Kyo

Kyo glanced sharply at Vigilon when he mentioned Krysta, but kept silent. If she tried to poke for information now, it would probably just end with these three relative strangers telling her to keep her nose out of it. Being a level-one player, that wasn't exactly unreasonable... but the idea still chafed. If not for Sword Art Online, after all, Kyo would have claimed easy seniority over any of these guys when it came to facing dangerous situations. But she set that relatively useless thought aside and simply filed away the name Krysta. Someone to look up when she made her way to Floor Eleven, at least, and now she knew to mention the name "Vigilon" if she ever met a player by that name.

Kyo was no info-broker, but she knew very well—even from just her street-punk days—how powerful information could be as a tool in one's arsenal.

Allowing the subject of Krysta and the eleventh-floor serial killer to fall by the wayside, Kyo chewed thoughtfully on her sandwich. The taste was quite good. The texture... wasn't quite there, but that might have been by design, to make the use of rarer ingredient classes in combination with higher-leveled Cooking Skill more rewarding. Kyo had idly asked a few people in the Town of Beginnings what the cooking system was like, and it was every bit as in-depth as the third-party Taste Recreation Engine it was founded on. Impressive stuff, really.

Once she swallowed her last bite, she let herself fall back on the grass and closed her eyes, sighing in contentment.

She didn't speak until Morningstar jokingly mentioned guild responsibilities, at which point she snorted.

"Eh," she said in a sleepy-sounding way. "Guilds suck enough when it's not life-and-death. I don't even wanna think about how shitty they can be when it is."

She raised a hand to her mouth and let out a yawn.

"Keep me on the short list for the choice ingredients, though. I might not be sure about takin' the Cooking Skill, but I still might..."

When the swordfish burst out of the water, Kyo opened one eye to look at it idly. It didn't really seem to phase her, but a look of amusement crossed her face at Freyd's crack about Morningstar being proven wrong. Kyo closed her eye again and chuckled.

"Well, there was that sword in Final Fantasy X that was made o' water..." she murmured comfortably. "And SAO's relatively low-fantasy so far, but I wouldn't put anythin' outta the realms o' possibility for the higher floors... besides, even the really serious old games had stuff like the 'Hoe of Destruction.' Y'never know..."

She trailed off, sounding for all the world like she was drifting off for a nap.

Kyo turned to glance at Vigilon, raising her eyebrows at the mention of it having a flawed justice system.

"Aincrad ain't got a justice system," she said blandly. "It has a crime-discouragement system 'cause that's all it was s'posedta need. 'Justice,' bannin' or suspendin' accounts, was s'posedta be the GM's job. Bein' able t' play a criminal role was s'posedta be a feature o' the game, just like if you were t' play a Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild run in the ol' Elder Scrolls games... but it'd suck if people camped floor one and just ganked newbies for fun, so, the penalties are harsh."

She scowled.

"It was also designed under the assumption that new players would actually exist, so. It'd prolly work, if this were still a game and newbies were loggin' in on the regular. Players would only gank other players if they could get somethin' valuable out of it, or if it were part o' some guild war, or stuff like that. Back when I logged on, first day, me an' my friends were more amped for that than any other part o' the experience, the PvP..."

She trailed off, her eyes going a bit dull. But she'd had practice at getting her thoughts away from what had happened that day, so the moment was only that: a moment. She grinned wanly and looked up at the sky, or rather the obstructive stone expanse where the sky should have been.

"Well, anyway," Kyo said. "Any 'justice system' is gonna hafta be whatever the player-base forms and enforces. Which I guess is how it's always been. We just get t' experience the long-dead part o' that where it starts from scratch. Livin' and growin' in a world where all that hard work was done generations ago, maybe it's spoiled us!"

She laughed humorlessly, and finally reached into the food basket and drew out what looked like a sandwich with spicy-looking meat as its central feature. Given the visible muscle-tone of her avatar, though, her decidedly carnivorous choice might not have come as a surprise to anyone. She munched quietly on her sandwich, listening thoughtfully to the ensuing conversation as she did.

A serial killer on the eleventh floor... Kyo had been so surprised by that tidbit that she hadn't reacted, at first, but now she filed it away. It would be reckless to investigate while she was still so low-leveled, but maybe, after she'd gotten some XP under her belt and some decent gear, she should take a trip to the eleventh floor and have a look-see. It wasn't necessary to fight the culprit herself, after all...

"I know there's plenty o' people who try t' live peacefully here," Kyo eventually said, in answer to Freyd. Glancing sidelong at him, she added: "But the game spreads out its features floor-by-floor, right? I was wonderin' if the farmin' mechanics had been unlocked yet, or if they even made the final cut. Aincrad's big, maybe Daggerfall big. I was curious if they'd finally realized the ambition o' bein' able t' realistically buy land, build houses, and farm there. It's a design idea that's been floatin' around the RPG space for decades!"

Spreading her free hand out (even as she held her sandwich inches from her face), she waved it across the lake, grinning and saying:

"It ain't just the Full-Dive part that people were psyched for, y'know! The way the devs talked up SAO, it was really grabbin' the attention o' the kinda crowd that runs a five-hundred-plus-mod load-order on top o' Skyrim t' transform it into a hardcore adventurer survival-life sim! Only the really niche indie devs ever seriously took on that sorta mechanical design... the big-names tended t' be afraid o' scarin' off the mainstream crowd. So the promises bein' made with SAO were kinda tantalizin', y'know? Not that Argus was promisin' all o' that, but even part of it's more'n most games offer."

Kyo shrugged then, returning her attention to her sandwich.

"I'm not exactly hardcore, as gamin' goes... a little too outdoorsy t' devote that kinda energy to it. But always did see the appeal. I guess I thought, leadin' inta launch... that Sword Art Online might be the perfect way for me t' experience that kinda thing. Y'know, since I can really experience a world like this while I'm playin', my outdoorsy side and my gamer side finally gettin' t' meet and high-five each other."

It was as she finished her sandwich that the question of what weapon she used came up, and she raised an eyebrow.

"Well, I mean, I'm usin' a whip," she said. "But I don't really need a replacement yet, and for all y'know, I could die tomorrow."

There wasn't even a hint of concern as she voiced the possibility; she might have been commenting on how nice the sun looked reflecting on the river. 

"Thanks for the thought, but how about y' hold that notion 'til I've proven I won't get myself killed by a floor-one field-dungeon elite mob or some shit, and call it a first-grade graduation present?" Kyo smirked and added: "I'll think of it as an 'unmarked quest.'"

Kyo nodded simply at Vigilon's statement that there was only one way to know for sure; nothing more needed to be said on that point, but it was helpful to remind themselves of it occasionally, Kyo thought. Every drop of resolve that could possibly trickle into any given player's well of willpower was a drop that would be well-spent by the end of this, for sure. There wasn't really any question in Kyo's mind that the players would eventually make it out of this, only the question of which players would last until the end.

For another player, one who valued their own specific survival more, it might have been a stressful question. Kyo didn't care about living or dying anymore, though. Well, not for herself. There was a particular living person she hoped would die before the end, but it was the one living person in this game who had no cause to ponder their own life or death. An irritating irony, that.

Kyo looked down at the picnic setup that Morningstar had produced, blinking a few times. She realized she'd lost herself in her own mind long enough not to notice him producing the items from his inventory, and shook her head lightly; if she was going to fight through this thing, she needed to break herself out of that habit.

She had never used to zone out like that, in the real world. Getting into so many sticky situations, along with the occasional street fight, had taught her a sort of alertness that the average Japanese citizen had no need of. The Town of Beginnings and the surrounding wilderness had ironically been a safer space than reality. The only unexpected danger that had ever found her here had been during those first few hours before Kayaba had made plain his betrayal, and what it would mean for those who died... what it already had meant...

"An orange cursor ain't all that important," Kyo said quietly. "The real dangerous killers are the ones who figure out a way t' kill someone without gettin' marked that way, and then figure out how t' do the same thing more'n once. The others're just mad-dog killers. Or people who accidentally clipped someone with their sword within the last few hours. That happens sometimes, too."

Kyo had learned such aspects of the system in a more firsthand way, but this, too, was a valuable thing for SAO players to remind themselves of. Once she'd witnessed a bit of a kerfuffle on the outskirts of the Town of Beginnings, where someone had needed their party members to bring them a bit of food because they'd friendly-fired a stranger in a field dungeon by mistake with a mis-aimed throwing pick. The way Kyo understood it, minor offenses like that took a handful of hours to fade away. Had this still been a game, players would have had the option to find a field safe-zone and wait out the criminal cursor in the real world, rather than being stuck outside of town or camping in dungeons to avoid muddying their reputations.

