Chapter 1: The Swallowtail Butterfly


12-31-2049

Level 1

Porthaven


The spacious living room of the large house thudded loudly from multiple footsteps running back and forth frantically, trying to prepare for what was soon to come.

"The countdown's starting!"

"Chou, where's Yurishizu?"

Below all the ruckus was the aforementioned girl who was currently isolating herself in the basement with a room full of computers. Wires which sprawled everywhere across the floor proved to be a safety hazard when her younger brother, Chou, sprained his wrist by tripping over them a few months ago.

She balanced a white case gently in her hands, knowing that the lens inside the smooth case would transport her into the virtual world. Its name, the AutoClear, was imprinted in a small black font on the back of the box. Helmet models had become obsolete decades ago, most companies opting to use lighter and more accessible designs instead. After all, it would be 2050 in a few minutes—no one in their right minds would want to buy an old, clunky helmet, especially after the events of Sword Art Online.

After Kirigaya Kazuto's endeavours were broadcasted around the world, people hailed him as a genius, a prodigy, a hero. But a few years after his son was born, people concluded that the true mastermind was actually his offspring—Kirigaya Kazuo, son of The Black Swordsman and The Flash. In his early teenage years, the boy had created the Human Implant Tracker—also known as the HIT chip.

The complex technology was surgically implanted into newborns and was upgraded wirelessly. Crime rates decreased significantly due to the navigation system present inside the chip, and it also kept track of an individual's health by simply connecting it to a PC, which made work for doctors significantly easier. People were living longer and misdemeanours were practically non-existent, so Kirigaya Kazuo became a name known by everyone in the world.

But then The Hero mysteriously died in his late thirties, and so did his wife, Asuna—most likely heartbroken at her husband's sudden passing. And soon after that, Kirigaya Kazuo had also stopped appearing to the public's eyes, only releasing updates for the HIT and soon, the AutoClear—something people believed he made to remember his parents' legacy.

Yurishizu was a closet gamer—to her co-workers, acquaintances, and family members, she was the quiet and antisocial engineer who was one of the few female workers in her father's company. The massive multi-billionaire empire had helped fund the AutoClear as well as many of Kirigaya Kazuo's other endeavours, which allowed Yurishizu to have a firsthand look at his pre-released creations. But not many knew that behind her cold stares and hardworking attitude, she spent her free time ripping apart Kirigaya Kazuo's inventions to try and figure out how the mastermind came up with such incredible machinery. When the AutoClear came out in 2048 with its first virtual reality game, Maverick Mecha Online, she bought it without hesitation.

The game was often abbreviated to Machaon (MaChaOn) for short, and despite only being on the market for two years, it garnered more than 100 million daily users. The idea of creating and piloting Mecha appealed to the vast majority of the population, but unlike SAO and its successors, MaChaOn and the AutoClear had complex accessible features that could even invite newborns or seniors to play. The line between virtual reality and actual reality was nothing short from disappearing, resulting in multiple controversies involving VR consoles.

"Ten!"

The countdown shook Yurishizu from her thoughts. This wasn't the time to be worrying about the ethics involving gaming—she played moderately, and always knew when to draw the line. More importantly though, she had somewhere to be today.

"Nine!"

"Yeah, we should call your older sister up! She'll be sad if we leave her out!"

She took a deep breath and inserted the lens into her eyes. Who cared if she missed the countdown to end the first half of the century? It was just a number, after all.

"Eight!"

"Let her be—Yurishizu doesn't doesn't care much for these things anyways.

"Where is she? I haven't seen her all day."

"Seven!"

"Probably in the basement."

"Six!"

"Isn't your older sister super hot, Chou?"

"Five!"

"She is! I saw her once last year!"

"Four!"

"Guys… shut up."

"Three!"

"Yeah, wait to start off the new year, you idiots."

"Two!"

"Not yet! There's still a second left!"

"One!"

