Asada Shino

is a skilled VRMMO player. She goes by the name Sinon (シノン) in «Gun Gale Online» and «ALfheim Online». She is nicknamed Hecate, after her gun «PGM Ultima Ratio Hecate II», a .50 caliber anti-materiel and rare sniper rifle. She is one of the main characters of volumes five and six and first female player that Kirito meets in GGO. She plays GGO to overcome her trauma concerning guns. She originally considered Kirito as an opponent, but she later develops passionate feelings for him.

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. She used a bow that was made by Lisbeth.

Background
Her father died when she was young, and as a result she became overprotective of her mother, who was in a frail state of mind. She was traumatized after she attempted to protect her mother during a robbery at a postal office, and ended up killing the robber with a gun. As a result she developed an intense fear of guns and 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 on one of her hunting sprees and faced an extremely powerful boss, through sniping it for countless hours from outside its attack range she received the Hecate sniper rifle.

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 actually makes other female players admire her. However, Sinon has a violent temper once angered something that is 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 may be hard to approach, is generally a friendly person and doesn't mind helping others.

Shino, however, is probably the most fragile minded character in the series. 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 seemed to gotten over her fear and is moving on from the incident.

In ALO, Sinon is shown to be admired by the other female members of the party due to her cool attitude. She also bickers with Kirito every now and then as the two constantly tease one another. Sinon also may be one of the few girls Yui likes, as Yui and her were seen getting along in the beginning of Volume 10.

Gun Gale Online
She is introduced as part of a player-hunting squadron led by Dyne, and assault rifle user. She then engages in a fierce battle with the high ranked hitman-like player known as Behemoth, who uses a heavy mini-gun. After an arduous battle she emerges the lone survivor. When she returns to the city she encounters Kirito, mistaking him for a girl and offers him help. After buying Kirito's equipment, the two find themselves running out of time to register for the Bullet of Bullets contest. Taking a three wheel buggy, they arrive with time to spare and register for the tournament. They then go to the bathroom to prepare for battle by equipping their attire and equipment, at this point since Kirito accidentally sees Sinon without her armor or clothing, which then leads Kirito to confess, showing his ID, which Sinon finds out that Kirito is a boy and slaps him. In the end, she is irritated at Kirito for fooling her up to the tournament and makes him swear to her that he would survive up to the semi-finals where she would defeat him on the battlefield; she gives him her username: Sinon.



When Sinon returns from her first battle, she sees Kirito has already defeated his opponent, but sees him hiding his face between his knees, and when she tried to greet him, she notices that Kirito appears shaken and where he even holds onto her hand and they stay like this until Kirito is teleported to his next match.

In her last match to the semi-finals, Sinon clears her last opponent and manages to win herself all her matches for the semi-finals, and for her last match, she faces against Kirito in the «Inter-Continental Highway» stage. In a bus, she plants herself near an open window and scopes with her Hecate and sees Kirito. But not like himself, walking with his head down, he walks straight down the road where he displaying no will to fight her.

ALfheim Online
When the location of Excaliber is found by everyday players, Kirito decides that it is time to retrieve the sword. Sinon volunteers to join Kirito's expedition to recover the sword as a Cait Sith archer, though she also wanted a legendary weapon. She always gets her tail pulled by Kirito as a joke. When they enter the dungeon she is relegated to the backlines due to her having low health and long range. After Kirito is forced to drop Excaliber Sinon retrieves this using a returning arrow. She hands it over to Kirito under the condition that he always think about her when he uses the sword.

Notable Achievements

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