Author's Note
This one is a bit longer, but it likely won't be anywhere near the longest chapter once I'm done with this. I'm expecting a lot of chapters to be near about Transcendent Bonds length, which is around 5-6k words each.
This one also has some original content instead of me working with a novel the whole time. From the start to around the 1800 word mark, so around half the chapter. Which, I suppose, is decent when you consider how I need to set the scene with events that happened in the Phantom Bullet novel. Although, even the novel paraphrasing here has bits of original content interspersed throughout it.
Anyway, still waiting on the cover from ForteDragon, which may be a week, so I'll put one up as a placeholder until then. It'll be worth the wait, though, I promise you that. She's the one who did the covers for GGO: SW, Transcendent Bonds, and Forgive Minus Forget Equals Love. She doesn't believe in her own skills as much as she should, which is really annoying sometimes.
Anyway, that's all for this note.
Sword Art Online: The Strongest Warrior
Chapter One: A New, Annoying Face
I've been having these strange dreams lately. I guess they started after I got my final memory fragment from ALO, the blank one. But the weird thing about all these dreams isn't that they're memories of strange things that happened to me – it's that they're memories that never happened in the first place.
Every dream is a replay of an event from my time in Gun Gale Online. However, in each one, the event goes in a different way from how it really did. For example, in one of the dreams, the first front line leader, Diavel, died in the first checkpoint raid because I didn't act fast enough to save him from the boss's follow up attack. In another dream, I didn't convince Sachi and our legion to not join the tenth checkpoint raid, and they ended up surviving and getting stuck in the first BoB, only for me to have to kill them.
In yet another, my battle with Kayaba Akihiko after the twenty-ninth checkpoint raid played out differently. Instead of winning and prematurely clearing the game, I accidentally relied on my most powerful Blade Master skill, resulting in him blocking every strike and then hitting me with a powerful attack of his own. He defeated me, and the moment after my HP hit zero, my vision went white.
These are but a few of the dreams that I've been having for just over a month. Every time one ends, I wake up in a cold sweat, and I get confused for a minute. I begin to wonder how much of my memories were reality and how many were fantasy – because the dreams just felt so real.
I know I should tell someone. I know there's probably a meaning to these dreams, one that I might never figure out on my own. But even so, I just can't bother anyone with it… it's my problem, and I'm not sure if anyone else would understand.
And besides, I can be selfish every once in a while and keep my problems to myself, right?
It was with great surprise that I found myself awakened from my mid-morning slumber on Saturday. The GGO survivor school didn't have class on Saturday, so I had expected to be able to sleep in for at least two more hours, and had thus stayed up late in ALO the day before.
On the subject of ALO, I still had yet to give an answer to Argo and Sinon about which one I would choose. They had respected my need for time to think on it so far, but I could tell that after a month of stalling them, their collective patience was running thin. In a few days, they'd likely confront me about the issue again, and I'd be forced to tell them I hadn't made a decision.
Back to waking up unexpectedly Saturday morning. Why did I find myself startled awake, you ask? A familiar ringing noise blared from right next to my ear, jolting me into consciousness at light speed. I quickly sat up, looking around like someone shot me, and then my gaze made its way to the spot beside my pillow.
My cell phone was ringing, but not because of an alarm I had neglected to turn off – someone was calling me. The ringtone told me I hadn't registered them as a contact (hell, only Argo, Sinon and my therapist were registered in my phone anyway), but when I looked at the caller ID on the touch screen, it showed the phrase, 'caller ID blocked' in big font.
Immediately, my brain flooded with questions. Why would the caller ID be blocked? Was the government calling me? And for that matter, assuming that was the case, why would the government want to call me anyway?
I picked up the phone and tapped the green 'answer' button hesitantly, and brought my phone to my ear. "Hello? Who is this?" I asked, voice as firm as I could make it in this unfamiliar situation.
"This is Kikuoka Seijirou," a light, almost carefree-sounding masculine voice resounded from the other line. "Am I talking to Kiriko?"
