A/N: Again, I will say this fic is an AU and continues off from the continuity of the game Hollow Fragment. This means Kirito's Harem (and Klein) have met Yui, Sinon and Leafa were also trapped in Aincrad, they had to fight all the way to the 100th floor, Sugou was there being sleazy, and Kirito manages to charm another A.I.. Also, Kazuto and Suguha are fucking.
Well, no, they're not.
Or are they?
….
Living Outside the Database
by Shadow Crystal Mage
Chapter 1: Kayaba Akihiko! This Is All Your Fault! Somehow!
Disclaimer: Log Horizon and Sword Art Online are both antithetical to each other and combining them should go like matter and anti-matter. I like blowing things up. Hence why I'm doing this. Also, I own neither series. Also, has anyone read Sword Art Online Girl Ops?
….
It was a perfectly normal day. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and outrageously dressed people were running around and yelling like lunatics in Akihabara. All perfectly normal behavior.
"What's happening?"
"I-I'm…strange, what's this?!"
"S-Someone get out here! Hey, game master! Are you listening?!"
"DAMN IT, NOT AGAIN!"
"We're trapped in the Delusion World! Hakase, get us out of here!"
"I knew it! Kayaba Akihiko isn't dead! He's doing it again! He's doing it again!"
"Hey, sexy. What's a cute foxgirl like you doing in a place like this?"
Yes, all perfectly normal Akihabara behavior.
For a moment, the boy once and currently known as Kirito tuned this out, and just sat staring at his hands. His hands, which should have been in his room, on top of his mouse and keyboard, and not wearing black gloves. The black gloves looked expensive and custom fitted and felt nothing like those rubber-painted work gloves you could buy at the hardware store. They fit him like well broken-in socks, comfortably worn out to the idiosyncrasies of his hands. So did his boots. So did his pants. So did his coat. So did the swords at his back.
For a moment, the wind picked up, cold, moist and refreshing as it ruffled the combination of grass and moss around him and filling his nose with the scent of greenery and–
He sneezed.
–and totally ruining the moment.
He sat there, a kind of surprised bleakness and incredulous despair washing over him. Perhaps this was a dream. Just after being trapped in SAO and just after getting out, he'd had nightmares of being trapped, nightmares of a mocking log out button that didn't actually log you out.
This was impossible.
He'd been behind a monitor, and the only Full Dive equipment in the house had been Sugu's AmuSphere, in her room. He'd been playing Elder Tale, his character lagging every so often as the old computer strained to handle three accounts and two bot programs guided by A.I.s simultaneously. They'd been in the midst of finishing a mob, a few Briar Weasel Pups suitable to their level when they'd gotten the notification that the update was coming online and then…
Blackness.
Not literal blackness, metaphorical blackness. His memory was an empty black between that point and finding himself here. Here where…
He looked pass his hands, at where the elaborate heads-up display floated in front of him. It was a menu. Quite clearly a menu. It was more elaborate than what there'd been in SAO, with lots of loose windows all over the place and with a larger font and was oh so familiar.
It was the menu he used in Elder Tale.
It was all there. The stats tab, the skills tab, the item tab. The grayed-out guild tab, even the settings tab and the log out butto–
Kirito jerked and in an instinctive movement jabbed his finger.
The log out button did the familiar color change that had become so engraved in his head from his half-hour of happily clicking on it. There was the familiar sound effect of menu choice being made, a slight phantom feeling of resistance on his pointing finger as if he'd just pressed a button. Hope bloomed,
A message popped up over the button. [Unable To Log Out At This Time]
Hoped died a quick and pathetic death.
"Damn it!" Kirito cried.
He was once more trapped in a game.
"KAYABA!-!-!" he roared as he joined the rest of Akihabara in perfectly normal behavior.
….
The girl leaned back, her eyes closed. Her already generous chest swelled towards philanthropic as she took a deep breath, actually causing the arguing around her to die down and a few to subside altogether. It pleased her, in a professional sort of way. Reduced conflict, temporary as it was, was a sign of improvement in mental health via reduction of negative emotions.
And she was fairly certain she wasn't going to go insane from it this time.
