๐ ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฐ๐ต ๐ญ๐๐, ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ฐ. ๐๐ฎ๐๐ฎ๐ด๐ผ๐ฒ, ๐๐ฎ๐ฝ๐ฎ๐ป, ๐ญ๐ณ:๐ฎ๐ฌโฆ
The evening on the city was slowly coming to an end as the sun started setting, and the last rays of the day would soon make way for the shadows of the night.
And so, despite this and even if Japan was still 'grieving' for the SAO Incident more than a year since it started, this meant that some of the darker sides of people would still come to light.
Like in one particular alley, through which a woman had tried to take a shortcut to get home fasterโฆand as such now found herself pressed against the wall by a man with bloodshot eyes.
"Give me all your money, bitch!" growled the shady-looking man while the terrified woman tried to get free. "And don't even try to scream or you WILL regret it!"
"N-no, pleaseโฆ!" begged the woman while shaking in fear. "I-I will give you my purse, s-so don't hurt me, please!"
"Heh, don't worry, I won'tโฆ" smiled the man while grabbing the purse from the woman's shaking hands. "But maybe you will want to have a fun tiโฆ"
"JUSTICE CHAAARGEEE!
"Whaโฆ?!"
BAM!
The last thing the shocked thief could see was the edge of a bamboo sword coming to his face at brutal speed. Then, the sound of something breaking echoed even as he fell on his back, knocked out.
Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, the trembling woman's attention shoot to the sound of brakes making a wheel skid over the road, only to see her own face reflecting on something staring at her.
"Are you okay, miss?" asked the mysterious newcomer, even as the awed woman nodded.
There, riding on a bicycle and wearing a red coat, was a young girl. Despite her hair and face being almost fully covered by the bicycle helmet, the reflective glasses and the typical surgical mask that many people in Japan could easily get, there was no denying she was female when you looked atโฆa certain part of her body.
She was gripping a shinai with her right hand, the other still on the bicycle's handlebar, and. on her back, she carried a bag that was clearly meant for the bamboo weapon to go in.
"Yo-youโฆare real! Th-the Bicycle Girl! I-I thought you were just an Urban Legend!" shaking her head, the teary-eyed woman looked at the girl with deep gratitude. "Tha-thanks a lot!"
"Uhm, yeahโฆyo-you should probably grab your purse and call the police, make sure that bastard gets thrown on a cell soonโฆ" the 'Bicycle Girl' said with a bit of awkwardness before pointing seriously at the woman, her almost-fully-covered face making it impossible to discern her true expression. "And make sure to not go through alleys alone so late again, okay?! It's dangerous!" without another word, the mysterious girl moved to the side and pedaled away at max speed.
The shocked woman didn't even have time to think about taking a picture with her phone before the 'heroine' had disappeared around the corner. She remembered to go and call the police, though.
When they arrived to take the lowly criminal some minutes later and took the woman's testimony, more than one of the agents either grimaced or sighed, a couple of them even smiling awkwardly.
It had been easy to dismiss it as rumors at first, when it started half a year ago, but, lately, it was beginning to get TOO out of hand to simply shrug it off as a couple of people with an overly active imagination. Even so, it was more than difficult to believe for anyone with a shred of common sense.
After all, what kind of teenage girl would go around in a bicycle hitting muggers with a shinai and helping to get cats out of trees?
๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ
"ArghโฆarfโฆI did it again." panted said teenage girl, one Kirigaya Suguha, while taking off the reflective glasses, the surgical mask and the old coat from her mom that she hadn't really thrown to the trash as she had said. Hastily, she put it all together with her shinai on her bag before looking around the corner of the old house at the side of which she had hidden, putting it all on her back and hanging her helmet from the handlebar before slowly moving out of there, now seeming just a perfectly inconspicuous teenage girl dragging a bicycle at her side. "DammitโฆI need to stop this, butโฆ"
Sighing, Suguha just looked forward, at the building she was heading towards, the one belonging to the SAO Case Victims Rescue Force, wondering just HOW she had ended up where she was.
It had started out of the blue, like nothing really special or important. She was calmly pedaling back home from kendo training one day, passing near a small park, when she had seen two high-schoolers bullying a little kid, not letting him get his soccer ball back.
