7Author's Note
I've been writing this for like two months. It's been a real challenge. This is the spinoff of my other story, Gun Gale Online: The Swordswoman – Transcendent Bonds. It takes the role of a prequel, and gives backstory to both Kiriko and the Black Cats.
Here's the warnings that apply:
Though this is the earliest story in the timeline, and is therefore readable as a standalone, I would not recommend just jumping headfirst into it without knowing the series I'm talking about. I wouldn't say you'd need to read all of Transcendent Bonds first, but if you want to be a little less blindsided by the differences from canon, read the first twelve or so chapters of the aforementioned story. It's not absolutely necessary, but it will provide some context about this AU that you may want.
Kirito is female. In this story, her name is Kirigaya Kimiko, which gets shortened to 'Kiriko' online.
Since no other character has been gender-flipped, and I don't ship either version of Kirito with male characters, this story will have yuri, or lesbianism for those who prefer American terms. Though I will say that this story in particular will be a lot more reflective of the Japanese view of homosexuality: that it's wrong/unacceptable and is highly frowned upon. I don't normally do this, but this is the only story in its series set almost entirely in real life (in Japanese society), so I felt it was appropriate.
In this part of the AU of the Swordswoman Pentalogy, no VRMMOs exist yet. As such, the vast majority of the story will take place in real life, with no VR stuff even mentioned. Sword Art Online is a popular 2D MMO designed primarily by Kayaba Akihiko in this universe. Towards the end, the beta for Gun Gale Online, this series' SAO incident equivalent, will start, but I won't be narrating any of it. This story is all real-life.
The development of the romance will be painfully slow in this story. Like, slower than in any of my other fics, I think. The reason being that this story centers more around realistically developing friendship than it does messing with pairings. This is another new one for me, but this story marks a lot of other firsts, so…
If those things don't bother you, you'll probably enjoy it a fair amount. Go ahead and read on, I realize this author's note was painfully long.
Transcendent Bonds Side Story
Break the Cycle
Prologue: Better and Worse
"You think you're better than us?"
The voice rang out loud and clear in my ears but I ignored it in favor of getting my things together. It was Friday, which meant no school the next day, so I had to bring some of the things I normally kept at school to my house. Not any of my textbooks, though – I had already read all of them once, so I'd remember everything in them for at least the next few years, word for word. The fact that I left them in my locker probably only fueled the resentment of the person who had called out to me, but I didn't care.
Well, I am smarter, faster and stronger than you, but I don't feel like wasting the breath in order to tell it like it is.
"Well? You gonna say anything, slut?" the female's voice called again, the word 'slut' dripping off her tongue like a viper's venom. "Yeah, I heard the rumors. Did you think people wouldn't notice you hanging around that part of Akiba?"
So every shop in that part of Akihabara is a prostitution house, then? The more this girl talks, the dumber she sounds.
"Not even gonna defend yourself?"
I still hadn't looked at the person speaking to me, but I already knew who she was: just a girl from my class who, until I transferred in, had always gotten the top score in her grade in most subjects. The moment I showed up, however, I took the top spot by getting completely perfect scores in every subject tested, not to mention achieving outstanding marks in PE – her worst subject – despite my shorter height. I couldn't really blame her for hating me. After all, I did present her with many things to be jealous of. I always had that kind of effect on people.
We were just tested in all five main subjects earlier this week, and the results had been publicly posted this morning. Apparently I had trounced her by a noticeable margin again, which is why she singled me out after school ended. It always happened, so I had grown used to it pretty quickly after transferring into this rather prestigious school in Tokyo.
But I wouldn't have to deal with it for much longer. I had just put the last of my belongings into my backpack. After slinging it onto my shoulder, I began to walk away, then paused for a second. I felt oddly daring this time, so I turned my head back just far enough to acknowledge her, but not far enough to actually see her.
"For future reference," I started, running my right hand through my long, lustrous black hair for a second. "If I don't respond, you've either said something really idiotic, proven to not be worth my time, or both. See you."
With that, I began to walk off. I realized that both her accusation and my retort had left the surrounding kids in a sort of stunned silence, but I didn't mind much . I heard murmurs like "Kirigaya-san has done it again" from a few kids as I passed them by, but I paid their commentary no heed and just continued walking away.
Once I rounded the corner, I noticed the presence of someone walking directly behind me. I didn't turn around to look – school just got out, so it was probably just another kid moving towards the exit. I didn't think anything of the occurrence until I passed one of the main exits in favor of one closer to my direct route… and the kid was still following a short distance behind me.
In order to judge whether the person behind me was following me or just going the same route, I decided to play a little game. Rather than going out my usual exit, I passed it, then went up the nearby stairs to the second floor. The kid kept walking right behind me, climbing the stairs a fair bit slower than I did.