But of course, even minor offenses could stack up. Repeat offenders could go permanent orange as surely as murderers could. Kyo thought that there was even a point where doing redemption quests to re-green one's cursor ceased being an option...

But she couldn't be sure. It occurred to her that she should probably find that out, pay one of the info brokers for a thorough rundown maybe. Given how dangerous this game might be, there was a chance she'd need to go orange herself at some point or another just to avoid something worse happening to her or someone else; the knowledge of what her options were in that situation could only be a helpful tool to keep in her back pocket.

Bringing herself out of her contemplations more deliberately this time, Kyo sat next to the snacks that had been laid out, peeking over to see what was on offer. "Thanks for this," she said absently. "What's kinda got me hesitatin' is that we can only take one craftin' and one gatherin' profession, so if I take Fishin', I'd feel obligated t' take Cookin' just t' get somethin' out of it without a middleman. Foragin' seems more flexible. So I dunno."

She snorted.

"On that note... I remember when this game was bein' promoted in magazines and shit, that the devs said you could live any kinda life ya want in here. Even buy a parcel o' land and raise cattle, or somethin' like that." She looked up, raising an eyebrow at the others. "I'm guessin' no one in here actually bothers with that sorta thing, yeah...? Or is that kinda junk on a higher floor, or another case of an ambitious RPG dev over-promisin' on features they ain't implemented yet?"

"Not a 'techie,' exactly. Just a dedicated journalism student who really dug deep inta the subject," Kyo said idly. Unlike some other players, she gave no sign that discussing her life outside the game was in any way uncomfortable for her. "I was gettin' set up t' do a story about Full-Dive tech and where it might go in the future. I actually bought the NerveGear before SAO was announced, just so I could get a firsthand look at how the thing worked... that first dive was a revelation, lemme tell ya."

Kyo's expression turned thoughtful, and she fell silent, mulling over her memories of those early days. The games and apps that had been released for the NerveGear prior to Sword Art Online's announcement were oppressively basic, though even within those limits the device had enough to make itself worth having in one's home. For one thing, there had been a virtual shopping app, basically a changing room you could use to try out clothes before ordering them online. Kyo had used that app to recreate her real-life body virtually, and then had transferred that avatar data into SAO. Even before Kayaba's "tutorial," she had been rocking her real-life appearance.

For many others, Sword Art Online was supposed to be an escape: a virtual world where one could become someone else, a hero of legend or a merchant extraordinaire, to live a second life as another person entirely.

For Kyo, Sword Art Online would have been the one place where she could be her real self without fear of judgment or recrimination... although, in a way, she supposed the two things weren't so different.

But before SAO, there hadn't really been anything like that. Gamers, in particular, had been chafing with the limited lineup of simple puzzle-adventure games and the like. Kyo recalled that in the wake of SAO's unprecedented publicity campaign, and especially after the glowing feedback from the closed beta test over the summer, several companies had announced their own ambitious Full-Dive projects. The NerveGear had almost certainly been recalled, though, and if Argus survived the fallout... well, Kyo would be very surprised. She wondered if any company would have the courage to co-opt Full-Dive technology... if they did, then perhaps those games might yet see the light of day...

As Kyo wondered about this, a couple of the others started to converse about something that had gone on with some girl named Dazia. It seemed like that player had killed someone... multiple someones, but with exception to the first one, it seemed like none of those were malicious killings.

"Hm..." Kyo hummed. "Killin' in this world... I think it might be easier for people t' take it lightly. Aincrad doesn't include any o' the things that would happen in the real world that people are programmed t' see as repellant, like gore and pain... real pain, I mean, o' the totally-uncensored variety. The sight o' blood or a broken limb or anythin' like that, it's the sorta thing that makes us think twice. Everythin' bein' just health values and disappearin' character models in here, it... makes it easy t' make light o' death, or t' not take the possibility o' your own death seriously enough."

Kyo's expression darkened.

"It was designed that way," she said quietly. "Game wouldn't be any fun if it were some kinda traumatic-stress simulator. But now that it's real, it's kind of a handicap. I wouldn't be surprised if a good number o' people in here didn't really understand the weight o' killin' another player until some heated situation came up and they did kill someone and had t' stop and think and wonder what the hell just happened. So it's hard t' compare 'murder' in here to murder out there, psychologically..."

Kyo trailed off, looking at her feet. After a moment, she said:

"Only way t' know what this Dazia was thinkin' would be t' ask her, and be someone she'd be comfortable givin' the complete, honest answer."

Kyo shrugged, then turned her attention to the lake they had approached. At the mention of fishing, Kyo chuckled.

"I don't really have the patience for fishin', in the real world, but videogame-fishin' has always been a relaxin' good time," she said. "I ain't decided what Professions I want here yet, though... we're only allowed one gatherin' and one craftin' job, right? I'm thinkin' I'll wait until I've carved a niche for myself in some guild or player group, then go back and pick professions based on what the others in that group already have. Cover somethin' that they need more of, yeah?"

Kyo turned on the spot as they approached the lake, taking in the scenery. She sighed, folding her arms over her stomach and closing her eyes.

"Man," Kyo said through her teeth. "I just realized it's been so long since I've been on an outdoorsy kinda trip in the real world that I can barely even tell where the NerveGear's simulation o' stuff like the wind on your skin or the smell o' the forest doesn't quite match up t' the real thing. If I get outta here, I wonder if it'll feel weird experiencin' the real thing again..."

Kyo internally sighed as Takao slowly expressed his skepticism about the concerns that Kyo had raised. She ran a hand through her green hair, looking around the room as if the café itself might present her with a ready-made sequence of words that would adequately express her concern.

Takao's mention of an AI developing a sex drive prompted a most unladylike snort from the girl, and she glanced sidelong at Takao.

"That's a thing that'd hafta be programmed in t' begin with, just like it is for us," Kyo said flatly. "What I'm more concerned about is what would happen if a really complex, high-functionin' AI of somethin' like Cardinal's level were given a directive like, 'create an AI routine for this companion NPC that's as realistic as it can be.' Or maybe somethin' like, 'create a genuinely helpful player-support NPC that can act as a middleman between players and GMs.' It would only really be possible in the first place if the 'mother' AI, in this case Cardinal, already had that capability itself... or was sophisticated enough t' learn it through trial and error. Like an AI that was put in charge o' content generation and bugfixing might."

Kyo swept her left hand back, gesturing back around herself at the room... and everything beyond it.

"We're two years and counting inta this game," Kyo said, "with a little less than three-quarters of Aincrad yet t' be conquered. That's a lotta trial and error for an AI like Cardinal t' mess around with... so, I know that a lotta the basic NPCs are the kinda rock-stupid shopkeepers that'll just loop back t' the start o' the line they were sayin' if ya interrupt 'em, but have there been any NPCs with more sophisticated chat patterns? Ones that respond t' words or questions y'wouldn't expect 'em t' recognize, maybe? Any NPCs that maybe blur the lines a bit when y' talk to 'em?"

Kyo dropped her arms and turned her attention back to the dessert.

"Thing is, it doesn't really matter if the AI is really at that level if it looks like it could be at that level," she groused. "From inside the game, we don't have the means t' tell the difference, and that... makes it impossible t' say what the 'right' thing t' do is if it comes up. If they're 'just NPCs' and they behave like they're 'just NPCs,' then no sweat, play the game and move on. But if they start actin' like they're real people... if they even just manage a convincin' enough imitation of it..."

Suddenly, Kyo's anxiety with this possibility deflated, and she slumped in her chair.

"Well, no use gettin' our knickers in a twist over it until we run into it, I guess... but in a way, if any AI at that level were involved in this, they might be as much a victim o' the death game as the players are..."

Kyo realized that in her panic, she'd done something again. Something that she'd been doing all her life, and that only Kenshin had ever really understood her well enough not to be swept away by: she'd rushed on to the conclusion of her logic without adequately explaining the thought process that had brought her there. And really, Kyo had trouble following her own logic sometimes. It was as if her brain worked faster than her own ability to track it, when it really got going, forcing her to stop and breathe and close her eyes and actually ask herself what she was thinking before she could even get a handle on how to explain it to someone else. Sometimes she barely even managed that... a few times, even though she was reasonably certain that her logic worked, she couldn't explain it well enough to convince someone else of that.

So she took a breath, slowly sat down, and tried to focus. Tried to roll her thoughts back to square one and play them back at half-speed, so she could examine them.

