"Hey mom, I'm gonna be in my room, so don't bother me, okay?" I yelled down stairs shutting the door excitedly holding the SAO hardware in my hands. I hurriedly opened the package and plugged it in. The opening day for the gear happened to be near my birthday, so my mom let me have it as an early birthday present. I put on the head gear and excitedly typed in my name; Isamu Mamoru. Then, I got lost in the world known as, Sword Art Online.

The first thing it asked me to do was to customize my class, character, and abilities. There were tons of classes to choose from. Archer, Mage, Swordsman, Elf, Orc, Shadow Knight, Barbarian, the list goes on and on. I eventually just ended up picking Beast Tamer though. Then I had to decide on what beast I was going to choose. Again, there was more choices than I knew what to do with. Phoenix, horse, skeleton, dragon, tiger, wolf, even unicorns were available. But me, I ended up going with a Cerberus. After all, who doesn't want a cute little puppy demon hound. Now for abilities. I got to choose three out of hundreds to start my character off with. I chose Beast Communication as one of them. That's where, if the player is a beast tamer, they can communicate regularly with their beast only, and their beast can only communicate with them. Next skill I chose was Fast Travel. It works the same as a teleportation crystal only instead of using a crystal, it takes all of my stamina to use. Lastly, I chose the Speed Technician lvl. 1. It enhances your speed but at higher skill levels you can vibrate your body so fast that you can eventually faze through things in the game. But at the highest skill level you can even slow down time. For my looks, I just made him look like my normal self. And with that, I officially started my adventure.

The first thing I did, was grind. If you don't know what that is, it's basically when you attack low leveled monsters to get experience a little bit at a time. I did that for about 6 hours, till finally I was level 10. That's when I heard about the incident. I went into town to get some potions, and food for my companion who I had name, Shadow. We walked into the bar. I had a good amount of money for a beginner, so I ordered a can of Fiery Bacon Bits and a bowl of water for Shadow, and an apple and water for me. When the bartender, a 15 year old boy, brought me my food and beverages, he looked sad.

"What's up?" I asked him. He responded with a teary eyed look. "You mean you didn't hear?" He said. I looked around and I saw everyone with almost the same expression. I was in the town that was after the first one so there wasn't many people here. I sat across from a table with a guy named Kirito, who had more of a serious look than a sad one. He looked kinda worried. "Hey there, I'm Isamu." I introduced myself. "I was wondering if you could tell me what was going on?" He looked up at me and told me everything. How if we die here, we die out there. And if we get our helmets taken off, we die from that too. My fists clenched together and Shadow looked up and jumped on my lap, licking my face. "So this just turned real, huh?" I said with teeth clenched. "Then lets party up. It would be safer that way." Kirito looked up at me. He closed his eyes, stood up, and walked out. I was alone in a game to the death, where my only friend was a virtual pet. Not exactly the best birthday.