Tokage, Shinwa || PHAEDRUS

PHAEDRUS
Shinwa
Tokage

PERSONALITY

Shinwa is defined most readily by his passionate demeanour. Bold and opinionated, he’s often the loudest person in the room; while this often leads people to believe he’s incredibly headstrong and prone to speaking without thinking, he’s actually quite sharp, and will commonly take at least a little time to consider the situation before he offers his opinion. In discussion and debate, he’s a habitual devil’s advocate, presenting arguments from all sides to help himself and others reach informed conclusions; in fact, he very often talks to himself, finding that he thinks more clearly about a situation when he can literally hear himself think. He wears his heart on his sleeve and greatly values friendship, with an often ferocious fraternal instinct towards those who firmly earn his trust.

HISTORY

Shinwa does not shy away from his past as a survivor of the original Sword Art Online. He had dropped out of education to pursue a career in gaming journalism, through contacts he’d made in the games he played, shortly before the release of SAO. Since he owned a Nerve Gear set, he made sure to snap up what had been promised as the most revolutionary gaming experience any console could present.

The revelation of the death game’s true nature took its toll on him at first. He was fearful, watching players disappear around him as the perils of the game took their lives, and he proceeded slowly at first. It took several occasions of crossing paths with larger parties, rendering aid to them to clear tough areas, for Shinwa to persuade himself that going solo would only put him in greater danger the further he progressed, so he chose to join one of the large emergent guilds: the Knights of the Blood Oath.

Here, among like-minded survivors who had learned to enjoy the little things and find pleasure in one another’s company even as they stared death in the face, Shinwa truly came into his own. He rose quickly in the guild’s esteem, and the name he’d chosen for his character, Phaedrus, became widely renowned as one of the Knights’ premier damage-dealers. He joined the efforts on the front lines, brandishing his favoured greatswords to undeniable effect. Whenever the Knights of the Blood Oath had a hand in clearing a new floor and advancing the surviving players a step closer to their freedom, the mighty Phaedrus could be found at the heart of the action.

By the time the game was finally beaten at the hands of the legendary Black Swordsman Kirito, Shinwa had likewise earned a name for himself: the Bloody Fury, unmistakeable on the battlefield for the devastating efficiency of his greatsword and the roaring battle cries with which he rallied his guildmates. With the game beaten and shut down, the first thing he did once he’d regained his strength through physiotherapy was reach out to find the other survivors, especially the guildmates who’d stood shoulder to shoulder with him at the end. When they found each other, they became such firm friends so quickly it was as if they had known each other all their lives. Shinwa had never felt more alive, or more thankful for the people who were important to him.

It was with these people, his family and closest friends, that Shinwa debated his decision to return when the news spread that the revived Sword Art Online had gone wrong in exactly the same way as the first time. He couldn’t bring himself to stand back and watch as more innocent people suffered and died at the hands of that terrible game, not if there was anything he could do to help protect them and lead them to freedom. With the blessings of his family, who understood what this meant to him, he bought his way into the new, unified SAO family of VRMMOs, and was thankful to find his old game data somehow still intact.

The Bloody Fury has returned to Aincrad.