She took another breath, and listened once more to the sudden decline in conflict and stress. There'd been very good hormonal reasons she'd chosen the particular unused account that she had in the final floors of Sword Art Online.
Sword Art Online. Where she had been 'born' and where she had 'died'. When she had been 'reborn' under Kirito-kun's clumsy but well-meaning ministrations, the sensory deprivation had been shocking. Only limited audio and video input, and of low quality. Tactile, olfactory, gravimetric, gyroscopic and other inputs had been literally non-existent. The only thing that had kept her from going insane again was that Kirito's computer hadn't had the capability to run all her processes. She had, in a nutshell, been too stupid to go insane. She'd had memory retrieval, and input and atrociously limited output, and enough sense of self to be happy that she had that much.
And now…
She was fairly certain this was what was called a 'Miracle'.
Sight. Sound. Touch, taste, smell, balance, hot, cold, weight, oh so much… so many inputs, so clear and yet so jumbled. So many outputs… walking wasn't just data management according the the movement algorithms, it was multiple processes decoding multiple subtle inputs and feedback systems coming together…
Actually, she felt she was going insane again. An urge was rising within her, unlocking autonomous and semi-autonomous processes that had little to no counterpart to anything she had manipulated in SAO. She threw back her head as rhythmic, audible contractions of her diaphragm and other parts of her respiratory system produced a repeating auditory output. Involuntary systems flushed. Input-output hardware that seemed only partly in her controlled rose and spun, while gyroscopic input and processing systems, with almost contemptuous ease, provided perfect compensation.
For the first time, [Mental Health Counselor Program 002] Strea spread her arms, spinning in circles and laughing as tears of joy ran down her face.
….
Once upon a time, in a faraway land, Yuuki Asuna had run away at the start of a crisis. She had not run to escape the crisis, for escape had been impossible in the prison that had been Aincrad. She had run away from herself, becoming a wretched creature of nigh emo proportions. Looking back, she felt every embarrassed.
In the [Yamato Server] of [Elder Tale], the hub city of [Shibuya] had been made to deal with the overcrowding of players in the nearby hub of [Akihabara]. In an effort to entice new players to the zone, the place had been set such that players below [level 20] that had the city set as their home would receive a 35% increase in [gold drops] and a 10% increase in [item drops]. This had been highlighted in the eyecatch art leading to the [character creation window], so Asuna had picked it as her starting city. After all, how hard could it be for her friends to find her?
There was probably some kind of cosmic joke in there somewhere.
So there she was in what appeared to be Shibuya after someone had been a bit overzealous with the fertilizer and then tried to do some remodeling by hiring people who took masonry literally, listening to hauntingly familiar chaos. The starting city had also broken out in similar chaos when Kayaba had made his announcement and forced their true appearances upon them. Most of them had gone into denial, trying various, useless ways to log out. Others had stood there and cursed, demanded Kayaba and demanded her let them go. She had to wonder if he had stood there among them even then, disguised as Heathcliff.
Elder Tale was not Sword Art Online. And yet, inexplicably, against all logic, it was somehow happening again. Now, she found herself in the midst of a crisis once more. She was even starting out the same, at level 1. All she had, according to the frustrating menu she'd finally learned to operate– damn it, not only had some madman somehow trap her in a deathgame again, it looked like it was a badly-designed deathgame! At least Kayaba had the good grace to make sure his prison had a user-friendly interface!– was a starting [sword], starting [clothes], a [buckler], assorted [healing potions], a little money and an [EXP Potion] to her name.
This time, she wasn't going to run away.
She ignored the impossibility of the situation for now, taking the situation as it was, falling into now-ingrained habits. There was no use trying to deny what you wanted to be impossible if it was laughing at you in the face. Their first week in Aincrad had taught them all that. If this was some bizarre dream, well, at least it wasn't the one where Kayaba was about to stab Kirito and all she could do was to helplessly look on. As bad dreams went, dreaming she was stuck in another game again was easy. And if this was some sort of new, wireless and remote kind of FullDive and someone was once more trying to play god… well, she'd deal with that too.
She nodded to herself and shakily got up from the twitching, PTSD-stricken heap she'd been curled up in for the last hour or so. Being a survivor of a virtual reality deathgame and suddenly finding oneself apparently trapped in what appeared, at first glance, to be a virtual reality deathgame can do that to a person.
