AN: As promised to those on the SAO Fanfiction Central Discord, I begin the release of the in-depth character studies I promised starting with Liz.
the Cast Files: The Anxious Engineer (Lisbeth)
1- Fear & Anxiety
When Kirito had waltzed into Liz's store, she had immediately been turned off regards to interacting with him beyond just helping a customer. Not that was strange exactly.
That disinterest was why Liz had honestly done her best to be very prickly, warding him off with her own robust rough around the edges boyish charm rather than showing any of the sweetness Asuna had frequently said she had hiding beneath that lightly boyish exterior. Namely, her comfort zone.
See, Liz was aware that she was different. How could she not? She, like Asuna was born with a silver spoon in her mouth but only in metaphors. Born a rich kid, it was difficult letting it get to her head when she was the girl always bullied and pushed around for it. For her money, for her connections, and for being not a typical girl.
A sweet girl yes, but a girl who liked building with mud and stray metal poles she found in her parents' workshops. Building with mud, watching her mother forge from a safe distance and wanting to learn it too; enjoying running, sports, and being put in soccer for her height and sharp eye and reflexes.
None of those were things that other kids associated with girls and despite how friendly Liz was, they all shunned her.
"Why're you playing soccer? This is a boys game, it's not for girls like you!" Words like that were words that Liz heard every day to her face and behind her back whenever she was learning goalie. No matter how friendly, upbeat, and hopeful she was that eventually she'd be liked, it never got better.
Throughout all of elementary school being bullied was a secret she was keeping from her parents. Trying to hide how much it hurt when she didn't understand why she was rejected, pushed around, and treated like a doormat till eventually it was a real problem..
Being rejected, hit, taunted, pushed around, and taken advantage of started to make fear breed. A constant question of what was next, what she was doing wrong, asking herself why kids hated her and what she had done to make them do to her what they were.
When was the next hit going to come?
What was the next thing that was going to happen?
It bred fear, a fear that over the years of her first years in school and around other kids without her parents, morphed into something else.
Anxiety.
An anxiety that she never seemed to be able to shake off.
Eventually, she learned to be prickly, to hide and protect that vulnerable sweet side of her personality behind a very boyish front, taking her boyish parts of her personality and taking it to the extreme if only to protect herself.
The same thing she did to Kirito at first, relying on the instinctive boyish areas of her personality, the areas she had spent more time cultivating than the rest of her to grab him by the collar and shake him for breaking her sword.
To put distance between herself and him, just another annoying boy who probably thought she was too 'rough around the edges' to even just be friends with. Since she would do this long quest because he was a customer who would pay for the travel time and effort needed to hunt the ore down for him.
Not because she thought she'd ever be friends with him.
Being friends with people was something she excelled at pretending in, but never really let people in. The only exception to that rule was Asuna. The girl she ended up moving to up the street from during middle school and had showed her that not everyone in the world hated her.
That she didn't always have to be anxious and try and predict what people would do so she could protect herself. If anything, Asuna had been surprised but in awe of the fact that Liz did boxing, something she had started as a kid in her fight to control the anger and the anxious trapped monster lurking low within her body and heart.
The monster born of the pain, fury, and hatred for being treated like an alien or a doormat for so many years as a young child.
That monster was why she could fight in the game like she did. Armed with her varying shields and either a short ranged hammer or spiked ball and chain for longer range but also the control from the boxing letting her wield the monster like a weapon, a controlled weapon of rage and anger that allowed her to do what she had infront of Kirito.
Staying in the background wasn't her style. Not because she wanted to be the center of attention in front of someone she honestly didn't give a damn around, but because being idle meant that anxiety could fester.
Doing nothing, sitting there like a useless lump, and hiding like a child made the anxiety flare, made her wonder if she was just a burden to him.
If she was just a burden to everyone.
Which was why she had rejected his directions and used her shield to block and deflect the dragon's breath. Standing firm with the spikes on the bottoms of her boots keeping her still till she hunkered down low enough and shouted at him to jump off of her shoulders.
Thankfully the boy in black had agreed and obediently gave a running start for jumping on Liz's shoulders. Which is when she had surged upward, throwing her body upright with the force of a rubberband snapping. Throwing the boy high up into the air while her shield cracked and she yanked on the dragon's front limb with the chains of her ranged weapon.
Keeping it's agro on her with her tank skills while above her the dark light of a sword skill flashed. Before everything had gone wrong.
The boy had fumbled in the air and the dragon had reared up.
Taking Liz with it.
She didn't remember much of what happened, other than the sensation of icy frost blasting over her body and sinking it's frozen fangs into her skin and bones. The sensation and the sheer pain of being given a debuff of being frozen from the inside out, caused her to black out. But Kirito would later tell her that she had snapped the dragon in the jaw with her weapon, breaking it's jaw before losing consciousness in the air.
She ended up waking up at the bottom of a massive sinkhole, waking up to the boy having his cloak and a sleeping bag wrapped around her body with him directly next to her. Unsurprisingly she had flipped out, or she was mentally, while her avatar barely moved, numb and almost motionless from exhaustion and the frostbite debuff. Until he had explained that he was using body heat, the sleeping bag, and the fire on the snow to unthaw her so she wouldn't just die out here.
Unknown to him, but dying to her favorite animal would've been extremely lame.
The experience of being down there for half a day with someone who eventually became a friend, was what made him thaw more than just her avatar. It thawed that prickly fully boyish, mostly contained, front that hid everything else she had to offer to the world even just a fictional world like this one.
Her first real friend within this world outside of Asuna, and it had been what she had needed to really just throw caution in the wind for getting out of there and dragging Kirito into her scheme.
Namely, riding the dragon.
That event had been one of the most powerful experiences she had experienced within the game on two different scales.
Because one, someone else thought she was really cool and wanted to be her friend, and two…
Because her best friend was in love with him. Which meant that as the one who had known Asuna the longest, had to back off. Which had hurt like she had been stabbed. Since nobody really liked her in any way, and the one person she was curious to see how things changed and possibly developed between her and him, was completely off limits.
Her best friend would be occupied with this boy, Liz would have to back off and keep a good distance between him, and again, things just didn't work out for her.
People hated her and Liz knew that.
Review who you want to see next out of the main cast!
AN: The series is on a four day upload schedule with four or more pieces per character according to what I have from Liz, Sinon, and Agil so far. More additions for characters via requests are welcome and will be implemented!