Asada Shino

Sinon (シノン) is the deuteragonist of the Phantom Bullet Arc in the Sword Art Online (series), and is a skilled VRMMO game player in «Gun Gale Online» and «ALfheim Online». Her real name is Asada Shino (朝田 詩乃). She is nicknamed Hecate in GGO, after her gun «PGM Ultima Ratio Hecate II», a rare .50 caliber anti-materiel sniper rifle. She is one of the main characters of the Phantom Bullet Arc and the first female player that Kirito met in GGO. She plays GGO to overcome her trauma concerning guns.

After joining «ALfheim Online» she becomes a Cait Sith archer, where she is capable of hitting targets 200m away with a bow that should only shoot arrows accurately to a max distance of 100m. This bow was made by Lisbeth.

Real World


Similar to both of her VRMMO game avatars, Shino has thin hair tied in small ribbons by the side of her face, with the back cut short. Unlike her avatars, Shino has dark hair in real life. She also wears a pair of half-rimmed glasses with oval-shaped lenses. Her skin is pale and she has black eyes. Her B-W-H measurements were 80-61-81 in the web novel.

Gun Gale Online Avatar


Shino's avatar has thin, pale blue swaying hair that was casually short, but there was a tuft of hair tied up on both sides of her forehead, and indigo colored eyes. When she is in combat, her wardrobe is a desert colored military jacket, bulletproof armor and combat boots of the same color and she wears a white muffler around her neck.

ALfheim Online Avatar
Shino's avatar maintains her blue hair from GGO, yet holds the appearance of a Cait Sith, her chosen race, with blue ears and a matching tail. She wears a green coat with white chest armor, a black choker and a belted quiver across her shoulders.

Background
When Shino was fewer than two years old, she was involved in a car accident. By the time anyone noticed the accident, it had been 6 hours. During the 6 hours, Shino's father slowly died from internal bleeding while her mother watched. Her mother was traumatized by the event and became very frail and was hurt easily. This resulted in Shino becoming overprotective of her mother. Nine years later, Shino was traumatized after she attempted to protect her mother during a robbery at a postal office, and ended up killing the robber with his own gun. As a result, she developed an intense fear of guns and a slight fear of men. She also was bullied up until high school for this reason. After being introduced into GGO, she fell into a trap, while navigating a dungeon alone, and faced an extremely powerful boss. By sniping it for countless hours from outside its attack range she received the PGM Ultima Ratio Hecate II sniper rifle. Her only reason for joining GGO is trying to relieve herself from her trauma with guns.

Personality
Calm and cool are two words that best describe Sinon's personality. In battle and most of the time in the game, she keeps a cool head that makes other female players admire her. However, Sinon has a violent temper once angered, best seen with her interactions with Kirito. It is actually said that Kirito is the first one to make her extremely angry. Despite all this, Sinon, while maybe hard to approach, is generally a friendly person and does not mind helping others.

Shino, however, can be a fragile-minded character. This is due to her childhood incident that involved her killing a robber. If someone were to act as if they were shooting her in real life Shino would have a nervous breakdown and be on the verge of collapsing. People have used this to take advantage of Shino before. Not only this, but the guilt of taking another's life haunts Shino the same way killing Laughing Coffin members haunts Kazuto. After the Death Gun Incident, Shino has made progress with handling her trauma, as she did not have any serious reactions to seeing a model gun when Endou threatened to shoot her with one, and was even able to use it while feigning that she was not affected by it.

Shino is shown to have an uncommonly kind heart. Not only was she willing to forgive Kyouji, but still cared for him as a friend to the extent that she resolved to visit him in prison to try and help, if not save him as a person.

In ALO, Sinon is shown to be admired by the other female members of the party due to her cool attitude.

