Sword Art Online: Frontier Mira

Chapter 3: Soldier of the Harriers

Kirito left the presence of Lis and Klein, after telling them to meet him at the barracks, heading to the nearby transport shuttle. The ship, looking like an orange box, hovered down to a small crowd of players, who were conversing freely. When the shuttle touched down, and the door opened, an NPC led players in an orderly fashion inside. There were rows of benches lining the interior, which were quickly filled up by people of all different skill levels. Kirito sat next to the wall, and leaned against it to take a short respite from the day's events. After the maximum capacity was reached, the door shut, and the walls lit up to display the city outside. Kirito jumped back in surprise, accidentally pushing the player next to him.

Everyone could feel the ship quickly take off, as they got an astonishing view of each district from above. Kirito focused on only one point, and that was the large countdown on the tower.

He thought only to himself. "It's a percentage, so what could that mean?"

Not long after, the tower loomed above them, as the shuttle landed on a platform in front of it. All of the passengers unloaded from the ship, as others took off and landed in the same area. Kirito looked around for more of his friends, after breaking away from the main crowd. He saw Asuna, Sinon, and Yui waving at him from the entrance to the tower. They all seemed very excited to see him again, so he wasted no time reaching the three of them. Yui sprinted to give Kirito his second bear hug of the day, while Sinon and Asuna stopped short of them.

"Daddy! I missed you so much!"

Kirito quietly laughed, not taking notice of her new body. "It feels like it's been forever! Where have you all been?"

Asuna took Yui's shoulder with one hand, and Kirito's arm with her other. "We crashed somewhere in the region, so we had to fight our way to the city. After we did that, we got inducted into BLADE. I'm sure you've heard a lot about it by this point."

"No kidding." He looked at Yui. "Whoa, when did you get an upgrade?"

She looked slightly older, around the age of 13, but still retained her young demeanor. She wore a white sleeveless shirt, with a black neck. On her arms were long black and blue gloves, matching her ankle high socks. She wore purple boots, and brown shorts held by a purple belt.

"Can you believe this? I got a new body here! I can help protect you and Mommy now!"

"I'm not so sure about that..."

Asuna only smiled. "Don't worry about it, Kirito. I made sure she was capable before I let her go with Silica."

"Yeah!" Yui removed something resembling a metal camping backpack, and unfolded it into a shield, larger than her body. "Nothing will get past me."

Kirito emitted a nervous laugh. "Is that all you've got, though?"

"If I need to hit hard-" She made the shield disappear, and in its place was a huge capsule. "I have this!" Yui unfolded the capsule into a gatling gun.

"Okay, okay. I guess I can't doubt something like that."

Sinon stood back, holding an assault rifle in her hands. "Obviously the developers weren't going for the realistic approach."

Kirito turned to her. "Definitely. Did you finally get rid of the sniper rifle?"

"No. The class system is what's holding me back from that. Yui explained to me that her weapons were based off of her class, and that I can change it when it reaches rank 10."

"Sounds like a grind."

Asuna chimed in. "Well, if Yui joined today, like the rest of us, it can't take too long, right? I'm already rank 8, and Sinon is 9."