At some point, while watching the tears of the little boy and the laughing faces of the older idiots, something inside of her had 'snapped' and a burning NEED to do something had exploded inside of her. Barely thinking about it and not really caring for the consequences, she had ACTED in the only way she could.
She had gotten her shinai out of her bag and rushed with her bicycle to the high-schoolers, screaming 'JUSTICE!' just before knocking both of them out with a passing 'slash', not stopping even after the surprised and scared squeak of the kid had turned into shouts of gratitude. She had kept pedaling without stopping until she got back home, where she collapsed inside the garage, feeling the rush of what she had done wash over her.
Surprisingly, hitting those two idiots hadn't made her feel good in the slightestโฆbut hearing the kid's happy shouts and his gratitude, feeling his smile, had warmed her heart. She had done the right thing, helping him.
She had brought JUSTICE for an innocent.
After that, it slowly had been escalating almost without her noticing. First, she had gotten the 'mask' and bought the reflective glasses on what she thought had been a whim. Then she grabbed her mother's old coat.
She wasn't sure at which point she had started not only carrying the full 'costume' almost everywhere and passed from helping little kids on occasion to hitting criminals with her shinai while riding on her bicycle, but it had happened. And nowadays, despite telling herself how stupid or dangerous it was and that she would STOP doing it, she still kept carrying the 'costume' on her shinai's bag.
It was stupid, especially when she knew she would get in REAL troubles if someone ever caught her, what her mom would do be dammed. The risk of actually pedaling around hitting criminals that may be armed aside, 'vigilantism' was illegal. No matter how cool anime made it look, people in the real world couldn't put on a costume and beat the bad guys without being arrested, even if the criminal truly deserved it.
She was just a teenage girl talented in kendo. And young schoolgirls shouldn't go around beating criminals on a bicycle even if they felt it was the RIGHT thing to do.
She was NOT Licenseless Rider.
That train of thought, obviously, made her look at the bicycle at her side. Her brother's old bicycleโฆno, HER bicycle. Nowadays, there was no other way of seeing it. She had even fully repaired and improved it last Christmas, leaving it as good as new, and even adding a metallic part to the rear wheel that would allow someone to hitch a ride standing if ever needed.
She quickly suppressed the blush creeping on her face at imagining, one day, carrying her Onii-chan around like Rider had helped Saitama that time during the Sea King incident, the boy smiling as he put his hands on her shouldersโฆ
With a sharp shake of her head, Suguha put the chain and lock around her bicycle before entering the building, as she had done many times before. The receptionist only gave her a soft smile before pointing to the elevator.
"Hi again, Kirigaya-chan. He's already waiting for you."
With a soft nod, Suguha nodded and started to walk towards it. When her eyes caught a man reading a newspaper on a page with the headline 'Mysterious Bicycle Girl strikes again', she couldn't help but feel as if her shinai's bag suddenly weighed a ton.
Some stops later, the elevator left her on an already familiar hallway, through which she walked down without sparing a glance at anything around, in total contrast with that first time she had done it, that night so long ago, when she rode her trusted bicycle for the first time, until she stood before the door at the end of it.
An idle part of her brain couldn't help but remember the nightmare she had sometimes. She was standing in front of that same door when it suddenly opened and revealed her brother, giving his back to her and standing on a white void. She tried to chase after him, to reach him, but no matter how much she ran and cried his name, Kazuto just kept getting further and further awayโฆ
Shaking her head, without even knocking, Suguha opened the door with an unreadable expression and looked towards the smiling man wearing a green suit and blue necktie who sat behind an extremely orderly table, his glasses reflecting nothing but friendliness.
Like the first time, the young girl didn't believe that expression for even a second.
"Welcome back, Kirigaya-san."
"โฆgood afternoon, Kikuoka-san."
๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ
Twenty minutes later, as the receptionist confirmed that the girl had already left on her bicycle, Kikuoka Seijirou sighed before looking back at the reports on his computer with a small frown.
Certainly, being part of the SAO Case Victims Rescue Force was very frustrating, especially when they could do literally NOTHING but monitoring the players' locations and Avatars' Info, and that only because they had physical access to the actual servers thanks to RECT Inc. They weren't even able to SEE anything happening inside Aincrad, and yet that little bit still made them the most informed people on the world about the actual state of the incidentโฆbesides Kayaba Akihiko himself, wherever he was.
