Author's Note

3/22/2019 Update: So, in preparation for this story's long-form continuation, I'm having my beta go through this story's existing chapters to at least make them slightly less cringe-worthy, especially at the start.

Not a whole lot to say that isn't already in the summary. Read on!

Gun Gale Online: The Swordswoman

Chapter One: Ready, Set, Launch!

The sound of gunfire echoed throughout the area. The moon in the clear night sky illuminated the firing of each bullet, making the battle raging around me seem like a light show. A very, very deadly light show.

And to make matters worse, my only protection was four decrepit, old walls, their color gradually erased by the sandy winds. One grenade, and they'd match their surroundings.

I looked down at my waist, gazing at the semi-automatic handgun resting at my right side. It still had all of its rounds in it, as the spot I was hidden behind was so plain-looking nobody would expect me to be there. But knowing my luck, I would likely end up emptying the entire clip while struggling to escape with my life.

I redirected my attention to the metal cylinder held at my left side by a belt loop. I eyed it intently, trying to think of a way to use what I had to get out of my current predicament.

Using this would be suicide, I thought, grimacing lightly. The bounty on my head's proof enough.

I looked up to the sky, wondering just how I had gotten myself into this mess.

«Gun Gale Online».

"Big sis, I'm going out for kendo practice!"

The call came from the other side of my bedroom door. I'd been expecting something like this – the sound of her footsteps closing in was loud and clear. I knew that my sister, Sugu, was probably waiting right next to the door, hoping for a response. At this point, it had become a routine.

Despite this, I didn't make a sound. Even my feet, which I had been dragging from side to side across the stained wooden floor, had come to a complete halt.

I heard a faint creaking coming from my bedroom door, telling me she was leaning on it. But it was locked, as usual. She was even more painfully straightforward than I was, so she'd never even think of not announcing her presence so obviously. She called out each time, giving me every chance I needed to react like this.

I remained as quiet and still as humanly possible in order to wait her out. I didn't want her to know I was even awake. And since it was Sunday, the idea that I could still be sleeping in was conceivable, even at such a late time as twelve-fifty in the afternoon.

Eventually, my plan worked. After a grand total of ten seconds, Sugu gave up, evident by the door ever so slightly creaking again. "I prepared lunch for you. It's in the fridge for whenever you get hungry. In case you're asleep, I'll text you about it in a bit. I'll be hanging out with the club after practice, so I won't be back until tonight. See you then, sis…"

I could imagine the sad smile on her face as she trod away. And honestly, it made me feel guilty; giving her the silent treatment like this wasn't my style. My reasons for avoiding my sister weren't even her fault – in fact, the only connection was how all of my anger, acrimony, and outright hatred was currently directed at her mother…

In other words, my aunt. Sugu and I weren't really siblings, but I still thought of her as one because we were very close growing up. Her mother, on the other hand, could barely mask her resentment, and I'd picked up on it before I was even toilet trained. By this point, I was pretty sure it was due to me reminding her of her sister, whom I knew was my grandfather's favorite child. It was a fact both of us were constantly reminded of; the old geezer never shut up about both that and how I was the spitting image of my mom.

And due to a string of events at school over the past year, we were having a difference of opinions over our living arrangements. I wanted to move somewhere else, to basically run away from some people I'd accidentally alienated, I did admit, and well… she didn't like the idea. In all fairness, she had the stronger argument on her side, but the way she was handling the problem didn't exactly scream parental figure of the year.

"I already bailed your sorry ass out of one school system, kid. I'm not doing it again for a reason that isn't even half as valid like this."

My current personal pick for the next cover model of Punchable Face Magazine actually said that right to my face just the night before. Was I supposed to thank her for doing what any sensible parent would have done in light of the circumstances? Even right after she blatantly told me my current problems weren't important enough to warrant similar actions?

"Go to hell, Midori," I muttered under my breath, making sure to be quiet in case my sister was still in the house.

What a joke. That jealous hussy just wanted to watch me suffer in a way that my real mom who was energetic, outgoing and didn't struggle to be social or maintain her friendships never did. The only thing I seemed to inherit from my mother was her physique, from the well developed figure to the incredibly short height. My personality, intelligence and thought patterns? They basically came straight from my dad with no alterations, as much as I hated it most of the time.

I couldn't let it slip that I was fighting with Sugu's mom. Or even worse, let it slip that her mom was my aunt, and that we were actually cousins, which I had tactfully kept hidden from her for the past five years. So until my emotions cooled down a little, I had decided to hold off on speaking with my sister as much as possible.

