The release day of SAO was a major world wide event that no one wanted to miss. November 6, 2022, 12:00. True, only ten thousand were allowed to play, but everyone was talking about it nonetheless. Levi sat in front of the television set watching news coverage while his brothers set up the Nerve Gear helmets.

"Hey guys, How's it coming?" Levi called over his shoulder.

"Just about done! Finished calibrating Wyatt's helmet! How about you come in for yours?" Jake called back. Levi smiled… and rolled his wheel chair out of the living room. Levi had been paralyzed from the waist down since he was eight. He had lost his ability to walk when he and his brothers were involved in a brutal car accident. Jake had a scar that stretched across his face and Wyatt was completely blind. Both of them had beta tested SAO as they were among the first to register their Nerve Gear and were among the disability testers who verified that the nerve gear would work regardless of handicaps. Jake was ultimately their guide in the real world, but in the world with Nerve Gear, they could keep up on their own. Wyatt could usually do well in the real world with his helper dog Pardy. Levi on the other hand was the only one really who relied entirely on his brothers. He could go some ways with his wheel chair, but ultimately with narrow doors he needed his brothers' help. He didn't like it, but he was dependent on them. They called him a priority but he knew the truth. He was a liability.

When he reached the door they went through the usual routine of picking him up and collapsing his wheel chair to get him through. As they did so they talked excitedly about the things they would do together. But all Levi heard were his brothers' happy voices, the muted sounds of two excited twenty year olds anticipating the start of a new beginning. True, Levi was excited too. In the game, he could finally do what his brothers could. But as of now he was simply a cripple they had to attend to. They didn't think so, but Levi felt it.

"Levi?" Jake asked setting Levi down in the wheel chair.

"Sounds great!" Levi replied cheerily with a thumbs up and wheeled himself over to the bed. As he went Jake looked to Wyatt concernedly. He had asked Levi what kind of sword he would want. Wyatt knew when he was being looked at as he could hear even the most subtle of movements. They knew something was on Levi's mind and it wasn't something he would tell them. Wyatt smiled back silently indicating to just move on casually and Jake sighed.

They set Levi up with the full calibration pat down and began setting up player names.

"The game optimizes all five of your senses so you'll need to do a few things just to fit the nerve gear with the physical constraints of your person. Pat yourself down and I'll check the surface mapping." Jake explained and Levi began patting himself up and down. Hand prints where his hands made contact with himself showed up on screen three-dimesionalizing his person. "That should just about do it. When you register you'll need a username and password. Don't worry about what you go with, just something you'll remember."

"What's it like to play a game where you control your avatar with your mind?" Levi asked as he set up his account on the computer.

"Actually it's amazingly fluid. All of your cognitive actions are patterned perfectly into the game. I never experienced any connection lag while playing." Jake replied.

"So, what are we going to go by in the game?" Jake asked.

"Let's do something that shows we're brothers. If we can clearly define ourselves from the rest, we have a better chance of leading the pack."

"Dragon names." Jake said and Levi and Wyatt looked his way in surprise.

"Drake, Wyvern, and Leviathan. Those will be our names. We'll be the three dragon brothers." Jake added smiling his ruthless grin.

"I like it!" Wyatt chimed in and Levi nodded.

"You boys ready?" came a voice from the doorway and they looked up to see their mother smiling happily down at them.

"Just about. Oh, and don't forget, once we're in the game you can't touch the Nerve Gear. These things are still experimental to a degree." Jake reminded seriously as he hopped into the top bunk.

"Don't worry. I remember. Just don't forget, dad will be home tonight for dinner so don't stay in past 6:00." She smiled teasingly.

"Don't worry!" Wyatt echoed chuckling.

"I know. And Jake honey, you're the boss so take care of your brothers. No soloing in there."

