Title: Misfits of Aincrad.
Author: Knife Hand
Feedback: Constructive feedback appreciated, flames unappreciated
Spoilers: Nothing Specific.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I do not own Asuna or Liz or Silica or Sachi or... I would buy them all but I am broke.
Summary: After the First Floor Boss Fight, Kirito deals with Kibaou in a different way. This leads to him meeting a number of Players who play SAO in their own unique ways. AU which diverges significantly from Canon.
Lizbeth shot a glare at the arrogant Player as he walked off and fixed up the display of weapons on the mat of her stall in the marketplace of Floor Three. The idiot had tried to claim he was one of the strongest Players in the game but she had not seen him in the broadcasts for the three Floor Boss Raids, his gear was not impressive and he had not known that a one handed strait sword and a one handed curved sword used different skills.
While the Fourth Floor had been opened three days ago, and Lizbeth had gone up and had a quick look herself, like most Player Crafters she had set up on the Third Floor for two reasons. One, more Players were here on the Third Floor than up on the Fourth and two, she could farm her own materials in sections of the Third Floor, which she would not be able to do up on the Fourth.
Her eyes drifted over the wares on display. They were not the total of what she had to sell, just one example of each type of weapon to show her range and then she would discuss specifics of individual weapons. Her eyes landed on the weapon at the end of the mat. According to the Blacksmithing Manual, that weapon should not exist, but it did and so did a dozen others of various qualities she had produced.
She noticed him before he stopped at her stall. Tall, red hair in an unusual cut, dressed in clothes of browns and reds. A face that had been prominent in the last Floor Boss Raid when he had launched himself at the Boss alongside Lizbeth's own personal hero and most badass girl in the Game, Asuna. He was Sovin Nai.
Sovin Nai's eyes surveyed her wares carefully but without much interest until they landed on the weapon that should not exist. He pointed to it.
"That's an odd one." Lizbeth admitted, lifting the weapon and handing it to him. "It is not in the manual."
The weapon was three foot long spear with an entire foot of that being a broad headed spear point and the rest a wooden shaft. According to the Manual, there were two kinds of Spear. Two Handed Spears, which were thick, heavy, around six to seven foot long with a broad headed point, and One Handed Spears, which were around five foot long, thinner and had a narrow chisel style head. This fit neither category, in fact both the blacksmithing interface and the weapon itself described it as a One Handed Short Spear. Under the field where the specific type of weapon, like a Broadsword or Bastard Sword, was listed, it always said 'Siswai', which she had never heard of before.
"Do you take Barter?" Sovin Nai asked, as he did a few quick moves with the weapon.
"Just mats and decent items." Lizbeth said carefully. "No vendor trash."
Vendor Trash was items that had no value other than to simply sell to NPC Vendors. They could not be equipped, used in any way or even broken down to crafting materials in any way.
Opening up a review window and selecting all the Siswai, she made it visible turned it so Sovin Nai could review the weapons. After reviewing the Siswai available, Sovin Nai selected one of the highest quality weapons she had yet created, and then Sovin Nai opened up his own review window, which showed a selection of decent weapons, armour and crafting materials. Lizbeth was looking at a selection of crafting materials, some higher quality than she had seen before, until one item caught her eye. It was a One Handed Blunt Mace that she had heard was a reward here on the Third Floor, but it was considered a difficult and dangerous Quest that she had decided not to pursue due to that danger. It was significantly better than her current Mace.
There was a bit of a discrepancy in the relative values of the Siswai and the Mace, so Lizbeth got a few low quality, but usable, blacksmithing mats as well. When Sovin Nai left both of them were happy. A few minutes later another Player, this one female, who was dressed similarly to Sovin Nai walked up to Lizbeth's stall.
"I hear you have Siswai." She said simply, getting a nod from Lizbeth.
