A/N:
This is a prequel to the Life is in the Multiverse Story that I am writing. I may release this concurrently or after, but anyway….its a Sword art online fanfic since I like the idea of writing one, and I feel it could work well with my OC entering the online world.
The OC is 15 in this fiction and is the same as my other stories, and as such, is training in the Thande institute in Timeline A. Read the Life is in the Multiverse story if you want more info on that. He will enter the nerve gear and attempt to survive.
I have decided to include Yuuki because I feel her character will be suitable, she is my favourite character and because there are too little fanfics about her. Also Mother's Rosario was one of my favourite arcs.
This will be an AU since that gives me more freedom in where the story can go. The Main differences are that Yuuki will be the same age as kirito (14) and will be in SAO. I may add some other characters (*cough *cough, Shino) but I haven't decided yet.
Obligatory disclaimer: I DON'T OWN ANYTHING! Maybe the OC's personality, BUT NOTHING ELSE!
Location: Thande institute, Cambridge (Timeline A)
Date: Thursday 5th March 2015 4:55 pm (Local time)
"So this is the tech the insertion team found, eh?" A 15 year old Boy asked.
"Yep, this is it. Most advanced piece of shit we found there too. They clearly had no invasion there, or they'd have had a lot more interesting stuff there...I hope." An older man replied. He was wearing a lab coat, and wore glasses; The stereotypical look of a researcher.
He was stood over a machine that had the words "Nerve Gear" written upon the side. Next to him was a hospital bed, and next to that, was a desk or table of some kind.
"We presume that its some kind of virtual reality helmet, that allows the user to see a virtual world of some kind. Our team also found this." He pointed to different desk, then moved over and picked up the object on top. It was a case for a DVD sized disk. On the case were the words "Sword Art Online".
The 15 year old took the case from the researcher and looked it over, once at the front, then turned it over and looked over the back.
"So, a MMORPG, eh? I like it..." He looked up to the researcher, and it clicked.
"You want me to test it don't you?" He asked.
The researcher nodded, and pointed to the hospital bed.
"That's why we've got this arrangement set up, we believe it works by shutting down the body's nervous system by hooking the brain to the helmet. Not physically, but the helmet directs all electrical signals to the body to the helmet instead. Thus, we think this is how your body will move in-game. We're giving you the hospital bed so that you will be relaxed during the testing and we assume that there will be a calibration set-up before you enter."
"We will also be equipping you with a wrist tablet. This is so that you can communicate with us during the testing. Within that is the equivalent of a top end enterprise computer, so don't mess it up or destroy it….. it also means that you can perform the functions of a computer within the test. I'm going to assume that you don't want a detailed explanation of how that's possible, so I'll skip it."
"So, Alex, are you ready?" The researcher asked.
Alex nodded. "Been a while since I played an RPG, hopefully its good."
Alex lay down on the bed and placed the "Nerve Gear" on his head. It looked like a fighter pilots helmet, or something similar thereof. He looked into the visor on the upper half of the helmet. The researcher nodded to him.
"Everything appears to be correctly set up, so all you have to do is to say link-start and it should begin, ready?"
Alex grinned and shut his eyes. This should be fun.
"Link start!"
Suddenly he was surrounded in white, and right in front of him, were a set of 5 circles. His eyes, or whatever he was looking out of in the virtual environment, looked at each one in turn, and they each vanished.
Must be an eye calibration….
A menu option appeared, where it allowed the user to select their language of choice. Alex was slightly surprised that English was in the options, despite the game being only released in Japan in the timeline.
I suppose English is probably a near-second language...or were they hinting at a greater release.
He selected English and waited. He presumed that he wouldn't be able to connect to the servers, no, he knew he wouldn't. How on earth could he connect to servers that aren't even in the same universe as his, this would just be a routine test to test the technology, nothing more, this wouldn't connect.
But no error message appeared, instead, multiple bright colourful lines began to speed towards him, and fly past him at great speed.
The hell….
And then, he heard the sounds of people chatting, and he opened his eyes. He was in a plaza, surrounded by buildings of a rather medieval design. This made sense, since it was an RPG.
And then he realised: Holy shit, I connected! How is this possible?!
Location: Town of Beginnings, Floor 1 (Timeline SAO)
Date: Sunday 6th November 2022 1:15 pm (Local time)
He promptly decided to go and explore, he was in a game, so logically, he chose to go off and grind for EXP. He then remembered that he currently had no sword in his hand, and that he had absolutely no idea of how to open the menu. Then, he heard a ringing. It was coming from his wrist computer, so he lifted up close to his face and pressed what he presumed was the on button.
Sure enough, he was correct, and the face of a researcher appeared in a hologram form. He jumped back instinctively, but then brought his wrist computer to his face again. It wasn't the researcher that had told him about sword Art Online though. This researcher was younger, and a female, probably in her mid-20's, the opposite of the other researcher.
