Nanairo Arshavin


 * This character's name is alternatively translated as Rainbow Arshavin (English localisation).

Professor Nanairo Arshavin (アルシャービン), known as Seven (セブン) in «ALfheim Online» (ALO), is a new, game-original character featured in the game adaptation, Sword Art Online: Lost Song. Nanairo's ALfheim Online avatar is a Pooka - a type of fairy who uses songs to boost her allies' stats in battle. Her in-game weapon is a large staff that she wields with both hands.

Background
Nanairo Arshavin is the younger sister of Karatachi Nijika (Rain). During childhood, the two sisters lived together in their home in Russia. It was from Nijika that Nanairo learned many of the greetings that she would later use, such as "privyet". From an early age, Nanairo displayed signs of genius, which caused her parents to argue about their child's future. These arguments eventually led to the divorce of the parents. Using his authority, Nanairo's father obtained custody before taking her to America, leaving Nijika to return to Japan with her mother.

Before meeting Rain in the game's main story, Nanairo remained unaware that she had an older sister. She continued to live with her father, who cultivated her genius, resulting in Nanairo graduating from university at the age of twelve.

In the real world, Nanairo works as a Ph.D scientist, while in the virtual world, Seven acts as an idol songstress, promoting peace through her music. According to her fans, Seven writes the lyrics for her own songs.

During an interview, Nanairo revealed her admiration for the achievements that Kayaba Akihiko had set in creating Aincrad; however, she stated that these did not justify the incident he caused. Whilst speaking alone with Kirito, Seven mentioned that she had wanted to play Sword Art Online (SAO) but was unable to. Despite the crimes Kayaba had committed, Nanairo wanted to use this idea of virtual reality as a springboard for her own research. She desired to create a peaceful environment in ALfheim Online where no fighting would occur, despite the fact that player-killing was one of the main attractions of the game. However, her real intention for playing ALO was to further develop her creation, the Cloud Brain, which had the ability to converge the emotions of people into one point, as demonstrated during Seven's concert in ALO.

Lost Song
Soon after Kirito and his friends logged into ALO, which had recently been updated, word about Seven's popularity and fame spread throughout town. She was first spotted by Kirito and the others when she and Sumeragi entered the town plaza and were immediately surrounded by fans - some of whom begged to join Shamrock. Nanairo's cuteness eventually caused Klein to become one of her fans as well.

Seven made her first major appearance in the story when she was trying to hide from Sumeragi and happened to encounter Kirito after the rest of his party logged out for the day. Seven started to seek out Kirito so that she could talk with him more often. Seven and Kirito enjoyed talking with each other, and Kirito started to learn more about how her research stemmed from Akihiko's work on Aincrad.

When Seven was asked by Kirito if she knew Rain at the time when she was dismissed from Shamrock, Seven claimed that she had never met Rain. Later, Seven made an appearance at Kirito's group's party after the boss at Flosshilde had been defeated. Here, Seven met Rain in person and lightly punished her for joining Shamrock via deception.

As Kirito's party continued clearing the game, eventually reaching Niflheim, the Dark World, Kirito began questioning the kind of affection and loyalty Seven's fan club and the members of Shamrock showed her. To verify the extent of this, the group attended one of Seven's concerts, and discovered that her words seemed to affect the viewers, making them motivated to complete her wishes. When Kirito's group managed to beat the boss outside the central tower and entered the final dungeon, they discovered an empty room full of Remain Lights of fallen Shamrock and Seven fans, who were undoubtedly used as sacrifices for Seven's advancements. After having cleared the boss in the next room, Kirito met Seven and Sumeragi. Seven apologized for the unfair tactics her guild members had used against them previously, and declared that she wished to speak with them at Agil's cafe.

At the cafe, Seven explained that her reason for joining ALO was to run tests on her latest creation, the Cloud Brain. Having gathered emotional data from the other players, the Cloud Brain was meant to unify the emotions of many players around one single point, essentially the same as what Kirito's group had witnessed at the concert. She then extended an invitation to join Shamrock to Kirito to clear the game and complete the final stages of the Cloud Brain. Despite being impressed with her songs and research, Kirito refused the invitation, as he believed that fighting hard with his loyal friends was his way to enjoy the game. Seeing as words would no longer work, Seven took her leave, but not before telling Kirito that they would be waiting for his group in the final dungeon.

After defeating Sumeragi in a duel, Kirito arrived at the final boss's room, only to find Seven having already defeated it on her own. It was explained that she had used the special badges given to the other Shamrock members, as well as her fans, to be able to transfer complete control of their Original Sword Skills (OSS) to her. Using these, she was able to slay the boss on her own, despite the majority of remaining players having fallen. Without any care for the state of her guild mates, she proclaimed that word of her accomplishments would spread all across the game, as she declared the beginning of "Ragnarok's Pastoral". The thought of her only achieving victory through stealing her fellow guild mates experience angered Kirito. As Seven started to ponder about the results of her experiment, which were being recorded by Sumeragi, Rain slapped her.