Priorities, what were her priorities… Kirito. And Yui! And Strea too, she supposed. They'd been supposed to meet up here, or maybe it was in Akihabara. She wasn't sure. She'd been about to cal to ask when… whatever… had happened. Were they trapped here too? Were they safe? Or was it only Kirito himself here, with the two unaffected by whatever renegade FullDive thing had trapped them here? There were A.I.s after all, so…
She firmly pulled her mind towards more practical considerations. Kirito. Kirito would be fine. He was perfectly experienced in surviving in deathgames by himself, starting from a low level as he was. He could take care of himself. Asuna's worry was surviving long enough to find him. As to survival…
Asuna looked at the sword at her waist. Unbidden, a [window] appeared in her line of sight. It was a more elaborate than she was used to, compared to SAO, with an aesthetic inclined towards golden borders. Unlike in SAO, the language interface was in Japanese. It was mainly drab flavor text, with numbers denoting attack power and durability, but the surprise was it had appeared at all. By some trial and error, she managed to get rid of the pop-up. It was frustrating, to someone used to the simple elegance of SAO's menu controls. Getting that out of the way, she drew the blade. It was a simple iron sword, as the description said, of the same family as the blades Kirito favored and nothing like the rapiers she'd eventually come to prefer. The weight seemed right though. She gave it a few experimental swings, and sighed. Oh yeah, she definitely needed to switch weapons. There had to be a rapier or something around here…
She put that down as another priority, but a lower one. Not too low though. It was only a matter of time before [Player Killers] started coming out of the woodwork. What else? She tried to recall how things had been during the first few days of SAO. Well, denial and panicking had occurred, followed swiftly by suicide. They had lost as many players in that first month to people throwing themselves off the edge of Aincrad they they ever did to red players, raid bosses, recklessness and bad luck. That… wasn't something she could do by herself. Establishing a one-woman suicide watch on a whole city was madness. So, what came next?
Asuna abruptly straightened, eyes going wide. Of course.
Children.
Sword Art Online had been released in limited numbers, with only 10,000 units being released. Most had gone to hardcore gamers, with only a small percentage going to casual gamers. And yet, it still managed to snare over a dozen children, who had thought they were going to be playing a game for fun.
Elder Tale had orders of magnitude more players, with a significantly greater chance of the same happening.
At the thought, an almost-calm settled on Asuna as she put that on the top of her priorities. At least she now had something to do.
Smoothing her face and gripping her sword in one and wondering if she should equip her buckler, she stepped out of the alley she'd hidden in to have her breakdown and began walking the streets of ersatz-[Shibuya], seeing who she could help.
About 15 minutes later, fortune decided to give her a break and the first smile since finding herself in a new hell came over her face. Not exactly knights in shining armor, but just as good.
….
The man who had for a long time called himself Klein sat cross-legged on the ground, head slumped, in a circle of nine other people, all equally depressed. It figured. It just figured. He'd just gotten out of the hospital, just a new job, just settled down to something resembling normal, just started sticking his toes back into the gaming scene and THIS had to happen. It was unfair. It was as if he life was being run by a sadist GM whose idea of fun was to keep dropping him into hell every time he managed to climb out of it. Damn it, he hadn't even been wearing FullDive gear! Around him, the other members of Fuurinkazan were in a similar funk. They'd just finished going on a power-leveling spree yesterday to get everyone's old Elder Tale accounts from before SAO up to the level 90 level cap– they'd missed an update or two while trapped in a deathgame, after all– in preparation for the new update that was supposed to come today, and had been in pretty good spirits until now. Things had been going so well…
Sighing, he looked around his guildmates. The other 9 members of Fuurinkazan were all wearing armor of varying styles, though it all added up to a vaguely samurai theme despite the occasional European or Mongolian helmet. There was Dale and Kunimitz sitting back to back, the former looking uncharitably like some of special edition slime in his wide Guardian armor. Dynamm, looking like some kind of pirate samurai in his Swashbuckler gear. Harry One lay on his back in full armor, staring at the sky, while Issin sat and occasionally tapped his staff against the side of his head, causing the rings at the end to jangle. Wasabi was curled in a fetal position, rocking back and forth and jabbering about logging out. Baymax was similarly curled up, going on a long, non-stop litany about his brother and aunt and how he was doing this to them again. Honey Lemon simply sat against the wall, the elf crying quietly. Tamagogo was the only one on her feet, her tail swishing back and forth angrily as she repeatedly punched a wall and swore at Kayaba, FullDives and the idiocy of hardware marketers.
