Fairy Dance 1

  “Mmp, mllp!”

  “Oh, come on.”

  Kazuto strode over and snatched the juice box. He stuck one of the ends of the straw into the lid and the other into Suguha’s mouth. She desperately sucked down the cold liquid until she could finally swallow the morsel.

  “Pwah! I…I thought I was gonna choke to death…”

  “Man, you’re so clumsy. You don’t have to wolf it down all at once.”

  “Ugh,” she muttered. Kazuto sat down next to her and started untying his shoes. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she took another bite of muffin.

  Abruptly, he said, “About last night, Sugu…”

  She took another hasty drink of juice before she could start coughing again.

  “Y-yes?”

  “Well, um…thanks.”

  “Huh…?”

  Suguha was not expecting this. She peered at him curiously.

  “Thanks for cheering me up yesterday. It really helped. I’m not going to give up. I’ll keep going until I’ve rescued Asuna.”

  She smiled to cover up the throb of pain in her chest.

  “Good. Keep at it. I’ve always wanted to meet her.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be great friends.” He scrunched her hair and stood up. “Well, see you later.”

  Suguha turned and watched him go up the stairs, then popped the last bite of muffin into her mouth.

  And am I allowed to keep at it, too…?

  She headed through the yard to do her stretches at the side of the pond. Once she was nice and warmed up, she picked up the shinai and started swinging.

  Normally, the steady pattern of thorough swiping would clear her head of all distractions, but this time, the thoughts stayed put.

  Am I really allowed to fall in love with him?

  She thought she was ready, for a moment, to forget last night—cradling him in bed. Asuna was the only person in Kazuto’s heart, a fact of which she was painfully aware.

  But…I don’t think that matters to me.

  She didn’t know why Kazuto was weighing so heavily on her mind these days. But her feelings had become as clear as day to her.

  When the hospital had called two months ago, Suguha had raced out of the house without waiting for her mother. Kazuto had smiled at her on his hospital bed when he saw her, tears in his eyes. He’d reached out and said, “Sugu,” in that familiar voice…and that was when these feelings had been born inside of her. She wanted to be with him always. She wanted to talk with him more. But forcing that on him…She couldn’t.

  I’m fine just watching him, she told herself as she swung the wooden blade through empty space. She stopped briefly to check the clock in the living room. It was past noon.

  “Ah, crap. I forgot my promise,” she muttered. She put down the sword and wiped off her sweat with the towel hanging on the pine branch. Up in the sky, the first glimpse of blue was peeking through the clouds.

  Back in my room, I changed into street clothes, set my phone to away mode, and sat on my bed. I zipped open my backpack and pulled out the game Agil gave me. ALfheim Online.

  From what he’d said, it sounded like a pretty serious endeavor. No level system was a big plus for me, though, as it suggested I wouldn’t be too inconvenienced by having started it later than everyone else in the game.

  Normally with an MMORPG, before starting I’d want to read up on as much information as I could find on the net or in magazines, but I was in no mood for that. I opened the package, pulled out a tiny ROM card, and slid it into a small slot on the NerveGear. After a few seconds, the LED on the front stopped blinking and went solid.

  I lay back on the bed and held the device right over my face. It had once been a gleaming navy blue marvel, but now the paint was chipping off here and there. This was the set of shackles that had held me prisoner for two years—but it was also an old friend that had been through hell with me without ever malfunctioning.

  Lend me your strength just one more time, I pleaded silently and lowered the NerveGear onto my head. Next came the chin harness, then the visor shield. I shut my eyes.

  My heart racing with excitement and unease, I gave the command to begin the game.

  “Link start!”

  The murky light shining through my closed eyelids abruptly vanished. The signals coming from my optic nerves were canceled, and true darkness enveloped me.

  But just as abruptly, a rainbow of color danced before my view. The amorphous light fashioned itself into the NerveGear logo. It was dim and hazy at first but then grew sharper as the device’s connection to the visual center of my brain became more solid. Eventually, a small message beneath the logo appeared, signaling that visual connection had been established.

