Chapter Text
Chapter 1 - A Bolt From the Blue
Asuna Yuuki had a problem.
Strictly speaking, it was more of a cascade of problems that all stemmed from one very poor decision, but that doesn't sound as succinct over radio, and right now, every moment spent on that, could've been far better used in trying to sort out her problem… her plane was missing a part, which had led to it being on fire, and she needed to leave it!
How today had gone so badly wrong, she struggled to comprehend…
Earlier that week…
Asuna was a model student, and she prided herself on that fact. If you asked her to write an essay and have it back to you the next day, she would ensure it was back to you at the exact time you'd asked for, without a doubt. She would always answer the question she was asked in classes, made sure that her notes were meticulous, and prepared for any eventuality.
What she wasn't, however, was a gamer. Or a pilot, for that matter.
When it came to gaming, she knew enough to know how to use a controller, as well as how to pull off basic attacks in the fighting game that Misumi was fond of, but that was the extent of her knowledge on that front. When it came to flying aircraft, she knew even less. She knew that going too fast was a bad thing, and that long flights were really quite boring. What she didn't know was how to fly a plane, and that was coming back to bite her, right now.
She'd listened to her brother, Kouchirou, explaining ACES Online to their parents over dinner once, and she'd witnessed her mother's apathy towards the project firsthand… or towards gaming in general, actually. Or anything that wasn't ''bettering yourself'' as she'd once put it. He'd rebuked that claim by suggesting that her definition of bettering yourself was in fact bettering your standing in society, and that she should just say what she really meant. The rest of the dinner had been an awkward affair, with very little conversation, but Kouchirou's implication, that bettering yourself wasn't linked to your standing in society, had lit something in her.
A desire to do something more exhilarating. Something like… gaming.
Okay, she admitted she had to start small; it wasn't as if she could just ask her parents to let her go gallivanting off around the world, as tempting as that sounded. She was still the heiress to her family's company, after all. Gaming felt like the perfect way of getting a small degree of freedom, and it wasn't as if she was going to become a delinquent just from playing a few games…
Her mother certainly had different opinions on that, though, having outright told her that any distractions from her studies would be treated harshly, but fairly, and that games were just a way for the unintelligent to pretend they had power before they returned to a life of mediocrity. Asuna doubted that was very likely on both counts, and Kouchirou hadn't seemed all that happy that his own mother was acting like that towards the industry that employed him. Needless to say, he'd become Asuna's biggest supporter when it came to games, which would've been great… had it not been only a few days before the NerveGear launched.
He'd planned to spend about an hour on the system himself when ACES Online launched, setting an account up for both of them, a semblance of cover from their mother, and then let Asuna use it.
That hadn't exactly gone to plan. Kouchirou had been held up at work, and Asuna had been given the go-ahead by him to log straight in and make their account. She'd made an account, and, with an evident lack of experience in MMOs, made their avatar look like her, or as closely as she could, managing to match all but her hair colour, which was now orange, rather than chestnut brown. She did find it odd that a game where players would be in the cockpit of a plane would need an avatar creation system that detailed, but there wasn't one for the planes themselves.
Selecting a country from the starting lineup had proven a task, considering she knew very little about the aircraft, their performance, and how they'd fly, but, after deciding that it wasn't as if they couldn't change planes, went for one on aesthetics alone - the BAC Lightning F.2.
Before she could fly the Lightning, however, she was to be put through the game's tutorials and learn how to fly first. She appeared in the cockpit of a very different looking aircraft just moments after she'd pressed 'accept,' then looked around. The aircraft had side by side seats, a long and straight wing, with a pod at the end of each wing, and appeared to be quite high off the ground.
As she returned her view to facing straight ahead, a man appeared in the seat beside her. The man wore the same green flight suit as she did, but his face was completely obscured by a blacked-out visor and an oxygen mask that had to obstruct his ability to speak…
Remarkably, it didn't, and the instructor, an NPC or Non Playable Character, as Misumi had called the game's characters that weren't people, took her through the basics of starting the aircraft, apparently called the Jet Provost, and, before too long, it was at the runway.
Lined up perfectly, as the instructor had told her, in a very stereotypically British accent, even going as far as rolling his 'r's, before telling her how the takeoff would go: the aircraft would pick up speed, and, at 110 knots, the instructor would call out for her to rotate the aircraft, bringing the nose off the ground and the aircraft into the air, before retracting the landing gear at 125 knots.
As the Jet Provost hit 100 knots, Asuna pulled back on the control column, and the small trainer became airborne, although only barely, as she felt a buffeting through the aircraft, as she climbed out at 20 degrees nose up. The instructor took immediate action and brought the nose down to about 10 degrees, allowing the aircraft to pick up speed and not drop like a rock into the grass beyond the runway. The instructor, having picked up on the fact that she was a newbie and making snide comments whenever she messed up something, had made the rest of the flight a
particularly unpleasant experience for Asuna, and as she got out of the Jet Provost, she made the decision to log out. She wasn't cut out for this, after all.