I heard a somewhat loud buzz tone. This noise, coupled with a subtle shaking feeling coming from the inside pocket of my dark gray denim jacket, interrupted my thoughts to notify me that I'd received an email. A single buzz would have been a text, and three of them would have been an app notification, but the presence of only two, along with the current time, told me exactly what to expect.

Rather than get out my phone, I swung my computer chair around to face my desk, where two large, high-resolution monitors, both blackened due to inactivity, stood next to each other in a way that made them look like a very obtuse angle from a geometry problem. Under the desk, there was another surface, attached to the one above it with a sliding mechanism.

I slid it out, and a keyboard and computer mouse appeared over my bare, frightfully pale legs, still slender yet toned from my kendo days. Since I almost never went outside except to go home, to school, or to certain stores, my skin looked significantly closer to that of a white American than that of a Japanese girl. In fact, my own family members all had considerably darker skin than I did, and they weren't even super huge on outdoor exercise. When boys around me at school thought I couldn't hear, many of them described it as a charm point… and coupled with the other such points they'd discuss, I usually had to fight back a shudder of revulsion and the urge to slap them across the face. Knowing my bizarre physical strength, I could very possibly snap their necks by accident if I actually went through with a slap like that.

Shaking my head to clear it of such morbid thoughts, I shifted the mouse, and both monitors lit up, showing two different screens. The cursor moved to the one on the right, which always housed my work email inbox. The sender was just the person I'd been expecting to hear from around then. I clicked on it and began to read.

Sender: Kayaba-sensei

Subject: A Quick Notification

I trust that your copy of GGO came safely in the mail. I wanted to inform you that upon successfully logging in for the first time, your account will be that of a normal player. Your developer status has been suspended to make it fair on the other players.

That was all it said. I'd been corresponding with him since shortly before summer vacation, and to date, he'd never sent a message longer than a mid-sized paragraph. He was very brief and to the point, always conveying everything he needed to and nothing more.

The honorific I used to refer to him, sensei, was purely sarcastic. He was hands down the smartest person I'd ever met, but frustratingly, he never taught me a damn thing I didn't already know. Sometimes I got the distinct impression that he was screwing with me on purpose, but he was more the serious type so it didn't really add up.

The game he mentioned, which he abbreviated to GGO, was a little project he'd been working on for quite some time. It was an MMORPG, and the first of its kind. Back around the time summer vacation was about to start, Kayaba scouted me as a beta tester.

He found me through my blog, where I built and sold custom high end computers, often with modified operating systems to fit the recipient, and had quite the reputation for being one of the best and most reasonably priced in my field throughout all of Japan. I also did computer repairs, upgrades, reviewed new parts shortly after they came out, and gave advice to people looking to build one themselves, which only added to my popularity.

Still, my reputation aside, it never really added up how he managed to find me. After all, I was a computer nerd and he was a revolutionary quantum physicist who happened to have an interest in the gaming industry. Realistically speaking, our paths shouldn't have normally crossed. Yet he contacted me through my blog's dedicated email, asking to meet up, and after asking me a few really odd questions, he offered to let me take the last slot of GGO's closed beta, which would take place over summer vacation.

I tentatively accepted, and he gave me a developer account to allow me to see all of the under-the-hood functions of the game. I also had a direct contact line to the programming staff in case I noticed anything that needed adjusting, which I had actually used a few times to iron out some particularly big problems.

To be perfectly honest, I was glad that he had decided to take my developer account away. Considering I still vividly remembered everything I'd learned from it, suspending it wouldn't exactly remove my unfair advantage from a knowledge standpoint, but at the very least, I'd have an equal standing with the rest of the players. I didn't like being special in ways I could avoid it.

Deciding that by this point, there was no way that my sister was still in the house, I clicked the reply button, entered a new subject header, and began typing out my response. I kept it short and to the point, as in tone with that of the message he sent to me as I could muster.

Subject: Too late for fairness

Considering my memory is eidetic, the damage has kind of been done in terms of giving me an unfair advantage. But I'm still grateful for the gesture, since I'd like to appear as normal as possible. A purple "Dev" tag next to my player name wouldn't exactly make that easy.

The game got here just fine, by the way. You did send it first class, after all. I've already got the cartridge in my Nerve Gear, which I set up for use again yesterday, so at this point, I'm just waiting for the hour to turn.

After finishing, I hit send, and the message composition window disappeared. It occurred to me that most people in my shoes probably would have been total kiss-asses. However, it never really occurred to me to treat him as someone special, even if he most certainly was.

At the end of the day, whatever his reasoning was, he was the one who sought me out to play his game, not the other way around. So at the very least, this meant he held me in some regard from the start. I got his attention by doing what I normally did, so I never saw any reason to change my behavior.