"Don't worry. I'll be certain to mother them for you. Wash behind your virtual ears, clean up your virtual laundry, clear your virtual dishes, take out the virtual trash-"

"Oh, don't patronize me!" She laughed"Just remember not to keep your father waiting on dinner. It's been a while since we've eaten as a family and-" She faltered and held her arm. Even though she was older with a delicate streak of grey growing through her hair, she was still a young girl at her core.

She was jolted from her thoughts when she felt Jake's firm yet gentle hand on her shoulder.

"Don't worry. We'll be together as one family again. I promise." Jake assured her solemnly. She smiled and gave a small nod.

"12:55!" Levi warned.

"Set in guys! The game will load up immediately once you're in." Jake reminded and the boys booted up their nerve gear.

"Take care you three!" She sighed and walked out.

"…Link START!" They called out in unison.

Levi looked up and immediately his eyes were flushed with shafts of color. His senses calibrated into the nerve gear one after the next and as each sense switched over, He felt his body go as numb as his useless legs. It almost felt as if he didn't exist at all. He set the language and logged into his account. When it asked for him to confirm playing as Levi, he declined and set up Leviathan. A black haired avatar with a blue hooded sweatshirt and longsword strapped over his shoulder. He couldn't customize it entirely the way he wanted, but the blue color scheme was what he was going for so he called it good enough.

After making the changes he confirmed and the screen turned grey. The words "Welcome to Sword Art Online" flashed up and Levi could feel his heart racing. The screen broke away into floods of blue color and he found himself in the midst of a verdant green field.

… and he was standing. He looked down at his feet, strong and resilient beneath him. Hills spread out in every direction around him. He gazed out over the grassy mounds and rolls in the landscape with the only thoughts in his mind being of his legs. He could walk again. But more importantly… he smirked and tore off, sprinting through fields of golden grass, his smile spreading into a laugh. The graphics were flawless as they were all in his head. He ran past trees, the feeling of the breeze cooling his face and pulling back at his hair. After slowing to a stop he looked down at the Town of Beginnings. A massive, sprawling city of a place with hundreds of streets and hidden alleys. Everything was so crisp and detailed. This was the world Levi had dreamed of.

"Well, what do you think of it?" Asked a player behind him and Levi spun around to see a player in a yellow sweatshirt with cutlass standing behind him. At first Levi thought it was a stranger, but only until he saw the player name. Wyvern.

"I can walk!" Levi exclaimed and threw his arms around Wyatt. When we broke away he held me by the shoulders at arms length.

"So this is what you look like?" He asked peering at me and I remembered he hadn't seen my face in ten years.

"No. I actually have brown hair. A lot like Jake's only longer."

"Ah, ah, ah. Player names remember?" Wyatt cautioned and Levi caught himself. Wyatt was really Wyvern now and he was really Leviathan.

"Right, Drake!" Leviathan corrected.

"So, where do you want to go?" Wyvern asked stretching his arms.

"Let's head into town and find Drake." Leviathan suggested."We should start setting up our plan for the game asap."

"Right, I'll message him." Wyvern agreed and sped through a series of windows that popped up in front of him. Leviathan watched him and couldn't help but see the glimmer in his eyes as he looked at everything before him. It had never really occurred to Leviathan that this game was as much liberation for him as it was for his brothers. Wyatt had his sight back, and Jake could walk around without looking like a menacing brawler. Levi wasn't the only one set free by virtual reality. However he did have a greater tie to the game than his brothers in that he had no interest in logging out. He wanted to play this game everyday for the rest of his life. Sure it was childish, but here he didn't depend on his brothers anymore.

"Drake said to meet him at the tavern on the south side of town. We should get going if we plan to find this place."

"Agreed." Leviathan smiled and they ran for the town's guilded main gates. They entered in and found themselves in a crowded bustling city with players of all types and colors.

"Over there." Leviathan noted and pointed to the Balergon Tavern. In the doorway stood Drake's avatar, clad in a Red hooded sweatshirt and carrying a broad axe on his back.

"Ho you two! So what do you think?" Drake asked.

