Equal and Opposite

Chapter Two: First Round, Opening Bells

Okay, so I finally got around to continuing this after several months. It'll probably be a bit more regularly updated from now on. Honestly, most of what's here was done in the past two, maybe three days. I only had 1500 words of this written until about Thursday or Friday, and then I picked it back up and ran with it.

Most of this chapter is setup for the fight, though there is a fight later on, right towards the end. I took into consideration the comments about how I need to describe the scenery a bit more while writing this, among other things. All in all, I'd say that this chapter is about one and a half times as good as chapter one. Kirito will cuss a bit less, but he also has less going on to agitate him in this chapter, so…

Anyway, I'll let you read for now. Gotta see how much everybody else thinks I've improved.

"My name is Yuuki."

Suddenly, logging out and facing an angry mother seemed like the least of my worries. There was no goddamn way that it could be a coincidence at this point. The similarities from body to avatar were far too much to be a randomly-generated avatar, and the avatar was too detailed to be one just haphazardly thrown together. On top of that, the voice of this girl I met online was exactly the same as…

I managed to keep my cool as I logged off, though I desperately wanted to get out of the game as fast as possible. When I finally returned to reality, before I even pulled my Nerve Gear off, I uttered one sentence. One single sentence that completely summed up my thoughts about my entire life in general at that moment.

"I'm so fucked."

The very first thing I noticed after slipping the Nerve Gear off my head was the draft coming from my newly-broken window. I found myself shivering profusely, even though it wasn't that cold. The real reason for my shiver was a far cry from a simple temperature.

It was the livid face of my aunt as she pointed at my broken window.

"Um, I can explain," I rushed out, holding my hands up in hopes of appeasing her.

"Please do."

The coldness in her tone made me shiver once again. I barely held in my tremors as I spoke. "Well, our hyper neighbor and her sister were apparently doing some batting practice in their backyard. Unfortunately, the one who probably has severe ADHD somehow screwed up and hit their baseball straight through my window."

"So, where's the ball?"

Her tone seemed slightly less edgy than before. Unfortunately, I knew that it was about to get ten times as livid as it was now. "Well… about that…"

"I'm waiting," she said, tapping her foot rather impatiently.

"I kinda… threw it into the window of their dad's man cave."

"You what?"

At the sheer amount of venom dripping from her last word, I backed up on my bed until I hit the wall. A little part of me in the back of my mind whispered that it wasn't a good idea to back into a wall, and that I should have got up, grabbed my Nerve Gear, and ran for the hills when I had the chance.

I decided that repeating myself would only get me further in the dog house. And thus, I reserved my right to remain silent. Japan had that, right? I heard of it from an American crime show.

"As you don't seem to understand the gravity of harming Mr. Konno's man cave, I want you to be the one to apologize to him. He comes back from his business trip in about four days, so you'd best prepare a massive speech detailing your regrets. Understood?"

Oh, shit!

"U-understood," I replied, quite literally shivering in terror.

The next day, I found myself wanting to log in with a passion that I hadn't felt in months. Anything to get away from my quite irritated aunt and my smug cousin. I couldn't even meet them downstairs for breakfast; I wouldn't give my cousin the satisfaction of getting to see the usually-calm, cool, collected Kirigaya Kazuto shiver in terror, even if I had to wait for breakfast until after they were both done.

Thus, I logged back in at around eight-thirty in the morning, almost immediately after I was awake enough to move.

Once again, I was met with the cobblestone streets and rather large, medieval Europe-styled buildings of the «Starting City». I looked around for any people I might know (that is, people who didn't want to duel me all the time). Unfortunately, or perhaps quite fortunately, I found none.

I took out a «Teleport Crystal» and used it to warp to the main settlement of the fifty-first floor. As the tournament was scheduled to begin that day, I knew that very few people would actually be dungeon-mapping right about then. It was the perfect time to get some grinding in, and also to level my new secret build.

I should probably try to record another OSS or two for it as well. After all, I plan to use it in the final few rounds of the tournament.