Finished with my correspondence for the moment, my eyes turned to the web page open on my left monitor. It was a live countdown to GGO's launch time, down to the thousandth of a second. It was telling me I had about five minutes to kill before the server went online – enough time to take care of the remaining preparations.

I swiveled the chair around to face my room and took survey of the task that lay before me. The floor wasn't exactly free of clutter by any means, but it was very well organized. Anything that took up space on the floor was properly packaged or put away.

However, when my eyes moved about a meter up, I found a completely different picture before me. In the center of the bedroom, I had three card tables set up. Not a single one of them had any spot with even ten centimeters of free space in any direction. Almost all of the surface area was taken up by ongoing projects – at least five half built computers stood out like mountainous islands among everything else strewn about the tables, each surrounded by an amalgam of parts that still needed to be installed.

I probably didn't have time to finish any of them or make any room, so I turned to the right, coming face to face with my bed, the locked entrance to my room, and my dark violet walls that I got painted shortly after moving in. I wanted to paint them black or dark gray, but my aunt vetoed both of those, telling me that would defeat the whole purpose of moving to a new house. So I settled for a very deep purple, since I'd been told all my life that my gray eyes would look violet in the right lighting.

My king-sized bed was the first purchase I made in full with my own earnings from the computer business I'd started. However, at this point, one could not see the memory-foam mattress it came with, mainly because of the presence of three fully built laptops that were currently situated on it. The two at the foot were irrelevant, since my feet wouldn't reach that far, but the third one — my personal gaming rig — needed to be moved. Kayaba's game was a VRMMO, which required me to lie down in bed and make use of my extremely fluffy pillow.

I stood up, walking over to my bed and grabbing my laptop with both hands. Setting it on the floor for the time being, I then turned to my large, whitish, oak wood nightstand, my eyes zeroing in on one particular device sitting next to the lamp. It was a streamlined helmet colored a dark blue, with an emerald green visor in front to cover one's eyes and a long, blue cord stretching out of the back end, the color of which matched the helmet. That cord was already plugged into the wall – I'd set it up the night before.

I grabbed the helmet and set it on my pillow, the pillowcase of which matched the leopard print of my blanket. I made sure to be as careful as humanly possible when setting it down and moving the cord – if I somehow accidentally damaged it at this stage, I wouldn't be able to play GGO for days, possibly weeks. These things were sold out in stores all across the nation.

After making sure everything was perfectly fine, I grabbed my laptop from the floor and set it in the spot on my nightstand where the helmet had once been, with notably less care than I'd used just before. That damn computer was durable as hell, so I didn't need to worry about it nearly as much.

I cast another glance to the live countdown. Three minutes left before I could start playing. As much as I hated adding to the stereotype, I had to admit that the passage of time seemed excruciatingly slow now that I was paying close attention to it. I didn't want to be even a second late in logging in, so I couldn't really leave my room, and there was nothing left to do inside it that wouldn't take more time than I had.

With nothing left to do, I sat down on my bed, deciding to just get ready a few minutes early. I swung my bare legs onto the bed, absentmindedly noting that I'd gone the entire day so far without changing or putting on any clothes aside from my jacket, which was more of a comfort than anything else. I'd just kept wearing what I'd slept in, like usual – this time, a dark gray shirt and a set of black lace underwear that I'd received from an asshole family member as my fourteenth birthday present the month before. While the message such a gift sent was irredeemably insensitive and cruel to me, I'd taken to wearing them anyway. In the end, that idiot paid full price for such comfortable undergarments. What reason did I have to throw them away?

Knowing I'd probably just killed another thirty seconds, I made a grab for the helmet on my pillow. Turning it a little as it rose through the air, I gently slid it on my head, then shifted around a little on the bed before inevitably lying down. I didn't even bother getting under the covers – though winter was quickly approaching, I still didn't feel cold, being insensitive to temperature changes as I was.

As I lay there waiting, my eyes wandered around the visor of the helmet I wore. There were two displays, both very small, showing across the whole thing. Those displays would not be visible at all unless one was wearing the helmet – they appeared on the visor using the same technology that GGO ran on. It directly displayed the images to one's brain as pre-interpreted visual data, so there was no need for the displays to actually be on the visor.

On the far right, in the upper corner, there was a battery icon. Mine indicated that it was both fully charged and plugged in. Which made sense, considering it had been charging all night, and even before that, I hadn't used the thing since GGO's beta.

The other display, situated in the upper right corner, told the current time in text about the size of the battery icon. As I looked at it, the readout said 12:59. All this super slow-paced thinking had worked marvelously for killing time. Although how I actually managed the feat of slowing down my normally lightspeed thought processes was a bit of a mystery. I knew I could do it on command, but I'd never figured out how it worked.