Rain was angered as well, as seeing what Seven had did to her allies made her believe that her own job as an idol was a joke as well. Although Seven claimed that it had only been a simple "business transaction" she was doing, Rain retorted that Seven had only progressed thus far due to the people who supported her spoiling her out of love. Despite her outbursts, Seven declared that she would not stop, her experiment would be finished, and she would be recognized for it. This led to the beginning of Kirito and Rain's battle against Seven, who was armed with countless Original Sword Skills at her disposal. Despite this giant advantage, Kirito's party still defeated Seven.

Following her defeat, Seven's uncontrolled rage erupted, and she began claiming she would be the one to be worshiped as a goddess for clearing Svart Alfheim and defeating the «Hero of SAO». However, at that moment, Seven's avatar became corrupt and mutated from the stress of commanding a large number of Original Sword Skills, and thus it transformed into a monstrous form, which confronted Kirito's party one last time as the final boss. Throughout the fight, Seven's rage continued to grow as she lost rational thought. However, as the fight continued, Rain became unwilling to fight, as realized that Seven was merely having an emotional outburst, and thus could not hurt her anymore. The battle ended with Kirito's victory, and Seven's avatar returning to normal.

Defeated and on the verge of losing her hit points, Seven ultimately broke down and started bawling, as she could not understand her failure. Sensing that it was the weight of expectations collapsing on her, Rain opened her arms and embraced Seven without a second thought, letting her cry to her heart's content. At the same time, uproars began to spread as the video feed of Seven's activity flooded the forums. Eventually, Seven's avatar lost all her hit points and her avatar disappeared.

Days later, in the aftermath of the event, not only had Seven practically stopped having concerts in ALfheim Online, but Shamrock's activity had practically halted, as her fans began dwindling away, some even unwilling to help her organize concerts. Despite such circumstances, Seven returned to her normal cheerful self, became a regular at Agil's cafe and began spending time with Kirito and the others.

After meeting Rain in real life, Kirito thought of a scheme to bring the sisters together again. After Kirito's duel with Rain, Seven arrived on the scene in time to learn the truth that Rain was actually her older sister, which was a fact that she had forgotten. Hearing everything Rain had to say, the memory of her childhood in Russia came flooding back, and she recalled her older sister, embracing her once more. Kirito watched on as the separated sisters were happy to be reunited.

In a short post-game scene, Seven invited her older sister to come join her to perform on stage at one of her concerts. Despite Rain having stage fright at first, Seven gave her older sister a mask to help ease her worries. The concert was a success, as the fans approved of the sisters singing together, prompting Rain to continue pursuing her dreams.

Seven joined the party for one final post-game event battle, where the entire group headed to Niflheim to challenge a new event quest boss. Throughout their journey in the dungeon, a voice spoke to them telepathically, asking how the players had managed to reach the point that they were at that day. Upon reaching the end, Rain and Seven both speak about how their lives had changed for the better after meeting Kirito and his friends. The voice then introduced itself as «Lost Song», the most powerful event boss of the game. After defeating it, the group returned to Agil's cafe, where Seven revealed that Rain and her mother were coming to visit her in America very soon.

Hollow Realization
When Sword Art: Origin (SA:O) was announced to the public, Nanairo was among those curious as to who would resurrect the Death Game and of the extent to which FullDive could take humanity. Thus, she lent her name in support of the project, though she confided to Kirito her endorsement was only a publicity stunt to quiet the most outspoken critics of the game. Weeks later, she invited Kirito and his friends to participate in the closed beta test.

Shortly after the release of the game, Nanairo contacted Kirito, Lisbeth, Leafa, and Silica through a special application she had designed for auditory chatting from outside the game. When questioned on her participation in developing the game, Nanairo revealed her support of the project was only nominal, though it was enough for her to have them join the beta test and import their old avatars. She regretted not being able to play with them due to her research, vowing to finish it before the end of the beta and the introduction of the Ground Quest, a massive story quest to be added at the game's official launch.

Inquiring on their activities up to that point, she learned of the mysterious Non-Player Character (NPC) with no pre-programmed settings they encountered. She dismissed their belief that it was a programmer's oversight, as the Cardinal System that was running Sword Art: Origin would have automatically corrected the error upon detecting it. Concerned at the prospect of an NPC without any settings being active, Nanairo remarked the management would immediately delete Premiere if they found her. However, sensing the group's desire to avoid that, she promised not to report the abnormality to the administrators, though she warned them not to let the NPC draw too much attention. Realizing the time and the amount of work she still had, she bid them farewell and closed the application.

