Where Your God Is - Chapter 12 (Patreon)

“But how do the rubber chickens block the sword?!” Asuna asked, her tone that of a person desperately trying to make sense of a world gone mad... and failing to do so.

Sinon rolled her eyes as she reclined on the couch. “Please stop asking, the answer won't change.”

Asuna made a frustrated sound as Mito quietly shook with laughter beside her. “A-As-suna, stop! Please!”

“But it doesn't make any sense!” Asuna cried, waving her arms in the air for emphasis and only managing to make herself look dangerously manic. “They're rubber chickens! They shouldn't be able to block swords!”

I sighed and held up my hands, palms out. “Okay, okay... they aren't rubber chickens.” Asuna blinked, turning to me. “The swords aren't swords. The water in your glass isn't water. All of this is just a bunch of really complex coding, a language that tells the computer how to run programs, which is giving you a really, really vivid dream. With me so far?”

Asuna made the same face I often saw my grandfather make when confronted with a task that, in the modern world, now required technology. “I guess?”

“Sword Art Online doesn't run on real world logic. It has its own rules. Like how giant monsters that would collapse under their own weight in the real world can exist here, because they're not actually monsters. They're just pieces of code; computer instructions making you see and interact with the 'monster.'” I paused here to do the obligatory air-quotes. “So it's not really the rubber chicken that blacks the sword. It's the piece of computer code that the game sees me holding in my hand impacting with the piece of computer code that the game sees the Kobold Lord holding. It uses that code to solve equations that dictate what happens as a result of the two code-objects meeting.”

“But, wait...” Asuna stated, shaking her head as she held a hand to it, her expression that of someone fighting off a headache as she pointed to her cup of water. “If-if I drop that glass, the game has to think about what's going to happen? Like, solve one of those equations?”

I smiled, nodding. “Now you're getting it! This is called a 'physics engine,' in game development terminology. In a lot of ways, a game like this will want to mimic real-world physics, hence the name, but there are a lot of special-case rules and exemptions stuck into the system that allow you to do things in the game that you can't in the real world.”

“But it's the exact opposite of physics!” Asuna cried, outraged at the very concept as she animatedly spoke with both her mouth and hands. “The real world doesn't have to solve a problem every ti-time a-an apple falls from a tree or something! The math used to explain that is descriptive, not prescriptive!”

Now I was grinning. “You actually understand it! Sinon, look! Someone understands it!”

“Kirito, I love you to bits, but there has to be something we can talk about that isn't esoteric game design, please?” Sinon asked as she rolled over and buried her head into a pillow, her high-cut jean shorts and casual t-shirt attesting to her desire to do anything but talk 'business.'

Grimacing, I reflected on exactly how much of that I'd put the girls through and, with a solemn sigh, I nodded as I beat down my desire to speak on the subject further. Looking back to Asuna I shook my head at her intense look. “Maybe we can talk more later on the subject? The girls don't really enjoy going down the rabbit holes like that. Honestly, I'm surprised Mito didn't already tell you all of this.”

Asuna opened her mouth, then furrowed her brows as she turned to her purple-haired compatriot, who was wearing a look of relaxed enthrallment as her eyes danced between the two of us. “Mito? What's up? Do I have something on my face?”

Mito just giggled and shook her head. “No, it's nothing... it's just that... I never thought, in my wildest dreams, that you and Kirito, of all people, would get along this well if I managed to introduce you to each other.”

I raised an eyebrow as Asuna managed to look slightly offended at the suggestion. “Why's that? He seems perfectly nice to me and he's a lot more civil than most of the other beta players you've introduced me to.”

The purple-haired girl leaned back, still looking amused as she looked between us. “It's nothing major, Asuna, just... Kirito is a serious video game otaku and this is, like, the first game you've ever really played. I guess I just always thought of you two as polar opposites in my mind.”

Sinon rolled halfway over and looked between myself and the brunette, then nodded her head against the pillow horizontally. “Yeah, that tracks.”