I had less than a minute to go. This was the most excited I'd felt in months – back in the beta, I'd been positively addicted to GGO, and I'd spent more time playing it than I did anything else, to the point that I'd forgone meals and sleep regularly to keep going. Even though I wouldn't be able to put the same amount of time into it now, during the school year, I still planned to play as much as possible for someone with my schedule.

At long last, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, the clock turned to 13:00. Filled with joy and anticipation, as soon as the numbers on the readout changed, I uttered a single phrase, just two English words. The words that, unbeknownst to me, would be the catalyst of an event that would change my life forever.

"Link start!"

Suddenly, my vision turned white, startling me for the faintest of moments just as it always did. Lines of all colors streaked across my field of vision until they were all behind me. Then, circles with the English words for the five senses came up into my field of vision one by one, confirming that I could use them in the game. Once they were all finished confirming, they scrolled out of my sight, and a language bar appeared.

I confirmed the play language as Japanese, and a login screen appeared. I mentally entered my username and password, then watched as the character creation window popped up.

Character Creation

Your beta test data is still available.

Would you like to use it?

Kiriko (M)

Yes/No

I tapped yes. Yeah, I play as a boy. It's stupid, but girls in GGO just aren't taken as seriously. Besides, my net persona had the same name, even though it was a girl's name. But I digress.

I mentally touched the yes button, and then then a gray screen appeared with the English words, "Welcome to Gun Gale Online!" in the middle. My vision moved past this screen, and pillars of orange and red light that formed a tunnel made their way past my field of vision. Then, the light turned into polygons that scattered, revealing the "sky" of this world.

I looked down, finding myself in the «Plaza» of the first city in the game, the «SBC Glocken». I clenched my hands into fists, watching the virtual muscles in my wrist tense. This was it; I was finally back.

"Hello, world…" I whispered, looking around at the new players appearing around me with a smile. "Did you miss me?"

It was then that I remembered that I had to purchase my favorite weapon. I could deal with the starting gun they gave me, simply dubbed as the «Hand Gun», as it was still semi-automatic. But if there was one thing to use all of my starting money on, it had to be one of the starting versions of my favorite weapon—

A «Photon Sword», that is. Apparently, Kayaba and the rest of the developers had put the weapon type in the game on a whim, trying to imitate a weapon used in some old American movie series. Well, whatever the reason, I loved to use Photon Swords, and seemed to be the only person in the beta who could use them effectively.

I broke into a run, heading straight for the shopping district of the city. Only one shop sold the starter Photon Swords, and only ten were kept in stock before they were sold out forever. I had to make haste if I was to be sure of getting one.

As I ran through the massive city, I started planning out my day. First I'd get my Photon Sword, then I'd get some ammo, and then I'd start the grind for level two. I was hoping to hit level ten by the end of the week so I could get another skill slot. Shouldn't be too hard since I knew where all the best grinding spots were.

Wait… what's that sound? Is that—

My ears twitched slightly. That definitely sounded like someone else's footsteps behind me. It was probably just a coincidence, though — not like I was interesting enough to follow around, right?

Wrong.

By the time I was almost at the weapons shop, the sound hadn't lessened. If anything, it was closer than before. The weapons shop I wanted was just around the corner, so I decided I'd play a trick on the poor soul who decided I'd be a good target to stalk.

I rounded the corner, then immediately pivoted on my feet to whip around. I timed it just right to the sound of his footsteps so that the moment he rounded the corner, I socked him in the jaw for messing with me. It wouldn't hurt him anyway, but it knocked my pursuer flat on his ass.

As he sat there, seemingly dumbstruck by my punch, the man's appearance became clear for me. And honestly, I wish it hadn't. I couldn't help but cringe at that ugly mug of his. He was about my height, with a muscular body structure that took muscular to unrealistic levels. His face looked well-chiseled, with a dark red mustache to accentuate his crimson mohawk.

After a few seconds, I put on my best 'I'm done with your bullcrap' expression and began to speak in a calm voice. "You know, if you're going to bother stalking someone so relentlessly, you could at least try to be a little stealthy about it, Mohawk. Not that it's possible with that attention whore hairstyle of yours."

"Didn't really mean to stalk you," the man said between pants. Apparently his chasing me left him winded. "You were running so fast, and I wanted to start talking once I caught up…"

Forgive me for being just a bit skeptical, asshole.

"Let's assume I believe you," I replied as my fist uncurled and fell loosely to my side. "What do you want? Why go so far to chase me down?"