For a moment, I stayed silent. Why did this person know my in-game name? How had he cracked me in the real? Could I really trust him?
"… What do you want so bad that you'd crack me in the real?" I asked him with a firmness that came from more than just a little anger.
"There's no need for such accusations," he replied in a frustratingly casual tone. Something about this man bugged me to no end, and I'd never even met him before. "I've known you since your mind was last at infancy. In fact, I'm the one who let you keep your Nerve Gear."
So he'd known me since right after I woke up from Sugou's prison – wait, did he say he was the one who let me keep my Nerve Gear? Just who was this person, and what did he want with me after all this time?
"Actually, there's something I want to discuss with you," he elaborated before I got the chance to ask him to. "Your little friend Sinon-chan told me you have your memories back, and since you're the only player in GGO famous for using a sword, I thought you'd be the perfect fit."
The more he talked, the more questions he generated about himself, his motives, and just what the hell he wanted from me. But I knew that such a talk would probably be best saved for an in-person meeting, not a phone conversation that could be recorded.
"… Fine," I told him after a few moments' deliberation. I spoke into the mic of my phone with a calm, measured, but also harsh tone. "Tell me the date, time, and place, and we can meet up. But not just for what you want; I want some answers as well."
"Today, in an hour and a half, at that high-end dessert restaurant a few blocks from your house. I'll buy you anything you want from the menu, so don't worry about money!"
"Nobody taught you patience, huh?" I asked him with thinly-veiled resentment. There went any chance of sleeping in for even a half hour more…
"What was that? I was just about to hang up," he said in that annoyingly relaxed tone.
"Nothing, so was I," I lied. At this point, I didn't know whether or not this person had any power over me, so pissing him off might not work out well.
"Okay, bye!"
"Whatever." That didn't mean I couldn't be at least a little sassy, though.
With a soft click, the line disconnected, and I drew the phone from my ear. Almost immediately after, I unlocked it, then went into the app for calling people. I tabbed over to the contacts page, and selected, 'Pushy Blue Hair' from the list. It pulled up an info page, and I immediately hit the button in the top right corner, 'call'.
Once again, I put the phone to my ear. It rang once, twice, three times before I heard a click sound, followed by some shuffling noises. After about ten seconds, a groggy-sounding, "Hello…?" came from the other line.
"Don't pretend to be tired, Sinon," I immediately cut through her BS with my words. "Who the heck did you just sick on me?"
"Okay, fine then," she replied with a hundred percent less grogginess. "Be that way, even though I gave you an excuse to put off giving me and Argo an answer, because it's so obvious you haven't come up with one yet."
"Wait, what?" Well, if this whole situation was interesting in an annoying way before, now it was interesting in a possibly pleasing way.
"Well, your mood just lifted five levels," she assessed from the other line, ire dripping from every word. "That guy that just called you from a blocked number? About ten minutes ago, he called me and woke me up, like he probably did to you. He asked me to investigate something in a VRMMO, but when he told me that the main weapons in the game were swords, I told him you were better for the job, since you were the only GGO survivor who got famous for a style of sword-fighting."
What she said probably would have confused me if not for something I only recently learned. Apparently, shortly after I woke up, ALfheim Online got bought out by another company, because its current owner went insane and could no longer manage it. One of the first things the new owner did was create a bare-basics version of the engine used to create ALO (which was based off of GGO), and then give out a thousand copies for free in a raffle before selling the engine a few months later. The result, as one might guess, is that thousands of VRMMOs sprung up rather quickly. By the time I started ALO with no memories of my old self, it was far from alone in the VRMMO industry.
"So that's why he called me out of the blue and asked to meet up," I concluded, my expression neutral as I got up out of bed. I still had to feed Shadow and get ready for the meeting, after all. "But why did you know him well enough for him to ask you to investigate in the first place?"
A thick silence went through the line for several seconds, and I began to wonder just what could get her to be so hesitant before she broke it with, "Back when most of the players logged out because you cleared the game, I traded information on GGO for your hospital number. We kept in touch after that, mostly because every time I needed a favor, I could tell him some more info on GGO and he could basically do or get anything."
