"Mom, where's my nervegear?" Matsuoka Masaru asked, digging through his room. The soon-to-be twenty year old man was a student at the University of Electro-Communications in Choufu, Tokyo, who worked part time in a computer repair shop.

"You lent it to Mafuyu because you were fixing hers," His mother replied, pointing him in the direction of his seventeen year old sister's room. "She said something about a new game or something."

"I should just rip it off her head."

"Oh let her play, I remember when Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire came out, your father and I played it for ten hours straight together. I was pregnant with you at the time so whenever he'd come visit in the hospital and that's how we spent those days. I always beat him when we battled because he didn't know about EV training. Besides, weren't you supposed to fix her Nervegear a few months ago?"

"It works fine, some of the sensors don't work properly but those are only for games that default your appearance to your real world one, shouldn't be unusable. Whatever, I'll just use hers."

"Oh you kids and your Virtual Reality. When the Oculus Rift came out that was all the rage but you were only 10 at the time."

Masaru went into his room. He lived with two roommates in a tiny apartment near his school so he did not get to come back all that often. That was part of the reason why he still had not fixed his sister's nervegear as it was currently sitting on his desk in pieces. He had not touched his in a few months because of how busy school and work started getting so he let Mafuyu borrow it. She told him about Sword Art Online and hyped it up to be the biggest game ever so Masaru gave in and agreed to play with her.

Screwing it back together, Masaru hooked it up to his laptop and put it on. It was about 3pm so the game had already launched but it was not like he would be that far behind.

"Link Start!" The nervegear activated and he felt his consciousness float out and into the virtual reality world.

"Sensor error using existing local data" displayed across his field of vision. A mirror was in front of him showing a generic humanoid body that was soon replaced by a seventeen year old female. His sister's appearance, Mafuyu. This was part of the reason he did not want to use his sister's nervegear because being in a woman's body just felt weird. It was not like Mafuyu was unattractive, she was tall and slim, built like the gymnast that she was, but it definitely did not feel like Masuru's more bigger, male, track runner body.

No matter, he changed the gender and got to work customizing the appearance to look more like his own. His height increased from 165cm to 180cm. Messy, black hair and eyes and a default dark reddish beginner's outfit replaced long brown hair and eyes and a black default outfit. After about 20 minutes spent just fiddling with his appearance, Masaru, jumped into Sword Art Online.

When Masaru was a kid, he thought that the games he played were photorealistic. They were not. Sword Art Online was photorealistic. Everything felt far more real. Everything looked legitimately real. Masaru was stunned for a while, just taking in the scenery of the starting town.

Something rang and Masaru fiddled around with his hands until he figured out how to open the menu and pick up. There were two friend requests, one from a 'Maria' which he figured was his sister and one from a 'Saben'. He accepted both and heard someone call out to him.

"Oi, Reed!" That was his handle so he turned to face the person talking to him. A pretty-boy-esque blonde guy who looked almost like a woman, "Sure is easy to find you, you looked just like you do in real life."

"Who are you?" Saben almost fell over.

"It's me! Shun!"

"You? Shun?" Reed was shocked for a moment before commenting, "Heh, I guess you don't want to look like your usual fatass self."

"Hey man, I prefer the term jolly, alright?" He joked. Shun, now Saben, was Masaru's best friend. They had stuck together since middle school and were even roommates.

"Seriously doesn't suit you at all man. Know anyone else here?"

"Nah, only the two of us were able to snag a copy."

"My sister was a beta tester so she's here too. Probably grinding somewhere."

"Man, I'd like Mafuyu to grind on me if ya know what I mean."

"Hey man."

"Relax, it was just a joke. She's practically a sister to me too. Let's go training, I already hit level 3"

"Dammit!"

"It's your own fault you took so long!"

"What level are you now?" Saben asked Reed, putting away his two handed sword.

"I'm still only at level 3," Reed replied slinging his lance and spear over his back.

"Don't worry about it, took me two hours to get to level 3 also, I'm level 4 now by the way."

"You've been at this for four hours now? Maybe we should take a break, I'll bring my nervegear back to the room and we can pick up from there."

"Probably a good idea."

A headset icon appeared in Reed's GUI with the name Maria next to it. Reed pushed it and his sister's voice sounded into his ears, as though he really was wearing a headset.

"Bro! Can you log out?"

"What?"

"Just log out."

"I was planning to anyways, geez," Reed brought up the menu and fiddled with it, "Uh... how do you log out?"

"It should be under the settings icon, the one that looks like a gear."

"Yea, I was looking there just now and there's no option for it... that's weird, there's a blank option," Reed tried pushing it but nothing happened.

"That's where it was in the beta but it's the same on my end too."

