Fairy Dance 1

  With a final chuckle, Oberon turned over and walked to the door, his toga swaying.

  Asuna watched him grow smaller in the mirror as she made a point of sobbing. Inwardly, she screamed a silent exultation.

  Kirito…Kirito is alive!

  That had been her greatest concern since she’d been taken prisoner in this new world. The possibility that she’d been sent somewhere else while Kirito was simply gone forever had slowly but steadily dripped its toxins over her heart, even as she told herself it wasn’t true.

  But without realizing it, Oberon had just wiped that worry clean from her mind.

  For such a smart man, he could be truly stupid—he’d always been that way. He just couldn’t resist the urge to talk down to others. He played coy in front of Asuna’s parents, but Asuna and her brother had been witness to Sugou’s haughty insults on many occasions.

  This was a perfect example. If he really wanted to break Asuna’s will, he shouldn’t have run his mouth about Kirito. He should have told her he was dead.

  Kirito was alive. He was back in the real world.

  She repeated the words over and over to herself, savoring them. Each time she did, the flame inside her heart grew hotter and brighter.

  If he was alive, he wouldn’t turn a blind eye to what was happening. He would find this game and come for her. That meant she couldn’t just play the helpless prisoner. She had to do whatever she could to escape.

  She faced the mirror and pretended to be grief stricken. In its reflection, she could see Oberon turn around at the door and glance at her to check on what she was doing.

  Next to the door was a small metallic plate with twelve tiny buttons. There was a passcode that he typed in each time to open and close the door.

  It seemed rather unnecessary to Asuna. Why not simply set the properties of the cage such that only an admin could open the door? But Oberon seemed to have his own exacting standards for this place, and he did not want to betray the illusion of the game. In here, he was the king of the fairies, the tyrant who ruled his queen with an iron fist.

  Another flaw stemming from his foolish arrogance.

  Oberon lifted a hand to fiddle with the pad. He was far enough away from Asuna that the game’s distance filter blurred the details of which buttons he pressed. He knew that she couldn’t tell from there, and thus he thought his cage to be inescapable.

  That much was correct—if she were looking directly at Oberon.

  But he didn’t have much experience with the actual details of the virtual world that the NerveGear created. There were many things he didn’t know yet. Such as, for example, the fact that mirrors were not treated as optical effects.

  Asuna was pretending to cry while squinting directly into the mirror at close range. Oberon was crystal clear. A real mirror would not make a distant object any clearer, no matter how close you sat, but the game treated the surface of the mirror as a pristine reflection. The normal distance obfuscation the game’s engine used was not applied to the reflection. As a result, she could see perfectly, down to the movements of his fingertips.

  She’d had this idea quite a long time ago. But until today, there’d been no natural way for her to be next to the mirror when he was at the door. She couldn’t miss this opportunity.

  8…11…3…2…9.

  She repeated the buttons that pale finger touched, over and over. The door opened, Oberon passed through it, and it shut again with a heavy clank. Through the bars, she saw the fairy king walk along the branch, his black-and-emerald wings waving, until he passed out of sight.

  Asuna patiently waited and waited for the metal bar pattern painted on the floor of the birdcage by the light of the sun to change.

  She had not gained much information to this point.

  This was another VRMMO much like Sword Art Online titled ALfheim Online, and shockingly enough, it was actually in business and taking new users. Oberon (Sugou) was using the ALO server to imprison the minds of about three hundred former SAO players, and he was planning to use them for illegal brain experiments. That was all.

  When she’d asked why he would risk the danger of running illegal experiments inside a well-known video game, he’d simply snorted at her. “Please. Do you have any idea how much it costs to run a system like this? Millions and millions of yen for a single server! But this setup will allow me to further my research and let the company make money at the same time. Two birds with one stone!”

  So it came down to profit. This worked in Asuna’s favor, however. There would be no way out of a completely closed environment, but since this game was connected to people out in the real world, she would have a chance.

