A/N: Hi guys, this is my first fanfic (kinda, as my first sucks and I'm not counting it). This is one of my fave anime's and I've had this idea circling in my head for a while now, got the next chapter all lined up so It'll be posted real soon. Hope you enjoy!

My name is Caleb Mair and I'm so tired it's no wonder I passed out on the desk in my room. It's been a long couple of days and the lack of sleep has finally caught up to me. Why am I like this? Sword Art Online is why and that makes it all worth it. Sword Art Online is a video game, one that beats all others and it's it one to finally make full use of the Nervegear technology, this is one of the first VRMMORPG's and it sends the player into a new world, one filled with wonder and it's where I'll be going in two hours. There were only ten thousand copies sold and I waited outside the game store for nearly a full day to get myself a copy, a full day, outside, in November, just saying I'm still freezing now.

Well a little about me anyway, I'm eighteen and am full British but born in Japan. My mother had moved to Japan to follow her dream of anchoring a news show in a foreign country (It's really weird I know) and my dad is an ambassador from Britain, they told me they met when my mother was doing a report on the British and Japanese relations and things spiraled from there. Enter me, front and centre now standing at 6 foot 2 and weighing in at 95 kilos, I've always been a big kid but add in the fact that I box, kick box and wrestle and people don't seem to say these things, not to my face at least. I learned how to fight ever since I had trouble at school when I was a kid, you know being British in a Japanese school was hard. Then again when I started fighting back and winning major tournaments for the school people seemed to like me a whole lot more, strange that isn't it? Anyway I've got light brown hair which looks like your typical mop, with bright blue eyes along with this I look like the opposite from any average Japanese person but its fine by me as it makes me stand out and for me, as a bit of an attention seeker it's the best thing to be.

I was staring at the case for Sword art Online for at least ten minutes, trying not to fall asleep again when I received a mini heart attack in the form of my best friend, Zakreiel Nagatomo grinning like a maniac after he had just slapped me from behind.

"Jesus Christ Zak you scared me half to death. I don't have any spare energy to use for stuff like this," I complained as he just burst out laughing.

Zak looked like your average Japanese guy, standing at 6 foot and with his black hair tied back into a pony tail, there was nothing remarkable about him. But, the one thing that set him apart from most others was that this guy was a Taekwondo genius, seriously he never lost.

"I've got to have a bit of fun now don't I?" He gasped between heaves of laughter,

I tried to dive on him and trap him in a submission hold but he managed to wriggle free and run out of my bedroom for a second before reappearing with his own Nervegear and copy of the game we had spent so long waiting for, a massive grin spread across his face, which most likely was a mirror of my own, it was so close to the official launch. We didn't speak for a while, but we didn't need to, you could feel the excitement between the both of us, it was palpable.

"In an hour we'll be off conquering a new world,"

"You've been saying this for the past day or so now so can you please save me the speech again,"

Zak rolled his eyes as he flung himself onto the mattress I managed to squeeze into my small bedroom. You know you have to make guests feel as comfortable as possible, even if they could do it themselves.

We spend in the next hour talking about everything we had read about the game from all the reviews we found, trying for one last time to figure out all the different skill sets there would be. Admittedly we would never know until we were in there because neither of us were in the Beta, not for a lack of trying though it's just we weren't two of the lucky ones.

Zak finally stood up grabbing his Nervegear and own copy of the game before snapping in the game cartridge in and placing the Nervegear on his head.

"Heh, you look like Robo Cop gone wrong,"

I had to be quick to dodge the pillow thrown at my head from a slightly irritated Zak, but still I copied his own actions before laying down on my own bed. The last thing that happened before me and my best friend launched ourselves into virtual reality was a quick fist bump and nod of understanding over where to meet each other in game, on the east side of the plaza in the first town which was in all the reviews.

"Link Start!"

In an instant my field of vision went completely white except for 5 blue circles which represented: hearing, touch, taste, sight and smell. As each of these were synchronised they turned green and flew off the screen leading me to the log on screen, muttering ever letter under my breath as I did this, I always did this and it always led to Taro hacking onto whatever account it was as he was the only one who knew I did this. Next came the input screen, I usually went for something off the wall but this time as it was virtual reality I wanted something similar to my own name.

