Fate Revelation Online: Mind Games
Disclaimer: I don't own any portion of the Type Moon or SAO universes, and though I'm working in the Fate/Revelation Online universe with the blessings of daniel, I did not conceive of it and give full credit for the crossover to him.
Author's Notes: This fic is an outgrowth of the "You're Trapped in FRO!" thread in the Ideas forum. I started getting ideas, and I talked them over with daniel and got his seal of approval for this fic. The main character is, well, me. The characterization of myself is as accurate as I can make it, though certain events have been altered to assist in maintaining anonymity. Any names of "real" people (myself included) have been changed for similar reasons.
I finally changed the title. Hated the old one.
Chapter Quote: To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice. - Confucius
Chapter One: Trapped in FRO!
Death Game: Day 0
Yamaguchi hadn't changed a whole lot in the past decade. Clean streets, young people on bicycles, public trains everywhere, roads designed for pedestrian traffic, little locally owned shops dominating the area - this would always be my personal image of Japan. Sure, Tokyo was hypermodern, and Kyoto had the traditional architecture, but Yamaguchi had a quaint, home-like air to it that appealed to me.
The study abroad trip that first brought me to Yamaguchi had been just over five years ago. I'd only kept in touch with a handful of people, and most of those had moved on with their lives to bigger cities and better opportunities than Yamaguchi could provide. I would meet up with some of them during my two week stay in Japan, but mostly I just wanted...to get away, and have a vacation. I hadn't even been sure I wanted to come here, but Yamaguchi Prefectural University had offered to let me stay in their guest housing, free of charge for the duration of my stay, as long as I did a handful of guest lectures at some English and cultural classes. It probably wasn't all that common that an Army officer with ties to YPU came into town. I was only Reserve, and had no combat experience, but they didn't really seem to care - they loved getting “unique†perspectives from foreigners for their cultural classes.
My first lecture was scheduled for a Global Culture class tomorrow afternoon. That meant I'd be in uniform - ACUs instead of the dress uniform; I hated wearing the dress blues. I should probably have been going over my PowerPoint, or rehearsing my presentation, or getting some last-minute Japanese studying in. In theory, all of the students in the class spoke English. I had been assured of this.
I knew better.
And I should have been doing all of those things, but instead I was wearing an oversized plastic helmet and touching my toes like an 80 year old grandma "working out." For a technological marvel, the setup process for the NerveGear could best be described as “silly.†It didn't help that the instruction booklet was in Japanese and so was the NerveGear interface. There had to be a way to set it to English, but I didn't feel like finding it and rationalized the inconvenience away as being "good practice." Besides, this was the promise games had given me since I was a kid! Technology had finally gotten to the point where total immersion became possible, and the first real game for this groundbreaking bit of technology, Sword Art Online, was solely focused on beating the crap out of things with sharp objects. SAO's lack of magic sounded weird, but I'd had plenty of fun playing Chivalry and other, simpler medieval type combat games.
Even without magic, an MMO staple, the hype for Sword Art Online had gone completely nuts in the past couple of months. I hadn't even had to hear about how amazing SAO was supposed to be from a gaming site; CNN wouldn't shut up about it. The US release had been delayed because Congress had conjured walls of red tape in the name of "protecting citizens from potentially dangerous or addictive new technology." The Virtual Boy had been held up as an example of what an untested product could do to children, and if that wasn't a hilarious commentary on how up-to-date Congress was with technology...
I shook my head and tried to focus on the moment. Probably best to not badmouth the government; that sort of thing tended to get people like me in trouble.
I felt kind of guilty as I finished the set-up procedures for the NerveGear - I should be going out and having fun with people I haven't seen in years, and playing video games inside an apartment instead of doing that...well, it seemed all too familiar. I kind of wasted my first trip to Japan playing Counterstrike and reading One Piece instead of sightseeing and socializing. 'But hey,' I rationalized. 'It's a weeknight, and I can fiddle with this for a couple hours. It'll make for some cool Facebook posts, and there's gotta be a way to get some screencaps or something, right? Besides, I can rub it in my friends' faces that I can play and they can't - the US release isn't scheduled for months.'