Suddenly, Reed could hear a bell tolling in the distance and found himself standing in the starting city again.

"What's going on?" He asked Saben.

"No idea, special announcement maybe?"

"Bro!" Reed heard his sister call out to him from not too far away. She looked much like she did in real life, though her hair was pure white and tied up in a ponytail and her eyes were red. She was carrying a on-handed short sword at her hip.

"Mafuyu, what's going on?"

"We're online, call me Maria, no real names here, remember?"

"Sorry, force of habit."

"I don't know what's going on either, this never happened in the Beta but It looks like everyone in the game is here so I think there's some sort of announcement."

A soft techno ringing could be heard and most of the players looked up to see a red Warning hexagon flashing in the sky. It suddenly started spreading and soon covered the entire sky. The hexagons started bleeding and a massive robed figure emerged from the blood.

"Players, welcome to my world, I am Kayaba Akihiko."

"See, I told you it was just an announcement."

"Shut up and listen."

"I trust that you have already noticed the logout button is missing from the main menu. However, this is not a game malfunction"

"Holy shit, that's intentional?"

"I repeat, this is not a game malfunction, but an original feature of Sword Art Online"

"You cannot log out of SAO on your own. No one of the outside will be able to shut down or remove the nervegear. Should anyone attempt to remove the helmet, the transceiver inside the Nervegear will emit a power blast of microwave radiation, destroying your brain and thus ending your life."

"Is this some sort of sick joke?" Saben was starting to sweat. Well, Reed did not see any sweat but he could feel that his friend was sweating. "Reed, you've fixed up a few nervegears before, right? What do you make of this?"

"There's a limiter that prevents that sort of this from happening-"

"See? I knew it, it's just a joke."

"That look on your face tells me that there's more to it," Maria flashed a slightly panicked look in Reed's direction.

"However," Saben groaned as Reed continued, "It's a soft limiter. It can be overridden. Plus, the nervegears have enough internal battery to fry us if we tried disconnecting the helmet. There should not be enough exposure to cause any permanent damage if the helmet is removed fast enough, but that's assuming he doesn't just overload the helmet and blow our heads off instead."

"Unfortunately, the friends and family members of several players have ignored this warning and attempted to remove the nervegear. As a result, 213 players have permanently retired in both Aincrad and the real world.

"N-no way..." as if to rub salt in the wounds, Kayaba Akihiko continued to explain, showing news footage and reports to confirm the cases.

"Please relax and work hard to complete the game."

"However, do take note of this, you can no longer respawn in this game. Once your HP reaches zero, your avatar will be permanently erased and at the same time... the nervegear will destroy your brain."

Reed suddenly remembered how much he sucked during the first hour, having died and respawned twice already. He had not died since as he was getting used to the flow of the game but...

"You only need to fulfill one condition to free yourselves- Clear the game. You are currently on the first floor, the lowest level of Aincrad. Make your way through each dungeon and defeat the floor boss and you will advance to the next level."

"Defeat the final boss on t he 100th floor and you will clear the game."

"And finally, you can find a gift from me in your item storage. Please check for yourselves."

Everyone opened up their inventories and found a mirror in there. Reed saw his reflection in it and people started glowing. Saben turned into his original portly self with his curly black hair and Maria's hair returned to its original color. However, both seemed taller than what he remembered. Mafuyu was slightly taller than him now.

"M-me?" Maria was looking at Reed, a stunned expression on her face.

"Twin Mafuyus?" The now taller than Reed Saben also had a stunned look on his face.

Long brown hair brushed against his face and Reed looked down to find two bulges on his chest.

"What the fuck."

"How did-?" Saben started right before it clicked with Reed.

"Default appearance. The Nervegear scans your face. And you have to calibrate your body by touching yourself all over," he explained.

"But why do you look like me?" Maria asked.

"I'm using your nervegear, the sensors on it are broken so the default appearance is from the last time it was calibrated which was..."

"So you're me from a year ago..."

"...Fuck."

"You might be asking yourselves, why would Kayaba Akihiko, the creator of Sword Art Online and the nervegear do all this?"

"Is this guy still talking?"

"My goal has already been achieved. I wanted to create this world and admire it. That is why I created Sword Art Online. And now, it has all been fulfilled. This ends the tutorial for the official Sword Art Online launch. I wish every player the best of luck."

Something sounding like a dialup connection sounded as the Game Master robe started fuzzing away like an old CRT TV with a bad connection. The blood was sucked back up and the warning hexagons vanished.

"Mafu-Maria..."

"Yea bro?"

"How far did you guys get in the Beta?"

"It took us a month to clear ten floors..."

"So I'm going to be stuck like this for ten months?"

"Each floor took progressively longer to clear..."

"...Fuck."