A type of semi-autonomous mob in ALO, Pixies have gained sentience and a high degree of intelligence after the Transition. They have a tribal, almost insect-like society, centered around the worship of Yggdrasil and their symbiotic relationship with their Garden. The first Pixie Garden to make contact was located near Tarbes and for a time waged war with the village. They have since made peace with the Fae and Halkeginians. Currently, the Tarbes Garden is helping to locate other Gardens, as well as their missing sisters.
WARNING! Unmarked spoilers beyond this point.
Tropes common to all Pixies
- Big Sister Instinct: Rule #1 of Pixie Society is "Elder Sisters protect Little Sisters".
- Chaste Heroine: Per
Word of God, Pixies have no concept of sexuality whatsoever, and actually find it rather gross. - Fantastic Caste System: All pixies are born as Little Sisters, who are basically the working caste who tend to the Garden, stoke fires, gather food etc. Eventually, they grow into Elder Little Sisters, who are responsible for the Little Sisters (feeding them, caring for them etc.). Little Sisters may or may not blossom into a Vespid Knight, the warrior class who defends the Garden, or a Shaman, the cleric class who teach the Little Sisters and tend to the Yggdrasil blooms, and generally lead the community as a whole.
- Goal-Oriented Evolution: Pixies will usually blossom into what they desire or find themselves good at. Due to The Transition, their new experiences have opened new evolutionary lines such as one Pixie who found herself more intelligent and questioning of the world blossomed into a line more oriented for research and discovery and was sent to TRIST.
- One omake shows an example of Gone Horribly Right, as Pixies who find themselves adept at black-ops will blossom into Professional Killers who are noted to have done so with a Lack of Empathy. Obviously most would join up with the Tristanian intelligence agency CATSI.
- Another variation exists in the omake Senchako, where a pixie's Little Sister stage is carefully raised in order to blossom into what can essentially be called living tea bags. From their diet to their physical and mental training in order to withstand the near boiling water they're submerged in. They are also given the more socially acceptable education of the geisha and oiran.
- Hates Being Alone: So much so, that one wild pixie that has a rather unusual Blossoming fears being exiled for not fitting into either the Shaman or Vespid Knights classes of adult pixies. Lucky for her, Hinagiku realizes that her blossoming is more in line with a researcher and sends her off to TRIST.
- In Harmony with Nature: Pixies are able to commune with and momentarily tame lesser mobs to use as mounts. They also sense changes.
- One-Gender Race: Female only; new pixies are born from a special flower known as Yggdrasil blooms.
- Painful Transformation: Blossoming is not a pleasant experience. Even with a shaman on hand to help, the Little Sister can expect at least several hours of feverish sleep as their body morphs and their mind expands.
- Sweet Tooth: All pixies seem to have it to some extent. They particularly like honey.
Botan
Dame Botan, Knight of the Garden
- Ascended Fangirl: As a Little Sister, she admired the Knights of the Garden. Then she blossomed into one.
- Honor Before Reason: As a knight, it is her purpose to defend the Garden and Little Sisters. Thus, she sees nothing wrong with deliberately Wilting in order to prove the process is safe, even if it means risking her very status as a knight forever.
Hinagiku
Shaman of the Garden
- Reasonable Authority Figure: In contrast to Sayuri, she tries to understand Yui and the humans, instead of blindly charging into violence.
- Sweet Tooth: She can't walk two meters through the market without drooling.
- Team Mom: She has a maternal love and care for all of the Little Sisters in her garden. She both teaches them how to be proper pixies and encourages them when they are sad or afraid.
Sayuri
Knight of the Garden
The leader of the Tarbes Garden knights and the mastermind behind the attacks on Tarbes. A brash and extremely serious pixie, she is dedicating everything to what she sees as duty, but is actually revenge fueled by a huge dose of PTSD. The sole survivor of her garden, which was burned to the ground by human mages.- Dark and Troubled Past: As far as she knew, she was the only survivor of her Garden, which was burned to ash in the moments before she was born.
- Doomed Hometown: Her Garden burning to ash is what prompted her heroic (in her mind) quest to save the neighboring garden from the "beings".