"Um, Who are you?" Alex asked hesitantly.
"I'm professor Sandra, I'm going to be the one to keep an eye on your condition during the test." She smiled at the camera.
"Ok then, that's good, I guess..." He trailed off, looking around at the virtual world he was in. He was amazed, it all looked so realistic, as if it was real life. He noticed people chatting and talking animatedly to each other.
They all look so happy….
He shook off these thoughts, there was no need to bring what happened up now. He glanced at the hologram and spoke.
"Sandra, how on earth do you open the menu?"
Sandra laughed. "Did you read the manual?"
"No, I threw it in a supernova because I disagreed with it. Of course I never read it, who ever does?" Alex shot back.
"Move your index finger down in the air in a continuous motion, understand?"
Alex did just that, and the menu opened. It was very complicatedly looking so he decided he could learn it all later. For now though, he needed what counted as an inventory system in this game. He flicked though the menu, and couldn't find it. He scrolled back to the top, and looked through it again. It was then that he found it. His inventory opened up, and he looked at the glorious emptiness within it.
He noticed, however, that it also contained a sword. He clicked upon it and it appeared in his holster on his belt. He looked the sword over, it was a simple iron cast weapon, something peasants would use in a battle, not like the noble weapons he hoped would appear later.
After looking the sword over, Alex began to walk around the town hoping to find an exit to whatever this place was called. He passed several buildings and windows and noticed himself in the window of what appeared to be a tavern of some kind.
Then a thought came to him, Why didn't I get to select my avatar?
He was the same as his normal self, complete with messy black hair. He was also wearing simple peasants clothes and a metal chest piece.
Not stylish or functional in any way, but it'll do.
He continued to walk down the road, passing merchants and sellers trying to do business. Since it was the first day, he assumed all of them were NPC's. No players would have had time to set up shop yet.
It took him the majority of the afternoon before he found an exit to the town, so much so that the sun was dipped low in the sky by the time he managed to leave the town.
As he entered the fields outside the town, he noticed a boar roaming around the field, several of them in-fact. He equipped his sword into his right hand, ran up to one and struck it once. The Boar stumbled back and roared, then charged towards him.
Alex attempted to block the boars horns with his sword and kicked the Boar in the face twice. This only served to anger the Boar and it pushed back, knocking Alex off of his feet. He attempted to get back up but noticed the boar getting ready to charge. He quickly realised that he wouldn't be able to get up before the boar hit him again. He brought his sword up to delay the inevitable and shut his eyes.
But the impact never arrived.
Carefully, Alex opened his eyes to notice another player standing there in front of him, looking at their Exp reward screen. He looked down and saw the Exp he had gained from the fight.
Not much….
Alex looked back up at the player that had helped him. The player that had helped him, for starters, was a girl.
From first impressions, she looked to be about his age, perhaps younger. She had long flowing purple hair that trailed down her back and red eyes. She wore simple leather clothes, similar to what he himself wore, so he assumed that she was starting out like himself. She carried a sword, the same starter sword that he had. She also wore basic shoes.
"Thanks" was all Alex could say, as he got up onto his feet. "So who are you?"
"I'm Yuuki" She replied, "And you're welcome". She smiled. "You are?"
"Alex" He looked around, then back towards Yuuki. "So, you seem to know your way about this game, could you show me how to play?"
Yuuki raised her, or at least he assumed it was a her since he was basing the assumption completely on her Avatar, eyebrow and smiled again.
"Sure, teaching someone like you shouldn't be too difficult."
"Great!" Alex grinned, then "Wait, what do you mean 'someone like me'?!" He asked, indignantly.
But Yuuki was already walking away, unbeknownst to Alex, she was also grinning.
"Nothing! Now come on, I need to teach you, don't I?"
Alex let out a hmph and followed her.
It had been about an hour since Yuuki had begun to teach Alex about the game, and how to do things called sword skills. Alex guessed that it was purely to make the game easier to play for people with little sword knowledge or skill, like him for instance, but he would never admit that. During that time, they had been mercilessly slaughtering boars and gaining col, which Alex assumed to be currency, and Exp.
Yuuki was clearly the better one out of the two players. She had killed the most boars and, Alex saw, was completely ruthless when dealing with them. She was able to deal with multiple boars at the same time with devastating speed and seemingly great skill, whereas Alex would be lucky to even reach half that speed and skill.
They were still murdering boars in cold blood when they decided to head back to the starter town to get something to eat. Though they had departed many boars from this world, they didn't have much col, so they both decided to buy what little food they could from an NPC seller.
"So," Alex began, as he and Yuuki sat on a bench and ate, "You seem to have quite the experience, played stuff like this before?"
Yuuki stiffened, then smiled. "Yeah, you could say I have….What about you?" She took a bite and continued, "You played something similar to this before?"
