Prologue
The door clicked shut behind them, cutting down the sound of the rain from a dull roar to a faint constant rattle.
"There's a shower through that door, go ahead and get warm," the taller of the room's occupants spoke with a commanding tone that would be more at home in the voice of a grown man than the young boy that produced it. The other occupant, an equally young girl who was soaked to the bone and generously splattered with mud, nodded silently, and moved to do so. The boy closed his eyes and rubbed his face, his thoughts racing. It was a testament to just how distracted he was that it was nearly a minute before he realized his overcoat was still dripping on the floor. With a sigh he reached out with a finger and opened his game menu, flipping through the system with a combination of mental triggers and small gestures. His clothes vanished into a shimmer of pearlescent light and were immediately replaced by sweatpants and a t-shirt. He gave the door to his bathroom another look, hearing the sound of running water, and then he walked to his bed and flopped down on it with a conflicted expression.
He stared sightlessly at the roof of his room, feeling a combination of guilt, fear, and growing responsibility. When the sounds of the shower halted, he purses his lips with a burst of nervous hesitation, but pushed through it and sat up so he was facing the door. The girl quietly came back out, in the same clothes but completely dry, the equipment having returned to optimum condition after passing through her inventory. She made eye contact with the boy, and stopped.
"What's your name?" the boy asked.
"Ruby," she responded after a moment. A weight seemed to settle over his shoulders.
"I meant your in-game name, but I guess either works," he tried smiling, managing a grim up-turn of his mouth. "I'm Cadmus, Chad for short… so I don't mean to be insensitive but I'm guessing you're kind of on your own, given that I found you sitting on the side of the road…" Ruby drew inward and her eyes watered, but she nodded. Chad reached across the distance between them, taking her hand and pulling her to sit down next to him. "Yeah, I'm here by myself too, I could use someone to help watch my back. Think you're up for it?" Ruby almost answered immediately, but hesitated.
"I haven't started combat school yet, I don't think I'll be much help…" she looked downward, avoiding eye contact.
"Well if you were headed for combat school than I need your help even more, my Aura isn't even as strong as normal people," Cadmus' gentle smile grew a little more bitter, "they told me that the strain of activating my aura would probably kill me." Ruby snapped back up to look at him, she seemed disbelieving that someone could be so handicapped and still remain as brave and calm as he was acting. "Besides…" he trailed off, "I'm… not great at making friends, you'd be doing me a favor just by hanging around and cheering me up with your company." Ruby seemed to grow less nervous after hearing this. She nodded slowly, thinking that making sure he didn't feel lonely wasn't too hard of a task for her. There was a pause in the conversation as neither party knew how to continue.
"So you're a Salamander?" Cadmus' eyes flicked up to her crimson-black hair, and back to her face.
Ruby nodded, then after a moment spoke up out loud, "Yes, and… you're an Imp?" she asked, eyeing his own violet locks.
"Yep, purple's my favorite color so there was no other choice for me," he smiled, losing himself in the conversation to forget about his own nervousness. His efforts were rewarded by a small embarrassed smile.
"Me too," Ruby admitted, before she froze, and in a rush of words clarified, "red is my favorite color and I chose Salamander, I mean…" she trailed off as he snickered.
"Yeah, I got what you meant," Cadmus grinned. "So, what level are you?"
"Sixteen," Ruby immediately replied, and then flinched.
"Yeah," Cadmus smile drooped into a subtly bitter expression, "with my Aura I started at level one, but I'm level two now so I'll get there." Ruby nodded, but wasn't convinced, still feeling guilty about being so powerful compared to him and still being overshadowed by his conviction. Before she could say something else, however, she yawned, her hand going to cover up her mouth to unsuccessfully hide the action from the other person in the room. Cadmus sighed, and Ruby again saw him seem to sag under some kind of invisible weight.
"Sorry," she started to say, but he cut her off before she could continue.