"So this is what you were experiencing everyday wasn't it?" Wyvern noted smiling. Drake grinned back.

"Still mad at me for not showing up at dinner more?"

"Yes but for a different reason." Leviathan joked.

"Well, first things first. Let's start training!"

It was late in the evening and all of the boys were having the time of their lives slashing away at pigs and wolves.

"This game is amazing!" Wyvern laughed as he reached level three. Leviathan meanwhile was deep in the middle of a fight with a wolf.

"Hey Leviathan! What are you doing?" Drake called.

"What?" Leviathan grunted back as he ducked and rolled under the wolf's charging bite attack.

"Your sword! You're holding it backwards!" Drake noted. And he was right, Leviathan, instead of holding his sword facing forward held it like a dagger but wielded it like a sword.

"It's called backhanding! Works great for me! I can swing and get more power out of every stroke!" Leviathan shot back over his shoulder.

"But your reach with the blade is severely limited!" Drake warned.

"I don't need to be far away from my opponent. I'm just as comfortable up close!" Leviathan replied and in a flurry of sweeps sent blue lines coursing through the wolf's body. It's HP meter dropped from red to zero and Leviathan leveled up to four as the wolf's body burst into graphic fragments.

And then the town bell began to toll.

"An hourly bell at 5:25? What's going on?" Drake asked and suddenly each of the boys was surrounded in a column of blue light.

"Forced Teleport." Drake murmured and Leviathan looked around, hand grasping the hilt of his sword instinctively.

The bell stopped ringing.

Drake looked up and saw the flashing red warning light in the sky. Suddenly it erupted and hundreds of alerts swept up the sky, covering everyone with red light.

"What's going on?" Wyvern asked, flexing his hands. Drake however folded his arms and starred up at the sky now oozing with red.

"I don't like it. First we can't log out, then we have a thing like this happen. If I didn't know any better, I'd say the game is crashing." Drake replied. The red ooze solidified and formed into a cloaked figure, floating over the crowds.

"Is that a boss?" Leviathan asked.

"I'm pretty sure it's a game master. maybe he's here to clear up the glitch?" Wyvern asked looking to Drake, but Drake shook his head.

"Something about this doesn't seem to fit. Kayaba Akihiko wouldn't screw up this badly and come out and say so. I can't help but feel there's something far worse going down, and it isn't a mistake." Drake noted.

"Attention players. Welcome to my world. My name is Kayaba Akihiko. As of this moment, I am the sole person who can control this world. I'm sure you've already noticed that the log-out button is missing from the main menu," Kayaba announced and everyone stared up, wondering what could possibly be the meaning or explanation for this. "But this is not a defect in the game."

"What?!" Wyvern exclaimed and Drake's eyes narrowed as his mind sank deep into thought.

"I repeat…" Leviathan dropped his hand slowly from the hilt of his sword and closed it."This is not a defect in the game. It is a feature of Sword Art Online." At this Leviathan felt weak. He looked to his older brothers as it began to sink in.

"Feature my right ass." Drake snorted and folded his arms.

"You cannot log yourselves out of Sword Art Online, and no one on the outside can shut down or remove the Nerve Gear. Should this be attempted, the transmitter inside the Nerve Gear will emit a powerful microwave destroying your brain and thus ending your life." Kayaba added and Drake grimaced.

"He has to be joking!" some of the players began saying and Wyvern turned to Drake.

"Would he though?" Wyvern asked solemnly.

"He's right. The Nerve gear could wipe our consciousness and destroy our nervous system." Drake growled and Leviathan frowned."But why?"

"I've had enough of this!" One player spat and ran for one of the exits. But as he came to the door he ran head long into a force field. "Hey! What's the big idea?"

"Unfortunately, several players' friends and families have ignored this warning, and have attempted to remove the nerve gear. As a result, two hundred and thirteen players are gone forever, from both Aincrad and the real world."