  Next came an eerie echoing noise from nowhere in particular. It seemed to be rushing closer, and the warped sound changed pitch until it formed a pleasing harmony. The solemn start-up jingle played and abruptly finished. Audio connection established.

  Now the setup moved on to physical sensation, then gravity. The feeling of the bed on my back and the weight of my body disappeared. As each one of my senses was calibrated and tested, the check marks piled up. In time, full-dive tech would no doubt shorten this process considerably, but at this point there was nothing I could do but wait for the headgear to perform its little handshake with each section of my brain in turn.

  When the final OK message appeared at last, I was plunged down into darkness. Eventually, a glowing circle of rainbow light appeared from below, and after passing through it, my virtual feet landed in a different world.

  Technically, it was just a stage for account creation, still shrouded in darkness. The ALfheim Online logo hung overhead, and a gentle female voice welcomed me to the game.

  I followed the computerized voice’s instructions and initiated the account and character creation process. A pale blue holo-keyboard materialized at chest height and asked me to input a user ID and password. I typed in the familiar string of letters that I’d used at the start of SAO. If this were an all-digital MMO, I’d be greeted with payment options at this point, but the retail version of ALO came with a free month of play.

  Next came my character name. I started to type “Kirito” but hesitated. Very few people knew that Kazuto Kirigaya in the real world went by Kirito online. Only the rescue team from the Ministry of Internal Affairs; Shouzou Yuuki, the president of RCT, who had been closely involved with that team; and Sugou. After that, it was Agil and the still-sleeping Asuna. Even Suguha and my parents didn’t know.

  Nothing about what had happened in SAO had been made public, especially not character names. There had been countless battles between characters within the game, battles that led to a shocking number of actual deaths in the real world. If stories of who had murdered whom became public, it would no doubt set off a tangle of endless court cases.

  For the moment, all charges of murder related to the SAO Incident were laid solely at the feet of the still-missing Akihiko Kayaba. All damages claimed by the families of the victims were levied from Argus, the developer of the game, and it wasn’t long until Argus had gone bankrupt. Kayaba had built up Argus into one of the premier development houses and then leveled it to the ground. But as far as the government was concerned, they didn’t want the ugly possibility of players suing one another.

  I was concerned about Nobuyuki Sugou finding me, but the name itself wasn’t that remarkable, so I decided to go ahead and call myself “Kirito.” I chose male for my gender, of course.

  Next, the female voice instructed me to create my character. Yet, my only choice was player race. All of my cosmetic parameters would be chosen at random, and if I didn’t like what I was given, I’d have to pay an in-game fee to re-create the looks I wanted. In this case, I didn’t particularly care what I looked like.

  I had a choice of nine different fairy-themed races for my character. Each one had its own advantages and disadvantages, the voice said. Some of the names, like salamander, sylph, and gnome, w
ere familiar RPG terms, while others—cait sith, leprechaun—were less so.

  The choice didn’t matter to me, as I had no intention of playing the game seriously. But I liked the all-black motif of the spriggan starting equipment, so I chose that one and hit OK.

  With all the customization complete, the computerized voice wished me luck, and another vortex of light surrounded me. According to the explanation, each race was teleported to its own starting city. The sensation of ground beneath my feet vanished, and I was weightless for a moment before gravity pulled me down. A new world began to take shape from the light. I was in the air, over a small town shrouded in darkness.

  I could feel my first sensations of full-dive gameplay in two months sharpening every virtual nerve that had once been so honed by my last experience. The narrow steeples of the castle at the center of town grew closer.

  When, suddenly—

  The image froze solid. Tiny shards of polygonal material splintered away, and digital noise crawled over my vision like lightning. The level of detail in the game grew cruder and cruder until it resembled a digital mosaic. The world melted and crumbled away.