I still had time to back out, and do something productive with my evening. Hell, I could scalp my copy of the game online for five times what I'd paid - everybody wanted the game, and not everybody had been lucky enough to place an order in the five-second online window before the entire first run had sold out. Hopefully America would have a bigger product run, or we'd have Black Friday-style pseudo-riots. The smart thing would be 100% digital distribution, but publishers have a love affair with brick and mortar stores.
Ah, hell. Time to stop stalling.
I checked the power supply, then laid back on the traditional Japanese bed. Just as uncomfortable as I remembered. I shifted for a minute, trying to get used to the way I could feel the tatami floor mat through the thin mattress. My feet stuck out past the bottom of the bed by several inches - Japan was not designed with people my height in mind.
I settled into an awkward sort of fetal position and tried to ignore the mild discomfort. Soldiers, even medical officers ones who never left the hospital, were supposed to be tough.
My back twinged and I shifted again. Being tough was not something I was necessarily good at.
I reached for the power button for the NerveGear. Virtual Reality would do a good job of blocking the aches, and I was going to wake up sore no matter what I did. I tapped the button, and the world fell away in a zooming tunnel of light.
A pop-up box appeared, with a bunch of text, a Japanese flag, and two options for "Confirm" and "Cancel." Oh god, was this the EULA and Terms of Agreement? I had no interest in reading that wall of text...except wait a minute, there was a drop-down box next to the flag. I tapped it, and a list of other flags appeared, with text in different languages next to each. So this was the Language Select option? I paused for a minute.
Reading the instructions manual and doing the setup had reminded me just how sketchy my Japanese was. The last time I’d been here, I'd gotten pretty good at the language by reading Shonen manga in Japanese. (I’d mostly read Naruto, which meant I had a tendency to talk like a bratty ten year old.) I grimaced and left the option on Japanese. It would up the learning curve, but I needed the practice. And besides, what learning curve could possibly be worse than Dark Souls?
I tapped through the rest of the menus that popped up, hitting "Accept" for everything. I may have wanted to learn more “proper†Japanese, but I still had no interest in reading the damned licenses.
It only took me a minute to get to the character creation screen. Everything seemed pretty standard, though there were more customization variables than I was used to. I thought for a minute, then spent a few minutes making myself into as blatant a copy of Link as possible - the end result would probably generate copyright violation lawsuits if it ended up in a promotional image.
Now for the tough part - name creation.
Which, for some reason, was using the Roman alphabet. Huh. That was...weird, but it did make name selection a lot easier.
I typed in my standard RPG character name...and then blinked in surprise. What? Who the hell would take Kelnath? There had only been like 20 instances of that name in WoW, and WoW had had more players by 3 orders of magnitude. I grimaced at my bad luck and spent a few minutes thinking.
Finally, I sighed in defeat. If the name was taken; the name was taken.
I frowned and spent several minutes scratching at my chin as I looked at the blank name box. One definite downside to this whole VR thing was the lack of ability to browse the internet for information while hooked up. I was sure there were any number of names I could steal from books and movies, but it was harder to just think of them in a vacuum.
What the hell. On a whim, I typed in a shorter version of my non-RPG tag: Heathen. A lot of RPGs would kick back common nouns with negative religious connotations, so I was already thinking of something else -
"Squiggle squig kanji kanji desu!"
Well, I assumed it said something about my name being accepted, but that was all I got out of it.
The screen flashed, and I reflexively closed my eyes against the light. When the light faded, I opened my eyes to the world of Aincrad.
I would have whistled at the graphics, except I never learned how to whistle. I settled for a long exhalation, eyes wide. I felt the wind of my breath brush against my lips and the pressure difference as my chest contracted. I flexed my shoulders and felt my shirt shift into a more comfortable position.
If it weren't for the HUD, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between real life and this...fantasy.
I looked around myself slowly, taking in the medieval fantasy-style architecture. I saw clean stone walls made of perfectly equal-sized blocks, a cobblestone road, and decorative planters with exotic-looking fronds lining the road. To my left, I could hear voices in the distance. I turned to face it, and my simulated inner ear corrected for my changing direction perfectly - the sound was now coming from in front of me.