"That's impossible!" One exclaimed and everyone starred on in disbelief at the hooded figure hovering above them. Suddenly windows started popping up around the game master of news organizations with leading headlines on the fatal game and the two hundred and thirteen players now dead, SAO.

"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 Nerve Gear being removed is now minimal. I hope you will relax and try to clear the game."

"Like hell you mad man." A player grumbled.

"But I want you to remember this clearly. There is no longer any method to revive someone within the game. If your HP drops to zero, your avatar will be lost forever and simultaneously… the nerve gear will destroy your brain." Kayaba warned and Leviathan could see the other people panicking. He would have panicked too, if it weren't for the fact that he was boiling over with rage.

"This was supposed to be just a game…" Leviathan murmured clenching his hand in a fist as he began to shake. "Why?"

"There is only one means of escape. To complete the game." Kayaba assured the crowds and everyone went silent again.

"Rats in a damn maze." Drake murmured. "He's playing with us."

"You are presently on the lowest floor of Aincrad, Floor 1. If you make your way through the dungeon and defeat the Floor Boss, you may advance to the next level. Defeat the final boss on Floor 100, and you will clear the game."

"Clear the game? Isn't this an MMO? What's he talking about?" Players started asking one another.

"We didn't even get nearly that far. Only floor eight." Drake noted and Wyvern looked to him in concern.

"Weren't you one of the leading players?" Wyvern asked and Drake nodded.

"At least that's what the leader boards said. I held the highest stats alongside Hankoyo, Kirito, and Beshazi481. We were the ones soloing our way to the top. We would have ended up worse than everyone else though seeing as we couldn't take on heavy numbers of monsters on our own as solo players." Drake admitted.

"The gates." Leviathan murmured and both of the other boys looked to him. "Get to the gates. The force field may still be up, but once he lets it down, it's going to be madness in here." He repeated pointing to the crowds. It was only a matter of time before people started recovering from shock and denial.

"Finally," Kayaba added finishing his announcement and the boys looked back up one last time, "I've added a present from me to your item storage. Please see for yourselves." Leviathan starred up skeptically but complied anyway, opening up his items menu and scrolling to the new item. The title mirror perplexed him but he pulled it out anyway. In it he saw his own avatar's reflection, black haired and with his blue hood up, shading his green eyes. But in a flash of blue light everything changed. Everyone in the game was now different in appearance and when Leviathan looked into the mirror, he saw his own real face looking back at him. His blue eyes and light brown hair hanging over his brow. He looked up to Drake who now looked exactly as Jake did in real life with scar, short reddish brown hair and all and Wyvern now like Wyatt with his longish blonde hair and blue eyes.

"Levi- Leviathan? Is that you?" Wyvern asked and Leviathan nodded.

"It's me Wyvern." Leviathan admitted.

"Drake?" Wyvern added turning to the eldest who sighed pulling back his hood and revealing the Brutal looking scar across the bridge of his nose. "... so that's what happened to you in the crash..."

"Yeah, I don't really appeal to the ladies much with a face like this." Drake confessed sadly.

"Right now you're probably wondering, 'Why?'" Kayaba began in a smug tone."Why would Kayaba Akihiko, developer of Sword Art Online and the Nerve Gear, do all this? My goal has already been achieved. I created Sword Art Online for one reason… to create this world and intervene in it. And now, it is complete."

"You monster!" Leviathan cursed but Drake caught him by the shoulder.

"We need to go. Now." Drake reminded and they hurried through stunned and flabbergasted players to one of the exits to wait.

"This ends the tutorial for the official Sword Art Online launch. Good Luck players." Kayaba said in almost a taunting voice and the cloaked figure of the game master began to fizzle and fall away into static. The red waning alerts in the sky cleared away leaving everyone in the large plaza area standing dumbfounded.

"Move!" Drake ordered and the three brothers ran at where the force field had once been. Leviathan looked back at everyone in the plaza. As the reality of what was going on was finally sinking in players started scrambling for the exits in all directions. Screaming, panic, chaos, all of it in a single confined area.

