Author's Note

So, the people have spoken! This rewrite of Gun Gale Online: The Swordswoman will be posted as a separate story. And with how much has been changed in the prologue alone, I'm thinking I'll have to wait until I'm caught up with the original in order to update it with the new versions.

Since TB is the version with no time skips, and this is a rewrite of the original GGO SW, I still have to follow the same general structure. Which means that I still have to start with the current point in time, then flashback to day one of GGO, then flash forward to the present again. But that said, I think I'll be able to pull it off much better than before.

So, this is the prologue. It's meant to replace the opening scene in the original chapter one of GGO SW. I specify that it is a replacement, not a rewrite – because it's a completely different scene, as you could probably guess by the fact that it's about ten times longer. This scene also serves a genuine purpose other than just to introduce Kiriko… well, several purposes, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, I don't have much else to say. These author notes will be replaced upon the rewrite's integration with the main story anyway. Prepare for significant changes as compared to the original. Read.

Gun Gale Online: The Swordswoman

Director's Cut Edition

Prologue: Saving No One, Killing No One

"Hey, there, young lady. That's a pretty powerful looking sniper rifle you have on your back. Where'd you get it?" a jaunty male voice called out from my left, right as I neared the center of the map.

I don't think there are any female snipers in the lead group… I wonder what's going on, though.

Whatever was happening, it didn't really concern me. If it weren't for where we were, I'd have no reason to pay attention to it whatsoever. After all, in a city, a topic like that would be a pretty standard conversation starter. Hell, I myself had been approached by people using this exact kind of line about my equipment quite a number of times in the past.

But we weren't in a city. This was a dungeon on the eighteenth zone of GGO. A place where making sure you and your party all walked out in one piece was a far greater concern than trying to hit on some girl using her gear as a starting subject. From that standpoint alone, this whole situation changed from a little pathetic to downright dangerous. The only reason someone would bug someone like this in this sort of place would be…

Damn. Looks like I can't just walk away from this one.

With a sigh, I turned towards the source of the call. This dungeon, a rocky plains area, was pretty wide, spacious and barren, with the occasional large rock formation cropping up and obstructing one's view. The voice I'd heard seemed to come from behind one such formation – a very large, perfectly round boulder that looked to be three and a half meters tall – about six meters away.

Around this time, a cold, composed female voice responded to the instigator in spectacular fashion. "Really? I know the towns are free game for losers like you to hit on any girl you see, but I'm pretty sure there's an etiquette about doing that kind of thing in the field. This is a dungeon, bozo."

Holy crap. This chick's got some real backbone, I'll give her that.

Making sure to limit the noise my black combat boots made, I stealthily dashed up to the boulder, making sure to listen closely for any further developments. Around the time I reached the other side of the rounded, iron-colored rock, my attentiveness was rewarded.

"I'm afraid you've misunderstood me, little girl," the accused replied, uncharacteristically polite for what I'd already discerned he was. "So allow me to be clear with you. I have zero interest in you. All I care about is that big gun of yours that you just used to solo the dungeon boss from such a far distance. And to further specify my intent here, I'll tell you your options. You either give it to me now, or I kill you and take it as my spoils of victory. Either one is fine with me."

So that's what happened to my target. I thought it was weird that it wasn't in its usual spawn location…

My own agenda for being here aside, he wasn't bluffing about killing her. In this game, if a player killed another player, they'd be able to take the victim's equipment. They could choose to keep just one equipped item, all of them, or any number in between.

And in this game, the stakes of player death were about as high as they could get. Having heard his true intent, which I had already kind of guessed, I now had more than enough information to justify intervening. Having resolved myself to action, I pulled a handgun from the harness on my right leg, then tensed my leg muscles for a jump.

Putting my exceptional Agility rating to good use, I leapt with speed and precision, soaring through the air as if propelled by a cannon. As I gained altitude, I absently counted the number of meters high I reached – it was far from a full-force jump, since I was trying to land in a specific spot and thus needed more control than power, but I still managed to top between seven and eight meters before I started to descend.

Up until right before I had jumped, I had also been mapping out where each of them were based on the volume of their voices relative to where I was when I heard them. The bandit was a meter or so away from the boulder, and his target seemed to be backed up against the side of it.

A pretty narrow landing zone, but I've dealt with smaller ones before.

"Are you for real right now? You're actually willing to—"

The would-be victim's somewhat unsettled query got cut off midsentence as I crashed into the ground between her and the bandit. The resulting collision with the earth kicked up a cloud of dust that conveniently obscured my new opponent's view, allowing me to point my handgun at his head without him noticing. As for the girl, she let out a quiet squeak when I landed, but otherwise didn't give any sort of reaction, not that she would be able to see me clearly through the debris to react properly.