When moving up the second flight of stairs on the way to the third floor, I caught a glimpse of the boy tailing me out of the corner of my eye, ascending the flight below me. He wore the usual male uniform of a blue jacket, white dress shirt and blue pants, but atop his head of chin-length dirty blond hair was a totally-against-the-rules gray beanie. His expression didn't suggest anything nefarious, but I couldn't be sure that he wouldn't try anything.
I kept going until I reached the door to the roof. While it was against the rules to go up there, I knew from experience that the door was never locked. I grabbed the handle and turned, and sure enough, it opened for me. I walked through and made my way to the railing, not even looking as I heard the door shut behind me.
About three seconds later, it opened again, much too soon for someone who was a flight below me. He must have dashed up the stairs the moment the door closed in order to close in on me faster. I swiveled my head left, locking eyes with him, and his eyes widened, realizing he'd been caught.
"I don't know why you followed me, but you weren't very careful about it," I told him, voice low with a practiced dullness. "I noticed you back on the first floor. What's your aim here?"
"I don't really have one," he replied, rubbing his neck awkwardly with his right hand. "I just… I thought it was interesting that you didn't deny her accusations back there. I'm pretty sure they're not true, so why didn't you say anything?"
I sighed, realizing I had gotten worked up inside for nothing. This boy didn't seem to be lying, nor did he appear to have an ulterior motive. He really was just curious about the little scuffle. The least I could do for completely misunderstanding the situation was give him an explanation.
"I just wasn't in the mood to make her look like an idiot again," I told him, looking back over the railing and noting the subject of my words on the ground below me. I considered giving her the finger, but decided if she couldn't see it, it'd be a waste. "It gets boring after you realize how laughably easy it is. She basically digs a grave for herself and crawls in."
"Again? And easy?! But she's one of the smartest kids in school!"
I normally would have dismissed this comment, but for some reason, this boy's honest, frank demeanor compelled me to reciprocate. I pointed to where the girl walked down below, where she was surrounded by her usual posse of three other girls. Right on cue, one of them frowned slightly at the same time as the ringleader's face brightened into a gleeful smile.
The blond boy moved to the railing in order to see where I pointed, and his expression grew puzzled for a moment. I turned back to watching her and began to explain.
"She's smart, yes," I acknowledged, my gaze cold and calculating. "But she's guided by her emotions and desires to an astounding degree. In particular, her pride and her desire to feel superior. She just made the frowning girl look bad in order to make herself appear better by comparison. I see it happen over and over again whenever her group is near me."
I moved my pointing hand back to the gray metal railing before turning back to the beanie-clad boy, my expression unchanging as I continued. He looked at me just as I began to speak again. "When a girl like me just shows up and is somehow better than her at everything without even trying, it hurts her pride and makes her feel inferior. This makes her angry, which clouds her judgment and renders her easy to make a fool of."
This would be the stopping point. Once people realized how much better I was than everyone else in almost every measurable aspect, they grew to resent me. My comments would be enough for him to figure out that I was the one who got perfect scores in all subjects, and with that realization the gap between us would become a giant chasm. He'd start thinking negatively of me and either leave or begin to harass me, like everyone else did.
"So then you're that one second year who always gets perfect scores? And you do it without even trying?"
My gaze shifted to the ground, and I repeatedly clenched and unclenched my fingers around the railing. Even though I had long since grown used to this part, it didn't make it any easier to see their faces at the moment they started to hate me. It became much easier to deal with if I simply looked away. As I stared at the roof's tile flooring, I nodded my head, then waited for a response.
His reaction was the opposite of what I expected. So loud it startled me into looking at him, he shouted, "That's so amazing! Are you a some kind of genius?!"
His expression once again hosted not a hint of dishonesty. This was what he really felt. He really thought of my intelligence as a good thing. It caught me so off guard that I ended up giving an honest answer about it for the first time in a very long while.
"Y-yeah, but that's only a part of it," I explained, holding up two fingers on my right hand to signify the existence of two factors. "I also have an eidetic memory. It can take several years for my memories to begin to fade, so if I read the textbooks once, I'll remember everything in them more than long enough to ace the whole class. I inherited both from my father, as far as I know."
"That's so cool!"
Once again, this boy's sheer enthusiasm about something I had despised my whole life took me by surprise. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to befriend him or tell him to quiet down a bit. But before I could try either one, he started talking again, saying another thing that caught me off guard.
"Hey, there's someone I want to introduce you to," he told me, his eyes bright and cheery to an almost alarming extent. "I think you'll like her. Do you have time, or is there somewhere you need to be?"
