A/N: So, Sword Art Online is an anime that's had its fair share of both love and hate...and while I did enjoy some of it, it has its flaws. So, with that in mind, I thought I'd try my hand at re-writing it (The Aincrad Arc) and attempting to fix the flaws as best I can. To this end, we'll be following a wider variety of characters, with more focus on teamwork and character interaction, and the actual game mechanics of Sword Art Online. Hopefully I don't mess it up too badly.
System Start
Dozens of excited gamers, clad as their new virtual avatars, walked the streets of a new world. The 'Starting Town' of Aincrad, the setting for the groundbreaking new Virtual Reality MMORPG Sword Art Online, was pretty basic as far as generic fantasy towns go, but being fully immersed in the world really put a new perspective on it. Two of these newcomers strode forth into this unexplored reality, with really no idea what they were getting themselves in to.
"You know, considering how hyped we were for this game it's kinda hard to believe that we're finally playing it" grinned a red-haired man in light armour.
"Oh yeah, don't think that's gonna stop us from enjoying it though!" replied his companion, a younger looking man with untidy white hair, who wore black armour with white trim.
"You know you didn't have to make yourself look so edgy, eh Hideki?" replied the red-haired man with a smirk, "you look like a bad Sephiroth cosplayer".
"Oi, you're not much better, what's all the red for, eh? Trying to make yourself run faster?" said Hideki.
"Well, I know you're jealous of my heroic build and impeccable fashion sense, but you don't have to make fun of my colour choices you know" laughed the red-head.
"Whatcha even name your character..." said Hideki, swiping the air in front of him. A glowing white user interface materialized, and he tapped one of the options on it.
"Klein? Is that meant to be German or something? Having a foreign sounding name isn't gonna help you pick up chicks dude..." sighed Hideki.
"It was the first thing that came into my head, ok?" replied and exasperated Klein, "Ryoutarou was already taken! You're lucky getting your actual name before someone else snapped it up..."
Hideki closed the user interface with a flick of his wrist.
"You wanna actually go do some questing or something? Kinda defeats the purpose of the game to just stand here, eh?" he said.
"Heh, why not?" replied Klein, "how bad could it be?"
As it turned out, not that bad, at first at any rate.
"Ey, there's something over there" murmured Hideki. Sure enough, after trekking through the woods that surrounded the Starting Town for a few minutes, the two adventurers had come across something. Among the fallen branches and verdant greenery stood a massive boar, muscle-bound and with vicious looking tusks.
"I dunno man, he looks pretty buff to me" replied Klein, "you think we can take him?"
"Relax, it's a low level area, we'll wipe the floor with this overgrown pig!" grinned Hideki, opening up his menu to equip a weapon.
"Hmmm..." he murmured, scrolling past a couple of axes and a staff before settling on a starter Halberd as his weapon of choice.
"Guess I'd better pick mine too" said Klein, opening up his own menu. There were a wide variety of melee weapon classes to choose from in Sword Art Online, each with dozens of unique abilities and their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, Two Handed Axes could inflict heavy damage, but were slow to attack and required a high Strength stat to get the best use out of them. After some deliberation, Klein decided that attack was the best form of defense and brought up a One Handed Katana. This weapon relied on sheer physical attack power and high speed to overwhelm the enemy, but left the user at a disadvantage defensively.
"So what, do we just jump in and start swinging?" asked Klein. Hideki shook his head.
"Didn't you read the manual? Check your skill list first, you'll do much better with those than just flailing about". Klein navigated the menu for a moment before he found the Skills menu.
"Reaver? I like the sound of that one!" he grinned as he saw the first Katana skill he'd unlocked, "let's have a go, shall we?"
With a battle cry, Klein burst forth from the undergrowth, getting the jump on the enemy.
"Here goes!" he yelled, twirling his Katana in the pattern indicated for using the Reaver skill.
As he did, the boar turned to face him...only to get a face-full of blade as Klein dashed forward, the momentum of the Reaver skill carrying him and his weapon, glowing with orange light, past the foe.