  “Wh-what is this?” I wailed and abruptly felt myself plunging again. I fell down and down, endless blackness beneath me.

  “What the hell’s going on heeere—”

  My helpless scream was swallowed by the void and snuffed into silence.

  2

  The massive moon hanging in the sky painted the deep forest blue, like the seafloor.

  Nights in Alfheim were short, but it would be a while yet until dawn brought its light. The darkness of the forest was normally an eerie thing, but on the run, its concealment was a blessing.

  Leafa looked into the starry sky from the shadows of an especially large tree. She couldn’t see any foreboding shapes crossing the sky for now. She whispered to her party companion as quietly as she could.

  “Get ready. We’re going to fly as soon as our wings are recharged.”

  “B-but I’m still dizzy…,” he whined.

  “Are you still feeling sick? Oh, this is just sad…When are you going to get used to it, Recon?”

  “I can’t help it if I’m afraid of flying…”

  Leafa sighed in exasperation.

  The boy named Recon, slumped at the foot of the tree, was a real-life friend of Leafa’s, and they’d started playing ALO—ALfheim Online—at the same time. Meaning that he’d had a year of experience with the game, just like her, and yet he still hadn’t conquered his flight sickness. In a game where midair battle skill was everything, his inability to handle more than one or two skirmishes at a time made him largely useless.

  But Leafa didn’t really mind that part of Recon. If anything, she thought of him like a helpless little brother. His appearance fit his personality perfectly: a short, fragile body, yellow-green hair in a pageboy cut, long drooping ears, and a face that always seemed to be on the verge of tears. For a randomly generated character, his look was so similar to the real thing that the first time she saw him in-game, Leafa nearly laughed her head off.

  Then again, according to Recon, Leafa’s appearance was fitting as well. She was on the larger side for a sylph, with distinctive eyes and brows.

  She’d been hoping for a virtual body that might be described as “willowy,” but by all accounts, it was still an attractive character. That was a blessing that required considerable good fortune in this game—many players had sunk several years’ worth of monthly fees just on the character reroll cost until they got the look they wanted. So Leafa wasn’t about to complain.

  Incidentally, avatar appearance had no bearing on performance in ALO, so Recon’s battles with dizziness were entirely an issue of his sense of balance.

  Leafa reached out and grabbed the back of Recon’s chest armor, hauling him to his feet. His four wings were glimmering with pale green light, the game’s indication that his flight power had recovered.

  “Okay, you’re good to go. Our next flight is taking us out of the forest.”

  “Aww, we must have lost them already. Let’s take a break.”

  “No! One of those salamanders had a really high Search skill, so they might have already found us while we were resting here. We can’t handle one more air raid just by ourselves. We need to rush back to our territory!”

  “Oh, fine.” Recon pouted. He grasped at the air, and a translucent joystick appeared in his hand. It was ALO’s flight assistance controller, a short rod with a small ball on the end. He pulled the stick lightly toward himself, and the two pairs of wings on his back fluttered and glowed faintly.

  Leafa beat her own wings a few times. Unlike Recon, she didn’t need the controller. She had already mastered the art of flying at will, the mark of a first-rate warrior in ALO.

  “Let’s go!” she commanded, springing into the air. The wings on her back spread to their full width, pushing her upward through the branches toward that full moon. The wind whipped at her cheeks and fluttered her long ponytail.

  In a few seconds, she was out in the open, flying above the forest. The land of Alfheim spread out as far as the eye could see. It was a feeling of endless liberation.

  “Ahh.” She sighed with ecstasy as she rose to ever-greater heights. There was nothing else like this precise moment. It was an exultation that brought one to the verge of tears. Since time immemorial, mankind had dreamed of flying like the birds. Finally, in this virtual world, we had found our own wings.

  She hated the system’s limits on flight. She wanted to experience it to her heart’s content, going as high and far as she dared. She would give anything for it.

  That was a shared desire among every player in Alfheim. Whoever reached the legendary city atop the World Tree before the other races would be reborn as an alf, a true fairy—and all flight limits would be repealed. You would be the true ruler of the skies.