Phantom Bullet Arc
She was introduced as part of a player-hunting squadron led by Dyne, an assault rifle user. She then engaged in a fierce battle with the high ranked hitman-like player known as Behemoth, who used a heavy mini-gun, the GE M134 Minigun. After an arduous battle, she emerged as the lone survivor. Several days later, she encountered Kirito, mistaking him for a girl, in SBC Glocken and offered him help. After helping him buy his equipment, the two found themselves running out of time to register for the Bullet of Bullets tournament. Taking a three wheel buggy, they arrived at the presidential estate with time to spare and registered for the tournament. They then went to the changing room to prepare for battle by equipping their attire and equipment. At this point, since Kirito accidentally saw Sinon in her underwear, Kirito decided to tell Sinon that he was actually a male by showing his ID card, which showed his gender, to her. Finding out that Kirito was actually a male, Sinon slapped him. In the end, she was irritated at Kirito for fooling her up to the tournament and made him swear to her that he would survive up to the semi-finals where she would defeat him on the battlefield. She also gave him her username: Sinon.

When Sinon returned from her first battle, she saw that Kirito had already defeated his opponent, but saw that he was hiding his face between his knees. When she tried to greet him, she noticed that Kirito appeared to be shaken. As Sinon slammed her fist on his shoulder, he unconsciously grabbed her hand and dragged it to his chest. They stayed like this until Kirito was teleported to his next match.

In her semi-final match, Sinon defeated her last opponent, Stinger, and gained the right to participate in the main tournament the next day. She was then teleported to the «Inter-Continental Highway» stage to face off against the other victor of the semi-finals, Kirito, for a friendly match. In a bus, she planted herself near an open window, scoped with her Hecate, and saw Kirito, but, unlike himself, Kirito was walking with his head down straight down the road, displaying no will to fight her. Sinon, angered by this, shot at Kirito several times, but missed each shot. She then ran out to meet him and demand an answer as to why he would not fight her. After remembering how he disliked his opponents dropping the fight, Kirito asked her for another chance and proposed to have a duel version battle, which Sinon accepted. Sinon and Kirito lined up and got ready, with Kirito throwing a bullet into the air, waiting for the bullet to hit the ground. As soon as the bullet hit the ground, Sinon shot, but Kirito was able to slice the bullet in half and get to her, asking her to resign as he did not like to cut girls.

Three and a half hours before the BoB finals start, Shino was complaining to her friend Shinkawa Kyouji about Kirito. Stating to Kyouji that Kirito infuriates her, which caused Kyouji to comment on how she was acting, saying that he had never seen her bad-mouth someone so much, as she never really takes interest in anyone. Later on she got home, and linked into GGO before the BoB finals started. After she linked in, Sinon noticed the betting area, and, looking at both hers and Kirito's odds of winning, noticed that both hers and Kirito's odds were quite high. She then met Spiegel, Kyouji's GGO avatar, who started to confess his feelings for her, which she stopped him from doing, telling him she needed to concentrate for the finals. She then met Kirito, who was also on his way to register for the finals, and then gave him information on how the BoB finals worked, and how the 30 participants had to work with it. Kirito also asked her which of the players in the finals she did not know, who were: «銃士Ｘ» (Jūshi X), «Pale Rider» and «Sterben». Whilst they were talking about Kirito's reasons for wanting to know who they were, Sinon worked out that Kirito is one of the survivors from Sword Art Online. As they left to get ready for the tournament, Sinon told Kirito that she would repay him for the humiliation he caused her in the Semi-Finals with interest, pointing her finger into his back as if holding a gun to him before she left Kirito.



Nearly thirty minutes into the tournament, Sinon was in a sniping position, watching a player run, noticing the he had no weak points due to his heavy armor. But she then noticed he had plasma grenades on his belt, which she calmly aimed and shot, reducing the opponents HP to zero. Sinon then picked her Hecate up and ran into shrubs due to her position most likely having been given away after her shot. When she stopped to check the Satellite Scanner, she noticed that there were three other players nearby: «Dyne», «Pale Rider» and «Lion King Richie». She chose to leave Richie alone, and watch Dyne and Pale Rider who were nearby and were most likely running towards the river.