She opened one eye to look at Takao, when he talked about Kayaba and his personal fantasy.

"I mean, you're not wrong, but I don't think you're all the way right," Kyo said. "The fact that he felt the need t' trap other people in here... it means he's more of a Dungeon Master than a player. He wants others t' share that fantasy. The key t' understandin' Kayaba's particular brand o' crazy lies in understandin' why he needed other people t' experience it, and then askin' why it wasn't enough for it just t' be a game we could leave at any time."

That single open eye closed again, and she took a breath.

"This much I've understood, more or less, for a good-long while," Kyo said quietly. "I've had a lotta time, these past two years, t' think about that bastard and try t' understand 'im. 'Cause he's the game master, right? The administrator o' Sword Art Online. If I'm gonna have any hope o' gettin' back at him for what he... for what he did t' me, then the only hope's in figurin' the guy out and identifyin' a weakness o' some kind. Or just playin' by his rules and hopin' I understand 'im well enough t' believe he'll keep his word and end all o' this..."

She drew in a breath.

"But Cardinal... changes things," Kyo said softly. "At least if it can do what you just said it could. I said 'sapient,' not self-aware. What I mean is that Kayaba might've managed AI on the level o' human intelligence. 'Sapient' only means human-like, see. When it comes t' AI, most AI tries t' ape human intelligence t' some extent, but all AI learning as we know it can really do is complex mimicry, just a really complicated game o' monkey-see, monkey-do. It lacks the ability t' look at its own work and make any kinda judgment call about its quality... bein' able t' do that is at the core of what separates human intelligence from artificial intelligence, and it's what makes AI more animal-like than human-like. 'Cause y'see, animals have a set of instructions they follow, too. We call 'em 'instincts,' but it's fundamentally the same. They have a set o' behavior patterns their entire existence revolves around and a very limited ability t' learn within those boundaries."

Kyo opened her eyes, and looked around.

"AI is typically the same way, we've just... designed them in a focused sorta way that narrows their entire existence down inta a single purpose. This AI can pretend t' hold a conversation, that AI can spit out grammatically-correct walls o' text and try t' pretend like it's havin' a conversation, that other AI can take text prompts and assemble a mish-mash o' art assets it has stored away, makin' a 'new' piece o' artwork from the components. But in all o' those cases, it's a human who has t' look at the work and then tell the AI that the quality of it's questionable. The AI can't do that part by itself. At all. The best it can do is be made better at not making mistakes in the first place."

The green-haired girl took a breath, then said:

"But this is a one of a kind VRMMO adventure, with a game system that's specifically tailored to it, attemptin' a game-design feat no one's ever managed," Kyo said. "Even if ya factor in that the music and art assets and even the core content and lore was all built by human hands, how does Cardinal know t' recognize when somethin' is 'too easy' or 'too hard?' How does it generate a quest and then look that quest over and decide that it's a good quest? How can it tell the difference between a bug and a feature? 'Cause that's the thing about AI, usually... it can't tell the difference between a bug and a feature. A human has t' do that part for 'em."

Kyo turned to look at Takao again, grimacing.

"The thing might not be self-aware, but bein' able t' make its own judgment about the quality of somethin'... well, that's the first step. The next step would be expressin' 'good' and 'bad' in a way that encourages the AI to pursue 'good' and avoid 'bad' on its own, sorta in... sorta in the same way a human's need t' eat and preference for different flavors and smells encourages us not just t' eat, but to enjoy eatin'. Or the way our sex drives and preferences make us wanna find a mate and reproduce. On some level, we feel like we hafta do those things, and the longer we don't, the more some part of us'll push us until we satisfy the survival instinct, but... layered on top are the things that make us want food or sex, and it's those things that feed inta our self-awareness. The instincts are more like annoyin' obligations, yeah?"

She paused here. Takao needed to show that he understood this part before Kyo could fully explain the rest.

Kyo's gaze was intent on Takao as he expanded on what he'd said about Cardinal. As he got into just how involved Cardinal was in crafting and revising the content of SAO, though, her eyebrows steadily went up. Partway through she blindly reached for the dessert Takao had brought her at the start of their conversation, grabbed a spoon (also without looking) and began shoveling the food into her mouth rapidly... seemingly just to ground herself as she took it all in.

When he finished talking, she froze in place right where she was, with a mouthful of that sweet treat already having been shoved into her mouth, spoon along with it. She sat like that for about five seconds, then swallowed, setting the spoon aside.

"That's..." Kyo said slowly. "Wow. That's... a lot more'n I was expecting. 'Specially given how easy a time I've had trippin' up the dialogue scripts o' those dumb-as-bricks NPCs down on floor one. But I guess it makes sense that a lotta regular NPCs are just basic bots... even if Kayaba or his dev team'd developed really good-ass AI, the game wouldn't have the processin' power to apply it t' all the NPCs in the game. Just a select few. You're right, all o' that's pretty amazin', and now I think of it, if he really wanted this t' be a 'world...'"

Kyo's eyes clouded as she considered this.

"How'd he do it, though?" Kyo asked, sounding genuinely baffled. "The progress o' AI learnin' ain't even got t' the point where art generators can get hands right, and there ain't any games like SAO for this 'Cardinal' to even learn from. T'do everythin' you're talkin' about, the system would hafta be on a level that'd make Alan Turing's eyes pop! And if the AI's at that level, it... JESUS CHRIST."

Kyo sprang up to her feet, and now her own eyes were popping: SAO's emotional-expression system doing its fair-weather best to exaggerate her expression as it always did.

"It couldn't be sapient, could it?!" Kyo yelled. "If it were... I-I mean... and what about any NPCs that level o' AI gets applied to?! That can't be right, I can't just bulldoze my way through this game if there's a chance that...!"

Kyo snapped out of her seeming panic, and her eyes jolted back down to Takao. Then there was a SLAM! as she brought her hands palm-first down onto the table, rattling it with the impact, and leaned over.

"How much d'you know about this?!" she said, almost pleading. "You're not yankin' my chain right now, are ya?! I-If Kayaba actually has made those sorta breakthroughs in AI development, it changes everything! About the game, about winnin' the damn thing, about what Kayaba's doing with all this, everything!"

Takao's mounting anxiety about the military brought a wan grin to Kyo's face. "...I wouldn't worry too much about government overreach in this case," Kyo said. "Too much publicity's involved, yeah, and also: the government'd probably've forced a recall on the NerveGear entirely. They'd also be really wary of messin' with the servers, unless they set off some defense Kayaba installed and kill us all by accident."

Kyo looked up at the ceiling of the café, frowning to herself. The only real worry, which she felt it would be unwise to voice out loud at the moment, was that if they were too slow to clear the game, the government might decide to pull the plug on all the people trapped in SAO. Japanese society had a certain propensity to want to sweep anything too troublesome under the rug... it was knowledge of that tendency, Kyo figured, that encouraged criminal players to endanger others for personal gain in here. There was almost no chance of anyone else suffering consequences for other players' deaths once everyone else got out; all the blame would fall on Kayaba. Japan would not want any ugly, contentious court-cases prolonging public unrest over the incident.

By that same token, though, the fact that the ten-thousand victims of SAO were so scattered and random, with families in all walks of society who would cause an outcry if the government moved to do something so drastic... it would make that something of a no-win scenario for the government for quite some time. By Kyo's estimates, they had maybe a decade or more until that became a true risk... which just left the health of their physical bodies as the main concern.

If we're lucky, Kyo thought dully, they'll use this as an opportunity t' make some advances in coma-ward care.

Well, no sense worrying over things they couldn't control from inside the game. Kyo tuned back into the moment, just in time for Takao's response to her more humanity-positive speculations about Full-Dive tech. She blinked at the mention of Cardinal; this was something she was unfamiliar with. Though she knew that something had been responsible for several system updates and content changes over the past years, Kyo had always assumed it was Kayaba acting directly.

"...I wouldn't worry about Kayaba hearin' what either of us say right now," Kyo said slowly. "Way I figure it, he's either hidin' in a mountain cabin somewhere, watchin' us from a birds-eye view like SAO's his own personal ant-farm, or he's in here with us, disguised as a player."

It was the first time Kyo had verbalized her speculations about Kayaba's whereabouts, and the only reason she was comfortable doing that was because she was sure that, even if Kayaba had been disguised as a player, it wouldn't be a player running an in-game restaurant using the Cooking skill. She shrugged, then, and added nonchalantly:

"Either way, he wouldn't kill anyone off like that. At least, I don't think so. Doesn't fit the sense I've got for the guy, based on what I know of him IRL and his words on that first day. Call me crazy, but I think he's got a twisted sense of fair play, and if someone had, say, a more personal vendetta against him, he'd see it more as an interestin' source o' drama for the 'story' o' his world, than any kinda real threat."