Certainly, he knew that his main frustrations came from how slowly his REAL 'work' was going, but still, things like the short meeting just now made it so that it was bearable.
Kirigaya Suguha. Adoptive sister of Kirigaya Kazuto, an SAO Victim under the avatar name 'Kirito'.
The world must be a smaller place than he thought, or that's what he believed when a family member of the player that had caught their interest the most suddenly showed up on their door, asking to know more about her brother's situation.
'Kirito' had been a mystery for him and several others since the first months of the incident. In the beginning, they didn't really have special attention on him, but when the players started to move to the 2nd Floor, Kikuoka had been of the first ones to notice that the 'location' of said Player changed way too fast. Thinking it must have been an error, he had personally looked over the data of the boy.
There were just countless interrogation symbols where his Stats and Level should have been.
That was why, instead of turning her away and telling her that they couldn't divulge anything, like it was supposed to happen, Kikuoka had made Kirigaya Suguha come to his office as soon as she gave her surname, then played his role as the friendly and supportive government officer and told her a bit of what she wanted.
He had told her how her brother spent most of his time in the Front Lines, and though this has worried her when he explained the proper terms and that he was in constant danger, she seemed to be relieved when he told her that he was rarely alone and that he had apparently Teamed-Up permanently with some players, which would make him be safer. Since then, she sometimes came once or twice a week to ask if something important had changed with Kazuto's situation. He would then kindly answer her questions and tell her what they knew.
Of course, he never told her about how her brother's avatar strange 'bug', or how he seemed to impossibly move from one side of Aincrad to the other at a supposedly impossible speed. He also didn't tell her how he seemed to have been the only one present when the 2nd Floor Boss had been defeated, or that since then he seemed to be present in several dungeons of the game before the Sub-Bosses stationed there suddenly 'disappeared' as if they had been defeated. He never told her even his In-Game Name, not that she had asked, or anything even remotely related to the strange things that, with the little knowledge they had, they knew happened around the boy.
He knew about the impossibility of the apparent happenings around Kirito better than most, after all. He had been one of the original 1000 Beta Testers of Sword Art Online.
They had all the possible information about the boy on reality: Parents died when he was 1, adopted by the sister of his mother's family, average grades through Middle Schoolโฆ
To summarize, nothing really surprising or strange. Nothing that indicated that the, currently, 15 years old boy could have managed to do the impossible and 'hack' the game that not even the greatest investigators of the country and several others had managed to. Kirigaya Kazuto was, under any light, a perfectly normal and unimportant teenager.
Hence, the reason why the man kept indulging his little sister's wishes for information. When the boy woke up (If that ever happened), it would be easier to get him to answer some questions if the young girl said that he had been keeping her updated about his condition.
Adjusting his glasses once again, Kikuoka leaned back against his chair.
Only time would bring the answers he was seekingโฆ
๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ
Flying through the skies of a magical land, a blonde girl with pointy ears frowned before spinning over herself, then shooting upwards.
Kirigaya Suguha, known as 'Leafa', a 'Sylph', inside the VRMMORPG of Alfheim Online, land of the fairies, loved flying.
The feeling of freely soaring skies with her own wings gave the young girl a sense of freedom and exhilaration that made her feel more alive than ever. It made that, for an instant, all the other problems in her world vanished.
She didn't trust that man, Seijirou Kikuoka. Not only because of her common sense telling her it was beyond weird how quickly he had given a teenager information about the state of one of the SAO victims, but also because that strange 'instinct' that she had felt inside her since she started riding her bicycle always told her that the man was hiding somethingโฆbut here, in ALO, all of those problems seemed to be put away by her wings.
There were no worries for school, no pressure about her next kendo tournament, no need to worry about being unable to stop being some sort of 'Hero', no need to think about how Kazuto wasโฆ
Her thoughts came to a screeching halt when THAT crossed her mind and, as if having been waiting for it, her wings spluttered for an instant before losing their glow, leaving her staring for a moment in shock towards the virtual moon before slowly starting to fall down, back to the earth, back to reality.