Yurishizu made sure she felt comfortable on her wide bed before closing her light-yellow eyes. Darkness engulfed her for a brief moment, and a flash of white suddenly burst onto the screen with a series of logins and passwords milling around her. She could feel her clothes being replaced into a white blouse with a black skirt. Her long white hair was tied into a loose braid and her bangs were clipped to the side by a light, electric-blue coloured flower.

She heard one last thing before the system completely overtook her senses.

"HAPPY NEW YEAR!"

Blue eyes flashed as they opened. "Login complete. Link start!"

The musty smell of her large basement at home was replaced by the salty smell of the sea, and a cool breeze gently circulated around her body. Cheers to celebrate the new year were muffled by the seagulls circling the giant harbours of the megacity, Porthaven. Tall buildings stretched to the skies, and small ships roamed the straights. Tiny dots—which she could only assume were other players—walked along the warm shores, unlike the cold January weather in the real world.

What caught her attention, however, weren't the busy streets of Porthaven. Far along the dark horizon where the sky met the sea were two specks that flew gracefully around the harbour. From where she was standing, they could have been mistaken for birds. But even without venturing closer to them, Yurishizu knew that they were in fact, giant robots.

Mecha, as the people called it, were massive and complex systems which were created as a method to fight and travel. Players often attempted to create these complex robots using the guidebook that was distributed to everyone at the start of launch, but it proved to be more difficult than originally thought, so only a tiny fraction of the 100 million users could actually create Mecha.

A female voice seemed to echo far off from the distance. "Welcome to Maverick Mecha Online. Player: Ageha. Current status: level eight. Location: floor one, Porthaven."

The screen briefly turned dark before soon flickering into her in-game home.

It was a two-floored apartment, fully furnished with minimalist decor to make the place seem cozy and warm. The apartment costed a fortune, but she was one of the better-off players in Machaon. With Mecha parts being ridiculously pricy in the first place, maintaining a home just wasn't possible for many, but not for Yurishizu. As one of the first people to ever play the game, she spent hours upon hours doing all sorts of missions to save up for her Mecha, and then enough to buy a large house. Levelling up was also no easy feat in Machaon. Level eight would seem simple and easy to obtain in other games, but it was nearly impossible to do here. In fact, there was a rumour saying that the highest-levelled player was only level twelve.

Today was the second anniversary of the launch of Machaon, and there had been a special announcement saying that the first one million players who logged in on January 1st, 2050 would receive a special gift. This was the first massive event in this world—there wasn't anything like this on its launch date nor in 2049. Yurishizu expected a large crowd in Porthaven.

Indeed, when she opened her apartment door to look out of the balcony, the normal buzz of the town was amplified into an excited roar. She could see the plaza far off into the distance where a timer hovered in the sky, counting down the last few seconds before the minute ended.

"Login will be shutting down in the next ten seconds," a voice rang.

The white-haired girl debated on what to do after the event had ended. She would most likely return to the real world where she'd spend the rest of the New Year's Day with her younger brother, Chou, and several of his friends. Even though she loved video games, there wasn't anything or anyone she loved more than her younger brother. They didn't look alike as they had different mothers, but they shared the same light-yellow eyes that they inherited from their father. Chou also had a mild and sweet temperament that made him popular amongst many people, unlike herself and their father, who bore cold gazes and judging eyes. Despite Chou only being fourteen—four years younger than her—he often worried for his older sister's wellbeing.

Chou's fine, but his friends… Yurishizu sighed, thinking about the rambunctious boys. Maybe going home wasn't a great idea. She'd stay on Machaon for a few more hours—tinker her Mecha a little bit more at the warehouse down at the port, and maybe get around to designing some more features.

"Login has been shut down. Commence The Bloody Half-Century event."

Yurishizu looked up at the clock in surprise. The Bloody Half-Century event? That's a weird name…

A screen suddenly popped up before her, but it was just a close-up of the clock in the plaza. She wondered why such a thing appeared but guessed that it was for people far away to see better.