Now it made a bit more sense. Why Sinon had taken my amnesia so well after we met up – it wasn't because she was a relaxed person (no way in hell), but because she already suspected or knew about it. She must have been one of the people in my room when I first woke up, having the mind of a newborn. I've figured out through medical records that the diagnosis of an abnormal case of amnesia didn't come for a few days after I awakened, so she may have left before then, since she didn't seem to know about it when she confronted me on the first day of school—
"You're making one of your miracle conclusions again, aren't you?" she interrupted me from my thoughts with a slightly amused tone. "You're so smart you could pass for a genius sometimes, yet you're so dense when it comes to romance… just what went wrong?"
"Don't think that last part will go unpunished, Sinon! Retribution is coming!"
"Welcome," a man in a tuxedo told me as I entered the restaurant, bowing graciously. "Party of one?"
"Actually, I'm meeting someone here," I replied nonchalantly. There weren't too many people here, so my anxiety actually rated pretty low at the time.
Then, a loud, carefree voice broke the calm atmosphere, coming from a table near a window in the back. "Kiriko-chan, over here!"
The hushed, refined chatter that had flowed over the classical background music fell silent, replaced by disapproving stares. I hunched my shoulders and quickly made my way over to the source of the shout. With my dark denim jacket, black shirt, and loose-fitting jeans, I stood in stark contrast to all the middle-aged, manicured, femininely-dressed women of wealth who seemed to fill the room. Their irritation at the well-dressed yet ill-behaved man who brought me here seemed to grow with every passing moment.
It might not have been so bad if two things were different: me actually dressing like a girl, and this man who invited me not being at least a good ten to fifteen years older than me. But I never felt comfortable in women's clothing, let alone women's fancy dress, and the government official who he seemed to be had to be at least twenty-seven, if not closer to thirty years old. He still had the spunk of someone young, but the beginnings of wrinkles were starting to appear in very small areas on his face.
I sat down in my seat across from him, not bothering to hide how out of place I felt. The waiter from before swooped in the moment I sat down, offering me a glass of water and a fresh hand towel, as well as a menu. I grabbed the latter item, noting the brown leather finish, and the fellow across from me piped up.
"This is on me, so don't worry about price and just order whatever you want," he told me, making it sound like he had more money than he knew what to do with.
I quickly discovered that I couldn't read whatever was written on the menu. It looked like… French? Just a guess, but either way, I had no idea what any of the items were. In the end, I just ended up ordering things based off the few pictures on the menu, and whatever items seemed to be connected to the pictures. The total came to around 5500 yen for all of my items, which were a slice of exotic-looking cake, an expensive ice cream sundae, and a fancy coffee. A lot of sweet stuff, but what could I do? This was a dessert restaurant, there was nothing even remotely spicy-looking on the menu.
"They'll be right up," the waiter said calmly, departing in a smooth manner to relay my order.
The man across the table from me, who had already received his order of a gigantic serving of pudding with cream piled high, must have been Kikuoka Seijirou. His voice sounded similar to the voice on the phone, and his mannerisms seemed to fit the demeanor I got from him during the call as well. That, and he still instilled me with the same sense of both annoyance and unease at the same time.
He wore thick, black-rimmed glasses, had an utterly plain, short, dark brown haircut, and narrow, fussy features that brought a schoolteacher of language to mind – but despite this, I knew from Sinon that he was a government official, one who worked in a division newly-developed, whose big name would translate to the "virtual division".
In other words, this man was a government agent – or possibly a scapegoat – in charge of monitoring the chaotic and lawless world of virtual reality. Seemed like quite the unstable position, as far as I could tell.
The scapegoat of a government official carried another bite of pudding into his mouth, swallowed, and looked at me with a mischievous grin. "Hey there, Kiriko-chan. Sorry for waking you up so early on a Saturday."
"If you were sorry, you wouldn't have done it in the first place," I snapped back before I could think it through. I wiped my hands on the citrus-scented hand towel, then added, "And don't call me Kiriko. I have a different name in real life."