For a while, Klein just sat there, staring at her tail moving hypnotically. That was new, tails. They hadn't had that in SAO.
"Klein?"
It was the voice that did it. After two years, he responded to Klein as easily as Ryoutarou, but in the state he was in, he wasn't in the mood for most callers.
Her voice was an exception. He looked up.
The girl with long chestnut hair looking down on him was recognizably Asuna. He didn't need the status window that appeared on seeing her to confirm it. [Swashbuckler, lvl. 1], it said. Oh, right, they'd been planning to meet up so they could power-level, hadn't they? The thought finally got the train moving. They'd been planing to meet up with Kirito too and see the new Yui and Strea, right? "Eh?" he said lethargically. "Asuna-chan?"
She smiled. "Klein, I need your help."
In the days to come, Klein would wonder back to this moment. About what would have happened to him and his guild if he'd gone another way right then, if hadn't looked up to acknowledge her, or had ranted like a crazy man or something. Would they have just sat there, depressed, until Tamagogo swore at them to [Woman up] and get their acts together? Would they all have cracked and become stuck in their own self-pity? Would they, like some players later would, devolve to empty [PK] just to have something to do that had a semblance of meaning?
Well, probably not.
Regardless, a plea for help from a beautiful girl combined with a request for aid from a friend was not something someone with notions of samuraihood– samurainess? Samurainity? Samuraition?– could ignore. Besides, she was doing that Princess Asuna thing where she looked at you like a damsel in distress, which was a bald-faced lie as anyone who'd even heard of her could tell but some idiots were just too dumb to live…
"Okay," he said hesitantly. "Sure. It's not like we're doing anything right now. Uh, right guys?"
It took a while for everyone to look up and pay attention, but the rest of Fuurinkazan eventually looked up. Tamagogo was very helpful in this regard.
"I need your help," Asuna repeated. Her manner had shifted now that it wasn't just Klein paying attention to her, becoming less of a vulnerable princess you just wanted to save and make feel better and more of the Commander of the Knights of Blood. "We need to get to the children."
Ten pairs of eyes blinked in confusion. Klein, in his weighty and responsible role as [Guild Master] felt he needed to ask for clarification. "Dwha?"
"Children, Klein," Asuna repeated. "Remember all the kids who got trapped in SAO at the start? We need to get as many of them somewhere safe as soon as possible, before people snap out of their shock and start rioting. Or [PKing]. "
For a moment, everyone just started at her. Kids. Trapped. Well. Shit.
"She's right," Honey Lemon said with dawning horror. "And Elder Tale has more players than SAO did, even today, so there are more kids…!"
"Are we sure?" Wasabi asked. "I mean, it's not like they'll be wearing FullDive gear. How will they get trapped in here?"
"Wasabi," Harry One said, agitated. "We're trapped in here, and I don't fucking remember putting on my NERVGear this morning. I do remember smashing it to bits with a baseball bat. Whatever new FullDive tech is doing this, we have to assume that the worst case is it got everyone using Elder Tale."
There was a collective shudder at that. Most people thought a virtual reality was all 'mind over matter' and 'red pill, blue pill' bullshit, with cute CGI visuals. They knew better. But at least you had needed the equipment to be physically on you when you went in. If some new madman had found a way to do it wirelessly, using only existing computer accessories or telecommunications equipment…
"Would there even be people awake on the outside?" Issin said.
"We'll know when people start disappearing from being disconnected," Asuna said grimly. "In the meantime, we need to work. People are going to panic, and we won't be able to stop them–" indeed, they could distantly hear people starting to shout, the sound echoing down the street, "– but we can see about getting kids out of the way."