The «Truth Reflector Cave», I decided, was a rather unnerving dungeon. Not because of the mobs or mini-bosses that lurked there, mind you. This went way beyond that.

In the bright red, almost pink crystals that covered up about ninety percent of the walls and ceiling, you could see your reflection. Your reflection. Not your avatar's. Yours. In other words, you saw exactly what you would see by looking into a mirror in the real world.

When I looked around for any mobs I may have missed in my grinding session, I saw not the reflection of Kirito, the «Immortal Swordsman» who had never once died since the start of the official game. Instead, I saw the reflection of Kirigaya Kazuto, the unsociable, lazy bum, wearing «Sword Art Online's» strongest player's equipment, carrying the strongest player's two swords in his hands.

"«Dual Blades»… what a tiresome build," I said to my reflections, watching as their mouths moved in time with my own. "Sure, the skills have crazy-high damage and hit count, and its attack speed bonus makes it a hell of a lot easier to record a high-speed OSS, but…"

I looked away from the mirror-like walls of the cave, opening my menu to return my second sword to its spot in my inventory. When the generic gray sword disappeared and left my mighty «Elucidator's» company, I sighed once again.

"Man, I'll probably never find a sword that matches my main one's power. Or at least, it'll be twenty floors before I do."

As I said this, I held my demonic boss drop out in front of me, inspecting it for what seemed like the hundredth time since I actually raised my «Strength» stat high enough to equip it. Without any thought, I swung it around, watching the trail of black that seemed to always follow it every time. Towards the tip of the blade, however, a small trail of white light would always follow behind the white cross engraved on both sides.

After getting bored of swinging it around, both in terms of attention and physical ability (that sword is frigging heavy!), I slashed the air once more, going from left to right before sheathing it in the scabbard on my back. "And, it looks like it isn't just a regular «Extra Skill», either. If it was, there would probably be a lot of other players with it showing up."

As I began my trek back towards the entrance of the unnerving cave, I heard the sound of footsteps coming from around the corner. I froze in place, knowing that there was no way to hide in a place that constantly shows hundreds of your own reflections all around you.

Wait… will they be able to see my real reflection?

Suddenly, I found myself seriously regretting coming to this particular dungeon. This regret multiplied by ten when I heard a familiar voice calling out my in-game name.

"Kirito!"

Shit!

I saw her reflection on the crystal walls before I actually saw her round the corner. I did a double take for a moment, before looking back at one of my own reflections.

Mine looks like the real me… but hers still looks like her avatar's… what's going on here?

It took me a moment to register her calling my name again. "Over here!" I called her over. I reasoned that if I couldn't see her real-world reflection, then she couldn't see mine, though I wasn't entirely sure of myself.

A few moments later, Yuuki herself was leaning over before me, panting as if she sprinted all the way here. More out of annoyance at the sound than out of actually caring, I opened up my inventory and quickly materialized a flask of water for her.

"You look like you just sprinted a mile," I pointed out as I held the flask out to her whilst looking away. The sound of her panting, mixed with her expression and body position, made for an annoyingly erotic scene (Don't look at me like that! I'm a teenage boy, of course my mind falls in the gutter when shit like this happens!). "Here, have some water."

I soon felt the small weight of the flask leave my hands, and heard the sound of feverish drinking, followed by a sigh of contentment. The sound of shattering glass ensued, and I knew that the flask had been emptied, and, having served its purpose, had disappeared from this world.

I finally turned back to face Yuuki, hoping that she no longer looked the way she did before. My prayers were answered. "So, you mind telling me what made you come here in such a hurry?"

"You're a life-saver!" she exclaimed, her over-reactive voice almost hurting my ears. I wanted to tell her that exhaustion and thirst had no effect on HP, but before I could, she continued. "But anyway, I came to let you know that the first round of the tournament starts in about twenty minutes."

I stayed silent for a few seconds. What was the point of that? And even more interesting, why did she even care? "Yeah? And?"

