Light Your Heart Up! {Yuuki Konno x OC}

Prologue- "The Beginning Is Just The Beginning. Not The End."

I'm standing alone on a street. Not sure which way is up or which way is down. All I can say is that I'm on a street. It's empty. It's awfully familiar to something I feel I've seen before. . . Where. . . is this? Then it hits me. This is Harvest, an old rinky dink town back in Aincrad. I almost missed it, set aside the horrors that everyone suffered from the game of SAO.

Suddenly, the world twists and I'm standing in the empty streets of Tokyo, neon lights blur past me, as if I was moving at an incredible speed before I slam into a car and--

I wake.

Cold sweat pours down my body and shudders wrack my chest as I bolt up right in my bed, throwing the blankets off of my chest. I look around my room multiple times, back and forth before taking a deep, calming breath.

We're okay.

Just a dream.

I rotate on my bed and dangle my legs just above the floor before letting them touch the soft carpet and exhaling. Still alive. Then again, why wouldn't I be? Ever since the Sword Art Online incident where thousands of VR players were trapped in a game with their lives on the line- typical manga material- I've been having a dream like that. Though I could never understand why it ended with me getting trucked by a car. That just didn't seem to make any sense.

I stand up, using the bedpost to steady myself as a small wave of vertigo hits me. I mutter a curse to myself as my head spins and steadies. Once I'm sure I can see straight again, I move on to my dresser, grabbing my shirt and sliding it on, not bothering to change completely because I didn't have any plans today.

I make my way downstairs after that to hear the bustling of dishes clinking together. So Momo decided to make breakfast? Hopefully not just for herself this time. I shuffle into the kitchen, scratching my head with a yawn to see an actual plate of eggs sitting at my spot at the table.

"What's the occasion?" I ask, raising an eyebrow at my younger sister.

She turns from her dish that she was cleaning from her own meal. "Nothing. Is it wrong that I felt like making something to eat?" She accuses and I raise my hands defensively as I sit down at the table.

"Not really. Just a change of pace." I mumble as I begin to eat. Sure, Momo wasn't the greatest cook, but she was a lot better than dad ever will be, so I was fine with it.

When we were younger, our mother had been involved in a car accident and didn't get fortunate enough to make it out alive. The first few months, we didn't know what to do. Dad was working himself to death, Momo and Shiro - the youngest sister- didn't do much more than cry.

After a few months Momo began to shape up, realizing she was going to have to step up her game, since I wasn't in any shape to be cooking at that time, and she started doing the majority of the house work while I was at school. And Shiro would occasionally help her, though she wasn't much of one to do anything.

Soon enough, we'd gotten into a rhythm of cooking and going to school, almost as if nothing had happened, which we all new was a lie. It always hung over us in the back of our mind. That's why I'd been holed up in my room for weeks before SAO came out. And then I spent two years of my life trapped in there, worsening every aspect of my IRL condition.

It wasn't some miracle in SAO that saved me, like some people finding their soulmate there, or best friend. But it simply made it harder for me to cope with reality. Two years in a virtual world that seems so hyper realistic wasn't the best for someone who'd just lost his mother weeks before.

I'd gone to SAO to escape the grief I'd had built up inside of me, but instead I just gained more of it. It built up and up, and eventually I felt like I'd pop one day. But it was all able to change a few weeks ago. I'd met someone who'd turned my life around.

"Hurry up and eat, your food'll spoil if you stare off into space for so long like that!" Momo scolds and I blink in stupidity, realizing I'd been staring at the window, not anything in particular, there was only a brick wall beside our house out that window, but just staring.

"Eh-- Oh. . . My bad." I return back to my food, finishing it within minutes and attempting to hand Momo my plate.

She glares at me a moment before I try to cover it up with a smirk and then set to work cleaning my own dishes. I was rather eager to log on today. I'd promised a certain someone I'd take them out onto a mini-boss run, and both of us were rather excited about that-- at least I think both of us were-- So, I do something of a cleaning to my dishes and pat Shiro on her head, who'd just woken up it seemed, and rush back up the stairs, getting my first wind of energy of the day.

I eagerly grab my Amusphere, the updated version of the Nerve-gear, assured to log the user out of their game if there's a spike in their heart rate, or any danger to their health. This time it wasn't equipped with a death machine to kill you when you die in game, so that was a bonus, too!

I log into the game I'd been playing a decent amount recently and open my eyes to see the realm of the fairies. Alfheim Online. A typical VRMMORPG, only it had way more mechanics than SAO or Gun Gale Online would ever pack. It had a magic system, sword skill system, mana system, and-- my personal favorite-- the Flight system. It simulates everything as if you were really flying.

My avatar logs into the game at my home set spawn point and I look around. I'd preferred to stick to neutral territory when it came to the game, since I liked to be able to interact with all sorts of different players than the ones with the same fairy type as me. Which was the Imp Fairy, a less popular selection of fairies, so there wasn't many players to talk to in the Imp Territories.

As if on que, a spark appears next to me, turning to simulated blue fire that rises about up to my shoulder and then begins to dissipate. It was the teleport animation that activates whenever a player uses a Teleport gate or crystal.

As the flames slowly die down, the oh so familiar form begins to emerge and my heart thumps faster with anticipation.

Her avatar was a slim Imp with milky white with a hint of purple skin, lustrous and gorgeous, long, purplish-black hair, and red eyes. She wore obsidian chest armor, a bluebottle violet tunic and a windswept skirt of the same color beneath the armor. A thin, black sheath hung on her waist.

There she was. The myth. The Legend. The Absolute Sword.

Yuuki.