"How about…CaleM…"

As I typed it out it was accepted with a bing and I was transported to a white room with a mirror covering the far wall. All that was there was me, me in a pair of plain white boxers but before I could even be shocked by this a white control panel appeared before me allowing me to change my physical appearance. As I cycled through the options available different aspects of my body changed but nothing really appealed to me so I decided to keep my original features and only changed my hair. Darker brown in colour and now slicked back instead of my normal mop, nodding to myself that I looked sufficiently awesome I proceeded to clothe myself and chose a pair of pain blue jeans with a cream coloured, long sleeved t-shirt which was slightly open at the front with a pair of black military boots, accepting my decision I was smiling thinking of how amazing I looked, then again I always did.

The last screen that I needed to navigate past was labelled 'Character Build' and a list of options appeared with fifteen points to be placed into certain attributes. As I started allocating these points into the 5 different options available I thought of how Taro would be doing this as we would both be fighting together for most of the time we would play this.

'He'll be one of those annoying speed players' was the one thing that flashed through my mind, he was like this on every game he played, so I balanced mine accordingly, placing most points into strength, health and endurance with only one each going into speed and agility. Even though I was considering the balance of both my and Taro I still always loved playing as a tank, hit hard, take hard hits and move slow. The last thing I needed to do was choose a set of 'Starter Items', in this there were a list of weapons and armour that could be chosen, this was easy for me as I always used the same things over and over again, as I cycled through the multitude of options I found the two handed battle axe and the light mail and clicked accept.

"Finally, all ready to go," I muttered to myself as I was teleported to the starting town, the Town of Beginnings. As I got there I looked around and took in my surroundings before many other players logged on and it was amazing to see just how much like real life it was. From the detail in each individual stone to the feel of the wind and the warmth of the sun on my skin, for a few minutes I just stood and took in all my surroundings, admiring this new world that I had entered. It took me a while to come back to my senses and realise I had to go meet Taro at our own little meet point so, making my way through the growing crowds of players and NPC's alike I headed toward the east side of the plaza where the crowd thinned as most people were going into the streets where equipment was being sold. I was pretty much all alone when I got there with just a couple of random NPC's there to fill in the crowds, I grew impatient waiting for Taro and decided that if he didn't come soon he would have to find me himself as I would be going off to train.

After a couple of moments doing absolutely nothing I decided to have a look round my menu and look at the equipment that had been given to me so I swiped my hand down and flicked through the inventory section of the menu, finally equipping the items that I had been given, during this I also noticed that I had been given some health crystals and a teleport crystals noting that the game did set you up quite nicely at the beginning. Coming out of this menu I felt the weight of the armour and sheathed battle axe hit me, nothing too much but still noticeable.

"Thank You endurance stat,"

As I looked down at myself, admiring the look and feel of my new equipment a hooded figure passed close in front of me trying to get some kind of reaction,

"You really need to get better at this Zak," I stated pointedly as the hood lowered showing a comical grimace spread across his face,

"No reaction at all?" Would be his only question which was greeted by a stony silence as I started to walk away to where I thought the training fields would be. As he caught up he had a rapier hanging loosely around his waist and it was when I noticed,

"Have you changed a single thing about your appearance?"

"Why change anything when it's already perfect."

It was obvious we were getting close to the fields now as people were talking about the amount of experience or Col they had got. It was funny as some people were just being ridiculous saying that they had already got enough Col to buy a house or that they had just hit level ten.

"Rubbish, the game's only been up 15 minutes, you haven't got to that level unless you're a Beta Tester!"

One voice was raised higher than the others and after this the player who was claiming that he had just hit level ten was laughed off of the platform he was on red faced through embarrassment, yet still we carried on through the thronging crowds of the same falsely boasting players until we reached the fields around the starting town. The fields were vast expanses of grassland, sloping along gently with the curvature of the hills, the weather was warm enough that if you grinded for a long time you could feel sweat beginning to build up and there were plenty of monsters that you could train on, mainly boars with a few wolves thrown in for the higher levelled players, but for the minute both me and Taro were level one.

At this time I finally began to notice my health bar along with everyone else's, there was also the name of the player above this if you were close enough to notice, I shook my head,

"Nenru? Really, can't you think of anything else to use?" I laughed at my friend's lack of imagination when it came to choosing names on RPG's. All I got from this comment was a quick swipe which was easy enough to avoid as we moved out into the fields looking for a monster that had wandered away from the rest and would be easy pickings. Spotting such a target, a boar that had re-spawned on its own away from any other I unslung my axe from my back and ran wildly toward it with a shout of,

"First Kill is mine!" But before I even reached my first victim a flash of blue sped past me and killed the boar with a series of well measured strikes, as I pulled up I looked behind me to see if Taro had gone in front of me and stolen the kill, but he was still there looking as confused as I felt.