"And, I wanted to make sure you didn't no-show and cheat me out of my rematch!"

It was then that I remembered the length of time that the girl before me had supposedly been playing this game for. She certainly hadn't been around at the time of the first tournament, but still…

This girl… is a total newb.

"Not to be mean, but your scrub level is really showing right now," I couldn't contain my smirk as I told her this. That first part was a total lie – I totally meant to be a jackass there.

"How?" Judging by her tone, she definitely knew my true intentions, though it's not like I tried that hard to conceal them.

This only made it more enjoyable, though. Especially after her reaction to my next remark. "The system will teleport all of the tournament's participants straight to the waiting area when there are five minutes left until a new round."

"I-I see…" was all she could utter in reply, her face beet-red from embarrassment as she rubbed her neck nervously.

"So, in the end, your journey to see me was pointless," I concluded, the smirk never leaving my face. It was too fun to tease the girl who had made my life a living hell in the real.

"No it wasn't!" she defended rather unexpectedly. I looked at her with inquisitive eyes, but I didn't get all that far before she continued in a hushed tone. "You still have to tell me about the OSS Record system…"

Oh, right. I totally forgot I had told her I would teach her about that, didn't I? Well, we still had about fifteen to twenty minutes before the tournament started… enough time to teach her the basics.

When the blue light that snuck up on the both of us subsided, we found ourselves in a roman-styled room. Pillars supported the ceiling in strategic points throughout the room, and the walls had Italian ivy growing on them for aesthetics. I remembered the room well – it was the place where the matchups for the first round were revealed to the participants in the tournament. This was an instance map, one that only the tournament's participants would ever see. Using «Recording Crystals» to make the room public was prohibited, as I remember a participant angrily finding out last time.

On the west wall, a large sheet of parchment resided, showing a bracket setup with names on it. I walked across the volcanic stone flooring, making my way over to the brackets before anyone else realized they were there.

On the far right next to the number one, I found my name. I would be in the very first match, it seemed. A kind of opening bells to the tournament, I guess, what with me being the current champion and all. Yuuki's name was clear at the opposite end, so she would be in the last match of round one. We were probably the two strongest competitors, but I couldn't completely count out Klein, who I saw near the middle, on Yuuki's side. He would get far, just like last time. But I figured that my hyper-active neighbor would mow him down for sure if it came to that.

All in all, I counted a grand total of sixty-four names on the bracket, half of which I recognized from last time. That meant there would be about six rounds. They would probably have two rounds per day, making this a three-day event. Well, it was summer vacation, anyway, so it didn't matter all that much.

For those wondering why there were only sixty-four slots in the tournament for a public VRMMO, the reasoning was simple. The requirements for qualification themselves were already highly strict. Minimum level of sixty (I was the highest-leveled at 76), at least four maxed skill slots, and a few other tough requirements cut out about ninety-eight percent of the population of the game, which totaled about 50,000 at this point in SAO's service. Of the remaining two, or a thousand players, only a select few were interested in the tournament that proved the strongest player.

All these limiters actually proved quite fortunate; after all, this tournament would last bloody forever if everyone who wanted to participate was allowed to. And there'd be so many low-leveled big-shots thinking they were better than the system, it would pollute the tournament atmosphere and make it unbearable for the people who actually had a shot at winning.

I offhandedly wondered how many of the participants whose names I didn't recognize had taken the "catch-up quests" that I had noticed appearing recently. They were rare, randomly-generated quests from the game's new quest maker system that were only allowed to be taken by people within certain level ranges. They were tough, almost impossible to solo, but they were about three times as lucrative as normal quests once completed. You were almost guaranteed at least three level-ups from the mobs and completion EXP, nice equipment rewards for your level range, and copious amounts of the in-game currency, Col.