He rubbed the back of his neck. "You seemed to really know your way around this place. You're a beta tester, right? So I wanted to see where you were going."

Stalker… I thought, masking my discomfort with a smile. "Okay. Anything else you want?"

"I was hoping…" he started, looking at me pleadingly. "That you could teach me the basics! Like most of the one-hundred thousand people here, it's my first day. Do you think you could give me some pointers?"

"I dunno…" I said with a bothered expression, averting my eyes from his begging look and hoping he'd take the hint.

If I do help him, there goes my whole plan for today…

It was then that I found two big hands gripping my shoulders. It startled me, but I remained calm on the outside. He kept up his begging routine.

Personal space: invaded.

"Aw, come on, please! I'm beggin' ya!"

I looked back up to face him, hoping to decline his request. Big mistake. Even with his ugly appearance, his pleading look completely destroyed my defenses. I sighed. "All right, you win."

Just don't randomly grab my shoulders ever again please…

"Sweet!" he shouted, raising his fist into the air in a victory pose. He then looked back to me, a broad smile on his face. "My name's Klein, by the way."

"I'm Kiriko," I said, a trace of a smile crossing my features. Something about this guy just made it impossible to stay upset at him.

"Isn't that a girl's name?" he queried, making me realize my mistake.

Crap! I should've given him a fake name!

"Yeah, it is," I said, grimacing slightly as I looked away. I decided to lie, knowing that he would have no way of figuring me out. "My beta avatar was a girl, but I wanted to have a male avatar this time around. Sadly, I forgot to change the player name."

"Oh, okay!" Klein said, nodding and making his mohawk bob up and down. "Anyway, let's go!"

«Hunting Grounds»

After using all of my starting credits to buy the first available Photon Sword —also known as «Beam Blade»— we made our way to the «Hunting Grounds», a place just outside the city where we could hunt the low-level mobs to replenish our credits.

To my dismay, it didn't go as I'd hoped. Klein turned out to be pitiful at mob hunting through and through.

Klein let out an involuntary grunt, flying back onto his posterior before grasping his groin in what he thought was agony. But of course, GGO had pain absorbers, so his reaction was nothing but what he was conditioned to feel. He was just overreacting.

His attacker was a level one wolf-type mob called the «Predator Eater», and it had the lowest HP of all mobs in the game. It also had the lowest attack and defense stats in the game, which only made it even sadder that Klein's HP bar had dipped into the yellow due to its attacks.

"Quit your posturing, we both know you can't feel the pain," I said, somewhat annoyed at his dumb antics. "Just shoot that mob once and be done with it. We don't have all day."

"Hey, screw you, man!" Klein said, giving me an angry look. "It keeps moving around, and my hands keep shaking! Seriously, that thing looks scary as hell!"

I took a look at the low-level mob, holding in the urge to kill it myself. Despite its black fur, razor-sharp claws and fangs, and its large size, after battling mobs of all kinds every day, that mob was as scary as an amusement park prop.

"All right, I get it. Let's teach you how to shoot a mob." I said, walking over to Klein with a forced smile. "Sadly, I forgot to make you buy an Optical Gun, which would be better for mob hunting. I guess it doesn't matter right now, since it still only takes one shot from what we have to kill it."

I looked around, trying to find another «Predator Eater» close by. I saw one about sixty-five meters from where we stood, and I instantly decided to pick that as my example target. "I'm going to show you how on that one over there," I said, pointing to it with my right hand.

"Okay," Klein said, looking over. "Wait a second, that one is so far! There's no way you could hit it with the gun you have, especially if you're shooting left-handed!"

In silence, I pointed my aptly-named «Hand Gun» towards the wolf-like mob, my index finger resting on the trigger ever-so-lightly. A small circle appeared in my field of vision near the «Predator Eater», enlarging and shrinking erratically for the first couple of seconds. Soon after, it stabilized, the size fluctuations slowing down along with the beating of my heart.

"Remember, remaining calm is key to being an accurate shooter, especially when shooting from far away," I said, taking a deep breath. "As soon as your finger touches the trigger, you'll see a circle in your vision that shows where you're likely to hit. It gets bigger or smaller with your heartbeat, so the calmer you are, the slower it changes. That makes it easier to time your shot right and hit your target.

"Now, if you have it aimed right, then it's best to shoot when that circle is the smallest. But if your aim is bad, then try when it's the biggest, as it'll automatically hone in on your target if it's even partially in the circle."

I focused on the circle, making sure it was pointing directly at the wolf's head. With my accuracy honed from hundreds of hours of playtime in the beta, it wasn't a matter of if I could hit it. If I timed it right, I would only need a single shot to kill it. After a few seconds of concentrating on the circle's fluctuations, I waited until it got to its smallest point, and then…

Bang!