"No, it's not you, just… big thoughts about the future and destiny and things," he chuckled without humor. Then, he smiled again, and this time she could see that he was genuinely amused at his own words, "you look like you could use some sleep, if you get any more tired those dark marks under your eyes will stick." Ruby's hands flew to the puffy skin under her eyes before she could stop herself. "Look, none of us have slept well, and if you were out on your lonesome I can guess why you had a harder time than the rest of us," he said with a bit of a commanding tone in his voice, "but if you're gonna have my back then I'm gonna hold you to a pretty high standard, so you're gonna need to take rest when you can, alright?" Ruby looked taken aback for a moment, but saw that he was both serious and joking with my statement. After a moment of hesitation, she seemed to focus, a small bit of determination replacing some of the despair in her gleaming silver eyes. Then, she noticed an important fact.
"Where am I going to sleep?" she glanced down at the only bed in the room.
"Well this is a bed made for adults," Cadmus explained, "so we'll share because I'm twelve and you're tiny." He kept his composure, but almost laughed at the aghast expression that bloomed on her face.
"You want us to sleep in the same bed?" she blurted, then more angrily continued, "and I'm ten, and you're only like, two inches taller than me!"
"Exactly," he nodded sagely, "I'd offer you a set of pajamas too, but I only have the set I'm wearing now and I think that'd be pushing you a little far." Ruby glanced over the t-shirt and sweatpants he was wearing and blushed, her entire head turning scarlet red. "You're adorable, anybody ever tell you that?" Cadmus threw one last tease in before hiking himself up and all the way onto the mattress, before reaching over and grabbing one of the pillows, placing it at the foot of the bed and laying down with his hands laced behind his head. "There, now the only thing that can touch is our feet, and if you're under the covers than you'll be completely safe from cooties."
"I'm not a kid! I know cooties aren't real," she protested, crossing her arms and showing far more liveliness than she had previously.
"Oh, then you have no problems, go to sleep then," Cadmus ended the conversation, rolling over away from her and closing his eyes. After a moment there was an annoyed huff, and then he felt Ruby climb into the bed and slip under the blankets. When he was sure she was in place, his eyes opened again, and his expression grew stressed again.
'Well, there is the hero I was expecting to vanquish evil and solve everything…' his gut clenched in nervousness. 'And if she's just a little kid, then who's going to fill the role? Kirito?' He closed his eyes again, and tried to convince himself that he shouldn't feel guilty for believing that he should wait for a protagonist to show up because he didn't have the strength or the selflessness necessary, and he couldn't possibly do it himself.
Deep down he still felt guilty he wasn't even going to try.
XXXXXXX
Cadmus stared at the wall from his spot on the bed, watching the moonlight travel across his field of vision, kept from sleep by his internal dilemma. Finally, he rolled onto his back, and took a deep breath.
"This isn't a story any more," he spoke softly to himself, "I'm not a hero... but maybe I can try to be a soldier." He closed his eyes and tried to push down his nervousness, trying to find some inner steel to build around the words. Within a few minutes, his breathing deepened as he finally dozed off.
Unbeknownst to him, his words just barely reached the ears of the other person suffering through a sleepless night in the room. She realized that he was just as scared as she was, despite his outward bravado. She realized that she wasn't the only person who used to dream of being a hero. The few days she'd experienced since the opening day of Alfheim Online had devastated her, forcing her to face the dark side of humanity in all of its selfish, cowardly, disloyal glory, and her childhood dreams of re-enacting the fairy tales her mother used to tell her about Huntsmen had been crushed as a result, because along with her faith in others died her faith in herself. But even if she couldn't put on a colorful cape and save the day with a smile on her face, maybe she could still fight for what she thought was right.
Not too long later both the room's occupants were asleep.
XXXXXXX
"Two sandwiches to go please," Cadmus called over the edge of the booth, and he and Ruby stood waiting for the food while attracting the gazes of the other players around them in the market on account of their age. They both fidgeted uncomfortably, Ruby because of the eyes on them, and Cadmus because he was bored. A few moments later, the NPC behind the booth held out the sandwiches, and Cadmus stood on his toes to reach up to take them. After, he handed one to Ruby and started peeling off the wrapping of his own while leading her away from the booth, cutting into a side street to escape from the bustle of the main roads.
"So," Cadmus said between bites, trying to start a conversation. "How's your meta-knowledge?"
"My what?" Ruby responded while still trying to unwrap her own sandwich. Without saying anything, Cadmus reached over and pointed to a spot on the sandwich wrapping. Ruby brightened, and finally got it open.