After Premiere managed to survive an assault from a misinformed player, Nanairo revealed to Kirito that aside from being a game, Sword Art: Origin was a research platform on interactions between humans and artificial intelligence (AI). To that end, the developers equipped each NPC with a functioning AI, rendering each individual as a unique existence. Thus, the underlying code expressly forbade duplication of an NPC character, instead replacing a deceased NPC with another character who possessed a different personality.

Much later, Nanairo contacted Kirito and Asuna while the group was progressing through the Kurjiez Desert. She anxiously informed them of a mysterious phenomenon she had discovered in her work: while running stress tests on the AmuSphere, she had observed that several AmuSphere units, including those of Kirito and his friends, were imperceptibly slowing down for some indiscernible reason ever since the start of SA:O. Although the players were not exposed to any danger, she was concerned that virtual reality research could face a setback if the problems were found to not be limited to the Cardinal System.

In an attempt to lighten the mood, Nanairo inquired on their activities in the game, thus learning of the progress the group had made on Premiere's enigmatic questline. The girl was surprised to discover that two Goddesses and six Sacred Stones were integral to this quest, as those were the key components of the unfinished Ground Quest, which was not supposed to be available to the public. At Kirito's request, Nanairo disclosed the location of an administrator console within the Kurjiez Desert in hopes of discovering the cause behind the quest's premature activation.

Through their investigation, Nanairo learnt about the Cardinal System's modifications to the quest to reenact the events of the Great Separation and recreate Aincrad, as well their inability to deactivate the quest from the console. She agreed with their decision not to report their findings to the administrators, since the developers would have to close the game if they lost control over it, thus potentially jeopardizing the future of virtual reality.

Not long thereafter, Nanairo secretly listened to Kirito's conversation with Genesis during their duel in the Temple of Prayers, revealing her presence when Genesis confessed to illegally altering his AmuSphere's safety protocols. In the aftermath of the battle, Nanairo reported Genesis' in-game actions to the public, which led to his immediate arrest.

However, Nanairo was unable to directly take much action when Tia, Premiere's twin sister decided to initiate the Great Separation on her own. After Kirito's group managed to avert Tia's attempt to destroy both Ainground and Aincrad, Nanairo notified them that she had been caught in another wave of research, though she promised to complete it and join them as soon as possible.

Fatal Bullet
Sometime after the events of the Death Gun incident and the case of stolen NerveGear units, Seven heard a rumor that the AI idol YUNA had appeared in Gun Gale Online (GGO). Excited at the chance to meet the one who had inspired her to become an idol herself, she convinced Rain to help her look for YUNA. Shortly after beginning their investigation, the sisters encountered Afasys, Fukaziroh, Kureha, LLENN, M, Pitohui, and the Protagonist, who were about to explore the Winter Frontier in search of a rumored rare item. Though reluctant to involve others, Seven was persuaded to invite the group to assist with their hunt, as the two had failed to find any leads. Once they had prepared themselves, the duo followed the others as they entered a blizzardy region with the Winter Frontier, where they eventually found YUNA.

Elated over meeting her inspiration for becoming an idol, Seven eagerly agreed to YUNA's request for their help in completing a quest in the Winter Frontier. Therefore, the group probed deeper into the area, eventually encountering a building that was apparently generating a blizzard plaguing the entire region. After spending some time studying the structure and the area around it, the girl determined she and Rain would need to sing atop a sonic-amplifying machine in front of the building to deactivate the snowmaker in order to complete the quest. While everyone else defended them from monsters attracted by their song, the sisters with YUNA's assistance performed on the machine, the last of whose participation provided the final bit of effort needed to terminate the blizzard. Afterward, Seven joined the others in exploring the rest of the Winter Frontier while Afasys, the Protagonist, and YUNA departed to pursue their own goals, the last of whom the girl was mildly disappointed to see leave.

Gallery

 * See Nanairo Arshavin/Image Gallery

Trivia

 * Seven is unlocked as a playable character in Lost Song after the defeat of the event boss «Lost Song».
 * Seven is available as a DLC character in Hollow Realization after the completion of the main story.
 * Seven has held several lectures and academic discussions within ALfheim Online.
 * November 18 was chosen as the day for Nanairo Arshavin's birthday as it was the day the Russian city of Yekaterinburg was founded. This reference was selected because of the city's abundance of theatres and performing arts, which appealed to the girl. Additionally, the salt mines beneath the city are known as The Caves of Seven Colours (七色の洞窟) in Japanese. This option won by a majority of the votes against February 29 (the leap day of 2012) and January 7 (Russian Orthodox Christmas).

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