"Onii-chanโฆ" she sadly muttered while extending a hand towards the heavens, barely aware of how the automatic 'landing system' of her wings kept dragging her down.
Her adopted brother was as far away from her as the infinite sky she usually dreamed of crossing without limits.
"โฆ๐๐ ๐ผ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ฆ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ฆ๐กโ๐๐๐?" she thought softly before starting to face the ground, still a considerable distance away but getting closer. "๐๐๐๐-๐โ๐๐โฆ๐ค๐๐๐ ๐ผ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ฆ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐ก๐ ๐ก๐๐๐ ๐ก๐ ๐ฆ๐๐ข ๐๐๐๐๐? ๐๐ ๐๐๐ข๐โ ๐ค๐๐กโ ๐ฆ๐๐ข? ๐๐โฆ?"
Suddenly, a flying mob spawned bellow her, the massive eyes with wings and mouth looking around before zeroing on her and shooting up towards the defenseless fairy.
Leafa stared blankly at it as she continued her slow descend, only idly thinking of how annoying it was going to be having to resurrect all the way in Swilvane. Resigned, she closed her eyesโฆ
"๐ต๐ฆ ๐กโ๐ ๐ค๐๐ฆ, ๐ค๐๐๐ก ๐ก๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐-๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ก๐๐ ๐ฆ๐๐ข ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐? ๐๐ฆ ๐ก๐๐๐๐ก!"
"๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ฆ?!"
"๐๐๐, ๐๐๐๐๐๐ฆ."
"๐ป๐โ๐โ, ๐๐ก'๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ ๐กโ๐๐, ๐๐๐๐-๐โ๐๐!"
Her eyes suddenly snapped open again.
"He promised meโฆ" she whispered softly while drawing her katana.
More words, these that she had heard being said by fictional characters, while smiling at His side, shot through her mind once again.
'๐๐ ๐ฉ๐๐ ๐๐๐ง๐ค๐๐จ ๐ง๐ช๐ฃ ๐๐ฃ๐ ๐๐๐๐, ๐ฌ๐๐ค ๐ฌ๐๐ก๐ก ๐จ๐ฉ๐๐ฎ ๐๐ฃ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ฉ?'
'๐๐ฉ'๐จ ๐ฃ๐ค๐ฉ ๐๐๐ค๐ช๐ฉ ๐ฌ๐๐ฃ๐ฃ๐๐ฃ๐ ๐ค๐ง ๐ก๐ค๐จ๐๐ฃ๐! ๐๐ฉ'๐จ ๐๐๐ค๐ช๐ฉ ๐ข๐, ๐ฉ๐๐ ๐๐ฃ๐ ๐ฎ๐ค๐ช ๐ค๐ฃ, ๐๐๐ง๐ ๐๐ฃ๐ ๐ฃ๐ค๐ฌ!'
'๐๐ซ๐๐ฃ ๐๐ ๐ฃ๐ค ๐ค๐ฃ๐ ๐๐ก๐จ๐ ๐๐๐ก๐๐๐ซ๐๐จ ๐๐ฃ ๐ฎ๐ค๐ชโฆ๐ ๐ฌ๐๐ก๐ก ๐จ๐ฉ๐๐ก๐ก ๐๐ค๐ก๐ก๐ค๐ฌ ๐ฎ๐ค๐ช.'
And just because they were said in a story, it didn't make them any less true.
"IโฆI want to embrace Onii-chan again. I want to laugh with himโฆ" fully closing her wings, determination seemed to fill the young fairy as she shot down at deadly speeds, now in free-fall as she raised her blade over her head. "I want to share that ice-cream with him!"
The mob roared, seemingly surprised at her change in descending speed, and tried to move away so as to not beโฆ
Unseen by her, the girl's blade shone with an ethereal light for an instant.
"JUSTICE SLAAAASH!"
The girl's seemingly childish and meaningless shout seemed to echo through the night as she swung her blade down, dragged the mob several meters and then cut THROUGH him, the monster exploding into polygons even as he kept falling down.
She opened her wings an instant later and finished slowly gliding to the ground, breathing hard.
For some reason, she suddenly felt much lighter.