It would have obscured my view as well if not for a specific passive skill that I had equipped for this zone that allowed me to see heat signatures when my normal vision was rendered useless. It automatically kicked in the moment the dust reached eye level for me, allowing me to see my target through the cloud. He seemed shocked stiff – he didn't even try to get away.

After a few seconds, the veil of earth began to dissipate, and my vision returned to normal. If I were to look at the ground at that point, I knew I would see cracks beneath my feet, and possibly a small dent, caused by the impact of my fall. However, staying focused on my target was much more important than surveying environmental damage. Said target, the bandit, stayed frozen for an entirely different reason than before: my gun was trained on his head. If I were to shoot him there, I would be guaranteed a critical hit. Since he knew nothing of my build, he probably had a reasonable fear that taking such a blow from me could result in his death.

And in his defense, such a fear would be right on the money. I ran a hybrid Strength and Agility build. Which basically meant that I had both incredible speed and staggering power. And beyond that, to call me over-leveled was a bit of an understatement. A single critical hit from me would easily be enough to take him out, judging by his equipment.

With the security of being the one who would make the first move, I had the leisure to really analyze him. His sleek and lightweight equipment, mostly consisting of black leather with metal accents suggested a Dexterity and Agility hybrid build. Which certainly would explain why he wanted to take the girl's sniper rifle, a powerful weapon that relied heavily on one's accuracy, which increased with Dexterity.

That kind of build basically equated to a few simple traits. Very high accuracy and similar speed, but a complete lack of power and paper-thin defense. Even if I hadn't pointed my gun at his head, I most likely would have put him in the yellow or the red with a single shot. It was hard to gauge exactly how much damage he'd take without knowing his level, but the point was, he'd go down remarkably easy.

As for his physical appearance, he was a somewhat tall, almost frighteningly thin young man with long, greasy black hair that seemed to be held back with some sort of product. If I were to guess, he seemed to be in his early to mid twenties. His eyes were a steel-gray color that might have intimidated me if they weren't on such a complete idiot. Nobody in their right minds would actually use a DEX/AGI build on the current frontlines, especially not alone like him. That basically equated to suicide unless you were incredibly good at evasion.

The final thing I took note of was his cursor. It was orange, signifying that he had committed a crime of some sort. Which really made me question what the hell the girl behind me was thinking, considering she'd assumed he was hitting on her in spite of that obvious clue as to his true nature.

Well, I've seen enough. Let's get this over with.

"Sorry to interrupt, but I don't really condone thievery or murder," I said in a calm, low, matter of fact voice. "But since I'm a merciful guy, I'll give you a choice. You can either stay here, try to take her gun as planned and find out exactly how much damage a headshot from me will do to you, or you can leave now and live to see another day."

"You… you're…" he stammered, the color draining from his face as he realized my identity.

I nodded, my finger closing in on the trigger. "You are addressing the one and only emperor of GGO. Since you seem to grasp that, I'll assume that means you know what your chances are."

The bandit held his hands up in the air, taking a step back. "I know when to quit. I'm going."

"Good. I like it when the peons are obedient," I replied, my index finger relaxing a little. Otherwise, my aim at him remained the same as before. "Take out a teleporter and get out of my sight. From your menu, by the way – reach inside your jacket and I shoot anyway. Who knows what you could actually be grabbing for, right? I'll also shoot immediately if whatever you materialize doesn't look like a teleportation item, whether it's a gun or the hide of an animal, or anything else."

He did as instructed, opening his menu with his right hand. After a few seconds of his fingers flicking around and tapping on windows that only he could see, a metal sphere with indented, glowing blue grooves separating it into two halves, and segmenting each half into four quadrants, appeared in the air in front of him. He grabbed it as soon as it began to drop to the ground.

Rather than speaking aloud the name of the place he intended to go, he pressed a circular button located at the intersection of two of the blue grooves. His whole avatar began to shimmer with a vibrant blue light, and as it began to intensify, he said one, final parting phrase.

"You got lucky, little girl."

Right after he finished speaking, the blue glow fully engulfed him, then dispersed at once, leaving no trace of the retreated bandit in its wake. He used a feature all teleportation items bought after zone ten automatically had: by pressing the button, he automatically warped to a preset location (which could be changed when viewing the item's properties in one's inventory) without having to say the place's name aloud.

"Damn, I was hoping for him to let his destination slip in fear," I absently remarked as I took a step forward. My business there was just about done. My original target was gone and the girl was safe, so I had no reason to stick around. And due to an utter lack of interest, I didn't even bother turning around to catch a glimpse of the player whose robbery and potential death I just prevented.

I would have just kept walking, if not for her voice, somewhat shaky and unsettled, calling out to me. "Why… why did you save me?"

I paused for a moment to allow her comment to sink in. Then, once the gravity of her misinterpretation of these events hit me, I couldn't help but let out a cynical chuckle. She really had no damn idea what she was saying, did she?