"That answers my question, I guess," he grinned, "I meant 'how much knowledge about how the game works do you have.' 'Meta' is pretty much a catch-all term for the stuff that has to do with the game that isn't a specific skill or something like that."
"Oh," Ruby nodded.
"Okay why don't we try it this way," he prompted after realizing that Ruby wasn't going to continue, "You tell me everything you know about how the game works like you're trying to teach me and I'll fill in any gaps with what I know."
"Yeah, okay," Ruby said after finishing her next bite. "Uh… so we all have skills."
"Good start"
"Shut up!" she blushed, "we all start with Strength, Agility, Dexterity, Defense, and Magic, and they level up based on the actions we take, and we can learn new skills from quests."
"That," Cadmus confirmed, "and you can also get some of them just from regular combat, I got the Sword Proficiency skill after fighting some beginner mobs."
"Oh." Ruby accepted. "And… we have an Aura level that says how strong we actually are and it works like real Auras do and that's why people who actually have strong auras start at higher levels." She glanced guiltily at Cadmus for a moment, remembering that he was one of the players that had to start at the absolute bottom.
"So how do you raise your Aura level?" Cadmus asked without noticing the look, taking the empty sandwich wrapper from Ruby and placing it in his inventory with an absent extension of his hand. Ruby watched his effortless use of the game's interface with more than a little envy.
"Leveling your other skills, right?" she ventured.
"Pretty much," Cadmus shrugged.
"And… um… there's magic?" Ruby's face scrunched up as she tried to think of what else she knew. "Each race starts with a spell from a different element but you can learn the others once you get your magic skill high enough."
"Leveling your magic skill lets you fly faster and longer too," Cadmus' face softened into a genuine smile. "I do have to say, we may be stuck in a game with the threat of death hanging over our heads, but flying is awesome." He turned to smile at her and Ruby smiled back a little, thinking about how much younger he seemed when he was actually happy. Then she slumped.
"I tried flying once," she admitted hesitantly, "I… wasn't very good."
"Really?" Cadmus blinked, taking her by the hand and leading her back onto a main street and through the crowds passing in and out of the gate through the city walls. He spoke up over the people around them while keeping her close enough to hear. "It's… an acquired skill, but it's kind of like the game menu. If you want to get off the training wheels you need to learn the mental controls, and that's pretty much just a matter of practice." He paused for a moment for them to clear the gate so he could pull her back out of the flow of bodies. He let go of her hand, and continued in a normal voice. "Well I think I know what we're doing today." He didn't look at her, but Ruby could see the impish smile on his face all the same. She got a bad feeling.
"What?" she broke the silence, coming to a stop on the edge of the dirt path leading out of the city.
"There's a forest a while down that way," he waved vaguely away from the city, "I'll fly us there, and then I'll throw you out of the trees until you learn to fly. If it works for birds it works for us right?" He openly snickered. Ruby fidgeted for a moment, and then Cadmus finished chuckling and continued. "Actually I'll probably get you to hover first, that's useful in case you accidentally get knocked off a cliff or something, and I can come rescue you as long as you can keep yourself alive."
"Okay," Ruby wilted in relief and nervousness. She squeaked and jumped when Cadmus poked her in the stomach. He gave her the second real smile of the day. "You're adorable." Then, he opened his menu without even using his hands, opening his inventory and equipping a short sword that appeared in a sheath on his left hip in a shimmer of light. "It's the way I learned, and unlike aura levels we all start from the same place. You'll get there."
"Alright," Ruby acquiesced to his assurances. They both stared at each other for a moment.
"Climb on my back I guess," Cadmus turned, violet ethereal wings sprouting from between his shoulder blades. Ruby glanced at the glowing appendages and then stepped forwards, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Cadmus reached up and grabbed her wrists, and then looked up. His wings flicked upwards and they rose upwards slowly. Then, he leaned forward and they started accelerating away from the city. Within moments they were moving faster than either of them could run, and the wind was throwing Cadmus' violet hair back into Ruby's face, making her clamp her eyes and mouth closed. They passed by a handful of farms, and fields full of tall grasses and small monsters. After a couple of minutes of awe the magic of flight passed, and Ruby managed to get bored enough that she broke the silence.