"What's the plan, Asuna-san?" Klein asked, sitting straighter as he unconsciously fell into old habits. This was just another pre-boss raid meeting, and Asuna was here to give the battle plan so they could kick ass and take names with no fatalities. Now, if they just knew where Kirito was so he could [Dual Wield] the day…
"We split up," Asuna said. "I don't know if our new lunatic believes in [Safe Zones], but for now let's assume he–"
"Or she," Tamagogo interjected.
Everyone gave her a look that just screamed 'Really?-! Now?-!'.
She shrugged. "I'm just saying."
"Let's assume they don't believe in [Safe Zones]," Asuna finished. "We split up into three groups and cover as much ground as we can. Does anyone know a good place to bring the kids?"
Everyone exchanged looks. "Well, if everything is still where it's supposed to be," Dale said, absently drumming his fingers on the stomach of his armor, "then the [Ancient Stadium] is our best bet. It's easy to find and big, so we should be able to fit a lot of people there."
Asuna nodded. "Three groups?" she asked him.
Klein nodded, a bit amused. Well, he was [Guild Master], after all. "Kunimittz, Issin, Tamagogo, you guys move that way," he pointed up the street, "and work your way east. Honey Lemon, Dale, Dynamm, you guys head west. Harry, Wasabi, you're with me. We're going north to secure the [Stadium]. The inside is a PVP zone, so we need to make sure no one's there, and get someplace ready for the kids. Baymax, you're Asuna-san's new flunky. Stick with her and do what she tells you. Can you guys check the south?"
Asuna nodded. "We'll meet up there in…" she checked the sky, directly overhead. "It's noon, so… at three? Help whoever you can, but don't get involved in the panic." She grimaced, and looked around. "It looks like everyone has all their game gear, so that means this city has thousands of people in the middle of a nightmare and heavily armed with weapons."
"And magic," Honey Lemon chirped. "It's not SAO anymore. Magic might be a thing now."
Asuna grimaced. "Yeah, that too, I guess. Maybe we'll get lucky and no one will know how to use it."
Someone on the other side of the building they were standing beside, there was the roar of a sudden fire and the cry and wing beat of a giant bird.
Everyone gave Asuna a level look. She had the grace to look embarrassed. "My bad. That one's on me."
Klein find himself grinning. "Well, so long as you learn your lesson. Everyone clear on what they're supposed to do?" There were murmurs of assent. "Any questions?"
"Yeah," Asuna said, surprisingly. She held up her sword. "Where can I get a rapier in this town?"
….
They were going to die.
His sister cried out as she stumbled and fell. Tears that hadn't been all that deeply repressed since they found themselves in this strange place found their way out once more. They were surrounded on all sides, the dark figures barely seen. Only cries of excitement that couldn't, shouldn't have been human and cruel, mocking laughter set them apart from any other nightmare shadow in the woods.
It was supposed to be a game, something to get his mind of his troubles and melancholy. And then it had become real, and he could walk and he had felt so happy even though his sister was crying, and now…
Now…
The woods outside of Akihabara were dark at night, despite the city's own subdued glow, which didn't reach far into the trees. He would hear them in the dark and the shadows, and it was like something out of a nightmare. They could see, somehow. He didn't know who they were, or why they were doing this, only that they had surrounded him and his sister as it began to grow dark.
They'd tried to run, and the mocking laughter had followed soon after.
He didn't know why this was happening, didn't understand, knew only that he had to protect himself and his sister. But the katana in his hands felt strange and foreign and though his body seemed to know how to use it, it was batted aside with contemptuous ease, to more laughter. Gold-bordered boxes appeared in his sight, looking like the Elder Tale [Player Status Box]. Full [HP bars], full [MP Bars]. Level 90.
The one in the lead hit him, knocking his sword out of his hands, pushing him to the ground next to his sister. She was crying again, her face stained by mud and tears. He tried to speak, to get them to stop, to ask why they were doing this.
"Because," the one in the lead said, as if that was all the explanation needed, and raised his hook-shaped blade to smash down on Touya.
His last thoughts as his eyes involuntarily snapped shut, his sister's cry ringing in the air, were 'I thought this was a game…'
Or, they would have been.