- Filler Villain: She is the villain or rather, one of two in the Tarbes quest, which is a filler arc.
- General Ripper: The Eldest Sister's rallying cry is "kill the evil beings!" It slowly becomes clear that her hatred for humans outweighs her love for pixies.
- Raise Him Right This Time: Her fate at the end of the Tarbes Arc is to regress into a little sister with only phantom memories of her previous life.
- Villainous Breakdown: After being defeated by Botan and having the Garden declare peace with the humans of Tarbes, she completely loses it.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: She just wants to protect her adopted family and second Garden from what she sees as evil giant creatures who will kill and enslave them and she's not entirely wrong on that point.
Shion
After her Villainous Breakdown, Sayuri escaped on her dragon to her old devastated Garden. When Botan finds her, she had already Wilted back into a Little Sister and lost most of her memories of her former life. In light of this, Hinagiku decided to take her under her wing and give her a new name.- Big Sister Worship: Botan is her idol and role model, and she loves spending time with her more than anyone else.
- Everyone's Baby Sister: She is so tiny and cute that even the other Little Sisters dote on her.
- I Hate Past Me: The name "Sayuri" reminds her of ashes and mean things, and so she doesn't want to be associated with it.
- Meaningful Rename: She hates the sound of "Sayuri" so Hingaiku names her "Shion" instead.
Kigiku and Ajisai
Knights of the Garden
Celandine, Olive, and Lily(Iris)
Born from the Yggdrasil blossoms from Sayuri's home Garden that was picked by Euphrasie after the transition of Alfhiem to Tristain. These blossoms were given to the Count of Tarbes whereby he grew an interest in them that began the Tarbes arc.- Happily Adopted: For all intents and purposes, they are the daughters of the Count of Tarbes. He takes care of them and teaches them and they, in turn, adore him.
- Series Continuity Error: In Part 5 & 6 of Chapter 11 Lily is introduced as Iris, but by the end of part 6 she is referred to as Lily. By the end of Part 7, she is reintroduced as Iris.
Lily
The only one born from the batch of Yggdrasil blossoms that Euphrasie and her mother kept in their garden.- Happily Adopted: She basically imprints on Euphrasie and becomes the Little Sister to her Elder Sister.
- Series Continuity Error: In Part 6 of Chapter 11, near the end, the reader does not know of Lily. It appears the author intended to introduce her but later forgot. As such, she is confused with Iris. This is further confirmed in Part 7 of Chapter 11 where Euphrasie and her companion, Antoine mention that the Count had three Pixies under his care back at the village.
Yui
Kirito and Asuna's adopted virtual daughter, who became real when ALO was brought to Halkegenia. During the second arc, she manages to access Cardinal and to use its abilities to transform herself into a member of the Maeve race with maxed out stats in order to attempt to save her father, Louise, and Duchess de Valliere. Doing so, however, nearly cost her her life as her unstable new form began to unravel. She was saved by the appearance of Akikhiko Kayaba who remade her as a Maeve Fae at the cost of her original human and Pixie forms.- Arch Nemesis Dad: Archnemesis Grandfather actually since fighting Heathcliff is the first time she's felt honest hatred for someone and she truly wanted to strike him down. After all, he almost killed her parents that one time and is responsible for the first time she experienced a system crash by creating her to do something and then forbidding her from actually doing it.
- Badass Adorable: Karin remarks that in her older super-mode player form she looks like a fairy princess out for a stroll and yet she possess maxed out stats and also skill with dual wielding.
- Berserk Button: Heathcliff, her family being in danger.
- Discard and Draw: Gaining a Maeve body came at the cost of her human and pixie forms, which were damaged beyond repair.
- Dynamic Entry: Drops from above to stop Heathcliff from landing a killing blow on Karin.
- Emergency Transformation: Akikhiko Kayaba saves her from her hacked player form by salvaging parts of her human, pixie and Maeve forms to create a stable form for her consciousness to inhabit.
- Good with Numbers: She helps Sakuya organize a census of Arrun. She also draws a little more attention to herself than she would like by doing a math problem a little too fast on her first day of school.