Asuna and I looked at each other, then our respective friends. Turning back to her, I raised a hand politely and she offered me an upturned hand as she nodded, signaling for me to go first. “Ah... I don't know whether I should be offended or not? Asuna seems like an intelligent young woman regardless of whether or not she plays video games. Barring a poor first impression and even allowing for the current difficulties, she seems perfectly reasonable.”

Asuna nodded in agreement, then pursed her lips at Mito, who blinked in surprise. “I think Mito is just projecting, Kirito. She and I had kind of a rough start when we became friends. Though I don't know why she never mentioned you...”

Mito pouted. “Aww... don't be like that, Asuna! You know it just surprised me when you recognized me at that arcade! Besides, even if Kirito and I knew each other, we weren't that close.”

I shrugged, acknowledging it as the truth. “Pretty much. We ran together to complete a questline back during the beta. Wasn't it floor seven? The casino?”

Mito groaned and rubbed the butts of her palms into her eyes. “Ugh! Don't remind me! That was so not the best part of the game!”

I chuckled in the way only a person who'd been through something exceptionally irritating and was looking back on it in amusement could. “Ye~aaah, that was... not fun. Ugh, I still can't stand to be around Coper even after all this time. He had one job! Just play the fucking drums! But noooo, he had to try to seduce the yakuza princess!”

I mean, I knew I was throwing stones from a glass house, so to speak, but... that retard was the kind of horndog with no self-respect that really pissed me off. Ugh.

Sinon threw a hand back and laughed aloud. “Pfft! I remember you bitching about that!”

Asuna looked between us, cocking her head. A look of slow realization swept over her face as she looked torn between multiple emotions. “You all have a lot of memories in this world, don't you? Good ones as well as bad.”

We all shared a fond and tired look.

“Wait, drums?” Asuna asked, abruptly turning to her friend. “Does that mean you were playing music?”

Mito stalled out, then groaned loudly, flipping me the bird. “I blame you for this!”

“Then there's no reason not to go all-in,” I replied, grinning as I turned to Asuna. “The quest was a battle of the bands style event. The reward for winning the tournament was a set of trick weapons that your scythe-obsessed bestie over there just had to have.”

Asuna blinked rapidly, looking between us in a repetitive, jerking motion, then slowly raised her hand. “Wait, wait. Uhh... what's a trick weapon? Actually, before that, I thought quests were all about fighting monsters and finding things for-um, NPCs?”

“There's all sorts of quests,” Sinon stated, stretching out and popping her feet up on my lap. “Whatever you're interested in, there's a quest for it. Kirito knows the name of whatever it is-”

“-procedurally generated content-” I interjected.

“Yeah, that.” Sinon stated, poking me with the heel of one of her feet. “So if you have some kind of hobby or want to learn something, this 'forced vacation' is a great time to do it.”

Asuna frowned thoughtfully. “I know the moderator, that Keyboard Smash-chan person, said something like that, but shouldn't we be working towards getting out of here more than... enjoying it? I feel bad if we don't do at least a little bit of grinding each day, Mito.”

Mito sighed and sprawled out on the long couch sloppily. “Asu-naaah, we really should take a break now that the first floor's been beaten. Since the beta players have shown enough newbies the ropes and Argo's manuals have gotten passed around, they're going to need us less. Plus, if we keep running at full-tilt we're going to burn out. Even if developing your sword arts and fighting mobs can be fun, doing the same thing for so long can get old really fast.”

I nodded in agreement. “Mito's got the right of it. But if it really bothers you all that much, you should pick something like a set of crafting skills that will compliment your fighting ability. “

Asuna's brows furrowed. “Crafting, like... making things? I'd heard about those.”

“I'd be shocked if you hadn't,” Sinon commented. “That would mean Mito was slipping in telling you how this world works.”

