Chapter 1

Finally the clock ticks to 11:59AM. It's Wednesday today. A normal day, at least it would be under any other circumstances, but today is November 16th 2022 the much-anticipated official launch date of Sword Art Online. I faked a sickie just for this purpose, because Sword Art Online, or SAO among gamers, is the first Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Me? Of course I'm excited! I grew up playing Pokémon, a great RPG. My parents grew up on Pac-Man, but this, this is indescribable. It's a great moment for gaming history.

My finger taps the NerveGear impatiently, getting faster every second. My parents understand I am gaming, so they won't disturb me until dinner. Finally, as if I couldn't remember, every electronic device in my room announces to me that it is 12:00PM, the launch of SAO.

I take a deep breath, and plunge the NerveGear over my head. "Link Start!" I'm in a different world as colours plunge around me. I sign in and customize my avatar with shaking hands. Blonde, I think. I always wanted to be a blonde guy magnet.

Eventually my avatar is created, and I see Aincrad for the first time. Its beautiful. The sky is blue, the graphics are crisp, and I can see nobody lagging. So far so good. I walk around, taking in the sights around me. Everyone seems to have had good taste with creating their avatars- they all look as nice as the city.

"Excuse me?" someone taps my shoulder.

"Hello?" I ask turning around. It's a girl with down-to-the-floor light brown pigtails. She smiles cheerfully.

"Would you mind training with me?"

"Sure. My name's Shina." I smile back.

"My name's Silica."

OOOO

After a few hours spent levelling up to level 5, I realize with a start that I would have to leave my new friend Silica because my mom would be making dinner.

"Silica, I have to go. Sorry about leaving you." I scratch the back of my neck sheepishly.

"Its ok." She smiles. She seems to do that a lot. I wave my hand for the menu to materialize. Scrolling down, I realize that the logout button was missing. Must be a bug, I think to myself. I close the menu and reopen it. Nope, logout button still gone. My stomach drops.

"Everything ok?" Silica asks. I must have a weird expression on my face.

"The logout button's missing." I close my menu and look at her as she opens her menu.

"It's gone on mine too." Silica looks worried, about as worried as I feel. I shake my head, the feelings of doubt and worry going to the back of my mind. I open my menu for the third time in those few minutes and the button is still gone. My eyes widen and I bite my lip. It has to be a bug. Maybe there are just too many people logging off at once and the server can't handle it? But as I think these things a voice in the back of my mind tells me that if the have the data to house a game like this with no lag, they should have enough data for everyone to log out simultaneously.

I look at Silica to see her tapping away furiously at her menu. "What're you doing?" I ask.

"Sending a message to the Gamemasters." She replies, not looking up. Of course! I mentally face-palm. Why didn't I think of that? If anyone could fix a glitch or a bug, it would be the Gamemasters, the creators of this game. At soon as Silica finishes typing her message a bright blue light surrounds us. I hear Silica cry out in shock, and it takes all of my willpower not to do the same. I squeeze my eyes shut as the sense of solidness I had ebbs away as the blue light grows stronger.

When I feel better, I open my eyes. It appears that we, along with everyone else playing, have been forcefully teleported to the town centre. The once blue sky has is now smothered with red hexagons and words in a different language that looks like English. I try to translate them, but as I do so, the sky began bleeding from in between the many hexagons. I, and many other players, gasp in shock and horror.

Slowly, the mysterious blood forms the shape of a man wearing robes, but on closer investigation, I discover that underneath the robes is nothing.

"It's a Gamemaster!" I hear someone say. Almost immediately everyone begins talking.

"Attention Players!" says the Gamemaster. Everyone, including me, is silenced. "Welcome to my world. My name is Kayaba Akihiko, and as of this moment, I am the sole person who can control this world. I'm sure you've already noticed that the logout button is missing from the main menu." I sigh in relief. Kayaba Akihiko himself, the creator of SAO, has obviously come to personally apologize for the logout button disappearance.

He continues on. "This is not a defect in the game, I repeat, this is not a defect. It is a feature of Sword Art Online. You cannot logout of SAO yourselves, and no one outside can shut down or remove the NerveGear." Any high opinions I had of Kayaba were instantly shattered. I hear sobs, and glance at Silica. She isn't the one crying, but her eyes are like saucers.

"Should this be attempted, the transmitter inside the NerveGear will emit a powerful microwave, destroying your brain and thus ending your life. Unfortunately, several players' friends and families have ignored this warning, and attempted to remove the NerveGear. As a result, two hundred and thirteen players are gone forever from both Aincrad and the real world." He pauses and brings up large holograms of some reputable news sites around the world.

"As you can see, News Organizations across the world are reporting all of this, including the deaths. Thus you can assume the danger of a NerveGear being removed is now minimal." He closes the tabs with one swift hand gesture.

"I hope you will relax and attempt to clear the game, but I want you to remember this clearly. There is no longer any method to revive someone in the game. If your HP drops to zero, your avatar will be forever lost, and simultaneously, the NerveGear will destroy your brain. There is only one means of escape, to complete the game. You are presently on the lowest floor of Aincrad, Floor 1. If you make it through the dungeon and defeat the floor boss, then you may advance to the next level. Defeat the boss on Floor 100 and you will clear the game.

"Finally, I have added a present from me in your item storage. Please see for yourselves." The entity of Kayaba melts away into the 'blood' once again, and nine thousand, seven hundred and eighty-seven menus are brought up. I check my item storage, as Kayaba told us all too. Could it be a useful sword?

What deformed hopes I have fade away when I see that the mystery item was just a simple hand mirror. I copy everyone else and hold it in my hand. For a split second, it shows my in-game avatar that I had created at 12:00PM today. Then the reflection morphs into my disappointing real-life appearance. I am now a skinny girl with bangs and long curls down to her waist. I have hair in a boring shade of brown, and eyes to match.

I look at Silica. Her appearance also changed drastically from her avatar, but the shocked expression is the same. She has light brown hair in pigtails, with reddish-brown eyes. She looks now about 11 or 12. But although her appearance has changed, her feelings haven't.

Before my eyes she begins freaking out. Hyperventilating, even. She screams and tries to run away, but is stopped by someone's newly large stomach. She is the one that triggers the full-on panic.

The mirror I hold in my hand shatters into pixels, and I fall to my knees laughing. Nobody notices. They're all too busy freaking out. All that mattered was that I was going to fulfil my lifelong dream- to live- and die- in a videogame.

A/N Thanks to Xakyrie's awesome constructive criticism review, the next 3 chapters have been fixed.

Madoka Magica wasn't nominated for an Oscar :(