A minute's walk brought me to a market, bustling with activity. I stood for a full minute, simply trying to make sense of the chaos. Players were shouting at each other from across the market in good cheer, bragging about quests they'd finished or cool drops they'd gotten. Merchants hawked their wares, and at first I didn't realize that they were fully voice-acted NPCs responding dynamically to whatever Players were saying.
AI that could respond to language, not just predetermined phrases? Kayaba...as awe-inspiring as this game was, he had wasted his talent on it.
I spent the next three hours exploring the town in a moderate daze, completely forgetting about the namesake gameplay aspect of Sword Art Online. I had a tiny amount of starting gold - Col, whatever - and immediately set out to spend it. I saw a charming place at a corner street, with a wooden sign that depicted a steaming cup and some kanji next to it. A...coffee shop? I didn’t recognize the kanji, but it seemed like a good guess. I walked through the front door (yep, coffee shop), then paused in hesitation - did I sit down, or order first?
“Would you like something to drink, sir?†a waitress asked me. I blinked, and looked down at the woman - she was barely half my height. Maybe I’d overdone it with the height stat.
“Ah...yes?†I responded smartly.
The waitress - an NPC, I realized - said, “We have ******, &&&&&&, @@@@@@...†she continued for a bit, then waited patiently for my response. I hadn’t understood any of that.
“Um, I’ll have…****&?†I had probably butchered the pronunciation.
The NPC held her pose for a second longer than felt natural, then responded, “Your drink will be ready -------. Please, --- -- any table you like.â€
...okay maybe that Japanese language option wasn’t the best idea, but dammit I would learn this way! And it wasn’t impossible to figure out by context. I was also oddly reassured by the display of a small Uncanny Valley from the waitress - it helped to remind me that she was just an NPC.
I took a seat at a table in the corner, and studied the design of the shop while I waited. I wasn’t sure what the design focus was supposed to be - it felt vaguely European medieval, but with clear Asian elements - and didn’t manage to figure out the theme by the time the waitress returned with my drink. While I was seated, our heads were about even, and I got a good look at her for the first time.
She was cute in a traditional Japanese way, with short-cut black hair and a soft expression. The cut of her outfit was demure and not eye-catching, which suited a background character. She set my drink on the table, bowed, and went back to waiting behind the counter - an idle animation?
My drink was an interesting shade of purple. I raised an eyebrow at this and gave it a long, hard look. Eh, what the hell, it was just a game. If I’d found a Poisonous Coffee Shop easter egg this early on, I’d be more amused than anything else. I took a careful sip.
The flavor was...unusual. It was like Vanilla Cherry Coke with a hint of something I’d never had before. Before I could place the flavor, my drink was empty. I looked down at the empty cup accusingly, but ordered a “@@@@†next.
With more focus on identifying drinks than preserving gold, I ended up penniless inside of an hour. I looked down at the menu sadly, resolving to come back and finish sampling once I had some money. Besides, this would give me an excuse to go out and actually play with the sword part of Sword Art Online.
“Did you want anything else, sir?†the NPC waitress asked me.
“Huh?†I answered intelligently. “Oh, uh...I...no money have.†Thank god she was an NPC. I didn’t want to have to see what real people would think of my spoken Japanese.
The waitress looked left, then right, almost furtively, before turning back to me. She winked. “You were a good customer. If you help me with something, you can drink here without money.†Her vocabulary had slipped into a more “childish†sort without any uncommon words.
I reeled back a bit in my seat. Dynamic quest generation and an ability to pick from dialogue options based on a perceived ability of the Player? Too good to be true, but there it was.
I spent the next two hours running errands for the woman (who I learned was the owner, not just a waitress), and was rewarded with infinite free (non-alcoholic) beverages at Mika’s Tavern.
It was probably getting pretty late, and I very much liked my sleep. I sat in one of the chairs in the tavern, sipping on some sort of carbonated fruit juice mix, and began tapping through the menu. Logout, logout, wherefore art thou…
Ten minutes of searching failed to bring me the elusive button. None of the typical text commands (/camp, /logout, /quit, /exit, etc) worked either. I couldn’t reach up and pull the NerveGear off of my head, because the device inhibited all of my motor functions for safety reasons. I snorted in amusement and tried to bury my irritation. There was certainly a culture in MMOs for “gameplay designed to keep players playing,†but this was ridiculous. Admittedly, if you could read the interface it was probably a lot easier…
And then I fell on my ass in the middle of the main plaza, the belltower ringing steadily above me.