Mito rolled her eyes and popped a finger at Sinon, who simply laughed at the response, before groaning as I began massaging her feet. Asuna, watching the exchange, blushed and looked disapprovingly at her friend. “Mito! Please stop doing that! It's very rude!”

I chuckled, drawing Asuna's attention to me and increasing her blush as she watched an intimate moment between myself and Sinon. Mito was less-affected, but also had the privilege of looking away instead of forcing herself to maintain eye contact with me. “Don't be too angry with her, Asuna. Casual rudeness with comrades in a game like this is accepted, or even encouraged.”

Asuna pulled a face and looked away. “I... it still makes me uncomfortable. Would it be rude of me to ask that you refrain from such in my presence?”

Mito grimaced and sighed. “If you don't like it, Asuna, I'll try to hold it in.”

“Does that mean you guys are sticking around?” Sinon asked, throwing her arms back over her head and getting more comfortable as she relaxed. “I'm not arguing about it or anything, but I thought it might be good to ask.”

“Maybe?” Asuna asked, looking uncertainly at Mito, who also looked thoughtful. “Mito and I have been doing fine on our own, but it is nice to have other people to talk to. Do you think Leafa and Argo would be okay with that?”

“Mito was always good people when we were on quests and raids together,” I replied, and Sinon seconded me. “And since you and she know each other IRL, you said; it's unlikely that either one of you would stab us in the back without the other agreeing to it, and I don't see that happening. Really, the only question is if you and Mito trust us enough to party-up.”

Asuna's eyes widened as she heard me out and nodded slowly, looking Sinon and myself over with new eyes. Even if she was still blushing at the way I was massaging the other girl's feet, there was a spark of analytic assessment that gave a hint as to her true intelligence. “Would you mind if we took some time to think it over? I-I mean no offense, of course! Just... we would be trusting you with our lives outside of the occasional floor boss and you... are a bit...”

I chuckled, grinning lazily as I raised one hand to pluck at a top that couldn't decide between shirt and blouse. “I'm effectively a crossdresser using an ambiguously androgynous avatar. You don't have to be shy about mentioning it, Asuna. For someone not used to the virtual environment, RPGs, and the like, it's okay to think it's weird.”

My grin turned the slightest bit teasing. “Although it's a bit hypocritical to ping me on that if you're running around with Mito, of all people.”

“What do you me-ah!” Asuna began, then stiffened in realization as she turned to her lightly-blushing friend. “That's right! You were using a guy's bod-er, avatar the first few days! I forgot!”

“And I really thought I was going to get away with that, too,” Mito sighed mournfully, throwing an arm over her face to hide in her own elbow. “Go ahead, get it out of your system.”

I snorted and barked a laugh. “Hah! Nah, I'm not going in too hard on you, Mito. You were cool about me being a guy back in the beta-”

I refrained from commenting on the way her ears heated up at the memory of that trainwreck of a conversation. Another moment that was funny in hindsight, but cripplingly awkward to actually live through.

“-so I'm not going to razz you for being a girl. As far as I'm concerned, what I'm seeing now is just a different avatar from one of your alts,” I shrugged and leaned back.

Her face still slightly red, she peaked out at me and smiled. “Thanks. I've known people who threw shi-er, ah... got upset about it before.”

“Do... a lot of people do things like that?” Asuna asked, her expression curious. “Play as a different gender, I mean? I'd think it would only be popular for, um... people who wanted to be a different gender in real life? Trans is the word, right?”

Sinon and I exchanged a loaded look. Asuna really was every inch the sheltered corporate princess.

“Nothing against it, but not trans myself,” Mito shrugged, and I turned to see Asuna directing her inquisitive gaze towards the scythe-wielder. “I got into the habit of making gaming accounts using male characters to stop guys from hitting on me in-game. Plus, there's a lot of gender-locked quests in some games that don't have female alternatives, which sucks. I didn't actually even think about making a male character for SAO's beta, I just did it.”

“Huh,” Asuna muttered, turning towards me and immediately snapping her head away as I chuckled.