...Which brushed a little too close for comfort to her own situation, Kyo thought. Time for a change of subject!

"More importantly, what's Cardinal?" Kyo asked, putting her chin in her hands and looking curiously over now-empty plates and the still-untouched dessert, frowning in confusion. "This is the first I'm hearin' about somethin' makin' game content by itself... although, it does kinda make sense, given the scale o' this game... even Daggerfall back in the day only managed what it did with a massive shit-ton o' procedural generation..."

At Morningstar's mention of there being some level of pain here, Kyo's eyebrows went up. She wondered if that were really true, or if it was a case of the human mind filling in blanks with what it expected to feel. In the early days of NerveGear software, before Sword Art Online had been anything more than the unprecedented publicity leading up to launch, she had kept her finger on the pulse of Full-Dive technology for her own reasons. She knew, for example, that the NerveGear could simulate pain. That was something mentioned in a think-piece about VR's potential for military and law-enforcement training, and it had cited an independent tech-demo as its source. For obvious reasons, it hadn't been tested much, but some interesting data had been collected on the subject... such as the residual pain the programmers had still felt for quite a while after leaving the dive.

She also knew that all of the information that translated into pain-sensation was pure software, and that Sword Art Online had undergone a patch or two in the time since the death-game's launch. Had pain sensation been added in, at some point? If so, why only some pain sensation? Then again, it was possible the pain-sensation itself was used as a base for the peculiar, tingling numbness that SAO employed in place of pain to let players know when they had taken damage, and that all it would take to make a player feel pain was a tweak to an associated variable setting.

"Interestin'..." was all she said out loud, her eyes narrowed in thought. But including pain on purpose would be counterproductive to Kayaba's game, wouldn't it? It was too likely to have a negative impact on the real-life body... a bug, perhaps? Or...

Freyd's words about trusting Kayaba brought her out of her thoughts. "Oh, I don't trust the guy any further than I could suplex the subway train he rode inta work on," she said. "But I did a lotta research on Full-Dive before SAO came out, for my own reasons. There weren't much more than smaller games and more tech-demo-y type things out in the early days, but as for the capabilities o' the machine, I know a thing or two... you better believe that when the NerveGear hit the market, there were a lotta tech nerds chompin' at the bit to experiment with all sortsa things. Mostly it was fringe knowledge, and inconclusive as hell. Not a lot of it's useful t' any of us in here, either."

Well, Vigilon was a veritable all-you-can-eat buffet of information about this floor, huh? Kyo turned her attention to him and tilted her head to the side, seeming unintimidated by the volume of intel he was dumping on her. She seemed to tense at the mention of the Forest of Memory, and even more at the mention of fallen players.

She looked down, eyes half-lidded, and when he was done she simply murmured, "So not a good floor for me, then..."

If the mention of a Loch Ness Monster had eased her tension levels at all, it sure wasn't visible.

The question about her reasons for leaving the Town of Beginnings brought a sour expression to her face. She paused in her walk, then started moving again.

"That," she said in a clipped voice, "ain't somethin' I'm talkin' about with a buncha strangers. I had a really bad launch day but I've finally gotten outta my funk. Let's just leave it at that."

Kyo's lips quirked upward as Takao took the idea of a training sim to a few logical conclusions, then chuckled a bit at the partially-ridiculous—but not-entirely-unreasonable—place he'd taken the logic. She was kind of impressed that he'd considered the effect that could be had on muscle memory, particularly with the Sword Arts. There was a conversation to be had about those, but since they couldn't log out and see how well their movements translated to reality, she decided to hold her peace on those speculations.

And there were weapons for which Sword Art movements would be utterly useless. A lot of the Sword Arts relied on utterly impractical combinations, and then there were things like her Whip skills, which were video-gamey through and through. Real-life whips had to obey real-life laws of physics that SAO's whips just didn't need to bother with.

When Takao's thoughts took him down an utterly unrelated path, still stuck on the military-experiments idea like it was a prickly bur caught on his pants after a fall, she threw her head back and laughed.

"Hahaha! Slow down with the tin-foil hat stuff!" Kyo chuckled. By this point in his ramblings she had finished her meal, and was leaning back in her seat contentedly. "...Although theoretically it might be possible t' use NerveGear tech t' mess with our thoughts and shit, now that I think of it. But I don't think Akihiko Kayaba would be involved in somethin' like that. Doesn't fit his profile. But you're wrong, y'know, sayin' that games are the most underwhelmin' way t' use this tech. I mean, a lotta people out in the real world would agree, but I don't."

Kyo looked around the restaurant, swept out her hand, and said: "Human beings are stuck workin' for their livin' for pretty much all o' their time on this Earth. But with tech like this, we have a way t' escape that for a while. Anyone could come home from a gruelin' day at the office, and boot up their NerveGear to enjoy their own personal five-star restaurant dinin' experience, they could bring their family along, they could go on a short vacation with 'em... and yeah, they can go on adventures in a fantasy world, like we are. That's no small thing by itself."

Kyo lowered her hand, paused for a moment, and then added:

"But the miracles we could work with the underlyin' tech kinda put that t' shame, yeah," she added thoughtfully. "NerveGear tech can intercept nerve signals and send info directly t' the brain. So, say someone was born blind or deaf... couldn't we use this tech t' build fake eyes and ears for 'em? Replace their nonfunctional sensory organs with ones that work? And your mention o' robot bodies is also a thing. Cut out the virtual avatar completely; this tech could be used t' control fully-functional robotic limbs. Prosthetics and externally-operated tools for use in work, both. With NerveGear, the VR stuff and the interception o' nerve signals are a package deal, but they can be separated and used on their own. In theory."

The green-haired girl grinned humorlessly.

"Even our own situation can be twisted inta somethin' useful," she added, "somethin' beyond wacky military experiments, I mean. We're a buncha coma patients in hospitals, completely unaware o' the state of our real bodies. Suppose y'took that concept and applied it t' actual patients who have t' live with long-term weakness and pain? Maybe even t' patients who are in actual comas? Now, I'm not sure o' the biology there, but it seems t' me like that's an avenue worth explorin'."

The grin faded, and Kyo's expression turned serious, eyes darkening.

"So o' course, that absolute bell-end had t' go and trap ten thousand people in a game o' death, causin' a crisis that'll probably put society off from Full-Dive tech for a couple decades..." she said through her teeth. "Motherhumpin' shit-for-brains idiot that he is..."

Kyo's eating pace slowed as Takeo spoke up about how amazing games could be with Full-Dive. It was about the response she'd expected, though he did at least show a bit of outside-the-box thinking with his comment about the military. When he offered to help her with tips and pointers, she gave him a grateful smile, but didn't directly answer. Her attention had visibly and obviously been caught by something else Takao had said, and it was taking up all of her mental bandwidth just at the moment.

After swallowing her latest bite of chicken, Kyo set down her chopsticks.

"Argus and Akihiko Kayaba invented Full-Dive tech 'emselves, so this is a case where the militaries o' the world are a bit behind, actually," she said. "I wouldn't be surprised if they were t' investigate the potential for VR as a trainin' tool... probably the first halfway-decent Full-Dive shooter game's gonna be their port o' call for the preliminary trials, then they'll contract some developer t' make 'em a more in-depth trainin' sim..."

She paused.

"Assumin' someone steps up and tries t' keep Full-Dive alive in the market..." Kyo added quietly, before sighing. "Sometimes I think this whole mess'll probably put people off from VR for a long while, but it's impossible t' tell, from in here. But, y'know. I wasn't actually thinkin' so far ahead as t' think of writin' a tell-all book about SAO, if I get outta here. That's an idea. If I can figure out a way t' express the truth o' what it's like for us all in here... all o' the truth, not just the scary shit... yeah. That's an idea."

Kyo picked up her chopsticks again, looking earnestly at Takao.

"It's not just games that'll change, by the way," she said, her eyes lighting up with... something. "Full-Dive tech has so many potential uses. Didja know the Taste Recreation Engine we're enjoyin' right now was originally developed as a practical tool for people who're fasting or on strict diets or have other reasons for havin' t' go a long while without eatin' much food? Some environmental company or other developed it, I forget the specifics, but it's true."

Kyo pointed her chopsticks at Takao's meal, grinning.