"No, I don't need to be anywhere…" I uneasily answered, wondering just what I was getting into by associating with this blond ball of energy.
"Great! Let's go, just follow me!"
"… But I never said I'd—"
I cut myself off this time. He had already began a dash back to the door, and was far enough ahead that he didn't hear my quiet protest. I resigned myself to whatever would come and began to race after him before he disappeared from my sight altogether.
For a guy who wanted to lead me somewhere, he sure didn't look back very much to see if I was still following. Granted, he wasn't that hard to keep pace with, despite being half a head taller than me, so I never actually lost sight of him. We wound through the hallways of the first floor, progressively encountering less and less students.
Finally, when the hallway was empty save for us, he stopped at a closed door. The sign just above the wooden frame read "computer room", but before I could question why he brought me to such a place, the blond boy grabbed the handle and turned it, opening the door before turning back to me.
"Wait here a sec," he told me before slipping through the doorway.
It was at this point that the ideas of just making for the exit or just not following him first crossed my mind. Really, I had no reason to stay – he said he'd introduce me to someone, but when he mentioned that it was a girl, my walls went back up full strength. I'd never met another girl that didn't resent me before. At first, it was just because I was smarter, but after puberty started, they gained another reason to hate me: my appearance.
Aside from my short height, I had a lot of traits that strongly appealed to guys. A slender yet toned frame with an hourglass figure, a large bust, a face completely free of blemishes, and long, naturally straight, glossy ebony hair… people had compared my beauty to that of a doll before. I was no stranger to confessions and date requests. As if that weren't enough to make other girls jealous already, the fact that I turned all of them down with no mercy somehow made my reputation among guys skyrocket into an almost legendary status.
The idea of making yet another girl hate me seemed like a poor decision, all things considered. The ones who didn't harass me would talk trash about me when they thought I couldn't hear. I didn't feel like making another enemy. Frankly, all the animosity was becoming tiresome.
Just before I turned to walk away, the blond boy came back out and grabbed my wrist suddenly, the contact shocking me into not resisting. "I cleared it with the gang, so you can come in," he told me, pulling me along until we were both in the room.
The first observation I made was that every single computer in the room was taken up by someone. There were four standard school desktop models lined up on a long table against the left wall, with a cushioned work chair in front of each. Every chair's occupant was doing something different.
The one closest to me was a boy with short brown hair, who seemed to be pretty tall. His eyes barely even looked open, and for a second I wondered how he even saw the computer screen his face seemed glued to. Either way, with those over-ear headphones on, he didn't notice us enter at all. Displayed on the computer screen in front of him, I noticed the UI of a familiar popular MMO that I myself played in my free time, Sword Art Online.
I'm surprised it can even run on these crappy computers.
The space next to him had a Google window up, though from this distance I couldn't see what the user had searched. Said user, a boy with long, wavy brown hair and soft eyes of the same color, seemed much more aware of the room's new occupants than the headphone-wearing teen to his left. However, his expression didn't give much away other than mild confusion. I couldn't really blame him, though; his friend had just brought a perfect stranger into the room.
The computer three seats from the door also seemed to be logged into SAO, though its occupant wasn't paying attention to it. I considered telling him that his player avatar was currently under attack by a monster, but since it didn't appear to be doing any lasting damage, I put it aside for the moment. The boy occupying this computer seemed a little shorter than the first one, with very short hair a dark red color. He had what appeared to be an apologetic smile on his face, making me wonder just how much he knew of the situation so far.
The final computer, which was right next to the window, didn't even seem to be logged on. Though that was rather odd, what struck me as more strange was the fact that its occupant was practically hiding behind the red-haired boy. I saw midnight hair and timid green eyes, but other than that, the rest of her was concealed by the boy in front of her. It brought the image of a shy little kitten to my mind, though I shooed the stray thought away as soon as it appeared.
"Hey, get your head out of the game," the boy with wavy hair said after pulling off one ear of the taller boy's headphones. "Hikaru brought someone."
So the name of the blond boy must have been Hikaru, I realized. Said beanie-wearing boy let go of my wrist just before I thought to ask him to, then flashed the wavy-haired boy a peace sign with his newly-freed hand. The cheekily victorious grin on his face made me wonder just what he thought he had accomplished by leading me here.
The boy whose eyes seemed permanently half closed pulled off his headphones before turning and promptly gaping at me like a dead fish. In the next moment, he exclaimed, "What a catch!" his voice boisterous.
At that moment, I really wished I could tell exactly where he was looking when he said that. But before I could say anything, the wavy-haired boy elbowed him in the ribs, earning a startled yelp. As I watched the scene with a somewhat justifiable satisfaction, the redhead spoke up next.
