Ayano Keiko

Ayano Keiko (綾野珪子), known as Silica (シリカ) in «Sword Art Online» (SAO), «ALfheim Online» (ALO), and «Project Alicization», is a supporting character in the Aincrad Arc, one of the main characters of the Girls Ops spinoff, along with Kirigaya Suguha (Leafa) and Shinozaki Rika (Lisbeth), and a reoccurring character throughout the Sword Art Online series. Silica is one of the 10,000 players who were trapped in Sword Art Online, where she was a dagger-wielding Beast Tamer. She currently plays ALfheim Online as a Cait Sith.

Real World / Sword Art Online
In both the real world and Sword Art Online, Keiko's hair is light brown and tied into two tails by red ribbons, as well as two red ring baubles for her SAO avatar. Like her hair, Keiko's eyes in the real world are light brown; however, her SAO avatar had red eyes. Before meeting Kirito, she wore a yellow robe with a dagger and pouch strapped to her waist at the back, a silver breastplate and pauldrons, brown leather gloves with metal bands, black shorts, and yellow boots. Afterwards, she wore a red robe of a similar design that exposed part of her shoulders, a short black skirt, fingerless red gloves, and black, asymmetrical shoes with long black socks.

ALfheim Online
Keiko's ALfheim avatar is very similar to her SAO avatar, except for having an overall blue color, as well as possessing the cat ears and tail of the Cait Sith race.

Personality
Silica is very kind, bright, cheerful, and supportive of her friends. She also has developed a deep attachment to her Tamed Monster Pina to the point that she was heartbroken to see it die and overjoyed when told that there was a way to revive it.

At some point, Silica had become arrogant due to her fame, but realised her mistake after this led to her getting lost in the Forest of Wandering and losing Pina.

Silica is also easily embarrassed and flustered, especially when it comes to a romance scenario, such as grabbing Kirito's hand, spotting many couples around her, or having her skirt flipped by a monster.

Background
Despite Sword Art Online being the first Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online (VRMMO) game Silica had ever played, she became the first player to tame a Feathered Little Dragon, which she named Pina, after her cat in the real world. She was introduced as a character whose parties treated her as a mascot, and who was immensely popular on the middle floors due to her pet and her status as one of the rare Beast Tamers. She is in the youngest age group of SAO players that are still active.

The Black Swordsman
On February 23, 2024, Silica was hunting in the Forest of Wandering with a party she had encountered two weeks prior. As they were returning to town around sunset, she got into a dispute with Rosalia over the distribution of healing items after the latter claimed the former having a Tamed Monster that could heal her exempted her from the allocation. Ignoring the party leader's attempts to defuse the argument, Silica left the party in anger and began traveling the Forest of Wandering alone, fully expecting her skills and Pina's support to be sufficient for her journey. However, she quickly lost her way due to the dungeon's unique design, forcing her into multiple battles and exhausting her healing supplies. Well after nightfall, she fell into an assault from multiple «Drunk Apes», becoming discouraged at her opponents' healing abilities. Fatigued from her constant fights, she made a miscalculated strike, opening herself to a counterattack that reduced her hit points to critical levels, thus causing her to freeze with fear. But as the Drunk Ape that had struck her launched a final attack, the blow was intercepted by Pina at the cost of its life, leaving only a tail feather behind.

In a state of rage, Silica defeated the ape that killed her partner and was about to engage the other two apes in a suicidal attack when the apes were suddenly defeated by Kirito. Her anger fading, Silica become overwhelmed with sadness and wept over her loss, before being reminded of the feather, the familiar's heart, Pina had left behind. Silica then learned from Kirito of the existence of the «Pneuma Flower», an item that could be used to resurrect Pina. Although the item was located in an area on the 47th Floor, which was outside her level range, she resolved to go one day when she had become stronger. However, her resolution was cut short when she discovered that she only had three days before the time limit for reviving a familiar expired. As Kirito offered to help her get there, Silica asked for the reason why he was so helpful, and discovered that she resembled his sister, which Silica found hilarious. After she formally introduced herself, they left the Forest of Wandering.