"Since you finished that whole thing just now... in a world where SAO wasn't a deathtrap, if you logged out right now, your appetite would be gonzo. No joke. Actually when I heard Argus licensed that engine for this game, I was worried it'd lead to, like, a new wave of eatin' disorders. But if used responsibly, it could be a fantastic weight-loss aid. And that's just with the NerveGear as it exists now... the tech could be adapted t' all sortsa practical and medical uses, I'm thinkin'."

She snapped up one of the few remaining pieces of chicken on her plate, and popped it into her mouth, humming in contentment.

At Sorun's observation that her objective was "a risky but noble goal," Kyo actually looked away and let out a faint snort. Risky, for sure, but noble? Absolutely not. The only reason Kyo was doing it was because after so long, she had reached a point where the only way she would find any kind of closure was if she personally put an end to Kayaba... or was, at least, part of what did. If she died in the process of trying, it would still be a less-certain death than if she never tried at all.

If the game ended before she found that son of a... well. She wasn't sure what she'd do with herself in the real world, if that happened.

"Good t'meetcha, Sorun," she said after a moment. "And sure, may as well do the quest together then. With more'n one person, we could maybe even speed things up by gettin' more'n one o' the mobs into a cluster and usin' our AOEs on 'em. Not sure I'd risk that solo, not at this level."

As she spoke, Kyo idly swiped her hand through the air to open her menu, and with a few clicks sent Sorun a party invitation.

Oscar's warning prompted a flat stare while she waited for Sorun to confirm the invite.

"Would it make ya happier if instead o' sayin' safer, I said less dangerous?" she asked, a bit tartly. "Don't worry, I know how real the risks are. If I seem a bit casual about it, it's jus' 'cause I was already usedta fightin' IRL, before the NerveGear was even a thing. So the idea o' fightin' for my life doesn't scare me as much as others, that's all."

That of course left the big old question-mark of why Kyo had hid herself away in the Town of Beginnings for so long. But for all that Kyo had a slight tendency to over-share when she was nervous, sometimes, that wasn't something she was about to get into with a pack of strangers. Instead, she nodded toward NIGHT.

"Girl's got a point. We can talk while we quest. A buncha boars ain't gonna pose us much trouble, especially with a couple o' epic-level adventurers taggin' along t' keep an eye on things. Let's go see about initiatin' the quest, then..."

Kyo was mildly glad she had at least run into the NPC "Dorian" the previous day; though she wasn't sure if Sorun had completed that step, come to think of it. NIGHT seemed to have skipped to the alchemist's shop. Perhaps, Kyo mused, NIGHT had been at this so long that she'd forgotten the actual starting point of the quest... the tutorial was designed to push itself on new players, after all.

---

"You there! Stop, please!"

Kyo, who had in fact been standing completely still while trying to remember which way to go to get back to the inn from here, sighed and rubbed her temples as if suppressing a headache. It was the third or fourth time Dorian had approached her by this point, but since she was planning to do the tutorial quest soon, she figured it was time to actually engage with the guy.

"...Yes, good citizen?" she said, with exaggerated grandeur, turning back to look at the NPC striding toward her and making a cartoonishly heroic sweep of her arm. "Hastest thou rats in thine basement in needeth of slaying-eth? Or something?"

As she had expected, and indeed intended, the NPC came to a stop, blinking uncomprehendingly. "I'm sorry," it said. "I'm afraid I don't understand." Then it shook its head and, from that default response reverted straight back to its scripted lines: "Pardon me, but I am in need of some assistance, and you appear quite capable..."

---

The rest of the quest-starter dialogue went about as predictably and straightforwardly as could be expected. Dorian was apparently the Barliman Butterbur of municipal government, and had issued a loan to someone... then promptly forgotten who. The first quest was to find out who the loan had been given to, and collect the money. Kyo was interested to see if the quest allowed for players to potentially keep the money after collecting it. Not that she intended to, but it would be an interesting indicator of Argus and Akihiko Kayaba's quest-writing philosophy, which would be useful information to have going forward.

Since Sorun was in her party, Kyo assumed he could probably share her quest-progress, although... that might not be true. It would be awkward if they had to run back to Dorian's usual spawn point and get him to pester Sorun just so they could run back to the alchemist's shop and have the same conversation again.

Slipping past NIGHT into the shop, Kyo raised her hand in sardonic greeting at the alchemist himself, who had the "?" of a quest-in-progress hovering above his head.

"Yo," was all she bothered to say.

The alchemist, a bearded fellow who looked about as stereotypical as it got in these fantasy RPGs, greeted them in just as scripted a fashion as the poor mayor would have.

“Oh, hello," he said.  "Are you here to order something? I’m sorry, but I am currently swamped with orders, and I’m running out of supplies.”

"What a shock," Kyo said blandly, looking at her fingernails. "Good thing there's a convenient pair of scrub-tier adventurers handy alluva sudden, huh?"

"I'm not sure I follow," the NPC said distractedly. Then, as if he had a suddenly brilliant idea: “Would you gather a few materials for me? Flowers, herbs, rare woods, whatever you can find outside the city walls. I promise I’ll help you fill your order as soon as you return. In fact, I would be willing to show you how to do it yourself.”

"That's your inner ear goin' wibbly, not a concussion," Kyo stated matter-of-factly. "A concussion is a physical injury t' the brain. It might be possible for Full-Dive t' simulate the symptoms of a concussion, but I don't think SAO was made t' do that. It is true that if we go through too much stress in here too quickly, it'd probably have a backlash o' some kind on our real bodies, though..."

The green-haired girl scratched her chin as she considered this, then shrugged her shoulders. She remained silent while the others talked about things that were obviously outside her sphere of experience, but glanced back up at the tree while Vigilon explained the tragic events of his last five minutes. Weird that birds would do that, and in town, too... was it some kind of event? Would they find something interesting if they tried to track the second bird wherever it had flown off to...? Not that Kyo, at level one, could do much to help in that event. But it was a helpful reminder to Kyo not to get too comfortable with the game logic of this place.

Kayaba didn't make this place to be a game, after all, she told herself. He made it to be a world... he made it a place where his captives would write their own stories. What was that famous quote o' his? "This might be a game, but it's not somethin' you play?"

"Anyway..." she said, shaking herself out of those thoughts. "Gettin' the lay o' the land is actually what I was here for. I'm about t' start levelin', but I figured it'd help t' at least get a feel for what's waitin' on the upper floors. Only meant t' explore the main towns, but if y'all don't mind me taggin' along, then I'm game for whatever. Just don't let any killer rabbits bite my legs off, yeah?"

Kyo strolled back to where she'd been standing when the impromptu gathering had formed, shading her eyes with one hand and squinting out into the distance.

"What're the mobs like on this floor, anyway? I heard a rumor that Floor Twenty-Two is s'posedta be, like, the safest place in Aincrad, but I'm not too sure about my source on that."

Kyo allowed herself a moment of pride at Takao's reaction to her physique—she had worked hard for it, after all, and Sword Art Online had managed to recreate her real-life body pretty accurately. Takao's enthusiastic acceptance of her half-joking idea that they could be gym buddies on the other side turned that hidden pride into a goofy grin. Who knew if the two of them would remember this conversation by the time they escaped, given the glacial pace of clearing? But she made a note to at least try. Allowing herself the fantasy of having a friend along for the rehabilitation ride let her pretend she had a goal beyond just her personal revenge, for a few moments.

When Takao disappeared into the kitchen, Kyo looked down at the dessert on the table. Food worked in a bit of an interesting way in SAO. For all of its realism in looks and eating experience, for example, it didn't warm up or cool down the way food left out in the open did IRL. Food would gradually tick down its durability and "expire," especially if left outside of the inventory, but that process seemed to drastically slow down inside a player residence or a restaurant. The bizarre mixture of reality and player-convenience-driven unreality boggled Kyo's food-related common sense. For a moment she thought to herself that she should scarf the dessert down or stash it in her inventory to preserve it. Then she remembered that here in Takao's restaurant, she would have around an hour and a half before it mattered. There were no motes of dust or small insects in the air to potentially ruin a dessert left out like this, either. And it could be pushed further; on other floors, Kyo had poked her head into different restaurants and found that there were even things like cake display-cases, which would extend the durability of dishes made for display for as long as three days before they got to a point where they had to be either eaten or lost.

Thinking about this soured Kyo's mood again, because it reminded her of how much work had gone into SAO, how much kriffing potential the whole thing had... and how Akihiko Kayaba had ruined all of that.