Alex shook his head. "Nope, first time. As you could probably tell by my inexperience in the art of killing boars." He grinned, and Yuuki grinned back.
"Well, I best be off, want to play tomorrow, since...er….um…..I still need help?" He spoke the last part quietly, half hoping Yuuki wouldn't hear it.
"Sure!" Yuuki nodded. "Do you know how to log out?"
Alex paused, then sighed, "Another thing for you to tell me about then..." He looked back to Yuuki. "So, how do you log out?"
Yuuki demonstrated. "You open up the menu, you know how to do that right?" Alex nodded.
"You go to the settings and then…." Her voice trailed off.
"What is it?" Alex asked. He guessed it wasn't a good thing.
"The log out button, its gone."
"Huh, wait" He flicked through his own menu and reached the settings. She was right, it was gone, vanished, had disappeared.
"Well, er…, is there anyway to log out other than that?" Alex asked, just ever so slightly worried.
Yuuki shook her head, and Alex could tell she was slightly worried as well. "No, the nerve gear blocks out all sensory input to your real body, so you can't take the helmet off from inside the game…."
"Damn, so we have to wait for an update. Day-one DLC anyone? Hope its free..." Alex spoke with a slight smile, probably from the reference he had made. This very slightly cheered up Yuuki.
"Never-mind, they should fix it soon." Alex spoke this as he was surrounded by a blue light. "Wait, what's this-"
Location: Town of Beginnings, Floor 1 (Timeline SAO)
Date: Sunday 6th November 2022 5:30 pm (Local time)
Alex appeared in the central area of the starter town. He looked around himself and in his inventory and was pleased to find he still had his stuff.
Must have been a teleport of some kind.
He looked around to discover the beginning area was quickly filling up with players teleporting in. The majority of them looked very confused, as they wondered what had happened to them and why they had been teleported here.
So it wasn't by choice…
"Why the teleport?" Alex turned around to find Yuuki just behind him.
"I don't know, this shouldn't happen right?" He replied, now the slight worry was evident in his voice.
"No, it shouldn't. Perhaps we're about to get answers…." She pointed to the sky, which, Alex had not noticed, was now full of red hexagons with the word 'WARNING' written on them.
By now the entire crowd was looking at the sky in anticipation, and fear, of what was going on. They didn't know what was going to happen.
What appeared to be blood began to drip down from in between the cracks of five different hexagons. But the blood did not hit the floor, instead, it curved back inwards towards the other falling blood columns and began to coalesce into a being. The being looked like a wizard, with a red drooping cloak and yellow bands on the arms of the cloak covering the being. It had no face, inside the cloak it appeared to be nothing but cavernous darkness.
It took thirty seconds for the being to fully coalesce, at which point it looked upon the people in the crowd, who looked back at it. Their eyes were wide in absolute, abject terror at the being. They were not aware of its intent or its purpose, and were scared of what it could do.
On the bright side, they didn't have to wait long for it to start speaking.
On the down side, what it spoke of was completely horrifying.
"ATTENTION PLAYERS!" A pause. "WELCOME TO MY WORLD!"
"MY NAME IS KAYABA AKIHIKO. AT THIS MOMENT, I AM THE SOLE PERSON WHO CAN CONTROL THIS WORLD."
So far, nothing bad.
"Who's Kayaba Akihiko?" Alex wondered aloud. Yuuki turned to him, opened mouthed.
"He's the developer of the game, you're playing his creation, how could you not know who he is?!"
"I haven't been out a lot…." Alex had created that lie on the spot, how could he tell anyone here he wasn't from their universe. He'd be put in an asylum for the criminal insane, or whatever the equivalent was. He'd sound crazy, and nobody would believe him.
Yuuki turned and looked back at the being. Everyone else was questioning whether this was the real deal or just an irritating hacker. What the being said next though, answered that question.
"YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED THAT THE LOGOUT BUTTON IS MISSING FROM THE MAIN MENU. THIS IS NOT A DEFECT, I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DEFECT, BUT A FEATURE OF SWORD ART ONLINE. NO-ONE CAN LOG OUT OF SWORD ART ONLINE, AND NO-ONE CAN SAFELY REMOVE OR DETACH THE NERVEGEAR FROM YOUR HEADS.
SHOULD ANYBODY ATTEMPT THAT, A POWERFUL MICROWAVE SHALL BE EMITTED FROM THE HELMET. THE MICROWAVES SHALL FRY YOUR BRAIN AND END YOUR LIFE QUICKLY AND PAINLESSLY."
Alex looked to Yuuki with a worried look, Yuuki simply looked back at Alex with an equally worried expression. Alex then looked down at his wrist computer and pressed the on button. The face of Sandra appeared in the hologram. Just as Alex was about to speak, she interrupted.
"Yeah, don't worry, I caught all of that. I'll be speaking with head office to see what we can do."
