"You may have noticed that the Logout option has been disabled. I should also inform you that, starting now, if you die here in the game... you die in reality.
Welcome to Unlimited Blade Works Online."
There are other FSN/SAO XOvers, but I don't think anyone's taken it from this angle yet: an older Shirou Emiya, partway down the path from FSN!Shirou to Counter Guardian EMIYA, decides that the world needs more heroes... and since no one's stepping up, he's going to make those heroes, even if he kills a large percentage of the "aspirants" in the process.
Basically, this sprang from arguments online (particularly in ShockZ's "IWIW SAO" thread on Sufficient Velocity) of Kayaba's canonical motivations for the Death Game, which mostly seem to boil down to his wanting to create a "real" world with real adventures and heroes and monsters and villains (and yes, someone did draw the parallel between Kayaba and Quincy from Drunkard's Walk II). And it occurred to me, what if someone wanted to use the game to create real world heroes? And a Shirou not yet entirely gone EMIYA might just have the requisite ruthlessness, while still retaining enough of his original Hero Obsession....
Actually, I could see a fully Dark Knight Batman, feeling age creep up on him, doing this (not really killing the players, but *convincing* them he would), trying to grind down enough raw human ore to locate the tiny handful of diamonds in the rough fit to potentially be the next Robin... and/or Batman.
"Oh, McGuinness? You're father's not dead, by the way -- that was all just a VR simulation to let me measure your worthiness. You can thank me later."
And for an uglier XOver: Battle Royale Online. No need to worry about motivation there. And a virtual battlefield would be so much cheaper, and easier to control....
Welcome to Unlimited Blade Works Online."
There are other FSN/SAO XOvers, but I don't think anyone's taken it from this angle yet: an older Shirou Emiya, partway down the path from FSN!Shirou to Counter Guardian EMIYA, decides that the world needs more heroes... and since no one's stepping up, he's going to make those heroes, even if he kills a large percentage of the "aspirants" in the process.
Basically, this sprang from arguments online (particularly in ShockZ's "IWIW SAO" thread on Sufficient Velocity) of Kayaba's canonical motivations for the Death Game, which mostly seem to boil down to his wanting to create a "real" world with real adventures and heroes and monsters and villains (and yes, someone did draw the parallel between Kayaba and Quincy from Drunkard's Walk II). And it occurred to me, what if someone wanted to use the game to create real world heroes? And a Shirou not yet entirely gone EMIYA might just have the requisite ruthlessness, while still retaining enough of his original Hero Obsession....
Actually, I could see a fully Dark Knight Batman, feeling age creep up on him, doing this (not really killing the players, but *convincing* them he would), trying to grind down enough raw human ore to locate the tiny handful of diamonds in the rough fit to potentially be the next Robin... and/or Batman.
"Oh, McGuinness? You're father's not dead, by the way -- that was all just a VR simulation to let me measure your worthiness. You can thank me later."
And for an uglier XOver: Battle Royale Online. No need to worry about motivation there. And a virtual battlefield would be so much cheaper, and easier to control....