  Leafa had no interest in powering up her character or earning rare loot. There was only one reason she kept playing the game.

  She beat her wings powerfully once more, reaching for the golden moon so far out of her reach. The motes of light falling off her wings fell through the night sky, trailing green tails like tiny comets.

  “L-Leafa, wait uuup.” The wheedling voice came from below, and she was brought back to reality. Leafa stopped ascending and looked down to see Recon struggling behind her, clutching his controller. Flight with the training stick was severely limited when it came to speed, and Recon stood no chance of keeping up if Leafa flew at her maximum speed.

  “Come on, put your back into it!” she urged Recon, beckoning with both hands as she hovered, wings outspread. She scanned the surroundings and found the imposing landmark of the World Tree amid the night, using it to ascertain the direction of sylph territory.

  Once Recon had finally reached her altitude, Leafa began gliding easily, matching his speed. He looked over, clearly worried.

  “A-are you sure we aren’t a little too high?”

  “The higher we are, the better it feels. Plus, if your wings get tired, you have plenty of time to glide.”

  “Have I ever told you that you change when you’re flying?”

  “Have you ever told me what?”

  “N-never mind…”

  They proceeded onward toward southwest Alfheim, where the sylphs held their own territory, playfully bickering all the while.

  They’d been in a party of five today, hunting in a neutral-zone dungeon to the northeast of sylph land. Luckily, they didn’t have to contend with any other parties and hunted to their hearts’ content. But when they prepared to head for home laden with money and items, they were waylaid by a group of eight salamanders.

  Warfare was permitted between races in ALO, but only a small minority of players practiced such banditry. Today’s adventure taking place on a weekday afternoon, they hadn’t expected to run across any large groups of roving enemies, which made the encounter all the more bitter.

  After a pair of air battles on the
run, three had fallen on either side, which left Leafa and Recon as the only sylph survivors. They’d made good use of the sylphs’ advantageous flying speed, however, and had managed to escape the salamanders’ pursuit. Now they were nearly within range of sylph territory. They needed to hide and wait for Recon to recover after the battle, but it seemed they were going to make it out safely. However, on an idle scan of the forest behind them, Leafa saw…

  A brief flash of orange light at the foot of a dense cluster of particularly large trees.

  “Look out, Recon!” she shouted, and peeled off downward to her left. In the next instant, three fiery shots burst out from the leaves below.

  Their extra altitude was fortuitous, as they had just enough extra time to avoid the blazing projectiles. The night air charred around them.

  But there was no time to relax. Five reddish shadows emerged out of the stretch of forest that had produced the fireballs, and they sped after Leafa and Recon.

  “Ugh, would you just give up already?” she spat, peering to the northwest. She still couldn’t see the light of the giant wind tower that marked the center of sylph territory.

  “Oh well, we’ll just have to fight!” She pulled a gently curved long blade from her waist.

  “Not more of this!” Recon wailed, readying his dagger.

  “There are five of them, so I don’t expect to win, but you’d better not just give up! I’ll try to draw their attention, so make sure you beat at least one of them.”

  “I’ll try…”

  “You ought to show me you can act heroic once in a while.” Leafa jabbed Recon’s shoulder, then readied herself to dive. She rounded herself up, did a loop for momentum, and folded in her wings at a sharp angle so that she dropped like a rock. She shot downward at the salamanders’ wedge formation with reckless abandon.

  Leafa and her party were old hands who’d been playing ALO since the start, with considerable experience and equipment. The only reason they’d suffered such an ignoble defeat was not just the enemy’s number but the battle formation that the salamanders had recently begun employing. They sacrificed mobility by wearing heavy armor, and they used their weight as momentum for devastating charging lance attacks, over and over. The array of deadly horizontal spearheads flying forth was so overpowering that it was nearly impossible to use the sylphs’ natural agility in battle.