Sword Art Online: Phantom Reaper || SAO OC

71 - Eiji

April 10th 2026 - 7:02am

Niko dashed out of his front door, hastily pulling on his school blazer. He hopped on his one good leg almost comedically with his backpack flung over his shoulder. He was an absolute mess.

Although it was fairly early in the morning it was still a school day, and Niko was running late.

He had spent so much time talking with Shino the night before and he, unfortunately, couldn't afford to be late given his school situation. For as much as he didn't want to, keeping up with school was his best chance at staying out of trouble.

Niko quickly got into his car and took a deep breath, quickly checking his appearance in the rearview mirror. At the very least he looked half-decent, which was more than enough for him.

His next step was setting up his "cast". Every morning he used the Augma to set his leg cast up since he didn't bother keeping it on at night.

Once he was done with that he hastily pulled out of the driveway and made his way to school, teetering between decently quick and dangerously fast.

A normal drive to school usually took Niko around 20 minutes and with his neighborhood streets taking up half the trip and usually being mostly empty, he at least didn't have to worry about bystanders on the road or stray cars getting in his way.

At least, that's the what he thought. The road ahead of him seemed clear and peaceful but he saw a flash of white dash across the road, forcing him to make a sudden stop.

He looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary. He blinked a few times and realized that he still had his Augma on and figured that to be the cause of the distraction.

As Niko reached to take it off he caught a glimpse of that same flash of white passing behind his car. From the brief look he got through the rearview mirror he came to the conclusion that the flash was a girl in a white hoodie.

Finding her sudden appearance strange he stepped out of the car, hoping to get a better look around and potentially find her.

Simply looking around did him little good. The streets seemed mostly empty at first, but a second look around revealed a boy who looked to be around his height in a blue bomber jacket and dark pants walking toward him.

It didn't take long for Niko to realize that he'd seen this person before.

At first Niko didn't think much of it and attempted to get one more look around in hopes of finding the girl, but the boy approaching seemed to take note of what he was doing.

"Looking for something? Maybe I can help?"

Niko shook his head as the boy stopped approaching, only a few feet away from Niko's car.

"That's a shame. I was hoping we would meet again."

Niko questioned what Eiji meant by that but he simply shrugged. "Maybe hoping is the wrong word. I've actually been looking for you."

"You're not making any sense. The hell would you want with me?" Niko asked the boy who simply shrugged and slipped his hand in his pockets.

"You're getting pretty used to the Augma, aren't you?" he asked Niko who had forgotten that he had it on.

Niko lightly tapped his injured leg, unconsciously bringing attention to it. "What's it to you?"

"Nothing you need to know." he squinted his eyes as his attention was drawn to Niko's leg.

His eyes lit up for a moment as though he realized something, but he quickly turned his attention back to Niko who was watching him intently.

"Ah... I think I get it now." he mumbled under his breath. "So you're Shigemura's new beta tester."