Takao finally returning with the meal he'd promised was a welcome distraction.

"Oh, hey—that looks good," she said, half-standing in her seat to get a better look. When she had said "spicy chicken," her uncultured culinary mind had gone to the crispy fried-chicken variety. Takao had gone above and beyond, crafting the kind of dish she'd have expected at the fancy restaurants her mother and father favored. And whatever baggage Kyo had regarding her parents, one of the things she'd never dispute is that the pair of them knew good food.

She could feel virtual saliva building just at the sight and smell, and was suddenly very glad that she'd stumbled into this particular player-run dining establishment.

More than that; Kyo had seen some low-level cooks at work, having shared her moping-inn with several of them at different times during the past two years, and knew a thing or two about how SAO handled the Cooking skill. Perhaps as a result of the flexibility inherent in the Taste Recreation Engine that Argus had licensed from another company for use in this game, players were able to exercise some impressive individual expression with the presentation of a meal. Takao's looked like something a food-stylist would have fluffed up for an advertisement. Belatedly Kyo realized that the lighting and ambiance in his restaurant was pretty much spot-on for that, too, though the same could be said for much of Taft.

She looked up, blinking in surprise.

"D'ya know," she said thoughtfully, sitting back down. "I think you just might've earned yourself a customer with this, once I've got the Col t' indulge a little. Thankya very much!"

Kyo dug in with gusto. If her outfit, hairstyle, and mannerisms gave her a tomboyish air, it was nothing to the way she ate, which was the enthusiastic sort of ravenous mostly only seen of Shonen protagonists in anime; like an incredibly happy animal ripping and tearing until the meal's done. But she was clearly paying attention to Takao when he spoke, her eyes turning back up from the meal to observe him, slowing her eating pace just a bit to listen.

When he introduced himself, she stopped mid-chew, then swallowed and lowered the piece of chicken she'd been working on.

"Well, damn, I didn't even realize I hadn't introduced myself yet!" she chuckled. "Sorry 'bout that, polite society's my dump-stat. Goodta meetcha, Takao. I'm Kyo."

She took another bite, chewing thoughtfully this time as she considered how to answer his question. After a bit, she swallowed.

"Well, I'm still makin' plans... it's why I'm tourin' the main towns like this," she said at last. "As for my interest in how the game works, well, that's not all just for gettin' through it. I have an academic interest in Full-Dive tech, just in general. Actually before all this went down, I was gearin' up t' write a big ol' ambitious article about it. I'm a journalism student, see, and this was gonna be my first attempt at makin' an impact with a story... 'How Full-Dive VR Will Change The World,' or, somethin' like that, I dunno. I had a better title in mind, but it's been a hot minute. I kinda... forgot it." 

Takao's lament about how he had only just started putting on weight brought a humorless grin to Kyo's face.

"I'm not exactly happy about it either," she said. She pushed her chair back, turning toward Takao so he could see her front fully... her open jacket, midriff-baring top, and the rather impressive abs they bared. "I put a lotta work inta this, ya know, and I'm gonna hafta do it all over again, on top o' rehab. Ha! Y'know, maybe we can be gym buddies when this is all over, cheer each other on."

Kyo certainly seemed not to have the same reservations about their situation as Takao did, given her generally easy demeanor as she said this. But she must have picked up on Takao's need to change the subject, because she shifted her attention to Otoko. "So there's a range o' different AI levels," Kyo said thoughtfully. "I wonder how deep it goes... Christ..."

This last came out as a mutter, Kyo's face darkening.

"Why'd you invent somethin' this amazin' and then make sure everyone only thinks o' the mass-murder part?"

She seemed to be thinking out loud, and there was a bitter edge to the words. But she snapped back to the moment with a shake of her head. She looked at Takao, and raised her eyebrows at his words to the dragon. When he said his evening had opened up, she straightened in her chair.

"You sure? Alright then, I sure won't say no. Kayaba didn't invent the food system, anyway, so that's one o' the things I got no problem with."

Readjusting her chair, Kyo slid closer to the table, and brought the dessert that Takao had placed in front of her closer so as to examine it.

"What d'ya mean when ya say your evenin' opened up?" she asked idly. "Didja have plans t' party up with friends and go grindin'?"

"Well, thanks for the warm welcome, I guess, though I'm a long way off from properly joinin' the fray—"

Kyo heard a honk. She looked up, and saw the tail-end of what could only be described as "a very sad story." A branch cracked, and the protagonist of said sad story fell out of the tree, onto his face. Well, at least it had happened in a safe haven, Kyo reflected.

She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes.

"Trapped in a death game by a madman, only a quarter o' the way through after two years..." she muttered, "and this is what I find when I leave town at last. Well, that's where we're at, gotta roll with it..."

She opened her eyes, but kept on pinching her nose as if suppressing a headache.

"Y'can't get a concussion in VR," Kyo said blandly. "And the system doesn't simulate pain, so I think the only thing ya'd have t' worry about with that kinda fall's your HP and gettin' dizzy for a while."

She let her hands drop at last, grinning a relaxed, sardonic grin, and looked down at the player who'd crash-landed into their midst.

"Given we can't lose HP here, how's your inner ear? Can ya walk in a straight line or do ya needta sit down?" she quipped. "And what were ya doin' in that tree, anyway?"

She looked up, eyeing the Goose curiously, and blinked. Did geese even fly into trees? Kyo didn't think they were supposed to do that...

"Off-limits? ...Huh," Kyo thought, sounding nonplussed. Clearly this was another of the many, many things that she had missed while she had been trapped in her depression for the past while. She wondered what this woman had done to get the rest of the clearing group to force her onto the bench.

Ah, well. If it meant there was a high-level player who was perfectly free to help her get going, and who had just so happened to stumble across her path like this... well, that was a useful coinky-dink, wasn't it? Yeah. Useful. And quite the coinky-dink. Kyo's suspicion faded, but did not vanish completely.

Not that she had time to think about it for long. What had begun as a one-on-one conversation suddenly became a one-on-two conversation, and then a one-on-three, and Kyo gradually tensed up... then forced herself to calm down. Every time an unfamiliar player crossed her path she was reminded of her speculations about just where Kayaba might be hiding, and had to remind herself that the odds of her running into him on the first floor were less than zero. Besides, that was just one of several theories she'd formed about the man, and she had no reason to think that this one was more likely to be true than the others.

For all she knew the bastard might be living lavishly in the Ruby Palace instead, only sporadically checking up on the virtual-reality ant-farm below through a scrying mirror or something... checking up on the goings-on of his favorite players, spectating the boss fights... maybe with an alert set up in his admin hub for whenever players triggered certain quests or events that he was especially proud of...

Kyo shivered, and mentally drop-kicked her attention back to the moment.

"...Ah... that was me, I was jus' tryin' to get someone's attention for help on the tutorial quests..." Kyo said to Sorun, rubbing the back of her head. Her previous train of thought hadn't completely left her, though, and her voice quavered a bit with the discomfort of the images it had conjured. At that point she glanced at Oscar. "I was lost, see, so I had no idea the Teleport Plaza was so close. The town's big. But... NIGHT, was it? Goodta meetcha... anyway, she just told me."

Hitching a grin onto her face, Kyo hooked a thumb in the belt-clasp that held her whip in place and thrust her free thumb into her collarbone in confident introduction.

"I go by Kyo," she said. "I'm aimin' for the front lines. I just figure it's safer t' use the tutorial quests t' get past Level One, instead o' goin' off half-cocked without even a proper armor skill and gettin' mauled by a wolf or eaten by one o' those Nepenthes plant-monster things. I'm not really worried about fightin', but it's an RPG, yeah? Gotta play the numbers game."

Kyo blinked and stared down at the menu when Takao indicated the cheaper items and explained them.

Wait, food has buffs in SAO...?

After a moment's thought, she realized she should have expected as much. It was, after all, the only thing that normally made videogame food worth a damn in most of the many, many RPGs that included it, from single-player games to MMORPGs. The only exceptions were games that had survival mechanics, but those tended to be kind of niche. Since they felt hunger pains here if they starved themselves—and since SAO's design ethos was obviously and decidedly very old-school in many ways—Kyo had simply assumed the food was there for survival value.

Well, as far as that went... it looked like Sword Art Online was able to have its cake and eat it, too.

Pun absolutely intended.