The sound of gunfire resounded throughout the area, swiftly followed by the sound of shattering glass. I had shot the «Predator Eater» from sixty-five meters away with the starting gun… and killed it. I'd hit it right in the face, and the resulting explosion could be seen and heard even over where we stood. But despite me hitting the mark, I was far too slow.

It seems I need to acclimate myself again.

I released a breath I didn't even know I had been holding, turning around to see a shocked Klein. Klein's face remained incredibly surprised for a good five seconds. Then, it instantly changed to an amazed expression. "Dude, that was freakin' amazing!"

"Don't get so excited just yet," I said expressionlessly, pointing to the «Predator Eater» five meters away. The one which wrecked him before. "It's your turn now. Get your revenge."

Klein donned a look of determination, turning towards the mob and pointing his gun at it. Unlike me, he held his gun in his right hand, I mused. He narrowed his eyes, putting his index finger on his gun's trigger. After a few more seconds, he pulled it.

Bang!

Right on target, the bullet fired from his «Hand Gun» hit the «Predator Eater» right in the forehead. The resulting explosion of red and orange polygons was the perfect confetti for him to pridefully celebrate with. He turned to me, his face a mixture of shock and another emotion I couldn't place.

After a few seconds of silence, he smiled broadly, throwing both of his hands into the air in a victory pose. "Yeah!"

"You just killed the weakest mob in the game."

With his happiness crushed, Klein looked at me as if I had grown a second head, then shouted, "No way! I thought that that thing had to at least be a mid-level mob for the first zone!"

I looked over to our left after hearing the sound of something spawning. Pointing towards the source, I showed Klein the spawning of two more «Predator Eaters».

"If it was, the beta testers would've cleared the game," I replied, shaking my head. "You were just fodder until you learned to shoot."

"Let's keep going now that you can pull your own weight," I suggested, looking around and pointing to a hole I spotted. "Once we clear out the «Predator Eaters», mobs with good drops and experience rates will spawn from those for a bit. I think we'll both want to take advantage of that."

He smiled. "Hell yeah!"

«Hunting Grounds Edge»

Because of the walls that divided the various zones of GGO, sunset happened a bit earlier than it would in real life. However, the experience was no less beautiful than the real thing – if anything, it was even more so, especially in the first zone. The setting sun cast a full rainbow of colors upon the evening sky that almost looked like an aurora.

"No matter how many times I see something incredible like this," he spoke, almost as if on cue, "I still can't believe that this is inside the game."

I shrugged my shoulders as he looked up at me for a comment. "Even if you use the word 'inside,' it's not like our souls were sucked in. Our brain is just seeing, hearing and feeling using signals that the «Nerve Gear» is sending instead of our eyes and ears."

Klein pouted like a little kid. It seemed that a dose of realism wasn't the response that he was looking for. Not that I would have said something else had I known what he actually wanted to hear, but still.

"You might be used to it by now, but this is my first «Full Dive»!" he exclaimed, extending his hands in an elated gesture. His left hand bumped my right leg. "The guy who made it has got to be the smartest guy in history! I'm so glad I was born in this era!"

"You're exaggerating…"

In the game lore, this aurora-like phenomena supposedly happened because of specific chemicals that had been introduced into the atmosphere through man's pollution which the plants could not purify.

The first zone was supposed to be a post-apocalyptic earth, where man created sentient machines. In the end, the human race was driven off the planet, the ones who stayed facing extinction. One look at the monsters that populated the place was enough– almost all of them were machine types, and those that weren't lived in hiding, doing their utmost to survive in a world that had once been their home. It painted a grim picture; one of a future which we probably hadn't done enough to avoid in the real.

But at times like these, in spite of what it represented, this world seemed amazingly radiant. No one could deny the splendor of this rainbow sunset. It was so ethereal and yet... I couldn't help but see it as stunningly real. It couldn't happen in reality, yet it looked so realistic that you'd almost think the developers had based it off of a real phenomena.

I'd seen this dozens of times in the beta, and yet it still instilled a sense of awe in me that was hard to dispel. But compared to the person sitting next to me, I probably hardly felt anything at all – this was his first day playing, his first time seeing this spectacle.

Despite this grim picture the first zone painted, I just couldn't ignore how miraculous the NerveGear was. The work of one man allowed for what made a fully immersive, lifelike experience taking place in what was essentially a whole new world. A world we had the freedom to explore in every way humanly possible. It was truly a leap into the unknown.

A leap into the game itself.

The effect of this experience captivated me and many gamers alike, to the point where we would almost certainly never be able to go back to the touch pens, motion sensors and handheld controllers of the last era of gaming.