She opened her menu, and… the log out button wasn't there.
She was a rational person, and realised that, if this wasn't an isolated incident, there'd be people working to fix it. She'd only have to hold out a few hours at most… That had been until everyone in the game had been gathered in the base's main hangar and the situation explained to them. They were trapped. Not only that, but if their avatar died in the game, then so did they. The only way to escape ACES Online was to clear the game's campaign, which involved a bewildering number of missions, numbering into the low thousands apparently. Upon revealing this particular piece of information, the cloaked figure that Asuna assumed had been the game's lead developer, Akihiko Kayaba, made himself very scarce, probably to avoid being beaten by the angry mob gathered in front of him…
He needn't have bothered, given that most of the crowd were too busy having a breakdown to actually do anything, a not unreasonable reaction, Asuna thought.
/-/
Almost two weeks had passed until the hopelessness on the base had started to subside, and people had started to go out and look for the first mission. She'd overheard a number of the players moaning about Kayaba and his questionable decisions. Somehow, she figured they didn't mean trapping them all in a death game, and more likely his design choices…which made her wonder if they had any sense of perspective.
Regardless, she held her tongue and headed to the library. The library in the game was a huge area, larger than the main hangar on the airfield…, and yet she was the only person here. A small smile came to her face as she realised that she had a small hint of normality back in her life and as she read through every book on aviation in the library and made notes on what she felt was important.
As she did so, she began to lose track of time, and, before she was aware, it was 2am. She'd been woken up by the librarian NPC, who'd asked if she'd wished to log out and take a break. She hoped that was just a case of a line of dialogue being left in and not just Kayaba toying with them. Considering what he'd done, she really wasn't sure which it was.
Finding the library had been the end of the good news, as it turned out. The bad news began to pile up as she read about the aircraft she'd chosen. Performance didn't worry her too much (though reading about an engineer who'd accidentally taken off in the aircraft, by moving the throttles too far, hadn't exactly done anything for her anxiety…), but it was handling the aircraft that concerned her. She'd struggled to fly the Jet Provost safely - never mind properly - and that was an aircraft designed to be easy to fly! The Lightning…just wasn't, a fact evidenced by no one else out of almost ten thousand people flying the aircraft. Those that had flown it only flew it briefly, before they converted their EXP to the slower, but far more stable and agile Hawker Hunter.
Asuna herself considered that option briefly, but two obstacles came about. The first was that the Hunter was also a less capable aircraft in air-to-air combat, being subsonic and cannon-armed, with no air-to-air missiles, meaning she'd potentially struggle should she encounter supersonic aircraft.
The second was a more important one - that required having actually flown the Lightning for at least a few flights. So far, she'd managed none, which meant it was time to change that, in her mind…
After a few minutes, she'd found her way to her aircraft, which currently looked quite plain compared to some of the others she'd seen. A natural metal finish ran the length and width of the aircraft, with only a white tail fin, and an olive nosecone, covering the radar, to break up the finish. The Lightning itself was a larger aircraft, having the distinctive feature of its twin Rolls Royce Avon engines stacked on top of each other, which helped to reduce thrust asymmetry, should an engine fail, as the aircraft would not begin to pull to the side that had lost the engine. Its heavily swept-back wings also held the fuel tanks and its main landing gear, the former of which gave the Lightning a relatively short range without the use of its ventral tank, on the belly of the aircraft.
The other downside to the novel engine arrangement, as Asuna was now finding out, was that the Lightning was a narrow aircraft, as she had very little room in the cockpit, her shoulders only barely avoiding hitting switches. With no instructor, but an entire evening of reading the operations manuals for the Lightning, under her belt, Asuna felt confident that she could start the aircraft, and perform a routine flight, albeit armed with only the twin 30mm ADEN cannons, rather than carrying the two Firestreak missiles, usually mounted on the fuselage.
After a few minutes of messing about with switches, buttons, and toggles, the two Avon engines roared to life, and Asuna was soon discovering just how much power the Lightning actually had. Even with her feet firmly on the brakes and the throttle at only the lowest position, around 5% thrust, the aircraft still felt as if it would run away from her as she taxied to the runway.
Lining the aircraft up on the centre line, Asuna took a few deep breaths and said a silent prayer. This could go very badly wrong, and she had no idea just how this would actually perform…
The throttles were opened up, and, almost immediately, the Lightning bolted. Like a racehorse on a track, the Lightning flew forward, and Asuna went flying backwards into the seat. The description she'd read suddenly felt very accurate…; it really was like being saddled to a skyrocket!
Within twenty seconds, the Lightning had accelerated to take-off speed, and Asuna pulled back on the control column, and the aircraft soared airborne. In the Jet Provost, she'd nearly stalled at 20 degrees nose up. In the Lightning, the aircraft continued to accelerate, passing through 350 knots with very little difficulty, as the plane soared upwards through 10,000 feet.