"Yeah, I'm... gettin' a feel for the different floors before I start levelin'. I wanna make it t' the frontlines, and it'll help if I have a good idea of what t' expect," Kyo admitted, scratching her chin as she eyed the menu. Then one corner of her lips quirked up. "For the record, tho', I'm more of a spicy-chicken kinda girl, so I'll pass on the garden salad. Not that it really matters what we eat in here so long as we eat somethin' t' shut our stomachs up... our actual bodies are wastin' away on a drip-feed, so we're losin' BMI by the hour even if we pig the hell out, aren't we."

Kyo snorted as if she found this funny. But her eyes were locked on the little red dragon as it perched itself on Takao's shoulder, and her eyes lit up with curiosity as Takeo explained its role in the restaurant.

"That's some pretty frickin' impressive AI routine it's got goin' on, if what you're sayin' is true..." Kyo said, leaning forward and squinting at the dragon. "NPCs are kinda rock-stupid, or at least... the ones in the Town o' Beginnings are. I'm surprised anythin' in this game can behave in such a complex way. I wonder if it's related the way mobs are programmed t' kinda learn a player's tactics as ya fight 'em..."

She leaned back, then, grinning sheepishly.

"Well, maybe that's all stuff other players already know the answers to. I haven't really, uh... haven't really been keepin' in touch with what's been goin' on, up t' now. So there's a lot I'm behind on."

What the green-haired virtual chef would find waiting, when he reached the table she'd sat at, was a girl with green hair and green eyes not far off in shade from his, looking up at him and blinking in surprise. She had been slouching in her chair as if exhausted, but was straight-backed as a flagpole now. It was obvious that she hadn't expected anyone to approach her just then.

"Eh?!" she blurted. Her eyes darted to the space above Takao's head but that just brought a grimace to her face: she was checking whether he was a player or an NPC, but cursors didn't show indoors. Eventually she sighed, deciding he was probably a player; NPC waiters tended to be a bit more boring-looking than this.

"Well, I won't say no t' free food, but... I didn't even know this place was player-run. I was just takin' a break before headin' back. I'm honestly afraid t' check out the menu, though. Somehow I get the feelin' player-made food is outside o' my price range at this point..."

Now wasn't that the understatement of the month. Over the past two years, Kyo had mostly just lived at the cheapest inn she could find, and she'd run through all of the starting money that her... that the group she'd logged in with had dropped when they'd lost in their launch-day dueling tournament. She'd managed to hold onto barely enough Col to make a two-years-late start at leveling up, but that was chump change compared to what active players would be making in their day-to-day grind... so it was chump change compared to what this guy probably expected to make when a player stopped by his place.

She was only even on this floor because she'd wanted to get a look at all of the floors that the players ahead of her had unlocked so far, and she'd only come in here because, virtual avatar or not, she'd done a lot of walking around today. She was exhausted, damnit, and it was just such a cozy-looking little restaurant.

Had she known the café was player-run, she'd never have stopped in here. NPC waiters would generally just leave you be if you told them you didn't want to order anything, but in a player-run establishment, loitering was... well, it was loitering.

After a few moments of considering this, Kyo cast a squint-eyed look in the direction of the kitchen, and said, "...Was that a li'l dragon I saw slip inta the back when I came in, or has the NerveGear microwaved my brain already?"

---

CHARACTER STATS:

Kyo | Level 1
HP: 20/20
EN: 20/20
DMG: 1
MIT: 0
EVA: 1
ACC: 0 [Keen]
LD: 0

Equipped Weapon:
Leather Whip | [Whip, Uncommon] [Keen I]

Equipped Armor:
Boarskin Jacket | [Cloth Armor, Uncommon] [Evasion I]

Battle-Ready Inventory:
Starter Healing Potion (x5) | [Heals 50 HP]

Skills:
«Whip» Weapon Skill | Rank 1

"...Mm?"

Kyo turned a surprised look in the direction of the voice that responded. For a moment she narrowed her eyes—the idea that Kayaba might masquerade as a player had occurred to her more than once, when she was planning the initial stages of her path to the frontlines of clearing—but the suspicious look passed as quickly as it came. While she expected Kayaba would be living in a place like this in reality, she didn't think he'd be loitering around here when there were so many more interesting things to observe on higher, more player-dense floors.

So after a moment she said, "Nah. Stupid jackass prolly doesn't even know he'd have a reason t' keep an eye on me yet..."

Her eyes darted to the player cursor hovering about Takeo's head, as if double-checking that he was, in fact, not an NPC. Then another voice interjected, and her eyes went a strange sort of flat, speaking louder than words ever could that she found the situation too stupid for the Japanese language to express.

"...Don't tell me players actually do come here," Kyo said waspishly, turning a sharp look on Freyd. "Progress clearin' floors's been slow enough as is, ain't it? Or is there somethin' actually worthwhile on this floor that I don't know about. Seriously, I thought I'd be the only one here."

She looked around dubiously, nose scrunching up in dislike. Folding her arms over her chest, she snorted, and turned her attention back to the two male players.

"...And the reason I look like this is 'cause I look like this IRL," Kyo stated matter-of-factly, for all the world as if talking about the real world didn't bother her one bit. But a moment later, Freyd's goofy act seemed to crack her grumpy attitude; as she looked at his puffed cheeks her lips twitched up and she sighed.

"Eh, sorry, don't mind me, it's just... my first time outta Floor One, gettin' a feel for what the other floors're like, y'know how it is... the name's Kyo, by the way, Kyo Morina—"

Abruptly she cut herself off, winced, and corrected herself:

"Well... the character name's just 'Kyo,' but t'hell with it... Kyo Morinaga's my name. I don't really give a boar's ass about anonymity in here."

"Huh. So it's true. This floor really is just a big ol' campground, huh?"

Kyo turned on the spot, surveying the smallish village that comprised the main "city" of Floor Twenty-Two. She'd emerged from the Teleport Gate just ten or so minutes before and had spent that little bit of time strolling around town. Rumor had it Floor Twenty-Two was so tranquil and calm that even low-levels could spend time here... though Kyo wasn't yet ready to test that by stepping outside the Safe Haven. With her still being a level-one scrub, even a sufficiently aggressive bunny-rabbit mob could probably tear her to shreds. Dying like the victim of a Monty Python skit was not exactly how Kyo wanted to go out.

She put her hands on her hips, though, standing at the edge of town and looking out over the scenic pine-forest expanse, and the sparkling lakes...

Man, y'know, if this weren't a death game, what would players've thought of this floor...? It'd be like having a vacation you can just dive into every day after work, wouldn't it.

Not for the first time, she muttered the worst curse she could think of at the absent Akihiko Kayaba. What had the man been thinking when he turned this game into a deathtrap, anyway? Some nonsense-trash about making the virtual world more "real," probably. What a shitshow. The man had probably tanked the potential of wonders like this for decades to come...

Two years. Had it really been two years? Kyo wasn't so sure. She looked up at the ceiling above, the under-side of Floor Twenty-Three, and smiled wanly. If it really had been two years, some government official on the other side would probably decide to pull the plug on the SAO server and hope for the best, before the player-base ever reached Floor One-Hundred. She didn't expect that they would ever make any headway in actually finding Akihiko Kayaba. Probably the man was living in the mountains somewhere, off in bumfug rural nowhere. He didn't need the kind of uninterrupted Internet connection the rest of the players did... God, just the idea that her NerveGear's connection might lag at a bad moment gave Kyo the shivershakes, sometimes.

But this floor...

Man, it would have been great if this were just a game. You didn't even need to make real progress in the game to access the areas that other players had unlocked the Teleport Gate destinations for. Kyo could totally imagine a bunch of tired salarymen from Tokyo logging into SAO just for the flippin' fishing floor, beelining it to the quest to snag the relevant profession and then fishing to their hearts' content, never touching the PvE content. She could also imagine the inevitable tide of player-killing griefers logging in specifically to ruin that, but eh, you take the rough with the smooth.

Now, though, Kyo supposed that a lot of the clearers probably didn't give a place like this a second's thought, and a lot of the people too scared to be clearers did what she had done, and just... hid away in the Town of Beginnings.

She sighed, and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Akihiko Kayaba, you flamin' idiot," she said out loud. "A floor like this only even makes sense in a game that's an actual game. The flippin' hell were you smokin'?"

She did not expect anyone to hear her. In point of fact, she expected the odds of meeting another player on this floor were a million to one or so... come to think of it, did this place even have anything worth doing on it, now that the labyrinth boss was long dead? Good hunting for Cooking ingredients, maybe? The image of a bunch of anime-ass-looking fantasy warriors heading out into the woods to shatter deer like glass for the venison drops made her snort.

