Integral Factor: Ordinal Scale

The Augma And Ordinal Scale

"Oh, it was her?" He kept talking, this time in English, probably about something Koharu didn't want to translate. She just smiled at the ongoing 'hatred' between her two friends. "I suppose she's eager to hear your song as well."

"Yeah. Thanks for letting me take a break today. I would have gone home after school if you guys and my mom hadn't convinced me."

"You're wel...come?" Jaymes' confusion originated from up ahead, where a young teenage girl sang a song in the middle of the mall. That girl was Silica, and her performance was possibly a prank on her by Lisbeth, and she even had holographic spotlights on her. All of this, of course, was visible through the Augma.

"Oh, that's Ubiquitous DB!" Koharu squealed. She almost ran to join Silica, but that was prevented by the show's end. Noticing her cheering audience, the youngest member of the seven scampered over to her friends.

"You were great, Silica!"

"Excellent performance, Miss Silica!"

She didn't answer Yui and Rei's compliments. Instead, she looked up at the two boys. "Kirito, you're gonna come to the concert with us, right?"

"Huh? I wasn't planning on it. I'm not much of a fan if you wanna know the truth."

"What? You should go, it'll be fun! Jaymes is going!"

"Forced to go," he corrected, indicating how disinterested he was in Yuna's concert. "I have no one to give my ticket to since Momiji won a pair in the lottery. And before I could ask someone like Shino, a certain Rika Shinozaki said, 'We need a guy to go with us girls. A big boy, not just Koharu's little brother.'"

Kirito continued to rub his head. "Well, I don't know, maybe." As Liz sighed, failing to convince Kirito to join them, he removed his Augma. "Anyway, you must admit you can do a lot of cool stuff with this gadget. Still, I think FullDives are more my thing."

"You're kidding," Liz replied.

"No. I guess I just got used to living in different worlds."

"I agree," Jaymes added. "As bad as Sword Art Online was, plus there's Alfheim Online, Gun Gale, and Sword Art: Origin, sometimes they felt more like the real world than this one. It is where I met all of you, after all."

"You doofuses," Liz replied as she folded her arms. "You sound like you wanna go back."

As terrible as the boys' opinion might be, Koharu couldn't help but understand them. For two years of their lives, Sword Art Online was their world.  She initially met Jaymes and Kirito on the last day of the beta, and they helped her out in a dungeon. Kirito departed from them soon after, but Jaymes stayed with her until the beta's final second. They reunited in the official release of SAO, in which the boys assisted her and Klein in getting accustomed to battling before the doomed announcement from Kayaba.

Kirito went off on his own afterward, Klein had his guild, and Koharu remained with Jaymes until the final days before the first floor was completed. The pair reunited with Kirito during the first meeting to clear the labyrinth, during which she met Asuna, who she and Jaymes had saved weeks earlier in a cavern. They'd remain together as a party until they reached the tenth floor. Still, they continued to work together until the deadly aftermath of the twenty-fifth when Kirito forced Asuna into joining the Knights of the Blood Oath.

Koharu and her partner had multiple run-ins with Silica, Lisbeth, Philia, Rain, and many other of their SAO friends during the ascent up the floors. Most of them Koharu knew survived to the end, while others either did not or she had no clue.

Earlier this year, they revisited the world of SAO through a slightly different medium, Sword Art: Origin. Since it was a port of sorts of the original SAO assets, it brought back almost all the memories of Sword Art Online, yet it felt different. At the beginning of the original, she only had Kirito and Jaymes and a world of death; at the beginning of Origin, her closest friends were with her...and a death game for the NPCs. That is a story for another time.

"Speaking of Aincrad," Silica started, "do you guys think that rumor about Ordinal Scale is true? You know, the one about boss monsters from old SAO showing up in it?"

"Oh, right. The mysterious event battles."

"Really? Is it like some kind of promotion?"

"I don't know. I haven't had the chance to check one out yet. Those locations are secret till the last minute, so it's hard for folks who don't have a car to get there in time. It'll be awesome to find out, though..."

"That does sound awesome. And it would be nice to revisit those fights without worrying about dying. Right, Asuna?"

"Right, Koharu. So all we need is a ride...two, in fact." Right then, Kirito attempted an escape, but Jaymes grabbed his shoulder. Simultaneously, a message about the OS boss raid arrived from Klein. As the five girls smiled at them expectantly, Kirito's fate, possibly shared with Jaymes' fate, was sealed.

"...You too, Jaymes?"

"Just entertain them this once."