  She’d managed to sneak enough information out of Oberon to know that days passed here faster than in the real world. That meant it would be difficult to determine the real time outside, but once again, it was Oberon himself who provided her with the means to solve the problem.

  She knew that he came to her once every other day, after work, using a company terminal. He valued his regular schedule and was punctual to a fault, so she was confident that his visits were at the same time each day. That meant the smartest time to strike was after he left for home and went to sleep.

  He wouldn’t have orchestrated this conspiracy all on his own, of course. But it was clearly a criminal act. She didn’t think that the entire maintenance team of ALO was involved. It would only be a few…and if they all reported to Nobuyuki Sugou directly, they couldn’t possibly monitor ALO all night long. No office employee could work full-night shifts every day of the week.

  If she could just escape the birdcage when they weren’t watching, find her way to a system console somehow, and log out…And if that weren’t possible, there must be some way to send a message to the outside. She rolled over onto her stomach, face buried in the pillow, and simply waited for time to pass.

  Leafa watched Kirito fight with half wonder, half disbelief.

  They were in the air over the Ancient Forest in the northeast stretch of sylph territory, just before the woods gave way to rolling plains. Swilvane was far in the rearview mirror, the jade tower well out of view by now.

  Because they were deep in the neutral territory between safe havens, the monsters were of a high level. Kirito was fighting three Evil Glancers, giant one-eyed winged lizards. The beasts were each as strong as the boss of the starter dungeon in the sylph homeland.

  They were quite powerful, naturally, but the real menace they posed was in their Evil Eye ability, a magical curse attack that temporarily reduced the victim’s stats. Leafa kept her distance to provide backup, casting a curse-nullification spell every time Kirito got hit, but she was beginning to wonder if that was even necessary.

  Kirito swung his mammoth sword with berserk abandon—the words defense and evasion did not exist in his dictionary. He devastated the lizards with his tremendous swings, and he didn’t seem to even register their long-distance tail attacks. The maelstrom of his charges often enveloped multiple lizards in a single blow. Most frightening of all was the sheer damage every hit inflicted. There had been five Evil Glancers to start with, and in no time at all, they were down to one, which turned tail and fled for the trees when it fell below 20 percent HP, shrieking piteously. Leafa held out her hand and fired a long-range homing vacuum spell. Four or five glowing green boomerang-shaped blades converged on the lizard’s body, shearing away scales. The blue reptile burst into a cloud of polygonal shards, and their fifth battle of the day was over just barely after it had begun.

  Kirito loudly sheathed his blade and bobbed through the air over to Leafa, who gave him a brief salute.

  “Nice work.”

  “Thanks for the backup.”

  They slapped palms and smiled.

  “You know what? You fight like a crazy person,” Leafa remarked. Kirito scratched his head.

  “Y-you think so?”

  “Normally you’re supposed to prioritize evasion and dart around, but you’re just hit, hit, and hit.?
??

  “Hey, it finished the battle quicker, right?”

  “That might work against a group of the same monster. But if you go up against close- and long-range foes at once, or a party of other players, they’ll snipe at you with magic.”

  “Can’t you avoid magic?”

  “There are different kinds of spells. The really heavy blasts that fire in a straight line can be dodged if you see them coming, but not the good homing or area-of-effect spells. If you run across a mage using those spells, you have to keep moving at top speed and try to time it so you don’t get caught.”

  “Well, there was no magic in the last game I played…I’ve got a lot of new stuff to learn, I guess.” He scratched his head like a child being faced with a particularly tough test question.

  “I’m sure you’ll pick it up in no time. You’ve got very good eyes. Do you play sports or something?”

  “Nope, not at all.”

  “Oh…well, whatever. Let’s keep going.”

  “Yeah.”

  They nodded and flapped their wings. Beyond the edge of the forest, the golden-green of the plains beckoned them, reflecting the light of the sun in its descent.