As I slid my gun back into its holster on my leg, I used my other hand to wave back at the girl with the sniper rifle dismissively. "Saved? Don't make yourself sound so important. I just happened to overhear your little exchange, and I didn't feel like walking away from it with your blood on my hands."

I didn't really expect her to understand what I meant by that. Not many people would get it quickly unless they were put through similar trials to my own. What she said next came as no surprise to me.

"This coming from a guy who literally calls himself the emperor of GGO?" her retort was quick and sharp, like what she'd said to the bandit before realizing why he was actually after her. "And besides, if he killed me, it'd be his fault, not yours. You clearly had some other reason to help me."

It was what I had anticipated, but it was still a tad disappointing to hear my suspicions so blatantly confirmed. Though I knew she couldn't see it, I frowned a little at the let down of having to deal with yet another person whose thoughts, conclusions and inferences lacked any true depth.

"I call myself the emperor because my name is literally Kaiser, which means emperor in German, if you were interested in that simple yet vital thing called context," I told her with a sigh and a shake of my head, taking another step forward. "As for my reason for intervening? I guess my way of thinking isn't quite as conveniently simplistic as yours seems to be."

For a good few moments, the silence that hung in the air threatened to crush me with its weight. Even if I'd long since grown used to acting out this persona I'd developed for myself, it still didn't make the threat of alienating yet another person any less hard to deal with. If only I could just act true to my real personality… but I couldn't. That would be too compromising.

When she next replied after about three seconds of what I presumed to be stunned silence, her voice lacked the confidence it had just a few seconds prior. Interestingly enough, that self-assurance got replaced by a thick, overbearing snark. "What do you mean by that, huh?"

Well, even if her words were laced with thorns, they still basically told me to explain myself. Which I had half intended to do regardless of her response, to be perfectly frank. I took a deep breath, then loudly exhaled, as if to imply that her question annoyed me.

"Here's your morals lesson for the day, then," I began, taking another step forward before allowing myself to continue. "If you stand by and let someone die even though you had the power to stop it from happening… it's just as bad as if you'd killed them yourself."

This was one of my core values as a player of GGO. In a game where avatar death makes a player die for real, how could I just turn a blind eye to something like this and then sleep at night? If I had just walked on by and she ended up dying, it would weigh down my conscience for the rest of my life.

But at the same time, I didn't intervene with any sort of noble intent. I wasn't concerned about her safety, I didn't think her life was particularly important, I didn't want to protect her. I just didn't want to add to the count of people that, if I had just done things differently, I could have prevented from dying. I just didn't want yet another person to perish right in front of me.

I raised my right hand up by my head, flashing her a peace sign. "Well, since you apparently already killed the target I came here to beat, I have no reason to stick around. That bandit said you're a sniper, right? In that case, consider joining the lead group. We have a massive shortage of users of your weapon type right now, so having another one would be real useful. But fair warning: if you do join, you'll have the displeasure of dealing with me on a regular basis."

With that, I left the scene at a relaxed pace. She didn't try to stop me or even respond at all, not that it mattered much. I saw another rock formation up ahead, about seven meters away and ten degrees to my right, this one a dark brown color. It was jagged, and it stuck straight up like a spire, the top just managing to cut through the glare of the lowering afternoon sun. I walked up to it, then went around to the other side and leaned against it, safely out of the girl's view.

I gave a great sigh. I'd managed to fool two more people. Two more players now believed my façade. That I was the self-proclaimed emperor of GGO, Kaiser. That I was a male. Even though the deception was necessary for me to continue fighting to clear the game, it was still depressing.

As I leaned against the rock, lost in thought, my mind began to wander back to simpler times. Back when I didn't have to hide my true identity. Back before the game turned into a deathtrap. Back to when I could truly enjoy playing the game.

Back to the launch date of «Gun Gale Online», before this wide awake nightmare began.

Author's Note

Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about this. Part of me doesn't really like it a whole lot, and part of me thinks it's one of the better things I've written, if not one of the best. Quality wise, I kind of pulled out all the stops, though… except for editing, because I didn't really feel like waiting another day to allow me to effectively revise the last few hundred words.

And yeah, Kiriko kind of has a different male alias name now. Because let's be honest, she wouldn't have intentionally chosen to go by Kazuto… since she doesn't have that name IRL and nobody she knows has that name. I made her pick Kaiser because it means "emperor" in German and her IRL name, Kimiko, means "empress child." I made her develop an entirely separate personality for this alias just for the hell of it, because I thought it'd be amusing in scenes with less tension.

Well, let's hear what you all think! Was this significantly better than the original scene it was meant to replace? Do you like the changes I've made so far? Do you think there's anything in this version that I should change? Do you have anything you want me to add in future updates? Share anything like these with me in a review, please!

See you in chapter one!