I blinked in confusion. This was not the tavern. This was not the tavern at all.
I looked askance at my mug. I considered pouring it out, but another player appeared a few yards away from me, mid-swing. He looked around in confusion, muscles tense, with no clue what was going on.
I nodded to myself. Good, it wasn’t my drink.
I took another sip. I liked my drink.
More players kept appearing in the enormous central plaza of the starting town, filling it much too densely for someone used to an American personal bubble of four feet. There was a hum of conversation, players speculating and complaining - apparently a forcefield prevented leaving the plaza. I overheard the phrase “log out†in worried tones from several different groups.
I took a gulp of my drink, trying to bury a surge of nervousness. If there were a system announcement, it could have just as easily been accomplished by mass private message...though this method did ensure a focused audience.
The bell tower fell silent, which drew the attention of the players upwards. Before their eyes, crimson hexagons overtook the sky, spreading like a cancer special effect in a medical drama. Conversation died, and I heard one player whisper, “So cool…â€
I looked at him askance. Cool? Kind of. But not the word I would have chosen.
To me, this display simply felt...ominous.
The ominous feeling didn’t go away when hexagons began to blanket the sky, appearing in a manner similar to a .jpg image loading on an old computer - bursting into being and then the image resolution increasing until it had finished loading. It felt completely unnatural in this simulated world, which despite the player HUD did a good job of feeling “natural.â€
Then they began to bleed.
Dark red fluid seeped from the hexagon as if a giant vein behind the sky had been cut. It fell unnaturally, ignoring the game physics and pooling in the air above the bell tower. The wound in the sky continued to coalesce, throbbed as it was struck by lightning, twisted as if it were a womb with some monster struggling to escape into the world.
The pool of blood settled down somewhat and ceased its chaotic gyrations. From there, it slowly oozed into the shape of a giant figure, as if being poured into a mold and given fine detail at the same time.
In less than a minute, from clear skies a giant figure in a thick red robe had appeared. I felt sympathy for the ancient Jews going to pray before God.
A pregnant paused filled the air, only to be filled by the Word of God. The voice, though soft, echoed strangely in my ears as if it were coming from every particle of the air around me.
â€Attention, Player Characters. Welcome world of me. My name is Kayaba Akihito.â€
I spent more time trying to make out what he was saying than anything else, but at that name I paused. Oh. So it really was God...the God of Sword Art Online, in the pixels.
“...I'm sure that you are aware that you are missing from the main menu logout button.â€
Thank God he was going slowly, for drama. So, this was an announcement about the missing logout feature. Something of a major glitch, considering the nature of the game hardware. I expected there would be a class action lawsuit about it at some point.
Kayaba’s hand rose into the air slowly, then tapped the air where a player interface would be if he were a normal player. The menu that appeared was as colossal as the figure that had summoned it.
“This is not game error. I repeat, this is not game error. It is Sword Art Online function. You do not log out allowed. NerveGear of you same function.â€
I felt my jaw begin to slack, and my ability to focus enough to get the gist of Kayaba’s words took a nosedive. I started missing words, because there was no way I had understood him properly. Being stuck here was...intentional?
“If NerveGear removed, it ----- microwave your brain. Unfortunately family and friends of players tried to delete NerveGear you. As result, from real world and Aincrad, 213 players ----- dead.â€
213 players...had died? Because somebody took off their NerveGear, and it microwaved their brain? What the hell was this, some Saw-like deathtrap? I felt my hands clench into fists at the unfairness of it. 213 people, dead because their loved ones had gotten worried. I heard the sound of porcelain shatter, and realized I’d squeezed the mug so hard it had burst into pixels in my hands.
“News ------ around the world have reported this. As result, ----- know not delete NerveGear of you. Risk of NerveGear of you deleted now is small.
"I hope you to focus on clear the game. You have to relax.
"I want you to remember, all methods revive player have been removed in the game. If HP of your avatar is off to zero, NerveGear of you will microwave your brain."
Relax? When we were trapped in a Death Game by a psychopath who had already murdered more than 200 people?
