[Author's note: As you've probably already noticed, this story is going to be really, really AU.
Any constructive criticism in the reviews would be appreciated, though any review in general would also be appreciated.]
"What do you mean it's not in the script?"
Kayaba didn't have a chance to answer. The robed figure began talking again and I may as well have tried to tear a rock in half with my bare hands because it would have been easier than averting my attention.
"There is no escape. I await the strong at the top of Aincrad"
And then he, it, whatever, was gone. There was no brilliant flash of light, no sound, not the slightest indication he had left. In fact, it was more like the world had simply returned to the state that it had been before his arrival. There was, however, a flashing red exclamation mark in the corner of my HUD. The one that they used for admin announcements and maintenance notices during the beta test, the things that you read even if you read nothing else, unless you liked being surprise kicked out of full dive.
I brought the notice up with a gesture, and its source fell into my hand. It was a small mirror, not unlike one I might keep in my bag. On looking into it, I wasn't really able to comprehend what I saw. It was me, but the wrong one. Not ingame me, but real world me. Mousy blonde hair, too gaunt face, ghost of a scar across my cheek, everything I had tried to leave behind. There was a little tinkle as it fell out of my limp hand and shattered on the ground, which didn't make any sense either. The mirror should have dissolved into a shower of blue polygons upon reaching zero durability.
"Is this supposed to be happening?" I asked, picking up the largest mirror shard.
There was a scrap of vain hope that I wasn't actually me, but it was dashed as I ran a hand over the old scar on my cheek, feeling the ever so slight depression in the flesh there. Looking at Kayaba was further confirmation. He looked like the person in all the interviews now, same sharp features and skinny frame. His gaze was scrutinizing. It examined all the aspects of this world, as though he had created it – because he literally had created it, and it came back wanting.
"None of this is supposed to be happening. I know that wasn't Hide's voice. Actually it hardly sounded human. That mirror shouldn't be doing that either. Broken objects were never coded into the game," He smiled wryly at that ", not that the players ever needed or were supposed to know. It's just a cool particle effect otherwise, right?"
Kayaba's words brought me back to reality. I could obsess over my appearance and he could wax poetic about game design later. Right now, things were becoming unruly as people panicked, yelled and confusion reigned supreme. I was occasionally jostled by the moving crowd that was becoming rowdier by the second, the air was hot with all the additional body heat and felt almost suffocating to breathe. We needed to get out. Crowds could be calmed down, but you'd need a regiment of riot police and loud speakers to even have a chance with all the people here, which appeared to be all one hundred thousand that had been logged in during launch hour.
"We need to go. There isn't much we can do to control a crowd this size"
I started elbowing my way towards the nearest exit. Kayaba followed in tacit agreement. We moved quickly, now not exactly being the time for a leisurely stroll. Unfamiliar faces passed us by and some of them looked at Kayaba in recognition. Elbow made contact with plate armor and I winced. The crowd was particularly thick near the exit arch. It seemed that a lot of people had gotten the idea of leaving. Thankfully, whoever designed the square had possessed knowledge of exit design and traffic was at least flowing smoothly. Kayaba had put on a cloak at some point to cover his face, so that was one less thing to worry about.
On getting outside, we moved out of the way and into a side alley, stopping there. Neither of us had apparently given any thought to what we would do once we got out here. We both stood there for a moment, burning daylight, and then Kayaba brought up his menu and frowned.
"My admin privileges are gone if you were wondering," he said "and the logout button is gone too"
I sighed ", of course it is. Is there anybody else you know who might be ingame?"
Kayaba chuckled "The core dev team was actually all supposed to stay on the outside, in case something happened. I'd expected that "something" to maybe be server issues or a bug that had slipped by us. Not this" He gestured around himself ",There's not much you can do in full dive that you can't do out of it, but I kind of snuck off and went for a dive anyways. Head developer wanting to see people enjoy his finished product and all that. But no, while it's very possible that there are people from the dev team here, they wouldn't be people I knew. We were over two thousand strong, so it's impossible to have known most people working on the game"
"Okay," I sat down on a conveniently placed bench, looking up ", If we're really stuck here I suppose it's probably best that as few people are here as possible, but it would have been nice to have some more people with in and out knowledge of the game"
"Well you'll have to settle for me," he said sitting down on the other end of the bench.
