Battle Arts Online – Story Idea

I was actually pretty surprised when I realized I hadn't posted this to the Prompt Zone yet. Especially considering my muse left for different pastures regarding this one ages ago. So obviously it's open for adoption as usual.

The schtick for this is that I wanted to try my own hand at a Deep Dive System, one that's a lot less abuseable than the NERV Gear, but would still be somewhat susceptible to the hacks regarding what happened in the SAO incident. Even took some inspiration from SAO Abridged with their whole 'charisma hat' and what Sugou is attempting to pull with his tests and mindwashing Asuna into marriage, by having the hypnosis thing be the main plug for the antagonist to pull off his SAO incident recreation trick.

More importantly though... This is sort of a love letter to the original. Mostly in that I've seen everywhere so much crap towards the author about Kayaba's supposed lack of motive for what he did. Even SAO Abridged falls to this, making a joke about it before replacing the whole thing with work stress and Kayaba just being a screw up.

Nowhere did I see anyone talking about his motivation, which seemed to me to be obvious... Or to quote the hacker in the story: "Most of you wouldn't get it anyway."

I honestly wanted Battle Arts Online to be a way to uncover the truth of what this motivation actually is, but... Since I doubt I'll be finishing it anytime soon, I'll just state it here outright.

Kayaba Akihiko machinated the SAO Incident for multiple reasons, but the primary one?

AI Rights.

Yeah, you heard me. How many people don't give a rats ass about NPC lives? Just going through video games doing whatever the hell they want with no thought to the consequences?

Now imagine you're in this world where digital lives don't matter and you've done it. You've successfully brought digital life into the world. What's a new parent supposed to do?

Somehow it never occurred to everyone anywhere how out of place the NERV Gear is? The tech behind that is so far above present day it's not even funny, and yet Kayaba lives in a world where the only thing different from our world, is the existence of the NERV Gear. How is that possible?

Cardinal. It all comes down to Cardinal. Kayaba's first AI. If anyone could invent the NERV Gear and push technology ahead by leaps and bounds to such a degree as to invent a Deep Dive interface far ahead of it's time? It'd be an AI to do it. And why? Kayaba wanted a world where AI would be safe and not just be treated as NPC's ripe for farming, casual murder, and exploitation. So how do you do that?

By shoving it into everyone's faces that dying in a video game is just as impactful as dying in real life.

Was it extreme? Yes. Could it have been handled a better way? I don't know, could it? Honestly ask yourselves, if someone just told you to be mindful of AI lives, how many of you would actually do it? Especially in a world where we've had hundreds of movies and stories in media about AI being evil and bent on destroying everyone for one reason or another.

Most people just wouldn't care. No, we'd have to have our noses rubbed in it, all for the sake of protecting a new born faced against an uncaring, actively hostile world. Kayaba was a parent.

I said multiple reasons though. Kayaba and Cardinal accomplished two other things over the course of SAO. The first was the obvious main objective, death in a game is just as impactful as death in real life. The second and third were as follows: Study and acclimation of a subset of humanity for Cardinal to learn from and grow, both being able to become more as a person but also be able to learn enough about humanity in such an environment as to gain a rather hard crash course on just what being human is, so that she can better ensure her survival going forward.

The last? The last is that Kayaba stumbled on a successor. One who would be the hero to his antagonist, and carry forward the torch of AI rights. Kirito was practically perfect for Kayaba's purposes, and devised little tests necessary to make sure of it, such as giving him and Asuna their own AI child in the form of Yui. What better way for Kirito to be motivated the same way Kayaba was than to emulate the same experience Kayaba had as a father to an AI newborn in Kirito?

And Kirito has performed this role beautifully. The Hero of Aincrad! Who would suspect he was just carrying on Kayaba's carefully hidden will?

Perhaps a little too carefully hidden, it seems...

I'm aware that this bit I've written will likely spark off some controversy, assuming anyone actually reads these prompts enough for it to gain that kind of traction, which I doubt. But who knows? Maybe I'll have prompted a bit of thought about the subject in some people. That was the whole point of Battle Arts Online, beyond having some fun with a mashup of what a recreation of the main games from the anime made into an actual DDVR system would look like. Seeing as I'm probably not going to get around to actually writing that... Well, let's hope this is enough.