“You're allowed to ask,” Sinon grunted in my stead, then sighed as I lifted her feet and stood up to stretch and head over for a drink. Both because I was thirsty and because Asuna's ingrained high-class politeness might weaken a bit if I wasn't right there.

“Anyone want anything to drink while we wait for Argo and Leafa to come back with food?”

Habitually, I washed my hands before going for the high-class hotel's mini-fridge. Even if I knew, intellectually, that I hadn't actually just touched someone's feet, the impulse for cleanliness was too strong. Picking out what the girls called for, I headed back laden with sugary bounty and set them all on the low table between the couches.

“Ah, thanks again for paying for our stay here,” Asuna smiled as she grabbed a drink, then hesitated and looked back up at me. “Why do you play with a-an avatar like that, if you don't mind answering?”

Draining part of my drink, I sighed and dropped onto the couch lengthwise, intertwining my legs with Sinon's. “Mostly it's because I tend to play a lot with Sinon, Argo, and Leafa. If I look like a girl, people tend to give our group fewer problems. Or, at least, they'd give me the same problems as them, so we could all complain about it in solidarity.”

I paused, then decided not to scare her off by going too deep down the rabbit hole with my motivations. Sinon was already giving me a more knowing version of her trademark confident grin. The girls and I had all agreed to wait and see how long Mito and Asuna would stick around before letting them in on our bedroom arrangements. I didn't really know Mito all that well, even if I felt reasonably sure Asuna wasn't going to go telling tales.

“Are guys in games really that bad?” Asuna asked, scowling. “I hear a lot about how awful they can be... I thought it was just exaggeration for jokes, but Mito and I haven't really run into those types.”

“They can be pretty bad, although I think it's mainly because most gamers are guys as a general rule. It doesn't really matter what sex a person is if you give them anonymity over the internet and delusions of power,” I replied with a tired sigh. “But Mito's probably avoiding places where those types gather.”

The girl in question nodded, taking a sip of her drink. “Pretty much. I haven't had all that much time to teach Asuna everything she needs to know yet. We just started covering how to upgrade weapons the week before the boss fight. Since this is her first real game experience, I've had to explain a lot of jargon, social etiquette, and settings to her.”

Asuna flushed in embarrassment and muttered something to the effect of, “It's not my fault I'm not a video game otaku!”

“You have her on manual, semi-auto, or auto?” I asked, idle curiosity taking hold.

Even as Asuna repeated the words under her breath, her face a mask of confusion, Mito replied to my question. “Semi-auto. I had her on auto for the first two weeks, but she's been improving a lot so I walked her through changing her settings.”

“Oh, I remember that!” Asuna cried, nodding. Then she paused, frowning. “What was all that about 'auto' and 'semi-auto?' You didn't use those terms when you showed me the settings.”

“They're three broad categories of how you've tuned your personal settings in SAO,” I interjected, saving Mito the explanation as I held up three fingers. “Auto or Full-Auto means you're running the default settings the game starts you out with and that's good for most beginners just starting out. Semi-Auto refers to players who've started to mess with their settings to find personal preferences that suit their playstyles better, but a lot of the stuff in their settings menu is still going to be factory-default. Manual is-”

“-when all or almost all of your settings are tuned to your personal preferences,” Asuna intuited, nodding in realization as she smiled. “That's a useful piece of slang.”

My lips twitched, but Sinon didn't bother to hide the smothered laughter, earning her a mild glare from Asuna.

“If I remember right, then, I don't have many settings changed from the defaults,” Asuna continued thoughtfully. “Mito helped me fine-tune the <<System Assist>>, which was the big one. We almost had a problem when I overshot a plant monster and nearly ran into another that would have caused a huge mob of enemies to charge at us.”

“So teaching her how to override the assist function needed to be moved up the curriculum,” Mito nodded, rubbing at her eyes. “I wanted to wait until after the boss fight to get deep into things like <<Nerve Feedback>> and <<Crafting Realism>>.”