- Grounded Forever: After the stunt she pulled at the climax of 2.0, Yui notes that the only she reason is she not permanently grounded is because her parents are reluctant to punish her for saving someone's life. She's already planning how to wriggle out of it.
- Free-Range Children: At the start of the story, she has a lot of freedom to roam about Arrun and travels all the way to Tarbes with Klein as the oldest in the group. At the climax of V2.0, she almost dies because she did something reckless while unsupervised. Afterward, she is forbidden to leave her home's front yard without her parents or aunt as a chaperone.
- Living Lie Detector: Can always tell when her parents (and presumably others) are lying.
- The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Now that her body truly is that of a human child, she has begun acting truly childish. This is Played for Drama, such as panicking in a life-threatening situation (due to her body's biochemistry influencing her originally digital thought process) and also for comedy, where her evaluation of Emily's mental state is interrupted by Emily's near victory in hide-and-seek note .
- Military Brat: Both her parents are in active service, and will be for the foreseeable future.
- Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: "I'm not going to let you have your way this time... Grandfather!"
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: She hacks Cardinal, giving herself maxed stats and equipment, in order to save Kirito and Karin.
- Ship Tease: With Bardiche in the Omake; it goes from play-dates all the way to a distant-future where they are married and have children.
- The Shrink: Type 3. The knowledge and empathy acquired from core programming as a mental health AI, as well as her own experiences in SAO/ALO, help her immensely.
- Thinking Tic: According to the Beach Episode, when Yui goes on a <<Query>> search, she has what Balandene calls "blinking fits".
- What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: In the omakes she has trouble realizing her love for Bardiche.
- Because of the illogicalness of love and emotions, despite her being a mental health AI, It drives her into a full blown terror-stricken teenage girl.
Suisen
A Nav Pixie owned by Argo who assists her in her work. In the second arc, she Blossoms, something that most Garden Pixies did not even consider to be possible for a Tame Pixie and becomes what can only be described as a rat girl with wings.- Big Eater: According to Argo, she will devour anything placed in front of her. She wasn't always like this but becoming a mousegirl gave her quite the appetite.
- Photographic Memory: If Argo tells her to memorize something, she will do it and be able to recite it later on command.
- Fairy Companion: She began as a semi-autonomous AI that performed calculation and sensory tasks for Argo. Then the Transition happen. She became a real pixie and flies around Argo while helping her investigate.
- Happily Adopted: In Pixie parlance, she is a "tamed pixie" who recognizes Argo as her Elder Sister. She even addresses the information broker as such.
- Little Bit Beastly: She blossoms into a mousegirl; yes "The Rat" has a mousegirl partner.
- Little Brother Is Watching: She copies her Elder Sister's behavior down to gestures and verbal tics. Even her blossoming is influenced by it. Jensen calls her Argo's "mini-me".
- Verbal Tic: Ends sentences with 'ba'.
Edelweiss
Erika
The youngest (by blossoming) of the Pixie Commando team.Ayase
Rose
One of the newly-blossomed Pixies. She has great passion for useful knowledge and wishes to understand the world around her, but is treated as an abomination by her sisters (Except Hinagiku), due to her aberrant blossoming. She ends up joining TRIST.- Intelligence Equals Isolation: Rose feels that the other pixies' ways of thinking are too simplistic. As much as she loves her Little Sisters, their inability to think as broadly as she can is frustrating to her. On the other side, the other pixies of her garden are simply unable to understand why she does things like measure flower petals and writing down the result.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: It's a played-with case. On one hand, Rose feels that she is "wrong" and would really like to be in-synch with all of her sisters again. On the other hand, she sees so much beauty in the world and in the collection of useful knowledge and doesn't want to lose that.
- Jack of All Stats: During a heart-to-heart with Hinagiku, the two of them discuss her taking up the role of either the Shamans or the Warriors. She is certainly smart enough to learn the role of the Shaman, even if her blossoming takes her more towards research than ritual. She is also quick enough on her feet to be a Warrior, maybe a tactician, but she lacks a Warrior's build for combat.
- Loners Are Freaks: Inverted. She is alone, because others shun her due to her aberrant form, not the other way around.