  There were no more monsters after that. They emerged from the Ancient Forest and headed into a rocky hillscape. The mountains were designed so that they loomed well above the flight altitude limit, so the pair had to land in a corner of the plain that served as the foot of the range.

  Leafa skidded to a landing, boots sliding on the grass, her arms outstretched. Oddly enough, even though it wasn’t a real part of her body, she couldn’t shake the sensation that the base of her wings was tired. A few seconds later, Kirito landed and used the opportunity to stretch out his back.

  “Heh, tired?”

  “Nope, not a bit!”

  “Good to hear…but as a matter of fact, we’re done flying for a while.”

  Kirito’s eyebrows rose at Leafa’s words. “Oh? Why?”

  “See these mountains?” She pointed at the series of peaks capped in white, looming over the plains. “They’re taller than the altitude limit for flying, so you have to go through a cave to get past them. It’s the trickiest part of the journey from sylph lands to Alne—or so I hear; I’ve never been past this point.”

  “All right, then. Is the cave long?”

  “Very. There’s a neutral mining town inside where you can rest, though. How are you for time, Kirito?”

  He waved his left hand to check the clock in his menu and nodded.

  “Seven o’clock outside. I’m fine for now.”

  “Let’s keep going, then. Wanna rotate out here?”

  “Rotate…out?”

  “It means taking turns logging out to rest. This is neutral territory, so you can’t just log out immediately. Instead, by taking turns, the person online can protect the other’s empty avatar.”

  “Ah, got it. You can go first, Leafa.”

  “All right, see you in twenty minutes, then!”

  She opened her window and hit the log-out button. Next came a confirmation warning, which she accepted, and the scenery around her flowed far, far away, until it became a single point and disappeared.

  Suguha popped awake on her bed and leaped up, almost too impatient to remove her AmuSphere. She left the room and snuck down the stairs. Midori’s magazine deadline was coming up, so she was still at work, and Kazuto was in his room. It was silent downstairs.

  She opened the refrigerator and pulled out two bagels, sliced ham, mustard, and a few vegetables. She sliced the bagels quickly, spread a thin layer of mustard, and topped it with the ham and veggies. Each bagel sandwich went on its own plate. She then poured some milk into a pan and set it on the induction stove before heading back up the stairs.

  “Big brother, what do you want for dinner?”

  There was no response. She shrugged and returned to the kitchen, assuming he was asleep. The gently steaming milk went into a big mug, which she carried to the living room table with the plates of food. After a brief grace, she ate her simple dinner in barely ninety seconds and dumped the dish into the sink before rushing to the bathroom. Even in the virtual world, the rigors of battle made her sweat, so she always needed to clean up and change clothes after a long dive.

  She stripped off her clothes at light speed and leaped into the shower room, spraying the hot water directly on her head.

  Midori would scold Suguha if she let the VRMMO take attention away from meals or bathing, so she made sure to schedule any group activities before the evening. But this case was different. This journey with Kirito would last all of tomorrow, if not the day after. Normally, Suguha was not a big fan of long-term party play, and she balked at multiday activities, but this was different somehow. In fact…

  I’m excited about it, she told herself, shower water running over her closed eyelids.

  When she opened her eyes, they stared back at her in the mirror directly in front of her. In those black pupils she saw eagerness and just a bit of apprehension.

  Suguha’s stature was far from large for a kendo athlete, but compared to Leafa the sylph, she was rather big-boned. When she moved her shoulders, stomach, or thighs, the muscles rose to the surface of the skin. She thought her breasts had grown quite a bit recently, too.

  She couldn’t help but feel that the inescapable reality of that body reflected her own inner conflict, so Suguha shut her eyes tight again.

  Well, it’s not like I’m in love with him. I’m excited about the new world I’m about to venture into, not the person it happens to be with. That’s all.

  Those words weren’t just something she tried to tell herself. They were the honest truth.