“Nerve Feedback?” Asuna asked, curious. “What's that?”

“It's how much pain you feel, more or less,” Mito replied with a grimace, and Asuna's jaw dropped in surprise. “There's a ceiling to stop you from making it like the real world, because that could send you into shock, but some people don't react well to the numb-pressure kind of feeling when an attack hits, so you can modify it to produce a painful sensation of some kind instead.”

“This game is a lot more complicated than I thought it was,” Asuna sighed, looking a little overwhelmed.

“Heh, don't worry Asuna. Making the game your own is the best part!” Mito cried with a grin and her friend groaning before letting out a long giggle that caught to Mito.

Sinon and I exchanged a clueless glance, mutually shrugging.

Suddenly remembering something, I popped open my inventory and booted an item from it before holding it out and placing it on the table. Having caught her attention from the flash of object materialization, Mito took one look at what I'd pulled out and groaned aloud. “Oh my god! You filthy cheater! I can't believe you kept that thing!”

It was a large thing that topped six feet, made of a curved purple and silver metal. The 'staff' of the weapon was a long and gently S-shaped rod with an arching blade turned inward. Two dozen strings were pulled taut between connection points on the blade and the curved staff. A ball of metal was set at the bottom end, with the top being decorated by a purple gem and silver wing-piece.

 “I thought I told you how much of a packrat I am,” I replied with a smirk, then turned to Asuna, who was staring at the weapon. “See, when we won the battle of the bands, each of us got a full set of the trick weapons on display. Mine was-”

I manifested a longsword in my hands, the entire body a work of silver and gold with the spread wings of an eagle that created a crossguard and it's body the bridge and saddle and a 'handle running even beyond that. Strings ran up the length of the blade, rendering it virtually useless for fighting, much like Mito's harp-scythe.

“-a guitar-sword,” I stated proudly, holding it up for inspection.

“How are you supposed to use those?” Asuna asked in disbelief, taking in the odd shapes of the instruments.

“You aren't,” Mito sighed, picking the harp-scythe up and chuckling as she carefully maneuvered it to rest against her shoulder and bean plucking a few strings. “They're 'trick weapons.' That means they do something else instead of or in addition to whatever damage a normal version of them would do. In this case, when you use certain sword arts with them, you can lull low-level enemies to sleep if you haven't already drawn aggro on them.”

“That sounds useful,” Asuna replied, interested.

“Situationally,” Sinon replied dryly, watching me as I tuned the old beast of a guitar. “For quests that have a stealth component, at least. Otherwise, you run into the problem of being high enough level with strong enough skills once you have these, that you can just cut your way through enemies that they'd be effective on.”

“Eh... there are a few nifty questlines that you can do with these,” I pointed out, then looked over at Asuna. “Hey... I'm not going to use the flute-rapier from the set. You want it?”

Asuna startled, then frowned. “I-ah... I do know how to play the piano, but I've never played the flute before.”

I went ahead and manifested the instrument-weapon from my storage and offered it to her. It was, like both mine and Mito's, more of a decorative conversation piece than a real weapon. The bulk of it was made of mother of pearl with only a platinum inlay at the tip and running down the length of the 'blade' to suggest it was capable of violence. The entire thing was hollow, though, and so it was much more fragile than other makes of rapiers.

“It's beautiful,” Asuna whispered, smiling at the gift. “Thank you so much!”

Even as Mito gave me a sour glance, I smiled back. “Think about practicing with it. We'll be in the game for a while, so it's good to have hobbies. Mito can show you how to mess with your settings to make the skills run more realistically. That way, you can play the flute when you get back to the real world.”

Asuna nodded slowly, tapping away at her menu to store the gift. “I'll... think about it, thanks.”

“I have been meaning to get you started on some non-combat skills,” Mito chimed in. “I know you've been leveling <<Haggling>> when you went on those shopping trips, but there's other kinds of quests we can try out now that we're past the first floor.”