Admittedly, I had found a few in my level range (the high-level ones were exceedingly rare, so I only found less than five in total) and tackled them with the clearer friends that I could convince to come with. Every single time, I leveled up at least twice, with one of them making me level four times. The equipment rewards weren't bad, but I typically had better rare drops, so I gave them to my friends after choosing what they told me to.

I called the quests "catch-up quests" because for those who just started playing, if they managed to consistently find and complete these particular quests for their level range, they could close the gap between themselves and the clearers in less than a month of playing, based on my estimate. Yuuki had probably used more than a few of these to get to her current level and skill proficiency – the ones with mini-bosses were excellent ways to level up your skills as well as your character.

I heard the sound of footsteps walking up to the spot beside me, and I turned to find my violet-haired acquaintance. She looked at the sheet of brownish parchment herself for a good ten seconds before turning to me and speaking.

"Well, that sucks…" she didn't hold back her words even a little. "I won't get to fight you until the end."

I smirked, looking at her disappointed face with a smug one. "But that means that we get to fight each other in the final round, right? Doesn't that have a nice ring to it? I'm glad I get to fight the second strongest in the final battle."

"Don't call me second!" she snapped at my unintended antagonism, getting right up in my face about it. "That loss yesterday was a fluke, and I'll prove it to you in the final!"

"Bring it," I egged her on as I backed out of her way. "Just try not to lose before you get to me."

I think I'll start using «Dual Blades» in the quarter-finals, just to give her a heads-up that she hasn't faced me at my strongest yet.

I walked away from the bracket right before everybody else started going up to look at it. In about five minutes, after the opening ceremony played for the public, I would be teleported to the arena along with my opponent. And then the first round would begin, and I would end up being the real opening show – after all, I knew they fixed the brackets just to have the current champion fight in the first round's first match.

Here we go again.

When the blue light once again started to claim my body, I merely waved to Yuuki, who had been chattering for the past three minutes. I really didn't get her; I had made every attempt to mess with her, tease her, insult her, and other things that generally showed you didn't like a person. So the fact that she continued to stick around me left me wondering if she was oblivious, or just didn't care.

Anyway, when the light subsided, I found myself in the middle of a roman-styled coliseum with a seating section large enough to hold about ten-thousand players. And trust me, they were filled to capacity. The rest of the fifty-thousand were probably watching the free live stream, since in-person seating had prices that scared even myself.

I surveyed the coliseum's ground. The dried, flat, tan earth probably stretched out about a hundred meters in diameter, enough for a small-scale warzone. Fortunately, there were only two people there: myself, and a rather heavily-armored player I didn't recognize, standing about three meters away. He looked like a tin man compared to myself, considering my only metal armor was a small, light metal breast plate and metal accents on my black dragon leather boots.

Fortunately for my one-handed swordsman build, his armor wouldn't make it any harder to hit him. Sure, it added defense points, but if I made contact with, let's say his chest, my blade would move through his silver plate armor as if it were butter. Such is the way that the system handled strikes.

His weapon was a one-handed axe, held loosely in his right hand. They had about the same power as one-handed swords, but their limit was the lack of options for attacking, since they could only really slash, and were even more close-ranged than one-handed swords. Most of their skills would inflict high-level delays, should they land, which made them a highly-favorable PvP weapon if you used them properly.

This brown-haired, fair-skinned warrior was obviously a person who knew at least a little about PvP combat. His silver armor looked big and bulky, but I noticed that it gave a little extra room in just the right places in all joint areas. It also had a silver color, so it wouldn't be as heavy as iron armor. His one-handed axe, gripped laxly in his right hand, looked highly-upgraded, giving off a luster that showed lots of use, but also lots of maintenance. Judging from its abnormally large, lustrous black blade at the handle's end, he had put a lot of upgrades into sharpness and heaviness, the latter of which would gradually increase the blade's size over dozens of successful upgrades. Heaviness upgrades made attacks slower, but also increased the chances for debuffs, such as motion delays, to land on successful hits.