When we were stuck in an MMO, a grinding game, where the only way to clear new content was to have dozens of players die dozens of times learning attack patterns? With no way for them to share their discoveries if they died in the fight? With no respawn? With no wiki to tell you the strategy? With no reroll allowed?
In this game, there was only death.
â€There is only one means of escape: I will end the game. Currently, the first floor you Aincrad. If you make your way through the dungeon, defeat the boss of the floor, you will proceed next floor. The game will be cleared on the floor 100, when you kill a boss at the end of it.â€
I saw absolutely no reason to believe that. It sounded like a way for him to watch as thousands of people died, for real, while fighting virtual lizards.
"Finally , I added a presence to the storage of your goods from me . Please refer to your storage of goods list."
I didn’t move, but my inventory opened by itself and scrolled to a mirror. The mirror shattered in a flash of blue light, like I’d seen at character creation. The light faded...and I felt slightly shorter, even though I still stood head and shoulders above most of the crowd. I looked down at my hands...and felt that my tan was gone, and that my hands looked infinitely more familiar than the ones I’d made during character generation. I raised one to my hair, which had been shoulder length and blonde. Instead I felt close-cropped hair, which I knew to be dark brown without looking.
Somehow, we were now our real selves.
Strangely, that was when the panic set into the crowd. I’d have thought it would have been during the announcement that we were all going to die, but being here in our “real†bodies was apparently the last straw.
Kayaba ignored them and pressed on, his voice as unrelenting as a tidal wave crashing onto a panicking coastal city.
“I would like to announce the development of the first SAO content within this time: a system for simulating Thaumaturgy. In other words, to create a strange mystery or wonder called [Spells]. It is a complete and accurate to the best of my ability as a ------.â€
The word “Thaumaturgy†had been in English, which threw me for a second.
"Please note that skills and items updated because of Thaumaturgy content. Items ---- [Teleport Crystal] and skills ----- [Night Vision] have been removed because Spells. Unnecessary.
"I ----- you to increase your skills as a user of Thaumaturgy. Essential is to be able to clear the game."
"Now, perhaps, why you are wondering? Developer Kayaba Akihito, maker NerveGear, why you do this? Old saying: ‘to magic use is for walk with death.’ If you want to reveal my reason, you are beat game. When it comes to be know, I would like to think you agree.
“However, if you good magic user, I happy you. Reason of me Is the main plot of the game SAO, please make an effort to think about this mystery and solve it.
“This will end the tutorial for the official announcement SAO.â€
"Good luck.â€
The giant Kayaba-figure slumped in the air, like the body had disappeared from the robes, Jedi-style. Before the robes had fallen any distance, they dissolved into droplets of blood and faded into the sky, where the hexagons had begun to break up.
None of that mattered, because the riot had already started.
I stood in the plaza, motionless, the crowd buffeting me about as they physically fled the announcement, as if they could run away from it. I continued to stand there, dumbfounded, ignoring the others as their panic reaction overtook any logic. After all, there was nowhere to run to.
When I came out of my stupor, night had begun to fall. I looked around in confusion - the plaza was entirely empty. Had I had a waking nightmare? Was the NerveGear driving me crazy, like the Virtual Boy had blinded those kids?
I knew I hadn’t lost it, but the thought that maybe I was just insane was a pleasant alternative to the reality of Sword Art Online.
I stumbled back to Mika’s Tavern, and was greeted with a cheerful smile and wave by Mika. The way she completely ignored the obvious depression of the Players in the street, like their suffering at the announcement of the beginning of a Death Game didn't matter...it creeped me out. Like she were some kind of sociopath instead of just an NPC.
Still, she let me sleep in one of the extra beds for free, which was more than many people were getting. I’d seen plenty lying in the streets, unresponsive to the world. They were perfectly safe - they couldn’t take damage inside the city - but it still looked like the roads were strewn with corpses.
I collapsed into the bed and closed my eyes, trying to forget the image. Hopefully the world would make sense when I woke up.
-----
Eight hours later, the in-game clock read 0500. I spent thirty minutes searching my menu options, just in case, but the logout function was still nowhere to be found. An image of the players collapsed on the side of the streets with the vacant expression of the hopeless and the damned came to my mind, and I slowly rose from the bed. I didn’t want to sleep any more. I didn’t want to have that face.