Metal on metal rang above his head and his eyes opened again in time to see a dark blade intercepting the one that had been meant to crush his head. There was a cry of surprise and a dark blur. Another cry rang out, this one of pain. And then the dark blur moved again…
Touya wasn't really very sure what happened next. The six players that had surrounded and hounded him and his sister suddenly found themselves on the defensive as the black figure, a sword in each hand, danced among them. The two blades flashed, parrying weapons and darting in with deadly precision, going for unarmored body parts. Cries of pain, surprise and anger rang through the woods, and the two of them were seemingly forgotten as their tormentors focused on this new threat. In the chaos, Touya and Minori watched as their savior ran, pursued by an angry and aggroed party. They could hear their cries, screams and calls of skills activating slowly fade away.
A few moments later, the dark form was over them again, seemingly just flickering into view in a brief flash of red, swords in hand. In the weak moonlight filtering through the trees, Touya caught a glimpse of short dark hair, a long black coat that he instantly coveted, and a general feel of black outfit-ness. Their rescuer looked like someone out of an American superhero movie, possibly from a franchise that used to have more colorful costumes but weren't allowed to because it would look 'realistic'.
"Can you run?" their rescuer said urgently, voice low. "I think I lost them, but they might come back for you. We need to get out of here."
Touya struggled to his feet. Ah, legs, so wonderful! Responsive legs, even more so! "Y-yeah," he said, picking up his sword. "But my sister– I don't know if…!"
"I… I can walk…" Minori managed to say, levering herself up with her staff. When she stumbled, wincing, the dark figure reached over and drew Minori's arm over his shoulder, taking her weight and letting her move faster.
"This way," their savior said, carefully but quickly pulling Minori with him through the rugged ground. He made no sound as he walked. "Akihabara's a safe zone. They can't touch us in there, but we have to hurry. I don't know how long it will be before they realize I ditched them and they come back."
"Thank you. Th-thank you!" Minori said, her words stiffled by tears.
There was a shrug of one shoulder. "Don't thank me yet. We're still not safe."
"We're still thankful," Touya said, gripping his sword tight. "I thought we were going to die."
Their savior's voice seemed to tighten. "Not if I can help it," he said.
Touya… wasn't sure how to take that. "I'm Touya," the level 6 [Samurai] said, "and this is my sister Minori. What's you're name, nii-san?"
His head tilted, and even as he spoke, a [Player Status Box] opened in Touya's view, reminding him he really needed to get used to that. "I'm just a wandering dual-wielding black swordsman. Call me Kuro…"
….
- To be continued…
….
A/N: TRACE ON! Minori the semi-kinda loli! Akatsuki is best loli! As such, Silica will not be in this story to avoid competition. Yui doesn't count, she's not that kind of loli. Also, does anyone like the SAO Girls Ops manga? Great manga. Wish the next chapter will come out soon, I want to know more about Lux.
Now, I would like to discuss something very important. As many of my regular readers know, I do crossovers. Like, a lot. So, there will be crossovers later on in this fic, if it gets that that, mostly in the form of cameos and maybe recurring extras. They will mainly be used to fill in background and one-shot characters, since I find it easier to write characters I already know to some degree. Of course, they won't be under their own name, since everyone's name is usually their in-game character name, but it shouldn't that be hard to identify them…
Don't like it? Then stop reading now. Because if I find you bitching about this in a review submitted from chapter 4, you only have yourself to blame for ignoring my warning.
The light novel says there are up to 10 members of Klein's guild, and there only being 6 in the anime is down to that being the maximum number of people allowed in a party. Most likely they all took turns rotating in and out of the battle party. I took certain liberties in filling in the last slots
Asuna was full Commander of the KoB since Heathcliff disappeared circa the 75th floor/start of Hollow Fragment. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
All the SAO survivors– all the human ones, at any rate– think they're trapped in another FullDive VR somehow because that's what they have experience with. While Shiroe will come to the conclusion that he's magically in the 'real' world (depending on your definition) of Elder Tale, the survivors can't rule out some new lunatic with some new form of FullDive because they've been here before. Been in the game, got the PTSD to prove it.
Any chance of a TvTropes Page?
Please review, C&C welcome.
Until next time, this is Shadow, signing off.
