is harder then any metal. The other sword on my back was once my best friends sword, but it shared the same fate as him and was cut in half by a crazy 'god'.
God, this world is full of gods, which means none of them can be anywhere near her power, or Kayaba's power in his world, because those two had the literal power to delete their worlds.
"Both at once?" Izayoi clarified.
"I can use two swords at once." I answered ambiguously, not really answering his question.
He seemed satisfied and didn't say anything further.
I remembered about the edge of the world and grew curious.
"I'm gonna go check out the edge of the world real quick and come back." I said and turned around.
Once I was far enough that they wouldn't hear me even if I ran I took off at a run, though it was more of a jump from place to place really.
Jumping through the trees I reached a large river/lake and followed the current hoping to reach the edge of the world.
(3rd person, Problem Children/Black Rabbit)
They arrived at the gates where Jin was waiting.
"Was there nobody there?" he asked.
"This boy-in-blac—" Black Rabbit started to say.
"Where did he go?" she asked the group behind her.
""We don't even know when he left."" said the two girls.
"He said he wanted to check out the edge of the world real quick and come back." Izayoi said.
"Not AGAIN!? Why didn't you stop him!?" said Black Rabbit, drooping down slightly.
"Because that would be hypocritical." Izayoi said lazily.
"You just didn't want to bother." Black Rabbit whined.
"Please go back without me, I'll go fetch this problem child." she said and her hair turned pink then she muttered "Can't have on reasonable one, can I?"
With that she bounced off in the direction they came.
(1st person, Kirito)
A few giant pillars of water and that's it, pretty pathetic for a water 'god', even Sugou put up more of a fight.
There was artificial rain now, I guess I get to get wet, again.
I heard someone land behind me and start panting, turning around I saw what looked like Black Rabbit with pink hair.
"Are you Black Rabbit? What happened to your hair color?" I asked.
Ignoring my question she asked "Do you have any idea how far you've come?"
"The edge of the world, I think." I said, gesturing to the gigantic water fall into the void to the side.
"I was worried you might have challenged a god to a gift game, well since you're safe let's go now!" she said, exasperated.
"I did challenge a god to a gift game." I said.
"What?" she asked, looking worried.
Suddenly in a bubble of water a gigantic snake, our so-called water god burst out and screamed "This trail isn't over yet!"
"What did you do to make him so mad?!" Black Rabbit asked in surprise.
"Well, he told me to pick any gift game and I told him to see if he could give me a run for my money." I explained.
"I think that part of the reason he is so mad is because Izayoi did almost the exact same thing, I feel like I'm experiencing de-javu." Black Rabbit said.
"Don't be so arrogant kid!" screamed the snake and three tornados of water formed, one between me and him and the other two at 45° angles from that.
"Get back!" yelled Black Rabbit, covering her face from the wind.
"Nah, I started this and he seems to want to finish it." I said, in not-a-care-in-the-world voice.
"You got guts, I'll give you that. If you can take this hit I'll give you the win." the snake said.
"I think Izayoi hit him so hard he forgot about that whole thing because he is saying almost exactly the same thing." Black Rabbit muttered from behind me.
"I don't think fights work like that, it's over once somebody wins." I said.
"That's the last stupid thing that will come from your mouth!" screamed the snake and the tornados intensified before merging into one.
"Kirito, get back!" screamed Black Rabbit.
I responded with a casual "Nah."
The giant tornado of water slammed down on me, or tried.
Once it was about a meter away I drew my sword and executed the sword skill [Horizontal] in one fluid motion, to my surprise, I felt the system assist happen, so sword skills had turned into one of my 'gifts'
The sword slashing through the tornado, ignoring the terrifying currents and finished the skill before I returned it to its sheath in the same fluid motion.
To an observer there would be a blue semi circle in front of me and the tornado would be chopped apart by it, and they may have seen a blur.
The tornado had been disrupted to the point where whatever was causing it to happen stopped and it shattered into some splashing water, kinda like a sword skill, divert it enough and it cancels.
"Impossible!" screamed the snake.
"Wha?!" Black Rabbit 'said.'
I jumped into the air and slammed my fist into the snakes face using a [Marital Arts] skill which caused my fist to glow orange.
The snake collapsed into the water and Black Rabbit muttered in amazement "What... just... happened?"
Water rained down on me and I got wet for a third time now.
"How did you do that? I couldn't even see your hand move!" Black Rabbit finally said.
"Well, years of practice." I answered, which was mostly true.
How's this for a first chapter? I think it's better then the first try.
Well anyway, I like it more so I'll be writing this version, I'll keep it more-or-less canon at the start but the anime is really short, and I'm starting half way through so if I want to make this any reasonable length I'll have to go to the LNs or make stuff up.
Anyway, please tell me what you think!
Cya me oouuttiiyy!