Before she could touch it, a huge gust of wind began to blow across the entire port, almost sending her flying. She attempted to shield her face from any incoming debris but realized that she didn't have to, because everything had been completely frozen.

A pair of seagulls in the sky were completely still mid-flap, and the petals of a flower that should've whipped right past her stood frozen midair. She reached out in an attempt to touch it when large bells suddenly rang in the distance.

"Welcome, players of Maverick Mecha Online," a male voice said. She looked around to find the source of the voice but with no avail.

The clock in the centre of the plaza disappeared with a bit of a static and changed to show the bottom half of a man's face.

"I am the creator of this world, Kirigaya Kazuo."

Everyone stared at their screens in awe. This was the Kirigaya Kazuo, son of Kirigaya Kazuto and Yuuki Asuna, the heroes of Sword Art Online. This was the mastermind behind the AutoClear system as well as the HIT chips that was used by virtually everyone around the world.

"I'd like to thank everyone for coming to today's event—'The Bloody Half-Century'"

Yurishizu raised an eyebrow again at the title.

Kazuo continued. "Everyone remembers the iconic Sword Art Online incident back in 2022—it was the game where my mother and father met for the first time. It was also the NerveGear's first title, and it is infamously remembered today as the 'death game' that trapped 10,000 people and killed 4000."

His mouth curled upwards into a sinister smile. "My father, The Hero, loved games and was fascinated by them. He saved the world of gaming multiple times—in Sword Art Online, in Alfhiem Online, in Gun Gale Online, and in Alicization. But the damage he sustained from these games soon proved to be fatal and at last, it took his life at a young age. To my father, gaming meant everything. But what did it leave me with?"

The world suddenly flickered into a dark shade of red, startling all the players.

"Nothing," he said bitterly. "But you… the 1 million idiots I've gathered, will be the price to pay for their lives. It would have been many more if I didn't have to cap the number of imbeciles that wanted to play, but it doesn't matter since your actions will determine the fate of humanity anyways."

Yurishizu's slender fingers clasped around the balcony with such strength that her hands began to shake. She had seen all the reports and the edited footages of what happened in SAO. Would Kirigaya Kazuo really attempt to copy the crime?

"Maverick Mecha Online," he said. "Many of you have wondered why it's been so hard to gain money and level up, or what the entire point of Mecha's are in the first place. That's because you see, the part-time jobs you work in this world aren't supposed to let you raise huge amounts of money, nor are Mecha's supposed to be used as a replacement for personal jets or for streetfighting, if that's what you want to call it. No… this world is a battlefield. Machaon has a whole new storyline, starting from today."

People were already beginning to panic. Could the AutoClear kill them like the NerveGear?

"Ten years."

His voice caught the attention of everyone standing in the plaza.

"I will give you ten years to conquer the world. My forces currently march on every floor of this world. Your duty is to defeat me and my empire within ten years."

Ten years? Yurishizu thought to herself. How big is this world if we need ten years?!

"If you cannot kill me within the next ten years, I will kill you using the HIT implant in your real bodies. And not just you—your friends, family, and everyone that's dear to you. It is likely that people will figure out a way to remove the HIT implant in the real world, and to prevent that I will say if the HIT implant knows it is being tampered with, I will program it to kill you immediately."

The plaza was completely silent for a moment. Then, a scream could be heard off in the distance, starting a domino effect.

"Are you kidding me?!"

"Ten years?"

"I can't log off!"

"It's like the Sword Art Online incident…"

"So we have to somehow manage to kill this lunatic in ten years?"

"A Mecha War?"

"Momma, I'm so scared..."

Yurishizu's eyes widened at the last voice. Unlike SAO, which had been dominated by diehard gamers or beta testers, Machaon was widely popular with people of all ages—young, old, novice, and experienced. Even though the population of a million was much larger than SAO's 10,000, Yurishizu guessed that this was because Kazuo knew that it wasn't only experienced gamers playing Machaon.