  Looking back, every day used to be that way.

  The stronger she grew, the wider her range of activities. Just flying through the sky over unfamiliar territory was a thrill. But as she became one of the strongest sylphs in the game, along with her knowledge came hassles. In time, she felt she was just going through the motions. The obligation to fight for her race became an invisible chain shackled to her wings.

  The term renegade, used to refer to those who abandoned their homeland, was an English word that could also mean heretic. People who gave up on the duty placed on their shoulders and were exiled in response…She’d thought of them as simple traitors, but now she wondered if those renegades were actually just guilty of nothing more than a sense of pride.

  Her mind wandered over this topic while her hands kept busy, scrubbing her hair and body and washing off the suds. She grabbed a dry towel off the wall and fiddled with the wall panel next to it. A slit on the ceiling started blustering hot air down on her. Once her hair was mostly dry, she wrapped herself in the large towel and ran back into the living room. She checked the clock: Seventeen of the allotted twenty minutes had already passed.

  Suguha wrapped the other sandwich in plastic and ripped a note off the pad. She scrawled, “Eat this if you get hungry, big brother,” and stuck it under the plate.

  She flew up the stairs and slipped into a fresh outfit, crawling onto her bed and putting on the AmuSphere, still in suspended mode.

  The connection test crawled by with agonizing slowness. Through the rainbow ring she went at last, and the gentle breeze of the plains tickled Leafa’s nose.

  “Thanks for waiting! Any monsters?” Leafa asked, rising from the one-legged crouch that the game always started in. Kirito was lying on the grass nearby, and he removed a green straw-like object from his mouth to speak.

  “Nope, all quiet here.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I bought a bunch of them at a general store before we left. The NPC said they were a specialty unique to Swilvane.”

  “I’ve never heard of that.”

  Kirito tossed the pipe to her. She caught it and put it in her mouth, hoping a blank face would hide her fluster. The drag of air she took tasted of sweet peppermint.

  “Now it’s my turn to log out. Thanks for standing guard.”


  “Yep, see you soon.”

  When he logged out, his body automatically assumed the standby crouch. Leafa sat down next to him and gazed up at the sky, puffing on the minty pipe, until she was startled by the tiny fairy who wriggled her way out of the shirt pocket of Kirito’s still form.

  “Pwaa! Y-you can move without your master?”

  Yui nodded, hands on her little waist, as though this was obvious to anyone.

  “Of course—I’m me. And he’s not my master; he’s my papa.”

  “Speaking of which, why do you call him Papa? Is that what he set your relationship to be?”

  “…Papa saved me. He said I was his child. Which makes him my papa.”

  “I…see…” Leafa lied. “Do you love your papa?”

  She intended it as an innocent question, but Yui fixed her with a deadly serious gaze.

  “Leafa…what does love mean?”

  “Um, it means…” She trailed off and had to stop and think. “You want to be with someone at all times. Your heart races when you’re around them…Stuff like that, I guess.”

  Kazuto’s smile crossed her mind—and for some reason, it overlapped with the face of the avatar kneeling next to her, eyes closed. Leafa held her breath. When she realized that the affection for Kazuto she’d kept hidden in her heart for so long might be happening with Kirito as well, she had to shake her head to clear it. Yui was puzzled.

  “What’s the matter, Leafa?”

  “N-n-nothing at all!” she yelped. The next instant—

  “What’s nothing?”

  “Aaah!!”

  Leafa literally leaped up into the air when she noticed Kirito had raised his head.

  “Well, here I am. Did anything happen?” he nonchalantly asked the panicked Leafa, rising to his feet from the standby position. Still perched on his shoulder, Yui squeaked, “Welcome back, Papa! I was just talking with Leafa about what it means to be in lo—”

  “I-I said it was n-nothing!” Leafa hurriedly cut her off. “Y-you’re back fast; did you actually eat?” she asked Kirito to change the subject.