Klein just kept staring at the void with actual tears in his eyes. The wind passing through the plains and creating waves in the lakes, the walls of the zone border in the distance… Even though I didn't share the sentiment, I saw myself in him, just a little bit. I saw me looking at the newly-unraveled apocalyptic scenery surrounding me, the eerie feeling of liveliness long lost taking over me for a few moments.

"So GGO is the first game for the Nerve Gear you've played, I take it?" I asked him nonchalantly. I already knew the answer, so I wasn't very invested in the question.

Klein turned this way and nodded. His expression seemed to be going for calm and handsome, but the attempt was undercut significantly by his crude, punk-assed Mohawk. He looked goofy, enough to be surprisingly amusing. I almost laughed, but I managed to suppress the impulse down to a mere smile instead.

Of course, this was probably completely different from his actual body in the real world. It was an avatar made out of complex data, created by choosing from various lists of options. Naturally, I looked nothing like I did in real life, given that I chose to play as the opposite gender.

I'd chosen features that made me look like a handsome if slightly effeminate protagonist from your average fantasy anime. Not any specific series, given that we'd never had a TV at home in the first place and I never felt compelled to watch any shows online, but just what I expected one's main male lead to look like.

As my thoughts reached this point, Klein began speaking in his low, vigorous voice. "Well, to be exact, I sort of bought the hardware in a rush after I managed to get my hands on GGO. There were only a hundred thousand in the first batch, so I guess I was pretty lucky… but come to think of it, you were ten times luckier when you got picked for beta testing. They only picked ten thousand!"

Here, I found myself at a crossroad. Should I tell him I was scouted and risk him finding out who I really was and that I cross-played, or should I let him believe that I got the beta out of sheer luck so he didn't raise questions about it that I didn't want him knowing the answer to? One way was completely honest, and the other was deceptive in what it didn't say… and I hated deception.

… But in the end, I hated the treatment that comes with being a known female gamer far more. "Yeah… I guess I really won the lottery. I heard that millions of people applied for the beta from all over the country and even a few thousand foreigners."

Klein kept staring at me. "How many zones did you clear in the beta?"

"The lead group successfully defeated seven checkpoint bosses, which counts as clearing that boss's zone, during the two months of testing," I answered before holding up my finger to convey that this wasn't the full story. "However, when the beta ended, a total of ten zones had been cleared, with the remaining clears coming from just one person playing solo. The game's top solo player got three zones cleared by himself, although the tenth took him a bunch of tries and he only beat it on the last day of testing."

It wasn't really a lie, but it wasn't perfectly accurate. The solo player who cleared zones eight, nine and ten may have played as a boy, but it was actually a girl. A fact which I knew for a very simple reason: it was me who did it. Although another slight inaccuracy of what I'd just said was the result of the battle on the last day of the test period. It had been a draw – the boss and I delivered the finishing blows to each other at the exact same time. The system judged that to be a victory, but for me, the outcome wasn't good enough. Not that any of this was Klein's business to know…

"Whoa! There was a solo player strong enough to solo checkpoint bosses?!" he exclaimed, completely unaware of what I'd just been thinking. However, his next sentence almost made me question that. "That is some hardcore shit…"

Well, he wasn't wrong. Even if you were in the zone boss's level range or higher, most of them had not only intelligent AI, but also either constantly spammed powerful moves or attacked with ranges and speeds that made evading require a near instant reaction speed combined with knowledge of the direction of every hit in the combo. It was something which made soloing them on the first try impossible – I'd been beaten by every single one of the bosses I'd soloed at least once. Although for the last one, I got beat once or twice for each combo he had.

Or to put it as succinctly as possible… "Damn straight it's hardcore. And even that word doesn't do it justice."

To be completely frank, I didn't really get along with people in real life. I never minced my words even slightly, whether I was criticizing someone else or myself, and so I naturally made a lot of enemies with the things I said to and about people with no hesitation. In games, I got along with people even less, although for different reasons – in games I just didn't bother associating with anyone I didn't need for something. During GGO's closed beta, I got to know a couple people, but I didn't get close enough to anyone to actually call them a friend.

But the player sitting next to me had a side to him that was undeniably growing on me, and I didn't find being with him uncomfortable, either. If it was him… I might be able to get along with him just fine, enough to call him a friend.

"So anyway," I spoke after a few moments. "What do you want to do? Should we keep hunting until we level up? We're both really close at this point."

"You bet!" he replied with a big smile before his eyes darted to the bottom right corner of his vision. He must have been checking the time. When his eyes returned to meet mine again, his smile turned somewhat bashful. "… Is what I want to say, but… I gotta log off and eat. I'm starving!"