Alex nodded, "So I'm affected?"
"Yup."
"Ok then…." He turned off the computer into what he hoped was a listen in but no look mode and looked back at the sky, but not before looking at Yuuki, who was looking at him with a Questioning look. Alex mouthed 'I'll tell you later' and looked back at the sky.
The being spoke once more.
"UNFORTUNATELY, SEVERAL PLAYER'S FRIENDS AND FAMILIES HAVE ATTEMPTED TO FORCIBLY REMOVE THE NERVEGEAR, AND HAVE IGNORED THIS WARNING. AS A RESULT, TWO-HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN, NO, FOURTEEN NOW, PEOPLE HAVE DEPARTED FROM BOTH THE VIRTUAL AND REAL WORLDS. AS YOU CAN SEE, NEWS ORGANISATIONS FROM AROUND THE WORLD HAVE ALREADY PICKED UP ON THE DEATHS, SO YOU CAN BE ASSURED THAT NOBODY WILL INTERRUPT YOUR GAMING EXPERIENCE."
Alex glanced at the pictures of the news corporations flicking around the beings cloak. He could distinctly see the BBC and CNN, as well as Fox news, ITV and a whole bunch of other news networks. Well, at least they're in this timeline.
"THERE IS ALSO NO MAIN METHOD TO REVIVE PLAYERS IN GAME, ONCE YOU REACH 0 HP, YOUR AVATAR WILL BE DELETED FROM THE SYSTEMS AND THE NERVEGEAR WILL DESTROY YOUR BRAINS.
THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO ESCAPE, YOU MUST CLEAR EACH FLOOR AND DEFEAT THE BOSS ON EACH OF THEM. ONCE YOU HAVE DEFEATED THE BOSS ON FLOOR ONE HUNDRED, THE GAME WILL END AND YOU WILL BE LOGGED OUT.
YOU MAY USE ANY AND ALL MEANS NECESSARY TO CLEAR THE GAME.
OH, AND ONE FINAL THING. I HAVE LEFT A GIFT FOR YOU IN YOUR INVENTORIES."
Everyone began to look in their inventories and were confused to find a mirror. Once pulling said mirror out, a bright light overtook them. The light faded and people looked around confused.
Everyone had changed looks.
Except for Alex, it seemed, who looked exactly the same as before. He looked around and found Yuuki, at least, the real Yuuki.
Her appearance had changed. She was around the same height, but her long purple hair had been changed to short black hair around upper neck length. She was slightly pale, but not enough to cause too much concern, and, strangely enough, she retained the red eyes.
"Yuuki?"
"Yeah, it's me." She replied, still looking at herself.
"THAT ENDS THE TUTORIAL AND THE OFFICIAL START OF SWORD ART ONLINE! GOOD LUCK!"
The being began to falter and vanished. The red hexagons in the sky vanished and the world looked like it did before the being was ever there.
"So, isn't a tutorial meant to offer instructions on how to play? Not deliver the stuff of nightmares by a mass-murderer with a god-complex." Alex asked to no one in particular.
Then all hell broke loose.
People began to scream, yell, swear, run around desperately trying to escape to somewhere, anywhere but the main plaza. Alex quickly grabbed Yukki's arm and pulled her towards the side street he had used earlier.
After they had escaped, they managed to retrace their steps to the field they had met in. They slumped on to the ground in silence.
Alex broke the silence first. "So, what's the plan?"
Yuuki shrugged. "We've got to get supplies and level up, I suppose. Keep ahead of everyone else, and clear the game."
Alex nodded. "Yeah, that would be a good aim." He got up and held out an arm for Yuuki. "Come on, lets go. Need to get to another town by nightfall."
Yuuki looked up at him. "Why the arm?"
"Well, we're sticking together aren't we? Safety in numbers and all, also, you still need to teach me stuff." He smiled at her.
Yuuki, despite what had gone on less than an hour before, returned the smile and let Alex help her up. "Yeah, I suppose we should. What's that thing on your arm anyway?" She gestured to the wrist computer on his arm.
"This?" He looked at it. "This is a wrist computer developed by the researchers I work for. How they managed to get this in game I do not know. But it functions like a normal computer." He pressed the wake up button, or at least he hoped it was, and the hologram of Sandra appeared. "This is Sandra, whom I presume is the main researcher in charge of my test, of course, given the circumstances, its more complicated now..."
"Hi, Yuuki isn't it? Nice to meet you." Sandra suddenly spoke.
"You too." Yuuki replied.
After more pleasantries had been exchanged, Alex turned off the computer. He turned to Yuuki, and pointed over the hill in front of them. The sun was setting in the virtual sky.
"The next town should be in that direction, according to the map, so we should probably get going."
He began to walk, and Yuuki ran to reach along side him. They fell in pace as they walked to their next destination.