"Ah, yes," he spoke as if my harshness didn't affect him at all. "Your real name, Kirigaya Kimiko. A genius who pretended to be average, yet was so good with computers that she earned the recognition of Kayaba Akihiko himself. You know, you were the only person in the world to get a personal invite to GGO's beta from its head creator."
I ignored the implications of his words – that he had dug up serious data on me behind my back, that is – and chose to focus on responding to them at face value. "And look at what it got me. I got stuck in a death game, won my way out at the cost of most of my friends, then got stuck in another virtual world where I ended up losing all my memories. Yeah, being a genius worthy of recognition by a mad quantum physicist with a god complex has improved my life a lot. Totally."
I gave a mighty sigh, deciding I'd had enough small talk. "Anyway, can we get to the point of this meeting? I heard from Sinon that you want me to investigate something in a VRMMO that mainly uses swords. Let me guess: someone committed a crime, and you want me to find out more about it by doing hands-on research?"
"Well, you're quick on the uptake, aren't you? Guess I should have expected that from a genius like you."
My eyes twitched in indignation at the word 'genius' being used to describe me once again. I spent a good portion of my life trying to hide my intelligence from everyone, so hearing it so freely mentioned made me uneasy, if not a bit irritated.
The waiter appeared without a sound and placed a plate of cake, bowl of ice cream, and cup of coffee in front of me. "Will that be all today?" he asked me politely. I nodded, and he placed a receipt on the table and left soundlessly.
I started on the ice cream first, lifting a spoonful to my mouth and letting it sit on my tongue for a moment. When it began to melt, I swallowed it and spoke.
"Well then, I hope you're aware that I'm going to need more compensation than a few items off a dessert menu," I told him in the most no-refusal tone I could muster. "There's something I want you to look into for me regarding a possible ALO player who also played GGO."
"You drive a hard bargain," he told me with a smile that hid his true feelings quite well. "How about I tell you the job first, and then you tell me what you want as payment. I'm sure I can look into this player if that's what you want. Now, look at this."
I nodded, and the government official grabbed something from the seat next to him and put it on the table. The item, an old-fashioned touch screen tablet, showed a picture of some random guy, along with a profile containing an address, among other personal info. The picture showed a man with long, unkempt hair, silver-rimmed glasses, and heavy fat around his cheeks and neck.
"Who's this guy?" I asked with no hesitation.
Kikuoka merely smiled at my blunt question, before his face suddenly turned dead serious, a first for my time knowing him. "Let's see… it was last month, in May. You were still getting your memories from ALO back then, if I remember right."
My eyes twitched again as I wondered just how much of my life this person knew about, but I kept silent in hopes he'd get to the point. "Anyway, at an apartment complex in the Nakano Ward, the landlord was doing some cleaning and noticed a funny smell. He narrowed it down to one unit, but there was no response to the intercom or the phone. Yet the lights were on in the apartment. So he undid the electronic lock and entered the apartment to find… Tamotsu Shigemura, age twenty-six, dead."
Author's Note
There were originally about two hundred more words to this. Hell, originally, this was a part of the prologue. I split that prologue into three for the sake of, quite frankly, getting more attention.?
That being said, the third part of the prologue, which is now chapter two, isn't actually done yet. It's at 250 words and gaining, and I'll probably be done in a couple days, but I recently figured out a way to continue ALfheim Online: Path to Recollection that also ties in with a reference in chapter two of this fic. So I'll work on that before getting back to this, so as to avoid spoiling a part that hasn't even been released yet.
Also, in case it didn't become obvious by the pairing tags, this pentalogy isn't a love triangle (well, the first and third fics are, but still). Frankly, it was and is my attempt at creating a believable yuri harem centered around a female Kiriko. I know it's dumb, but it's been a blast to write, so I'm sticking with it to the end, even if that end is a fiery wreck of angry reviewers.
Anyway, I don't have much else to say. I guess I'll see you next chapter, if not before then with ALO: PtR.