“Like what?” Asuna asked, looking between us.

“You could steal stuff,” I suggested, snickering childishly at the aghast look that came over Asuna's face. “Oh, c'mon! It's a game! There's a <<Thieves' Guild>>! They hand out quests to steal things and it's usually less dangerous than fighting mobs, even if the progression is a bit slower.”

Asuna looked me over with a newly-suspicious eye and turned to Mito. “I'm starting to see why you thought we wouldn't get along.”

Mito chuckled as she gave me a, 'take that' look. “Well, there's plenty of other things.” She raised a hand to knock down fingers. “There's cooking quests to make meals for NPC officials and you can eventually get to making delicacies for the NPC nobility of a given floor. We already talked about the music stuff. If you get enough of a reputation there you can play for big fancy parties and find secret quests with NPCs that most players never even see. Then... hmm, I think there were some messenger quests? Those weren't all that interesting given you were basically being a mailman, but they paid well. I heard some beta players found some hidden content there, but not the details.”

I cleared my throat to more politely interrupt, taking a drink from my soda in the process. “Supposedly, you'd deliver some bad news to people, like a firing notice. After you hand it over, you can hire those NPCs as party members since they're looking for work, and they have unique story hooks for good quests.”

Mito snapped her fingers and pointed at me with a nod. “Now I remember! That's about what I heard, yeah. Figures the cheater would know.”

I rolled my eyes and Sinon scowled slightly at the jab even while Asuna bristled. “Why do you keep calling him that, Mito? You started right after we partied up and never explained.”

“It's because you can see your party members' levels and statuses if you look them up in the system,” Sinon interjected, taking the words from my mouth. “You remember before the fight when Kirito said he logged in to help his friends and sister, us, after he knew it was a death game?”

Asuna nodded.

“Well, since Kirito is a huge game otaku, he knew how to mess with the NerveGear and logged in with his beta character. So he started out, day one, at level thirty.” The brunette's eyes widened as she looked to me and I nodded. “Even now, while most players are in the mid-teens in terms of levels, Kirito is nearly to level forty.”

“Which means I'm not mad that Mito is accusing me of being a cheater, because it's the truth,” I stated with a shrug. “But I decided I valued my life and those of my friends and family more than the rules of a video game, so it's more of a compliment than an insult.”

“Oh,” Asuna nodded quietly, her gaze faraway. “That explains how you could do that, with the floor boss...”

Mito snorted and shook her head as we turned our attention towards her. “Nah, that's just Kirito being a monster. Besides, as salty as I am over him getting to keep his beta character, I'd have done the same thing if it meant keeping you safe, Asuna.”

Asuna blushed red and laughed awkwardly. “Ah... thanks, Mito. I-I would, too.”

The moment hung quietly in the air as we all took in the comfortable silence before the door swung open, Argo and Leafa barreling in and their arms loaded down. “Food's here! Pizza from the best place on Floor Two!”

~~~

Harp Scythe

Guitar Sword

Flute Rapier - couldn't find a good one.

~~~

...and I really wanted this out yesterday, too. Le sigh.

Anyway! This is kind of a filler chapter to catch up with things after the boss fight. Lot of talking, but there were a number of subjects that needed to be covered. Next chapter of this will feature more going and doing as Kirito et. all take a mini-vacation after beating the first floor boss.

Next up on the docket is Industrious, this time the Marvel timeline, so get ready for that in a few days. I'll be trying to squeeze in one last chapter of Nexus event before the month's out, but it may overflow and have to show up with the June poll come the weekend. Sorry if that ends up happening, but things have been a little crazy IRL and it's been costing me time. Lots of drama and I'll spare you the details save to say that my ex-brother in law is out of rehab and it's been not very fun. Woo!

So believe me when I say thank you for all the support. I really, really mean it. I love writing and couldn't justify dedicating this much time without your help. Rock on and stay awesome!