As the plane continued to climb through the ever thinning air, Asuna took the chance to look outside the aircraft. It looked almost the same as when she'd flown before, only dashing by far faster. However, there was something that felt so different, something liberating about this. The only limits she had to worry about were the plane's limits, the sky around her, and that incoming aircraft…''Is that speck another…'' she mumbled to herself, her blood running cold as the realisation set in. She pushed the Lightning into a dive only a split second before impact, far too late to avoid the imminent collision.
Asuna didn't even have time to process what happened next, as her Lightning's vertical stabilizer collided with the aircraft, tearing around two foot off it with a sickening crunching noise. What happened to the other aircraft, she didn't know, as she frantically checked her plane's new performance. Remarkably, despite the collision at 525 knots, around 1000kmh, the Lightning continued to respond as it should, although the aircraft's latitudinal stability was considerably worse, the Lightning beginning to sway as it continued in a straight line…
Knowing that the aircraft was now crippled, Asuna began to fly the aircraft far more gently, performing a turn that a cruise ship would've considered wide and returning on course to the airfield, where she'd be spending some of her very limited supply of EXP on the repair bill, but she'd be safe, and that was more important.
For the next minute or so, the Lightning wallowed around a small amount, but otherwise behaved itself. That was until she noticed an orange glow on her instrument panel and looked back at the rear fuselage, to a sight that would make any pilot's blood run cold - the number one engine, the upper one, was engulfed in flames. Frantically, Asuna shut off that engine as she attempted to fly the Lightning back to the runway, around thirty miles away. Those thirty miles would feel like agony, the distance only inching closer to her, and Asuna prepared for possibly the most terrifying moment of her life - landing a damaged, and burning, plane, on her first solo flight.
The runway came into sight, and Asuna lowered the landing gear, feeling a noticeable weight on the controls, which filled her with yet more dread. The next seconds passed by, and the Lightning descended towards the ground, a soft thump telling her she'd made it…
As remarkable as she felt her landing was, it hadn't stopped the fire from growing increasingly large and engulfing the rear of the airframe as she'd made it. She frantically tried to open the cockpit, but, in her panic, her mind went blank as to where the release switch was, and a thought passed through her head - she could always eject if she had to, right? That was an equally terrifying prospect…
In films, ejecting from an aircraft was always depicted as a last-ditch effort to save yourself, when no other option was available, and give those filmmakers some credit, that it was. But in films, 99% of the time, the person got out safely. However, it was also a far more dangerous prospect, as it involved a perfectly timed system going exactly right, at exactly the right millisecond, to jettison the canopy, before a series of rockets fired you out of the aircraft, and hopefully not through the canopy. It wasn't even over then, because now you were in a seat, exposed to the air around you at high speed and all the aerodynamic forces that entailed, until you and the seat separated and a parachute opened, allowing you to float gently down to earth…you hoped. Or at least, Asuna did. Considering her luck, she didn't even entertain the notion of ejecting.
From halfway across the base, people were beginning to gather on the grass at the end of the taxiway to understand what the hell was going on and where the hell the thick black smoke was coming from. The few who could see the unfolding chaos couldn't do much to help, as the Lightning continued rolling down the taxiway, albeit slowly.
Inside the cockpit, however, Asuna had finally remembered how to unlatch the canopy, and, before she did, she pushed both fire extinguishers, something she'd forgotten to do as the crisis unfolded a few minutes prior. Both extinguishers came to life, spraying the twin Avon engines with foam and shutting them down permanently. Or until they could be rebuilt…which, based off just how bad the fire was outside of the aircraft, probably wasn't an option. The canopy release took only a few seconds, but, in a situation like this, every second mattered. Losing just five of them could be the difference between life and death, and Asuna knew it.
After three seconds, the canopy had opened partially, but got stuck as it did so. The fairly lithe girl was able to fit through the gap, contorting herself as she did, before dropping to the tarmac below. Picking herself up, she could feel the heat from the burning tangle of aluminium that had once been her aircraft, and it was excruciating, as if someone had set a sauna at far too high of a temperature, and, instinctively, her body made the next decision…; she ran away, as fast as her legs would carry her. Those seconds felt like an eternity, each passing slower than the last, until…
BOOM!
The aircraft exploded as the fire reached the ventral fuel tank and ignited the volatile fuel stored, bursting into a fireball that raised several feet above the aircraft. The shock wave generated threw Asuna, and a number of onlookers, off their feet and straight to the ground, whilst the fire had ceased to even loosely resemble an aircraft anymore, just a mangled field of scorched metals and tarmac, surrounded by a ferocious blaze and a number of NPC firefighters.
Asuna looked back at where her Lightning had once been, and not for the first time this week…felt like weeping. In the space of a week, she'd lost not only her whole life and her freedom…, but now she'd lost the one thing she could definitively call hers. The only way this day could get any worse was…
''SCRAMBLE! SCRAMBLE! BOMBERS EN ROUTE!'' The modulated voice over the base's PA system pierced the atmosphere around her, as players ran frantically to their aircraft, most of which were in the hangars on the far ends of the airfield.
Today really wasn't her day, after all...