This person must have put a lot of work into his weapon. My own blade, still sheathed on the scabbard on my lower back, had just been upgraded to plus twenty out of fifty the other day. However, even at its base levels, it had the strength of a plus twenty-five normal weapon for someone of my level, making its real worth closer to plus forty-five. It was my «Elucidator», the LA drop from the floor fifty boss, and one of the only floor boss drops so far that turned out to be a weapon. With the current floor being fifty-one, it was probably the best sword in the game for the time being. And I had the only copy.

I had zoned out by analyzing my opponent's equipment for a good couple minutes, hoping that by the time I was done, the announcer (one of SAO's development staff set an AI up to do it, apparently) would be done with its speech. Finally, right as I finished with looking at my own weapon, I heard a system sound.

When I looked forward, a large timer loomed between me and my opponent, obstructing our view of each other. It counted down from sixty, giving both of us ample time to draw our weapons and get into form without our opponent seeing us.

However, just in case he could see through the holes in the timer display, I decided to wait until the last second before drawing my blade. The first and only person who ever came close to beating me in a duel had shown me exactly how important it was to not give away your stance right away. At the time, he had been far ahead of me down the PvP path, and the only reason I didn't lose was because we let the timer drain while our health was within five percent of each other's, resulting in a draw.

The reason I gave away my stance to Yuuki in our duel was because I hadn't been taking the fight seriously at first. But now, with the advent of a new tournament to decide the strongest player once again, my serious switch was long flipped. I wouldn't give anyone a centimeter. I would give it everything I had, right up until the very end. Because for me, that's what it meant to be a swordsman in «Aincrad».

Twenty seconds left on the timer. Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, and sixteen. Right at the fifteen second mark, I grabbed my «Elucidator» by its upper handle, drawing it from its scabbard. Once its tip left the sheath, I rested it over my shoulder in a relaxed stance, one that gave away nothing of how I would start the match.

Ten seconds left. Nine, eight, seven, six. I could tell through the timer that he had raised his weapon from its loose position at its side. I could also see the faint red glow of a sword skill beginning to charge. But it didn't matter. The way I decided to start would make his skill inconsequential, even if it were a dashing skill to close the distance between us near-instantaneously.

Five seconds. Four, three, two. Finally, I put my sword into position to activate a certain skill, holding it tightly behind my shoulder and neck. I turned so that my waist and shoulder were coiled as tightly as my arm, and my blade took on a white glow that quickly gained brightness.

One… zero.

At once, the timer disappeared with a loud buzz, leaving it its wake the player whose skill had just finished charging. But my own skill finished charging before he released his, and I released it a split second before he acted.

Unlike what he probably intended to start the duel with, my skill kept me firmly planted in the same spot. First my waist uncoiled, then my shoulder, and then my arm extended after it in a full-power swing of my white-shimmering blade. The glow itself separated from my blade right as the slash reached its end, shooting towards my opponent in a curved shockwave.

My opponent took the wave of light dead on, and instantly froze in place, his skill immediately cancelling out. The skill I started the duel with, a single-hit, ranged AOE attack that did very little damage known as «Serration Wave», had stunned him for a good three seconds to come, as well as left him in a forty-second «Bind» status, which would prevent him from walking, running, jumping or using dash-type sword skills.

I didn't intent on waiting for the effects to finish. I used the momentum of the slash to pivot on one foot, spinning around and moving my arm into just the stance needed to launch a second skill.

With the sound of a jet engine firing, I let loose my second sword skill. I shot at my foe with blurring speed, thrusting my golden blade outwards and catching him in the stomach. His armor's added defense didn't stop his HP draining by a whopping fifteen percent due to the sheer power of my blade. But I only used this skill, an ultra-fast charge skill called «Vorpal Strike» in order to close the distance, not end the duel.

While the stun effect lasted and his weapon still had itself positioned out in front of him, I drew my sword out of his body and positioned it at my left waist. The glow of this fast-acting skill was almost instantaneously finished charging, and I released it no more than a half second after I started.