Upon returning to town, Silica led Kirito to an inn to stay the night. Right outside the building, they encountered Silica's former party, including Rosalia, who taunted the Dragon Master for the loss of her familiar, prompting Silica to announce her plans of reviving Pina. Ignoring the spearwoman's further jibes, Silica and Kirito entered the Weathercock Pavilion and ordered their meals. While waiting, Silica, confused over Rosalia's attitude, listened to Kirito's explanation  of Color Cursors, Player Killing, and roleplaying in massively multiplayer online games. When he reprimanded players for voluntarily committed misdeeds under Sword Art Online's death game premise but then criticized himself for his hypocrisy and responsibility for the deaths of his former companions, Silica grabbed his hand and consoled him, citing his earlier rescue of her.

The next day on February 24, the two journeyed to find the Pneuma Flower at the Hill of Memories. Despite encountering monsters such as the Garish Gerbera and Land Anemone, they reached their goal but were ambushed by Rosalia and members of the «Titan's Hand» guild on their way back. To Silica's surprise, Kirito was able to easily deal with the orange players and, after he sent them to the Black Iron Castle to be imprisoned and placed under the custody of «The Army», the two returned to Mishe, where they finally agreed to meet again, but in the real world. In the process of getting the flower, she gained feelings for him, but once she realized his skills, she realized that they could never be together in the game and began seeing him as a big brother figure, but continued to have feelings for him. Later on it was revealed that Pina was revived.

Fairy Dance Arc
After Asuna was rescued in January 2025, Keiko and Rika (Lisbeth) made a pact that they would give Kirigaya Kazuto (Kirito) and Yuuki Asuna one month together without interfering before they made their individual moves on him; however they quickly regretted their decision when they saw the couple having a moment on May 16. She joined Kirito and his friends in ALfheim Online soon after they met in the real world to explore the newly released New Aincrad.

Extra Edition
On July 25, 2025, Keiko joined Asuna and Rika in teaching Suguha how to swim, and talked about her first meeting with Kirito. Later that day, she joined the party for the «Deep Sea Plunderers» quest.

Phantom Bullet Arc
On December 14, 2025, Silica and the rest of the group gathered together in Kirito and Asuna's rented room in Yggdrasil City in ALO to watch the Bullet of Bullets tournament and support Kirito. As they watched the stream and speculated on Kirito's reasons for converting to Gun Gale Online and heretofore lack of appearances on camera, an ominously cloaked player paralyzed and apparently disconnected another competitor. When a shocked Klein identified the mantled player as a member of Laughing Coffin, Silica quickly explained to Leafa, who was the only one among them with no knowledge of the guild, the bloody atrocities the guild had committed and their eventual defeat at the hands of the Clearers.

Calibur
On December 28, 2025, Silica, along with Asuna, Klein, Leafa, Lisbeth, and Sinon joined Kirito's attempt to retrieve Excalibur.

Gallery

 * See:Ayano Keiko/Image Gallery

Trivia

 * With her avatar in SAO, she reminded Kirito of his sister, Kirigaya Suguha, despite looking very different.
 * As a Cait Sith, when Kirito grabbed her tail, she described the sensation as a "super weird feeling".
 * In the Blu-ray/DVD package volume 2, character song CD features Silica (Hidaka Rina) singing "☆Lovely Super Idol☆" as the 3rd Character Song in this series. This CD is bundled along with the 2nd Song, which is sung by Sachi (Saori Hayami)
 * Even though «Sword Art Online» is advisable for gamers above age 13, because of the age restrictions associated with the NerveGear, Silica started playing the game when she was 12 years old.
 * Keiko's family follows a tradition when naming their children. Since Keiko's grandfather was a chemist, he named his son Tetsuhiko after iron (鉄) due to Tetsuhiko being born on February 6 (2/6) and the 26th element in the periodic table being iron. Tetsuhiko continued this tradition and named his daughter Keiko after the 14th element, silicon (珪素), as Keiko was born on the 4th of October, but Tetsuhiko could not make a girl's name after the 104th element, Rutherfordium, thus resorting to merging ten and four to get fourteen.
 * Keiko's display name, Silica, means Silicon Dioxide (SiO2). She chose this name for her character due to her real name being based on silicon. The reason why she chose "Silica" instead of "Silico" was because "Silica" sounded cuter. She even ties her hair with two red ribbons to have two ring baubles which symbolize two oxygen atoms bound to her.
 * In a 4-koma non-canon spin-off, she had been stalked by Aaaa.
 * Keiko's Japanese voice actress also voices Kozuki Yuniko (Scarlet Rain) from Accel World.

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