As Sinon watched Dyne and Pale Rider, she felt a presence behind her, and turned around to see Kirito, with his gun held up to show that he wouldn't shoot her. He stated that he wished to watch how the fight between Dyne and Pale Rider ended to see if either was the «Death Gun». Sinon and Kirito then watched as Pale Rider was stunned by an unseen enemy, who turned out to be «Death Gun» who was hidden under a «Metamaterial Optical Camouflage». Sinon tried to shoot «Death Gun» at Kirito's urging, however when she shot him, her bullet passed right through him, not harming him at all. She then came to the conclusion that «Death Gun» had known where she was and had kept checking on her location. As she was thinking whether to shoot «Death Gun» again, he shot «Pale Rider» in the back. Sinon then watched as «Pale Rider» jumped up after the Stun Bullet's effect wore off, and waited for his counter attack, which never happened, as «Pale Rider» was disconnected. Sinon then spoke how Death Gun had cheated, as he had forcefully disconnected «Pale Rider», but Kirito then told her that he had not been forcefully disconnected, but in fact killed in real life.

Sinon then told Kirito to watch the bridge so that she could check Death Gun's name, as the third satellite scan was about to take place, but when she looked at the map, he did not appear on the scan. Kirito and Sinon then guessed that he was hiding underwater and was heading for the Lost City. They followed Death Gun into the city, where they only found two users during the next scan: Sterben and Jūshi X.

Calibur
Shortly after the «Death Gun» incident was solved, Shino was invited to join ALfheim Online by Lisbeth and Asuna. She created a new account and chose a Cait Sith as her avatar, due to the race having the best eyesight of all the nine races which proves to be very useful for using a longbow for long-range attacks. Two weeks later, when the location of Holy Sword Excalibur is found by everyday players, Kirito decides that it is time to retrieve the sword. Sinon is one of the 5 players (not including Suguha, as she was the one who inspired the expedition, so she didn't need an invitation) invited to join Kirito's expedition to recover the sword.





In the tunnel leading to Jötunheimr, she gets her tail pulled by Kirito as a joke, which she responds to by threatening to attack Kirito back for that. When they enter the dungeon, she is relegated to the back lines due to her having low health and long range. After Kirito is forced to drop Excalibur, Sinon retrieves this using a returning arrow. She hands it over to Kirito under one condition: that he always thinks about her when he uses the sword.

Gun Gale Online

 * «Hawk Eye»

Notable Achievements

 * Co-winner of the Third Bullet of Bullets (alongside Kirito) in «Gun Gale Online».
 * 2nd place in the fourth Bullet of Bullets.

Trivia

 * The glasses Shino uses do not have any prescription and are not meant for correcting eyesight. Instead, the lenses are made from an NXT polymer which is said to make the glasses able to withstand even the impact of a bullet. This gives her a modest sense of security and allows her to stay calm despite her trauma from the past.
 * The visual acuity rating for both of Shino's eyes in real life are 2.0 (in Japanese visual acuity system; roughly equal to 20/10 in the USA system), which is twice as good as the average person.
 * Asuna has nicknamed Shino as "Sinonon".
 * Sinon's avatar in ALfheim Online was originally going to be a Sylph archer. This was changed with the creation of the Calibur side story.
 * Sinon appears in the Sword Art Online game adaptations: «Infinity Moment» and «Hollow Fragment», as an archer, even though she was not an SAO player and archers did not exist in SAO in the original story.
 * Shino aspires to become a policewoman.
 * Shino's motto is "One Shot, One Kill". In the real world, this saying is popularly known as the "Sniper's Creed", and is often quoted by real-world military snipers.
 * While discussing about the designs of the series heroines, the light novel illustrator abec felt that the glasses factor in the series was too low at the time and suggested making Sinon a glasses girl. This idea ended up being adopted.

Gallery

 * See: Sinon/Image Gallery

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