Hideki followed up, vaulting towards the enemy with the shaft of his Halberd, executing the Spear Kick skill, and slamming into the enemy from above. The Boar reeled from the impact, his health bar flashing red above him. Klein lunged in a second time, and delivered the finishing blow with a swift slash. The boar exploded into fragments of data as the adventurers felled it, and a small window showing EXP gain popped up in the corner of Klein and Hideki's respective visions.
"Wow, I've played a fair few MMO games before, but THIS is something different!" laughed Klein, "you can't get this kinda rush from just watching it happen on a screen!"
"Hell yeah!" smiled Hideki, "I can tell already, this is gonna ruin all other games for me".
"You want to go hunting for more enemies?" asked Klein. Before Hideki could reply though, a window appeared with a bell-like noise directly in front of them.
"System Recall?" Hideki read out loud. With a flash of blue light, the two found themselves transported to somewhere completely different.
Gone were the vibrant surroundings, the trees, and the undergrowth. They now stood together in a crowded square, in the centre of the Starting Town. Hundreds of other players, all looking as confused as they did, surrounded them.
The sky was covered by a crimson light. Red hexagons reading "System Override" flashed up across the heavens, blocking out the sky. Within moments, a massive figure dressed in scarlet robes, with a hood concealing their face, materialized in the air above them, its arms outstretched.
"Welcome" it said in a deep male voice, "to Sword Art Online. I shall now reveal the true purpose of this game". The figure gestured with one arm.
"I am Akihiko Kayaba" he said, "this game is now, to all of you, reality. You cannot log out of Sword Art Online; any attempt to do so will fail. Moreover, should your HP in the game ever reach zero, you will not be revived. If this occurs, the Nerve Gear will be issued a signal, causing it to release lethal Microwaves, and this will result in the demise of your real world self. To put it simply; if you die in the game, you die for real. In addition, attempting to remove the Nerve Gear or cut power to it will result in the same fate; several dozen suffered this fate before it was reported widely on the news, so do not fear that this will happen to you".
To say that people reacted badly to this was an understatement. While many people were simply shouting and borderline rioting, reactions were not limited to this alone. Some thought this had to be some massive joke, and tried to convince themselves of such, while others broke down crying, not knowing if they'd ever escape from this game.
"The only way for you to leave this game" continued Kayaba, "is for somebody to clear all 100 floors of Aincrad Castle. Should even one of you reach the 101st floor, the exit, all those remaining alive in Sword Art Online will be released from the Nerve Gear's clutches. To this end, endeavour to escape this virtual hell! Strive, and conquer the task before you! I look forward to seeing the potential that you show, and hope that one of you might be the one who can clear this task I present you with. Finally, I shall be using this moment to alter all of your avatars to resemble your real world forms, as a parting gift!"
With those words, the form of Kayaba faded away into the ether, leaving a mass of screaming, sobbing gamers in the square below with no idea how to continue. To make matters worse, with a silver gleam, the forms of those below shifted and changed until they resembled their real bodies...which would have been quite amusing if not for the circumstances, as 'female' players turned out to be anything but. Hideki and Klein didn't really change much, other than Hideki getting a bit shorter and Klein's hair changing style slightly.
"Well...what do we do now?" asked a worried Hideki, "we could die...like, die for real! This isn't just a game anymore!"
"Improvise, I guess" replied Klein, "we gotta stick together though...if we just run off without thinking, we'll DEFINITELY die".
"Ok, stay calm and stick together, I can do that" said Hideki, taking deep breaths to calm himself.
"Assuming this still works like it did as a game, wouldn't forming a guild be a safe bet?" came the voice of an adventurer across the square.
"That guy knows what's up" said Klein, trying to manage his trademark grin despite the situation, "we just gotta find a crew to stick with, and we can make it through this!"
"You're right" Hideki replied, "so uh...what, we start looking for people to team up with?"
Taking a look around, Klein noticed a young girl sobbing in a corner, pressed back against a statue.
"Hideki...I think we gotta help people as well" he said, "some of these people don't know what they're doing, we kinda do...well, more than some anyway, since we're kinda MMO veterans".
"What, you want to play the hero or something?" replied Hideki, "I guess I can get on board with that...less people dying from this madness is always a good thing, after all..."