"If you play like that you'll never get anywhere,"

I turned back round the see the player who made the kill walking toward us afterwards, Immediately my temper flared and I felt myself grinding my teeth until Taro placed his hand on my shoulder trying to play the diplomat,

"This game has only just started; we weren't in the beta test so we don't know how to use the system yet,"

"Sorry, that came out, always happens to me,"

The new guy started to laugh openly at himself which made me feel slightly better, like it was a slip of the tongue as he continued,

"Look, let me make this up to you, I can see I annoyed both of you and I'm here to make friends not enemies so let me show you the ropes a bit,"

I was a bit taken aback by the offer, I mean after all the game wasn't even an hour old yet. But then again who was I to refuse something that would be so useful at the start of the game,

"Alright you've got yourself a deal, the name is CaleM and this here Nenru."

Shaking hands he smiled,

"Cool its Viktor by the way."

As we ambled over to where more boars had spawned I started to notice more about this guy other than the fact he could be really annoying and not notice it. He stood about the same height as me but he was a lot more lithe and had a buckler strapped to one arm and a short sword strapped around his waist. He had long blond hair with bright green eyes and looked like your stereotypical surfer dude, seemed to act like it as well judging from his lazy demeanour. All that faded from my mind though as he began to talk about the basics of the combat system before going off to kill about three boars roaming around the area with what he called 'Sword Skills'. I mean I knew about them but seeing them in action was an entirely different thing, it was amazing to see how it all worked.

As Viktor came back he continued to explain things again,

"Sword skills have to be activated using the right input motion which is pretty much where you hold your weapon and how you swing it, and if you look at your skills in your menu you'll see what skills you've got and how to activate them."

Before he even finished explaining all of this I had my menu open looking through the skills section but at the moment there were only two things written there:

Two Handed Axe – 0/1000

Horizontal Slash – 0/1000

I clicked again on horizontal slash and there was a brief explanation of the skil and how to use it:

Basic attack slicing from side to side. To activate hold away from body and swipe horizontally.

So as Viktor kept on talking about how each of the weapons had a proficiency rating and as it got higher so did damage, speed and chance of critical hits, also about how varied sword skills were and that there were thousands out there I charged off leaving Nenru listening attentively. As I approached one of the boars I held my axe as the menu had said and I felt a pulsing energy in the handle and felt it tingling in my hands, the axe turned to red as the boar began to charge and when I unleashed, slashing from left to right a bright red line appeared on the boar and its health dropped to just above zero. Smiling in confidence I went for the same thing again but was surprised that it didn't work, the confusion in my face didn't last for long as the boar hit me directly in the stomach causing me to fly back about 5 yards, but the weird thing was there was no pain, only a dull stinging where I was hit. As the boar began to charge again a green flash sped by me and dropped the remaining health to zero.

Nenru stood above me swiping away the screen which popped up to congratulate him, he shook his head,

"Maybe if you listened to everything then you wouldn't be looking like an idiot now would you?"

He offered out his hand to help me up as I winced comically,

"You really know how to pull punched when it comes to this kind of thing don't you?"

It was true though as Nenru was always this blunt, blunt like a brick to the back of the head more like it. Even still as I took the hand up he would smile before stating almost psychically,

"Before you ask, attack cool down," we both then stood chuckling at this apparent connection of the minds going on before I nodded showing I understood, then the hunger hit me as my stomach growled loudly and could tell the same was happening with Nenru, it was time to log off to get some much needed food for the gallant adventurer so I called over to Viktor who had seen the whole thing happen and had collapsed on the floor laughing. It took a few more shouts before he got up still chuckling.

"Look Viktor thanks for that, it been good help but for now we're off to get some food. It would be cool to do this again though."

He was still smiling as he opened up his menu swiping through the screen until with a bing a message came up on my HUD

Friend request from Viktor

Accept?

It didn't take long for the same t appear on Nenru's screen, we both laughed and pressed the blue circle confirming this and with another promise we would be back on in an hour or so we both pulled up the menu to log out. There was one problem with that though.

It wasn't there!

A/N: Soooooo what did you all think of that. Rubbish? *Hangs head in shame and goes of crying*. But seriously what did you guys think, if you could review it would be great thanks. The constructive kind, not the kind where I cry myself to sleep at night. Even still, the next chapter will be up real soon so just hang in there guys!

PEACE!