---

CHARACTER STATS:

Kyo | Level 1
HP: 20/20
EN: 20/20
DMG: 1
MIT: 0
EVA: 1
ACC: 0 [Keen]
LD: 0

Equipped Weapon:
Leather Whip | [Whip, Uncommon] [Keen I]

Equipped Armor:
Boarskin Jacket | [Cloth Armor, Uncommon] [Evasion I]

Battle-Ready Inventory:
Starter Healing Potion (x5) | [Heals 50 HP]

Skills:
«Whip» Weapon Skill | Rank 1

Kyo seemed to relax a little at NIGHT's reassurance that it had been no problem, but then she tensed up a little bit again, giving NIGHT a slightly squint-eyed look and half-opening her mouth as if to question the other player's answer.

But when NIGHT jabbed her thumb over her shoulder and said, by the way, the quest starter was right over there... Well. Any suspicion she had that NIGHT might have been lying flew from her mind in the face of that revelation.

"S-seriously?" Kyo blurted out, her eyes shooting wide.  "I didn't realize it was... I-I mean, I kinda got lost in the maze o' back-alleys over here on my way back from that weapon shop I found..."

Kyo looked down, patting the whip at her belt.

"...The Town o' Beginnings is bigger than any video-game town I've ever explored..." she said, pursing her lips. "This game has all the ambition of flippin' Daggerfall, with the tech to make it reality. It's pretty wild, now that I've taken time t' actually look. On launch day, me and the guys were... well, we had our own plans that day. I didn't have a chance t' explore until I really wasn't in the head-space for it."

Kyo coughed into her hand—the clothing that went with her "armor" had been specially selected to compliment the punkish look the Boarskin Jacket made for, so she was sporting fingerless black gloves. Then she looked up at NIGHT, smiling wanly.

"Are ya really offerin' t' help me just like that, though? I kinda figured a higher-level player like you seem t' be would have better things t' do with your time... being a big goddamn hero up on Floor Twenty-Whatsits, fightin' t' free us all from the death game, that sorta thing. Not that I'm sayin' no, mind, just... kinda wonderin' why you'd bother."

The first person to answer the call was, surprisingly, another woman. Kyo turned to look at her, blinking a bit owlishly at the question, Did anything happen out there just now? It took her a few moments of this blank staring for her brain to catch up and realize that her call for aid had been misheard as a distressed scream.

"Whaddaya mean, did anything...? Oh. Well. Shit," Kyo said with a tone-free flatness. "That was actually me, but I wasn't screamin', I was... well, I was just tryin' t' get someone's attention, is all."

Fidgeting uneasily with her Boarskin Jacket, Kyo grimaced for a beat and then seemed to force the expression away, pushing a smile into its place.

"I've, uh, I've been kinda hidin' away in the Town o' Beginnings since launch day, but I decided it's high time I go out and do somethin' with myself. I was thinkin' I'd do the tutorial quests for starters, since I kinda skipped 'em on day one, but... well. I never actually learned my way 'round this town, the whole time I've been here! ...Dumb, right?"

To say that SAO's emotional-expression system was doing Kyo no favors would have been an understatement. The longer she spoke, the redder her face became. But to her credit, she didn't let the embarrassment turn her into a gibbering mess or anything. In fact, she seemed to be looking over NIGHT with interest. Based on that gear... this was something of a more well-to-do player, looked like. Maybe even a fairly high-leveled one. Kyo hadn't had any notion that higher-level players might be sticking around the Town of Beginnings, even with it being a simple teleport away from any of the other floors' main towns.

I... really need to learn who the movers and shakers in the playerbase are... Kyo thought. As it was now, Kyo hadn't even tapped the local grapevine for such information. Her only friend over the past months had been a low-level tailor who'd just so happened to be living in the same inn as her... the maker of this jacket.

Kyo drew in a breath, closed her eyes, and said through her teeth: "...Sorry."

Golly gosh, but she was off to a wonderful start, wasn't she?

• Character Name: Kyo
• Character Description: A short girl with a punkish appearance, green-dyed hair in a boyish mop, and an unusual amount of visible muscle—both for a girl and for an SAO player. Having unwittingly killed her own boyfriend in an impromptu launch-day PvP tournament, she aims for revenge against Akihiko Kayaba more than for an escape from the death game. Her weapon of choice is the whip and she favors a light-armor, evasive style making use of her real-world athletic skill.
• Character Journal: [Link]

--------

• Character Name: Autumn
• Character Description: A red-haired, dark-skinned swordswoman... piloted by a girl who had no idea how terrifying it would be to embody that character until the death game of Sword Art Online forced her to face that reality. Having hidden away in the Town of Beginnings until now, she strikes out, seeking to grow past her fear...
• Character Journal: [Link]

She stepped back onto the main street, holding the Leather Whip that she'd just bought in her hand. Not a bad find for the Town of Beginnings, she thought. The place was so big, there were bound to be some hidden gems among the various NPC shops, or so she'd speculated when—at last—she had picked herself up from her depression and decided to do something about it.

I'm way behind the front lines o' the clearin' effort now, though, Kyo thought, and winced at the notion of how much work she had to do to catch up. Still, the active clearing efforts had only reached, ah... what, floor twenty-eight or twenty-nine or thereabouts? There was plenty of time, then. Plenty of time. The only thing that really mattered was that she needed to be there when the clearing group finally faced down that bastard, because there was no doubt in Kyo's mind that Akihiko Kayaba would be waiting for them on Floor One-Hundred.

Attaching her whip to her belt (a process that, she was sure, would have been more complicated in the real world than it was in SAO), Kyo glanced around the street, biting her lip. Okay, she had her starting gear figured out... so where to begin? The sheer scale of just this one starting town was kind of mind-boggling. The total land-area of Floor One on its own was straight-up daunting, and there were a hundred of the flipping things. They got gradually smaller as one ascended the Steel Castle, of course, but it wouldn't be until the last quarter at least that floor-size became manageable. Kyo had seen the promotional images of Aincrad-from-the-outside...

"...Which is assumin' all the floors'll even be t' scale with that," she mumbled to herself. "It's not like we'd notice if the devs played fast and loose with temporal physics... or would that be quantum physics? ...Eh. Whatever..."

Well. No use dwelling on something so useless! Kyo suddenly recalled that, in their haste to get to their own little PvP tournament, she and the guys had blown right past a certain NPC who was clearly Tutorial Guy, back near the teleport plaza. MMORPGs usually did give players some useful rewards in their tutorial quests, for the purpose of getting them hooked. She might even be able to blitz the first few levels if she followed the tutorial, although... probably not, thinking about it. The devs of Sword Art Online seemed to be skewing things a bit old-school for this one, a design mentality she didn't exactly disagree with. Jumping into Full-Dive virtual reality just to spam the same skill-cooldown rotation over and over while dodging glowy area-of-effect warnings would've been like buying a PlayStation 5 to play mother-humpin' Pong.

Which way to the teleport plaza from here? She looked around, and realized that in her excitement she'd gone and lost her frickin' bearings. Well, of course. She might have spent all this time since Launch Day holed up here, but she hadn't exactly gone out to explore during that time. Mostly she'd just gone and... bought food from an NPC shop whenever she got hungry, and since there'd been one of those right next-door to the cheap inn she'd spent all her time in, she'd never had to go far. Finding that weapon shop today had been an interesting experience, but...

Welp. Nothing else for it, and sometimes the simple answer was always best. The green-haired girl cupped both hands to the sides of her mouth, drew in a great heaping pull of virtual air, and let out a yell:

"YO! ANY OTHER PLAYERS 'ROUND HERE THAT AIN'T GIVEN UP ON LIFE YET!? I'D LIKE T' DO THE TUTORIAL QUEST, PLEASE AAAAAAAAND THANK-YA!"

It so happened (and Kyo would find the time to be embarrassed about this fact later, for sure) that the teleport plaza was not so far away at all. In point of fact, she was near the southern entrance, just a corner or two from finding the tutorial NPC on her own. Which also meant that her flippant call for aid could be heard by just about anyone who might be coming or going between floors at that moment...

---

CHARACTER STATS:

Kyo | Level 1
HP: 20/20
EN: 20/20
DMG: 4
MIT: 0
EVA: 1
ACC: 0 [Keen]
LD: 0

Equipped Weapon:
Leather Whip | [Whip, Uncommon] [Keen I]

Equipped Armor:
Boarskin Jacket | [Cloth Armor, Uncommon] [Evasion I]

Battle-Ready Inventory:
Starter Healing Potion (x5) | [Heals 50 HP]

Skills:
«Whip» Weapon Skill | Rank 1