"Leviathan! Get on the roof tops! These streets will get crowded faster than we can get out of here!" Drake warned as he climbed up the front of a shop and onto it's veranda.

"Aye!" Leviathan agreed and did a wall run up the first floor to get a hand hold on the second floor window.

"Hurry!" Wyvern warned. "They're getting closer!" Leviathan front flipped up and landed on his knees on the roof top. When he looked back He could see Wyvern jumping from one roof to the next with Jake a few blocks down.

"Where are we going?" Leviathan called.

"Northern Gate! Need to get moving to the next towns asap!" Jake called back.

"Right! meet you there!"

It was six o'clock when the three boys met up above the northern gates. They looked to one another, each at a loss for something to say.

"So we're stuck here… in this world?" Wyvern asked.

"That seems to be how it is. I just can't seem to wrap my mind around it all. " Leviathan said shaking his head.

"We need a new plan. Players will be flocking to all of the nearest hunting grounds and farming these lands dry." Drake said pounding his fist against the roofing tiles he knelt on.

"We split up. Cover as much ground individually and take out everything in our path. We should be all level ten once we regroup." Leviathan suggested.

"Good point. Wyvern, you take the western road to Halborne, I'll head north the Buckfang, and Leviathan will go east through to Goroburk. We'll meet up in Buckfang where I'll get us into a guild. And remember, if your health ever sinks to yellow, get your ass out of whatever fight your in. I don't care if it's the one fight that will level you up, I'm not going back to mom alone." Drake ordered and Leviathan and Wyvern nodded their ascent.

"Take care." Leviathan saluted and backflipped off of the ramparts to the ground, taking off along the eastern path into the Oaken woods.

"Drake," Wyvern began and Drake looked over his shoulder.

"Yeah?"

"Did you notice?"

"Notice what?"

"We're changing. Take Leviathan for example. He used to be the kid brother, but now… now it's like he's a different person. He's tougher than either of us at heart."

"I wouldn't say we're changing, our true colors are just shining brighter than we would like to admit. Levi was always a rough one. He just kept up the facade to pull us through. But now that we need to fend for ourselves, he's reverting to himself." Drake replied.

"But what will we tell mom when we come back different than we went in?"

"Honestly…I don't know." Drake admitted. "But we need to make sure we all come back for one."

When he came home from work early, it was for reasons he would rather regret. Koyoki was standing in the door way of the boys' bedroom sobbing for all she was worth, the news coverage of the tragedy murmuring in the living room. Warning banners blaring across the screen not to remove the Nerve Gear under any condition. But Hayuma knew now wasn't the time to lose faith. He took his wife in his arms and rocked her back and forth to comfort her… the way he did when their first son died in child birth. But with this, he at least the room to hope. Room to gamble for the lives of his sons who were now trapped in their own minds on beds. But the one for whom it was possibly hardest was Wyatt's escort dog Pardy who lay on the bed next to his motionless master, unaware that there was still hope to be had that he would move again. Unaware that Wyatt could be alive or dead at any minute in that cruel and viscous game. But all Hayuma could do was hope.

So, chapter 1 down and I have this gut wrenching feeling that people are going to hate it seeing as so many people who are die hard for this sort of thing will probably tear it apart for either playing too close to the story, not close enough, or where the heck are Kirito and Asuna. Let me know if I should add them in and I will do my best to do justice to their characters. Also be equally free in letting me know to not put them in as they are a bit over-used here on Fan-Fic. Bear in mind, the point of this story isn't so much to follow the story, but to elaborate on some of the lesser mentioned guilds such as the Laughing Coffins and how they weren't so bad at first. That as well as the fictional war I've been thinking on having between the Liberation Army and the Holy Dragon Alliance seeing as they were the most heavily geared in the series. Please reply as to what you think, and by all means, don't be afraid to flame.