"Let me tell you the rules," said the programmer. "In the case where the AutoClear is forcibly removed from your eyes, you will die. In the case where you die within the game, you will be sent back into the real world without your memories. In the case where you don't complete the game within ten years of today or everyone dies, I'll kill you and everyone important to you. The HIT chip will kill the user if it is removed or tampered with starting from today. The goal of this game is to conquer the world with whatever method you so desire. Each floor has an empire under siege. On the hundredth floor, I will be commanding. If even one person can kill me, the game is over and I'll set everyone free."

This can't be happening…

Another screen appeared beneath the hologram—a set of numbers. 1,999,763.

"237 people have already died or lost their memories," he said. "You can choose to attack on your own, or you can team up and create your own army. I don't really care," Kazuo said. Another sinister grin appeared. "But just to make up for the next few years of your life, I'll let you have a one-minute video chat with your loved ones. Have a happy new year, and see you within the next decade!"

With a wave of his hand, the image disappeared, and the clock came back, signalling 12:07.

Seven minutes.

Kirigaya Kazuo changed the lives of everyone in the entire world within seven minutes.

The screen in front of her suddenly flickered onto her living room where her younger brother, Chou, sat with four of his friends. Potato chips were everywhere, and plates of cake were sprawled on the plush carpet. Party streamers hung on the clothes of the five boys, as well as all the furniture of their home.

Chou recognized her first.

"Yurishizu?!" He exclaimed. "Guys! My sister's on TV for some reason…"

It took Yurishizu a moment to realize that she was being broadcasted to their living room television. Everything, whether it be microchip implants, gaming systems, or TV's and phones, were connected these days. She wouldn't be surprised if Kazuo somehow managed to connect Machaon with her television.

"Chou!" She cried out. "Chou, can you hear me?"

Her younger brother blinked. "Uh… yes? Where are you right now? How can you see me?"

"Chou, listen," Yurishizu said, heart racing. "There's been a copycat crime, close to one of SAO. I only have a minute to talk to you so I can't explain everything, but when police reports inevitably start collecting information, tell them this. If the AutoClear is removed from someone's head, they'll die. If we die in this world, however, we can wake up but we lose our memories. But if no one defeats him within ten years, the HIT chips inside of us will kill everyone. This was orchestrated by Kirigaya Kazuo, the man who created Machaon and I think he's doing it to avenge his parents or something."

"Huh?" Chou went, standing up when he saw his normally stoic sister look so desperate. "Wait, I don't understand—"

"Don't remove my AutoClear lens," Yurishizu said quickly. "I don't have many memories that I'm attached to, but I think I'm one of the only people in this world who can build Mecha to fight against Kazuo. Just make sure to transport me safely into a place where I can play the game."

"You need to slow down," Chou said, tears forming in his eyes. "I can't—I need a minute to understand."

Yurishizu shook her head. "There's no time to cry. You can grieve afterwards, but I need you to do a few things for me. Hospitals will likely be overbooked since a million people will be transported. Take me to the company instead and give me one of the VIP hospital rooms. Make sure my body is being fed regularly."

The girl gave Chou a very rare smile. "I'll be back, Chou. I promise."

"I need you!" Her brother cried. "I'd rather just have you here with me—we can create new memories and I'll take good care of you—"

"Chou," she said softly. "If we don't win, the chips will kill all of us."

"Why you?" he whispered. "Other people can create Mecha, can't they?"

Yurishizu gripped the metal bar before her tightly. "Chou, I love you and I'm so sorry that I may not be able to say this again. I'm so sorry that I won't be able to watch you grow up and take care of you."

"That's it, I'm going to wake you—"

"My dream," she intercepted. "Is to make sure that you get to live a decent life—one that our father wasn't able to give me. Being stuck in Machaon is scary, but it's nothing compared to how I grew up. This is nothing for me, so don't worry."