I nodded in understanding. "Good call, not eating here. Eating in game only makes you feel full IRL. Better not to do it unless you don't give a damn about your physical body's health."

He flashed me an energetic thumbs-up with his left hand. "I know, but I prepared ahead of time! I ordered a hot pizza for five thirty!"

"Someone's pretty thorough," I replied, my voice just a few notes off from being sarcastic.

Why is it that I can't talk to someone for ten minutes without being snarky or condescending? This is why I don't have any friends…

I did my best to ignore that nagging voice at the back of my head. It always chimed in with criticism whenever one of my less redeeming traits reared its head. It wasn't a literal voice in my head so much as the manifestation of my own self-loathing which I'd had ever since the event which caused my family to have to move. Well, chain of events, anyway. One that I had no intention of ever reliving.

Klein's eyes lit up as he proudly thrust out his chest, blissfully unaware of my own inner self-deprecation. "Of course! Once I've eaten, I'll be back."

I nodded and gave him a thumbs up of my own. "Not sure where I'll be when you're done, but if you still want some pointers, message me when you log on again and I'll meet you halfway."

Why can't I just admit that I want to hang out some more? I just had to make it sound impersonal, didn't I? Wouldn't want the guy to think that I like spending time with him or anything!

Once again, my inner critic did what it does best. And yet again, I simply pretended it didn't exist. And once more, the guy sitting next to me remained completely unaware of it. He nodded and got to his feet with a big, goofy smile on his face that seemed to project the opposite mood his large red Mohawk did.

"You bet I will, you're amazing!" he exclaimed, his grin widening. "Hey, I promised to meet with some friends I know from another game in a bit. Want to friend them, too?"

I froze as my gaze shifted to the ground instinctively. I got along with Klein pretty well, but there was no guarantee that it'd be the same for his friends. Given my impressively bad track record, it was far more likely I wouldn't. And if that happened, a falling out with Klein would be inevitable.

But when I looked back up at him for a fleeting moment, he seemed to understand why I hesitated to accept his offer. He shook his head and gave me a reassuring grin. "If you don't want to, that's okay, too. You do give off that solo player vibe. I can introduce you some other time."

"… Yeah," I offered with a nod. "Sorry… and thanks."

As soon as I finished talking, he shook his head vigorously. "I should be the one thanking you! You taught me everything, from aiming to weak spots to efficient drop farming methods! I'll pay you back sometime soon. Mentally."

As he smiled at me, he flashed me another thumbs up before taking another look at the clock. "Well, I better get going. Thanks a lot, Kiriko. Be seein' ya."

With that, he extended a hand out to me. In that solitary moment, a single fleeting thought flashed through my brain. For all intents and purposes, the person standing in front of me had all the makings of a fine legion leader. I was sure that he and his friends would become a powerful group as the game went on. I shook his hand with a small hint of satisfaction from getting to teach someone like him on his first day.

"Yeah," I nodded with a small smile of my own as I let go of his hand. "I'll see you around."

Klein stepped back a bit, put his right index finger and thumb together, and pulled downwards, opening his main menu window. Even though we were in a party, I wouldn't be able to see it – the only way to see someone else's menu was if you shared storage with them, which was something the game reserved for people especially close to one another… and married couples. Even so, I could still hear the ringing SFX which signified his menu opening.

I walked over to a nearby large, ovular rock jutting out from the grassy plains and sat down on it before opening up my own window as well. I started moving my fingers to organize the items we got from the rare coyote mobs. I knew I'd gotten more than just a single handgun from farming those things – I'd gotten a whopping six or seven of them, and their stat rolls weren't exactly equal. But they'd also dropped something a lot more valuable – one of the top tier drops on the first zone, a pair of gloves which had the bonus effect of adding an extra skill slot, which would allow me to pick up an extra skill tree to level as I progressed through the game. As soon as my pupil logged out, I planned to equip them and make a beeline for the next spot on my agenda for day one.

But at that point, I wouldn't get the chance. That was the precise moment in time when GGO, or «Gun Gale Online», stopped being just a fun, fully immersive game for me and Klein both.

"That's weird…" my first friend in the official release spoke in a strange tone, scratching his head with his left hand. "What's up with that? There's no log out button."

Author's Note

If this wasn't made obvious yet, a lot of parts of this chapter were taken from the Director's Cut version of the story and then modified a bit. The quality gap between the DC and my current writing ability is small enough that I didn't exactly have to completely overhaul a lot of what I wrote when it started to get it up to snuff.

That being said, I think I'll cut this notes short, the chapter is already really long as is.

Ciao!