I reflexively shivered in the pre-dawn chill as I stepped outside, though the cold air didn’t really affect me the same way it would in the real world. For one thing, I had no arm hair to stand on end - the “real body†hadn’t included body hair, for whatever reason.
The town felt...different, with an almost abandoned feel to it. Like I had entered the bad part of a big city, where the residents looked sullen and the commuters ignored their surroundings as hard as they could, as if by ignoring it they could be somewhere else. Yesterday afternoon people had raced each other in the streets, screamed about quests they'd found out about...had fun in their new game. In one night, the festive mood had turned to despair - the streets were more or less empty of PCs, and most of the ones I did see seemed listless and despondent. Maybe they didn't have any Col and couldn't sleep in an inn? Or, looking at the way they tended to slouch and move slowly, maybe they didn't sleep at all. Combined with the pre-dawn darkness, it looked like the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. I shivered a little bit, observing how quickly the mood went from the mindless enthusiasm of being the "F1rst!11!!" into a new game to the shell-shock of "The Rapture came, and I got left behind."
Then, in the soulless, lifeless mass of humanity, I saw a person. He moved through the streets with purpose, ignoring the lifeless players around him - and it struck me that he looked like a Player Character. Like the game had just started for him, and he knew he was a Protagonist.
He had equipped some sort of white jumpsuit, a red scarf that partially obscured his face, and a curved sword. Most of the players in the city still wore their starting equipment. The man - more of a kid, really, though I'd seen younger soldiers - stopped at a vendor. I watched, silent, unsure of my hesitation, of what I was looking for. He remained there for less than thirty seconds before turning sharply and sprinting towards the city gates. The other players, much like the NPCs, ignored him.
How old was that guy? Eighteen, maybe? And he was clearly headed out to grind levels...so that he could fight bosses, and “clear the game.†To complete the quest given to us by that madman, Kayaba Akihiko.
I walked while I thought. How many were there, like that guy? Who would risk their lives to clear the game on nothing more concrete than the promise of a mass murderer that he would grant them their freedom if they did so? There had to be some who believed Kayaba would let them out if they beat the game. Others might clear out of a fear of not obeying the whims of the game’s God. Worst of all, some would fight to die, to escape this game through the fastest, least shameful method.
I slowed down when I realized where I was walking. I stopped underneath the portcullis for the city gates, artifical dawn beginning to brighten the area. I hesitated.
This was something I could, and probably should, do. There were children in the game - real kids, that hadn’t gone through elementary school yet. I'd never actually been deployed, but my Platoon Sergeant was a crusty old NCO with more than enough stories about child soldiers in the Middle East. I know what combat stress could do to a person that young - and to those who weren't trained to deal with it, which was probably everyone in the game. Except, maybe, me. I could go out there and make a difference. I had spent years of training and practical exercises learning how to keep people alive in situations worse than this one.
Forget clearing the game - that was probably a fantasy. What I could do was keep people alive as long as possible while they repeatedly threw themselves into harms way for no tangible reason until a world government hacked the game and broke us out. I knew that I could do it, right in the core of my soul.
My legs shook, my fists tightened into balls, and my fingernails dug deep into my palms. I squeezed my eyes shut before tears could overtake them and turned my head away from the gate...
Because even with that certainty of my ability to help, I still couldn't make myself take that step outside the city, across the boundary of the Safe Zone.
If I went out there, by myself, I could die. And there would be nobody to save me. No field medic to stabilize me, no helicopter to rush me to a surgical unit, and no jet to get me to a first world hospital. I wouldn't even have a battle buddy to say a prayer and avenge me.
The thought of going out there alone terrified me, and more than anything else I was grateful for the game's inability to fully model my physical fear response.
I tried to swallow the nervous lump in my throat - a reflex action, the game couldn't simulate that well - and mustered the tattered shreds of my courage and pride. This was more than just some chance to be a hero. Here, in this Death Game, I felt obligated to be the leader and warrior that I had sworn a solemn oath to be. To uphold a moral Creed, portions of which flashed in my mind: I am a guardian of freedom. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit.
With thoughts of the values I had sworn to uphold ringing in my head...I stepped back away from the invisible line and silently began to hate myself.