"I don't know all the details," he said, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck. "But it looks like Hikaru got all excited about something and dragged you here, right? Sorry about that."
The sudden apology caught me off guard a bit. I raised my hands as a show of no ill will. "It's fine, it didn't bother me." Much, anyway.
"So, mind telling us why you brought a hottie like this in here?" the boy up front asked, which earned him another elbow to the ribs by the wavy-haired boy.
"It was a good question though, even if the phrasing was bad," the redhead acknowledged, looking at Hikaru with a serious expression. "Why did you bring her here?"
"Well, since it was my turn to be without a computer at club today, I walked around for a while after class, hoping to run into something interesting," the blond started, the cheeky grin resurfacing every time there was a pause in the narrative. "And I did! This girl was totally being harassed by the number two-ranked second year, but it didn't even phase her. Right before walking off, this shorty here even made a fool of her!"
"I don't get where this is going," the wavy-haired boy sighed. And at that moment, I felt exactly the same as he did, even though I knew the story. But more importantly, I had to restrain myself from stomping on the excited blond's foot when he called me a 'shorty'. That was one name I hated being called.
Hikaru continued recounting his side of the story, unaware that he was treading on thin ice after the reference to my height. "So I got curious about her and decided to follow her. She led me up to the roof of the school, where she told me she noticed me back on the first floor. We got to talking, and I found out that she's the second year who gets perfect scores in every subject!"
"And that makes it okay to drag her here because…" the redhead prodded, trailing off at the end to allow the blond to finish.
"Well, she said she does it without even trying," he replied, his words making me want to slap my palm over my own face. "And when I asked her if she was a genius, she said yes. After that, I kinda got excited and dragged her here."
The silence that followed was utterly palpable. I could see the wavy-haired boy and redhead both gearing up to say something to Hikaru, then probably tell me I could leave. In any other circumstance, I would have graciously accepted and gotten the hell out of dodge.
But… he was so accepting of me… I want to experience more of that.
These stray thoughts took me by surprise. I probably would have continued to explore them if I had more time on my hands, but I was in a race against time. If I waited too long and one of Hikaru's friends started talking, I would more than likely lose any potential place I had here.
I took a slow, deep breath, then began speaking about one of the first things I noticed when I entered the room. "So you guys play SAO? I'm honestly surprised it can run on those cheap old school computers."
For a few moments, everyone looked taken aback by my sudden, though not very loud, outburst. The midnight-haired girl's green eyes widened a bit, though out of all of them, her reaction was definitely the mildest. The wavy-haired boy's jaw dropped, the redhead's whole face screamed 'shell-shocked', and Hikaru's head whipped around to face me in record time. The nearest boy's reaction was not on his face, but instead in his hand, which formed a fist that pumped the air under the table where he thought no one would notice.
They probably all thought I didn't want to be there. And normally, I wouldn't, so it wasn't that far off. So my attempt at making conversation must have surprised them all greatly. At least, that's how I interpreted their kneejerk reactions.
The redhead recovered first, gulping and nodding his head. "Yeah, they run it, though just barely," he replied, gaining momentum the more he talked. "There's a small lag all the time, and during flashy Sword Skills, it gets a lot worse."
The ball returned to my court just like that, and I found myself faced with a very difficult choice. If I revealed my job to them, it would multiply the time we could spend together, but would also give me five more jobs to do. While that wasn't a whole lot of work for someone with my skill level, it very well could be a lot of money. Could they even afford it?
But at the same time, I had way more money than I needed to begin with. I really had no reason to charge them the full rate for my services. If anything, giving a buddy rate would be beneficial here.
All these thoughts ran through my head in a little under two seconds, and by the third, I had made my decision. I took a deep breath, looking the redhead dead in the eye before starting tentatively.
"I could… I could make you all some better computers if you wanted."
Author's Note
I don't know when the next chapter will come out. Not because I don't know what I want to do with it, though. I've just been focusing more on designing a new RPG Maker MV game of mine than I have been on writing for most of the past month. The demo is almost ready for release, and I'll probably be able to link it to people by the start of next month.
As always for Transcendent Bonds-related works, this chapter was edited by my beta/cover artist, ForteDragon. Thanks goes out to her for making this into something presentable.
So what did you think? Leaving aside that I stopped at a really cliffhanger-y point, I think this was pretty good. Especially after the edits made to it. But I'm not the one who decides that, you are! Go ahead and drop a review if you have anything to say that isn't along the lines of, "good/great story, update soon". Real critique is always welcome!
I'm about done. I think I'll hold off on publishing until the morning, since I finished the author's notes at like one AM. You don't really get many readers if you publish when most of the primary viewing country is asleep.
See you next chapter!