"Why aren't we going any higher?" She wondered.
"I did go higher than this when I was learning. My Aura isn't strong enough to protect me if I fall after I've spent it all on flying," Cadmus responded, voice even. "On an unrelated note healing magic is at the top of the list of things to master, healing potions are expensive as hell."
"Oh," Ruby's arms tightened around him, "sorry."
"Don't worry about it," he sighed. After, Ruby couldn't muster the courage to say anything else, so they finished the trip in silence. Nearly a half-hour after they left the city a green carpet of leaves crested the horizon and moments after that they slowed down and came to a stop in the shade of the huge broadleaf trees.
"This is just like the forests back on Patch…" Ruby said to herself.
"If nothing else," Cadmus spoke up, stretching his arms and legs to get the stiffness of of them after the flight, "Kayaba sure went all in to make the game as realistic as possible. Honestly I don't know how the servers can handle it." He then sighed, still seeming down after the exchange during their flight. "Okay, so this area's pretty safe the monsters are on-aggressive so they won't attack us unless we attack them, and their drops aren't great so we should have the place to ourselves." He pointed to her. "First thing you need to do is learn to summon your wings. I don't really have any advice to give here, just… imagine them coming out."
Ruby's scarlet red wings emerged from her back almost immediately.
"I thought you weren't great at this?" he raised an eyebrow.
"I can do all the commands okay, I just go way too fast," she explained hurriedly, fidgeting with her hands behind her back.
"Right," Cadmus put a hand to his forehead, "huntsman level aura, you probably have the opposite problems as me…" He looked at her, then at the trees around them. "Okay, why don't you stand next to a tree and practice going back and forth between two of them. Try and work on control if you're going too fast." He saw a bit of indignation flicker in her silver eyes. "There's flying mobs that you can only fight if you can fly too, this is a really important thing to learn."
"Fine," she wilted, "what are you going to be doing?"
"Optimized stat grinding," he replied immediately.
"...Right," she watched him walk over to a tree and begin flattening a section of the ground by stomping on it and brushing the leaves and loose dirt away. He dropped down and began doing push-ups. In between reps he looked up at her pointedly, and she realized she'd been watching him instead of working. She closed her eyes, and imagined herself rising upwards.
Cadmus looked up in response to her scream to see her bounce off a branch, go careening uncontrollably through the air, and crash into the ground, sliding on the dirt and detritus for a few feet. He snickered, and went back to his exercise, absently noting that his strength stat had finally leveled up again. Falling into the meditative state that all mmo players use to put up with grinding, he absently continued his work, silently reveling in the fact that he could do push-ups continuously without stopping due to finally having an active aura to counteract his muscle fatigue, or at least an excellent simulation of one. Ruby kept at it for a while, but inevitably grew bored and frustrated. She managed to hover once, just a few inches off the ground, but then tried moving and overshot herself again, hurtling sideways and sliding across the dirt again. Standing up with a pout she huffed, and looked over at Cadmus still working diligently. She internally debated over imitating his perseverance or giving into her impatience.
"Is there a less boring way to do this?" her impatience won, her irritation increasing her boldness. Cadmus stopped, and rolled over so he was sitting.
'She's ten,' he groaned internally, 'I am not prepared to be a parental figure. Quick, what's the best way to cure a little girl's boredom productively?' He asked himself sarcastically.
"Well, it wouldn't help you practice flying, but we could go kill monsters and sell their remains for profit," he proposed.
The answering excited smile he got from her was somehow both fitting for her age and unsettling given the context.
XXXXXXX
'This is ridiculous,' Cadmus stared in dread at the girl as she completely failed to even lay a finger on the starter mobs around her. She flailed the sword in her hand with her elbow straight and in massive arcs that nearly threw her entire body off-balance. She'd hit one of the evil-looking dogs at first and instantly killed it as her Huntsman level Aura gave her tiny arm the brute force to crush through its body with ease, but the others didn't make the mistake of letting her hit them and she wasn't able to fight with enough skill to land a single blow, despite being much, much faster than them.