She smiled softly. "I'll be back."

Her younger brother ran towards the television, an arm outstretched. In the corer of both screens, they saw the last five seconds ticking down.

"I may forget who you are, but please don't forget me," the girl whispered. "Goodbye, Chou."

"YURISHIZU!" Chou screamed, tears streaming from his eyes.

Just as her hand touched the screen, it blackened out; the timer in the corner blinking '0'.


01-01-2050

Level 1

Porthaven


Yurishizu changed into a white shirt with black leggings. With a cup of coffee in her hands, she wandered over to her light blue sofa and sat down, opening up the menu window.

The logout button had indeed, disappeared.

She pulled her white bangs back, sighing softly at the ridiculousness of it all. It was the perfect copycat crime, and one million people had fallen for Kirigaya Kazuo's trap. What had everyone been thinking… with the rapid growth of the electronic industry, it was getting harder and harder to completely secure virtual reality worlds, making it simultaneously easier for geniuses like Kazuo to bypass the systems. Even with the tragic endings of SAO, ALO, GGO, and Alicization, people still continued to risk their lives to play these games.

And now they'd have to pay for their ignorance.

The yellow-eyed girl didn't have the courage to go outside. Mobs were everywhere, and she wouldn't be surprised if people died tonight. Whether it be murder or suicide… the result was going to be the same anyway.

But then again, unlike SAO, Kazuo gave them a choice.

They could kill themselves and return to the real world or they could continue to fight for the next few years in an attempt to kill Kazuo. But in the case where no one could clear the game in ten years, everyone would die.

Yurishizu was a closet gamer, but unlike most heroes in video games, she didn't identify as one. There was no moral compass she really followed, and she didn't care much except for Chou and getting her father's approval. She chose to be in Machaon simply because she wanted to support whoever would be in the clearing group. It wasn't like her to step up, but she wanted to make sure that someone could clear the game so that Chou would be alive and live decently.

Setting the coffee down on the table, she opened the closet and retrieved a black trench coat, and long black boots. Putting them on silently, she opened the door to her apartment and peeked outside. The sky had turned into a dark mass of clouds, with snow gently falling down.

Some people remained at the plaza in awe. Off to the distance, a fire was brewing from an angry mob that had ransacked a fruit shop. She could hear the sounds of children crying, oddly reminding her of the way Chou used to when they were younger.

YURISHIZU!

She'd never seen her younger brother like that. That desperate look in his eyes, with angry and upset tears. She knew he felt confused and helpless; just thinking about it made tears well up in her own eyes. Before they could fall though, she quickly wiped them off. After taking a few deep breathes, she made her resolve.

It was time to go visit Dock Seven.


Author's Note:

Surprise! Bet you didn't expect another story from me.

In all honesty, I'm not ready to write MMO at the same time as Romance Dawn, but I just wanted to get this story out there because I felt that there was a lot of potential in it.

MMO, also called Machaon (Ma-Ka-On) is a virtual world where people fight with Mecha. The protagonist, Yurishizu (also known as Ageha) is a talented engineer who enters Machaon on New Year's Eve in hopes to get a special item drop. However, she and 1 million others are trapped when Kirigaya Kazuo, the son of the late Kirigaya Kazuto and Asuna and the creator of Maverick Mecha Online decides to create a copycat crime of SAO.

As she travels the 100 levels with her companions, Yurishizu will learn what made Kazuo do this, and the hidden secrets behind her and her companions' lives. Virtual and reality will collide, and hints about her own family secrets will be exposed.

Note: Yurishizu is the romanized version of Ulysses, as in the Ulysses butterfly.

Not sure if I'll update Romance Dawn this week, but let me know what you thought of this story! And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, please check out my One Piece Fanfiction, Romance Dawn: Bearer of the Silver Flames.

-Jeis