"I didn't mean that you weren't knowledgeable about SAO, it's your game after all. Sorry if that's what I implied. After all, it was your vision that–" I said, backpedalling furiously. I hadn't meant to inadvertently insult Akihiko Kayaba of all people.
"It's fine I know what you meant," Kayaba said, cutting me off before I dug myself deeper into a hole ", I think the question for the two of us is what do we do now?"
We both sat in silence for a moment, thinking. What could we do now? There were one hundred thousand people stuck in Sword Art Online – or at least something that superficially looked and felt like it – together, with us being among their number and nobody with any idea what had just happened. Did we have to eat now, could we die? At that thought, I pulled out the mirror shard from a pouch in my belt, the afternoon sunlight glinting off of its face, and pressed it against my finger, lightly at first, and then harder. It hurt. Then it hurt more. Then it bled. I watched with a horrified fascination as my HP bar dropped by a pixel and dark red blood beaded on my finger. So did Kayaba, leaning over to get a better look.
"I think we have a problem," Kayaba said.
I looked at him.
"In addition to that," he amended hastily.
I wiped off the blood to find that the wound had already healed. Passive hit point regeneration was apparently still a thing.
"What language am I speaking right now?" Kayaba asked.
"English, obviously…" I trailed off. Kayaba had possessed the barest Asian accent when I had first talked to him. It had been subtle, but enough for a native speaker to notice. Now he spoke clean, uninflected English like it was his native language.
"I was speaking Japanese, I've been speaking Japanese since we got here. I'm hearing you in Japanese right now"
"Despite the fact that I don't speak Japanese" I said, raising an eyebrow.
"Despite the fact that you don't speak Japanese" he echoed.
Great. Not only were we stuck here. Mr Red Cloak could and had done something to our brains. Everything was so fucked up I could hardly keep track of it all. We bled, we looked like ourselves again, and now we all spoke the same language. Tallying it all up, it wasn't hard to believe that wherever we were, it wasn't Sword Art Online the virtual reality MMORPG. In fact, it seemed like the only logical conclusion. I ran my hand over the scar on my cheek again. It felt incredibly real. Then I brought up my menu. That felt just as real, just as conceptually there as my scar.
We sat in silence. Each of us lost in our own thoughts. My armor was making it profoundly difficult to sit comfortably, so I dequipped it, watching as it disappeared in a shower of blue light, revealing the grey casual clothes I had on underneath. The stone wall was abrasive and cool against my skin and it's realness just made me question everything more. Could anything that felt so real actually be a simulation? Everything in Aincrad had a slight digitally generated quality to it, such that it was just barely distinguishable from reality. I wondered if that was on purpose. Kayaba had also taken his armor off, and was staring blankly into the wall ahead of us like it held the meaning to life. Who knows, maybe it did.
I was still until an idea crossed my mind and curiosity overruled my restraint. I kicked up a pebble into my hand with the tip of my boot. Balanced between forefinger and thumb, I reared back, waiting to see if a familiar hum of power appeared in my bones. It did, guiding me through a motion that shouldn't have felt so familiar. The pebble glowed with a crimson light as I loosed it against the wall. It chipped, a little piece of stone flying off the brick as it bounced away.
"That's supposed to be an immortal object," Kayaba said.
"Yep," I agreed. We were past the point of being surprised at immortal objects being very mortal, or sword skills apparently still existing.
Thankfully, something happened before we could lapse back into our respective mental breakdowns. Two young men stepped into the alley, the black haired one explaining his plan.
"Resources are going to quickly become limited as people want to level up and hunt the boar fields around the City of Beginnings clean, we should move to another town and get a head start while we still can. I've got the first floor memorized from the beta, so we should be able to avoid all the dangerous areas"
"Thanks for the offer man, I'm grateful, really. But I've got some friends back there who I was supposed to meet up with later," The red one said, halting in his steps.