Of course, with her Aura being as strong as it was, they couldn't hurt her either, resulting in a stalemate filled with Ruby's high-pitched "Hi-yahs" and other battle cries.
'Qrow, I don't know how the hell you managed to turn this into the little badass that starred in the show, but you have my eternal respect you magnificent bastard.'
XXXXXXX
That night, they came back to the same apartment and Cadmus put down the money for another night. Once they were inside Ruby rushed into the bathroom to wash off the thick layer of dirt and mud she'd accumulated over the course of many, many tumbles across the ground. Cadmus chuckled and swapped out his day clothes for his sweatpants again, and he sat down on the bed, feeling the exhaustion of trying to handle a ten year old girl with a probably unhealthy love of violence and an aura that nearly negated short-term fatigue.
A few minutes later Ruby emerged and plopped down on the bed in exhaustion, wearing her own newly-purchased sweatpants and t-shirt, colored in her favorite combo of red and black. After a minute, she lifted her head and looked over at Cadmus, who was laying with his hands behind his head and his eyes closed.
"Hey," she broke the silence. He cracked an eye open and looked at her. "Thanks," she managed. He gave her the third genuine smile she'd seen him make.
"You're welcome," he answered, closing his eyes again and seeming a little less stressed than before.
"Um," she considered how to ask the question she'd been pondering all day, and then finally asked with her usual level of tact, "why do you seem so old?" Both of Cadmus eyes flew open and his gaze snapped to meet hers, genuine shock on his face.
"Shit you're observant for your age," he mumbled almost to quietly for her to hear. He seemed to think over the question for a moment.
"Actually, that's a secret I'll probably only tell my wife, if I ever get one," he told her, leaning back.
"... then if I marry you you'll tell me?" she asked. Cadmus' face twitched.
"Go to sleep," he managed, "we can have this conversation again in… I dunno, a decade."
Ruby frowned, and stuck her tongue out at him, taking advantage of his eyes being closed. After, she crossed her arms and sat back, laying down on the bed forcefully with a quiet annoyed growl. She couldn't stay angry, however, and as she laid there, she smiled softly, feeling content and protected like she hadn't since she stopped sleeping cuddled with her sister. That night it wasn't long before they both were asleep.
XXXXXXX
Well, I've kinda been having writers block on my other story... for like a year... and in the meantime this was a plot bunny that evolved into a fully developed plot during that same year. I don't plan on stopping my other story but I'm not really happy with the way it was turning out. I wanted something a bit more mature and gritty than it was becoming, so I guess it's kind of taking the back burner for now. On the other hand this story is much, much more light hearted and hopefully is something that will be easier to write without being so... over the top without the necessary build up. Of course my brain doesn't like to come up with small ideas so this is probably going to be really really long, probably somewhere over 500k words, and I want to have a sequel come after that. Yay for unrestrained ambition. This is also going to be a multi-crossover. I don't plan on spoiling what else is going to show up because I kind of like pulling stuff out of the blue. Just saying, if you recognize a name or a place then it's probably what you think it is.
So there's a lot of people that won't read stories the moment they realize that SAO is involved because they hate it that much. On one hand I did enjoy SAO, mostly the actual SAO arc anyway, but on the other hand I understand where they're coming from. SAO had a stereotypical anime plotline type of deal, I don't know how else to say it, and while that can be enjoyable, that's not what I'm going for here. So while I'm using the whole "stuck in a game" plot structure don't expect things to happen exactly like they did in canon SAO, which honestly should be good news whether you liked SAO or not. On top of that, SAO itself, and the other games from the verse would never have even gotten the funding to reach production, they're interesting from a narrative perspective, but if you actually look at them as MMO games they are completely broken and would be abandoned by players immediately. Investors would know this, and because everybody but Kayaba Akihiko thought that they would be regular MMOs then they simply wouldn't get the funding because game producers would never waste their money developing games they know no one would every play. If you want to hear a really good analysis about this, check out the youtube link below. Anyways, SAO and ALFheim from the perspective of an actual MMO addict are completely unplayable so the version that I'm using in my story works completely differently. So please don't comment "but that's not how the game works!"
And I think that's it for this author's note, please leave any comments in a review, I can use all the feedback I can.