The two-hit skill known as «Snake Bite» struck in two mirroring horizontal strikes so fast that it looked like two swords hitting his axe simultaneously from different sides, and only a single, earth-shattering sound effect released from the double hit. It caught the blade dead in the middle of its wooden pole, the one-handed axe's weak spot, snapping it in two and forcing the bladed half of the axe high into the air. Both halves shattered into polygons soon after.

This left my opponent with two options. They could either equip a second weapon and continue within ten seconds, or they would automatically lose because they didn't have a weapon to fight with. This was my goal the moment I saw his weapon. I didn't like dealing with one-handed axes, so I would either force him to use something different, or force him to give up. Either way, this match was mine the moment it began. I didn't even need to use a single OSS to beat someone of his caliber.

"I… I give up…" came an early admittance of defeat from my brown-haired opponent. Out of everyone here, it probably only reached my ears, but the system heard it loud and clear.

A big system message appeared over our heads just as I looked up.

Euro has given up after a weapon break-type disarm! The winner is Kirito! It said in bolded purple font. No more than two seconds later, the crowd roared with cheering at the overwhelming power of the winner.

Overall, that match took a measly three and a half seconds. That's how quickly the fighting ended, from my stun skill's hit milliseconds after the start, to the breaking of his outstretched weapon while he still barely remained stunned.

I sheathed my sword, holding out my hand for the loser known as Euro to shake. He took it with a rather bewildered expression, and we shook.

"That was a good wake-up," I told him, letting his hand go and returning mine to my side. "Thanks."

He responded with something polite, but I could feel the bitterness in him. He lost in the first round, in only a few seconds. It made sense that he would feel upset about it. Not only that, but everyone cheered at his loss. I almost felt bad for the guy, since he got stuck with the game's strongest right away.

The blue light engulfed us, and I found myself alone in a room several tens of meters above the coliseum, suspended in the air. The walls were of large, drab, gray brick, but the floor was of clear glass, so I could watch the battles from above. This was the room where the winners of the first five rounds were teleported. As such, this rendition of it was fit to house a little over thirty sitting people comfortably. As the rounds passed, the room would progressively get smaller, to emphasize that half as many people would ever be there each time. The people in the coliseum wouldn't be able to even see this closed-off space, and you couldn't use «Recording Crystals» in it, either, so only a few people knew of its existence.

"Well… time to nap."

With that, I walked to a corner and sat with my head in my hands, closing my eyes and preparing to nod off for an hour. I didn't even entertain the possibility of seeing what the others had to offer. Not out of cockiness, but out of laziness.

Besides… it's not like any of them could beat me, anyway… and I'm too tired to care if any of them have good skills.

It didn't take long before I fell asleep.

A few more mechanics were explained in this chapter, some off-screen and some on. I specifically had Kirito avoid using OSS in the first round, because he views them as his hand, which he should never reveal right at the start.

Oh, and for those wondering about why Kirito saw his IRL reflection in that cave, keep in mind that the Nerve Gear does have the capability to scan to get a good picture of the face, and the calibration makes it possible to get the correct body shape and size, so that cave was there to prove that point. After all, the «Hand Mirror» item doesn't exist in this AU, so they never reverted to their IRL appearances. Another thing is that you only see your own IRL reflection in that cave; everyone else's will look like their in-game avatar's.

Interaction between Kirito and Yuuki is going well for how things were set up, I think. I'm not the type to have characters throw themselves at each other right away; they need proper relationship buildup before they can even think about having feelings for each other, in my mind.

This chapter actually turned out to be longer than the first one, though not by much. Don't expect this to be a pattern, because I'm really bad at making chapters longer than four-thousand words consistently.

So, any thoughts are welcome to be left as reviews. Unless you're just criticizing me for taking so long, in which case I'll ignore you. But any critique available on my writing style would be appreciated.

Well, I'll probably update (UN)Forgivable next. It'll be a bit, though, since I'm not finished with it yet. And I promised a friend that I'd let him see it pre-release.

I guess I'll see you next time!