The black haired one was about to answer when they noticed us spectating from our bench. The ensuing awkward silence hung ugly in the air for a few moments.
"The spawn rates are dynamic and adjust according to the number of players in the area. Though they wouldn't be able to keep up with one hundred thousand people all in the same area, so I guess you're right that it would be advantageous to get an early start," Kayaba said, the statement sounding like he was reading it out of an encyclopedia. I wondered if would ever pass up an opportunity to talk about his game.
"You're Akihiko Kayaba," the black haired one said, eyes widening.
"I'm Akihiko Kayaba," Kayaba said, voice completely level. He probably got a kick out of doing this to people.
The two of them were close enough now for their in game names to pop up beside their cursors. Kirito and Klein. They both opened their mouths for a moment, closed them, and opened them again. I really hoped I hadn't looked like this the first time I met Kayaba. According to him, I was even worse, but I'm liable to take everything Kayaba says with a grain of salt after two years dealing with him.
"Okay. Awesome. Perfect. Do you have any idea what's happening right now?" Klein said.
"Not in the slightest. Though the world we're in right now appears to be significantly different from the Aincrad we designed," Kayaba answered.
I took the mirror shard out of my pouch again, showing it to them ", Things break, and we bleed now, despite the fact that our HP bars are still very much there. There's more too, but I think the whole feeling pain and suffering thing seems to be the most important"
They nodded, apparently going through the same mental gymnastics we'd just had to do.
"We can help you find your friends if you'd like," I said, jumping at the opportunity for something to do and roping Kayaba in too. There were too many mines to step on right now to think about where I was walking, and Kayaba was the same. We both needed a distraction from our own thoughts.
"I'll help too then," the Kirito said, not one to be left out of the good-deeding.
"Awesome guys! Thanks you two, Kirito" Klein said, addressing first us and then Kirito, immediately brightening up "I said I would meet my friends in the Open Hearth Inn, but I don't actually have any idea where that is now that our map is gone. I don't know if they'll be able to find it without their maps, but hey, it's at least worth a try"
I brought up my map to confirm his statement and found that the only places shown on it were where I had been since being transported to the plaza. Of course that wasn't a problem for the person who had designed the game, or two people who'd had a month to beta test it, but Klein was neither of those.
"Yeah no problem, we'll show you the way," I said, and the others gave their affirmation. Walking to an inn wasn't a very trying task, but it was better than nothing.
I'd have to remember to stay in The Open Hearth Inn if there was ever the chance. The place was swank for a medieval inn. Even in the absence of players it was alive with NPCs singing, drinking and laughing. A bard playing his lute in the corner, the sound of clinking dishes and mugs everywhere and barmaids waiting on people at the tables. Klein scanned around before noticing three people sitting in a booth, locked in intense conversation. He shouted at them and they waved furiously for him to come over.
"They're not all here but that's three of them and three is more than zero!" Klein yelled in jubilation, pumping his arm into the air. Some of the patrons looked over at his outburst, but quickly lost interest. Klein turned to Kirito "Sorry for dragging you all the way over here, I'd feel bad asking you for anything else Kirito, so get going to that village of yours"
Kirito who had seemed uncomfortable since entering the tavern looked at Klein in surprise "You're sure?"
"I'm sure," Klein said, and grinned ", I used to run a guild in the other game I played, so don't worry too much about me"
Kirito grabbed the hand that Klein had stuck out for a handshake and then gave us a small smile, turning towards the tavern door. He seemed torn between leaving and staying for a brief moment as he stood in the doorway, but then gathered himself, leaving in a full out run. As for me and Kayaba, we looked at each other and both knew that we wouldn't be staying here. There was more to know, more to find out about the world we now found ourselves in.
"I can see by your looks right now that you don't want to stay. I don't want you to feel obligated to either. Like I said, I'll manage, just like I've managed before," Klein said, his voice firm.
I nodded in acknowledgement and he gave us both a firm handshake. We left too, not at a full run like Kirito, but we had a purpose in our step now. There were lots of people out there like Klein and his friends. One hundred thousand in fact.