The two of them walked over to the sobbing girl, steering around gamers in various states of panic and disbelief.
"Uh, hey, do you need a hand, uh..." Klein stopped talking as he checked the menu for the girl's character name, "Silica?" Silica looked up at them, still having something of a breakdown.
"S-sorry...I just don't know how to deal with all this" she said, "T-thank you though...I think I could do with some help right now".
"This might be kinda sudden but do you wanna join a party with us?" asked Hideki, "we're better off sticking together now that this game is decidedly more lethal".
"Um...that sounds like a good idea" replied Silica, wiping some tears away from her eyes with one sleeve, "how do I join a party?"
"Bring up your menu, there should be a Party option about three tabs down?" said Klein, bringing up his own interface, "I'll send you and Hideki an invite so we can get going".
Sure enough, a small notification window appeared in Silica's interface, and she tapped it hesitantly to join the party. Almost instantly, two health bars representing Klein and Hideki's vitality flickered into view in the top corner of her interface, below her own.
"We gotta look out for each other, so keep an eye on those" said Klein, "remember, this is serious now".
"Y-yeah, thanks for the help" stuttered Silica, "so we have to get stronger right? That's the best way to survive this..."
"That's for sure...I guess we should find some quests to do or something?" said Hideki, "There should be party-oriented ones we can have a go at, we should level up pretty quickly from those".
"Okay!" said Silica, pulling herself together, "which way do we need to go?"
Elsewhere, in the overgrown woods on the south side of the Starting Town, other adventurers were already getting stuck in to the new world.
"Over here!" cried a young woman with flowing orange hair, as she sprung towards a spear-wielding goblin with her rapier outstretched. Her ally, a pink-haired girl hesitantly brandishing a mace, followed behind.
With a flourish, the leading adventurer executed the Linear Rapier skill, piercing the Goblin effortlessly and taking it down.
"I think I'm getting used to this!" she gasped, slightly out of breath.
"I think you really are, Asuna!" replied her companion, whose name tag indicated her to be known as 'Lisbeth'.
"Well, I think that's the quest finished?" said Asuna, opening up her menu with a wave of her hand to check. Sure enough, the required number of goblins had been overcome, and the EXP reward for the quest was granted to the pair.
"Oh, I levelled up!" came Lisbeth's voice from behind Asuna. An aura of blue energy surrounded the mace-wielder as she checked her menu to distribute stat points.
"Um...Strength, and Vitality I suppose?" she said, tinkering with a few options in the level up screen.
"I guess I'll go with Agility then" said Asuna, tapping a few sections of the menu to confirm her choice.
Just then, another Party emerged from the trees to their left.
"Awww, these guys already cleared the place out?" said a slim man who wielded a sword and shield. His player tag indicated him to be named 'Dynamm'.
"They'll respawn in a few minutes, you know" said Asuna with a raised eyebrow, "did you even read the quest description?"
"She does have a point..." sighed a bulky man in plate armour, his avatar named' 'Dale'.
"Anyway, come on Lisbeth, let's move" said Asuna to her companion, "good luck, guys!"
Not all of the players who resolved themselves to survive in this new world, however, had immediately sent out for adventure. Some concerned themselves instead with a rather interesting feature of Sword Art Online; its economics. In SAO, a player could own a store just as an NPC vendor could, and this contributed to a larger overall economy that affected not only the costs of items, but the rewards given by certain quests, making it a rather important part of the game.
One such player, going by the name of Agil, was immersing himself in this new system. In the real world, Agil was the owner of a cafe, so he caught on to this system quicker than most, having at least some experience in what he was doing.
And so, Agil decided that the best way to make his way in this new world would be run his own shop. This way, not only could he make his living and make his way forward in the game, but he could help other players while he was at it.
With 10,000 players now trapped (seemingly permanently) in the world of Sword Art Online, the stage was set for quite the spectacle.
Some of these players would surely perish in the attempt, but as Kayaba would have them do, many would strive to clear the game.
A/N: So, hopefully that was good enough from what you've seen so far? Let me know what you liked, what you didn't like, what you'd like to see?