This time Lizbeth got a decent mix of crafting mats. In the next two hours she sold six more Sisawi, four to Players who were dressed similar to Sovin Nai and the female Player for Barter, the other two who were in armour and had metal shields and were looking to replace their primary weapon as their current one was not working for them, one being a longer one handed spear and the other a one handed Warhammer. For those last two Players, Lizbeth had recommended the Sisawi as a faster and still high damage output weapon, and they had paid in Col.
Seijirou Kikuoka walked up behind his subordinate's station and looked at the screen over his shoulder.
"Have we gotten it yet?" he asked.
"Not yet, Sir." His subordinate said. "They come regular as clockwork and it is still a minute early."
Seijirou nodded his head. He was the lead investigator in the SAO Incident, as it was being called, and had been brought in for one major reason. He had been an SAO Beta Tester. When one week after SAO incident had started and an email had been received by his department, some thought it was a sick joke, but it had not been. The email had been tracked and found to come from Argus, the company that had developed SAO, but not from any individual's computer, but from the SAO Servers themselves. The email had been from 'Cardinal', which had been the system that had been developed to run the internal monitoring and balance of the SAO system.
The first email had come with a lot of information, the largest portion of which was the full listing of user names, real names and addresses of all ten thousand SAO Players, or at least the names and addresses that were provided by the required registration processes to play the game, of which a small but significant number were fake. It had also provided a listing of deaths of Players and their cause, the most numerous being 'Killed by NPC Mob', but a significant potion being 'Suicide'. There was also a Crimes Committed section, which on the first email was blank, and a Marriages/Divorces section, which contained a listing of Player Names, real Names and real world marital status. Those first few Marriages were people who were married in the real world confirming the status within the game.
That had explained the, until then, unexplained records of searches of the Births, Deaths and Marriages Records that had no obvious source. That particular section had the lawyers arguing and the question was going through a closed court as to if a marriage in SAO was legally binding in the real world, particularly after last week's status update where there was a marriage between two Players who were not married in the real world, to anyone at all not just not married to each other, but was accompanied by all of the official paperwork along with signed statements from both Players on their intention to be married.
"It's just come through." The technician said and Seijirou looked to the new email from Cardinal.
The first thing he looked for was the 'Completion Percentage'. That told how many floors were cleared, with each floor representing 1%. It said 3%. Last week's had been 2%, so they had recently cleared the Third Floor and were now working on the Fourth Floor. There was the usual, and unfortunate, listing of deaths and the other weekly stats that Cardinal Provided. Several of the fields were blank, but for the first time there was an entry in the Crimes section. A Theft in a safe zone which got the Player six weeks imprisonment in the Black Iron Castle.
"Interesting. Seems the System has its own Justice System." The technician said.
"Yes." Seijirou replied. "There are NPC Law Enforcement and I remember there was a Quest listed for those who wanted to roleplay Law Enforcement. No one did it in the Beta, and many wondered why it even existed but I guess it now makes a bit of sense."
"Sir?" The technician asked.
"Think about it." He said. "Some of the Players are going to commit crimes, but not all of them are going to be overt about it. Overt Criminals loose certain protections of the system, but their accomplices? NPC Law Enforcement will act if an overt crime happens in front of them but they won't have the judgement of a Player to investigate a crime they did not see happen."
"Another thing for the lawyers to argue over." The technician said shaking his head.
"Indeed. Send me a copy of this once you have gone over it. I want to review the full file, not just your summary, before the meeting tomorrow." He instructed, before turning to walk back to his own desk.
TBC….
A/N: The name for the 'Short Spears' of Siswai is from the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and is one of the Old Tongue words for Spear. It is used in words like algai'd'siswai, which translates as 'Dancers of the Spear' which is what the Aiel call all of their Warriors. A different Old Tongue for Spear is Darei (or Dareis), and is used in the names of two Aiel Warrior Societies, the Cor Darei (Night Spears) and Far Dareis Mai (Maidens of the Spear). I decided to go with Siswai as it seemed to flow better and it encompasses all Aiel Fighters rather than just two of the Twelve Warrior Societies.