"Wellโฆthat was that. I better Log Out and sleep, I have Kendo practice first hour tomorrow" muttered the satisfied Sylph, before blinking at the sudden appearance of a screen. "Uh? That thing dropped somethingโฆ?" confused, the girl looked at the itemโฆbefore her eyes widened at its name and description. Quickly, she materialized it and couldn't help but STARE at the katana on her hands.
It was WEIRD. It had a long and smooth blade that seemed to reflect the moonlight with a handle that didn't seem to belong to a fantasy world, for it looked as if it was made to look like two WHEELS (And not 'car' ones) put together. Above that, the guard seemed suspiciously like a handlebar.
The stats wereโฆgood. Very good. Not super-rare material, but certainly much better than the weapon she currently hadโฆbut it wasn't that what had caught the girl's attention, no. It was the name of the weapon and its apparent 'effect'.
Justice's Wings. Doubled the Flying Charge of the user's wings.
Still unable to believe it, Leafa let one of her hands run over the blade's edge, just noticing that it had 'something' written in the magic-ALO symbols. A simple pressing of her hand over it let another window with what seemed like a translation in Japanese to appear.
"๐โ๐ ๐๐ก๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐กโ๐ ๐ป๐๐๐๐กโฆ" whispered the girl while looking over the words. "โฆ๐กโ๐ ๐ต๐๐๐โ๐ก๐๐ ๐กโ๐ ๐ฝ๐ข๐ ๐ก๐๐๐."
Slowly, a smile appeared on her face.
That night, Suguha had the same 'nightmare of the door' again. But this time, when she started running after her brother's retreating form, her bicycle was there with her, and she rode it with all her might, starting to catch him. And when that didn't seem to be enough, her bicycle suddenly broke and became her new katana. The moment she closed her hands around it, her wings sprouted and she flew forward, finally managing to touch the boy's back.
When he turned to look at her, the girl could have sworn that, for an instant, she had seen him wearing a white cape and a black jumpsuitโฆ
๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ
It was with a big smile that Suguha rode towards school the next morning, her shinai on her back as she quietly hummed and stopped on a corner before a red light.
"โฆwake up soon, Onii-chan." muttered the girl with a sweet tone. "You still owe me eating that ice-cream with me."
And thenโฆ
"MY PHONE!" shouted someone from two streets ahead, making the young kendoka blink and see how a guy on a suit screamed towards a man that was running like a possessed towards the opposite street, grinning darkly and firmly holding a mobile phone on his hand. "A THIEF! POLICE!"
Suguha STARED in silence. A soft alarm coming from her own phone reminded her that she would be late for kendo practice if she didn't hurryโฆ
The light turned green.
The smiling thief was already laughing his ass off at how easy getting the expensive-looking phone had been when he turned around a cornerโฆand froze at seeing a 'masked' figure speeding towards him on a bicycle, a bamboo sword in hand aiming directly at his face.
"What the fuโฆ?!
"JUSTICE CHARGEEEE!"
Some moments later, the wheezing and wide-eyed salaryman would arrive to the area and look in shock how the man that had stolen his phone was unconscious on the ground, the aforementioned device lying over his back.
On the distance, he managed to see a figure riding a bike for an instant before it turned around a corner.
Grinning, the 'Bicycle Girl' rode ahead.
After all, arriving a bit late to kendo practice was nothing compared to help those who needed Justice.
๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ฌ
๐ก๐๐ซ๐ง ๐๐ฃ๐๐ฆ๐ข๐๐ ๐ฃ๐ฅ๐๐ฉ๐๐๐ช!
"Good day, everyone. This is Seijirou Kikuoka, your friendly and trusted member of the SAO Case Victim Rescue Force and someone who doesn't hide anything at all, ready to give you the next chapter's preview without any ulterior motive. Really. I only have people's best interest in mindโฆCough, anyway! Next time on 'One Punch-Gamer': 'The Evil which Laughs.' What motivates someone to do dark and horrible things? Does freedom really bring the worst of humanity? Kirito and company must beware, for, in a world of Heroes, it's only natural that 'Villains' also riseโฆhuhuh, interesting. I have no idea what any of that means, but it only makes me wish that my time to know Kirigaya-kun comes fasโฆ"
๐๐ก๐ ๐ข๐ ๐ง๐๐ ๐ฃ๐ฅ๐๐ฉ๐๐๐ช!