A/N: Well this is it, my first SAO fanfic ever. Please note that it will be mostly based on what I saw in the anime along with a few additional things I've added for my character's story and development. I will add things from the light novel if I ever find an English translation of it somewhere. I appreciate any suggestions as to the names of places and such in Aincrad that were never featured in either the novel or the anime because that's where my characters will be.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything relating to Sword Art Online. All locations, characters, and terminology of Sword Art Online is property of Reki Kawahara. All characters and locations not related to the series are of my own creation or the creation of others.

Real World POV

Nighttime in the real world was so much different than it was from in there. It was hard for her to get used to it ever since she got out. Then again, she was still adjusting to the fact that she was back in the real world at all. So much had happened in the game that it seemed as though life before it was an entirely different life altogether. But still, she was home with her family and her lover, which had to count for something at least. But it mattered little if she couldn't find the one person she wanted to be with the most outside the game.

Thankfully, she didn't have long to wait for that person; they came to her and even met her mother. It was the happiest moment in her life since she got out of SAO and she would always cherish it as much as the anniversary of their in-game wedding. But even now, as she felt as though her life was complete, she wanted to tell her story. She knew the only way how.

Carefully, so as not to disturb her lover, she slipped out of their bed and slipped into her night slippers. But before she went anywhere, she leaned down and kissed her beloved on the cheek lightly before pulling back with a gentle smile. She then walked carefully and quietly out of the bedroom and down the hallway of their two-bedroom apartment where she entered the study that contained her computer.

She quietly turned on her computer's CPU and slid into the desk chair. She then took a pair of reading glasses she always kept at the side of it next to the head gear that she swore she would never use again until it was safe. After slipping them on, she waited for her computer to fully log on before opening the word processing software, and began to type.

Story POV

As I write this down, I can't help but look back on when it all began. When I was a kid, I loved video games. My dad introduced me to them when I was 2 years old and I took a liking to them. From simple children's video games, to MMORPG games that he was used to playing, he even introduced me to some of the classics like Pong, Pac Man, Super Mario Bros., even the original Halo. So it came as no surprise when the announcement of the newest video game sensation Sword Arts Online was introduced, the two of us bought a copy each so we both could play.

Mom could never understand how the two of us could easily bond when it came to video games. Then again, dad never understood how she and I could bond through cooking (not that he didn't like the results though). But then again, I suppose it's part of what drifted them apart and divorced when I was 10 years old. But now I'm getting off-topic here, I won't bore you with my real life details, but I will tell you the story of how my life had changed drastically ever since I went into Sword Arts Online.

Dad and I spent almost 3 hours waiting in line to get our stuff for the game. When we finally got our copies of it and got home, I was so excited I couldn't help but feel like I was 3 years old again when dad introduced me to World of Warcraft. We carefully set up the Nerve Gear and got ourselves ready. I had to admit, I had butterflies in my stomach when we were about to start; I had no idea of what was going to happen into the game. If I had, I would've stopped the both of us right away and dad would still be here with me.

Real World POV

She paused in her typing before taking her thumb and wiping her tears that had formed in her eyes as she thought of her father. She missed him, and even though she still had her mother, she wanted the comfort of her dad here with her. After a few calming breaths she brought a tissue she kept on the desk and dried her eyes before returning to her keyboard.

Story POV

But out of all the bad things that happened in the game, there were good things that happened too. The best thing that happened to me was meeting the person of my dreams; someone who had swept me off my feet and reassured me that things will get better in the end. If I hadn't met them, I probably would've ended up committing player suicide and end my own life for real.

The date was November 6, 2022, and my dad and I had just gotten our NerveGears ready and we had lain down on our beds to get ready to play the game. We wished each other good luck before giving him a kiss on the cheek. As I watched the timer on my NerveGear tick closer to 1 PM, I wondered what the game would be life. Neither my dad nor I were beta testers, so we never got a first-hand experience of the game yet. But I wish we were, so then both of us would be here today. Finally, at 1 PM Tokyo standard time, it was time to log-on.

"Link Start!" The two words echoed by both me and my father ran through our home and a few seconds later, our life in SAO had begun.

I had created my account, made my password, and then created my avatar and after a few more seconds, my avatar appeared right behind a few others in the place known as The Town of Beginnings.

My avatar was a slender young woman with long golden hair that reached to the middle of my back, bright emerald green eyes that would make even the gods envious, and fair skin so smooth that even a long-term fight wouldn't blemish it. Outside the game, I was known as Kurumi Nagasawa or Kuru-chan to my friends. Inside the game, I was known as Tiger-Lily, after my favorite flower.

A message then popped up in front of me saying, "Player Zeus wants to add you to their friend list, will you accept?"

With a smile, I poked the "yes" button on the message with the words "Player Zeus added to friend list."

I knew who Zeus was, it was my dad. He had chosen his player name because he really loved Greek Mythology, and Zeus was his favorite of the Olympian gods. We had told each other prior to our log-on that we would add each other to our friend list and go through the game together every once in a while when he was off from work and I was home from school. We also agreed we would help the other level up if one of us got too far ahead. But I knew the only way we would identify each other is that we gave each other our planned names in the game.

After a few more minutes, I decided to look for my dad and get us started. So I opened my menu, accessed my buddy list, and went to "track-buddy" under dad's name to look for him on the map. After skimming through the map, I located him and was happy to know that he wasn't far from my current location. So with a spring in my avatar's step, I ran towards his location (avoiding other players and NPC's along the way) and spotted him right where I thought he'd be, in a water fountain that reminded me of the one in the park he used to take me to as a kid.

"Zeus!" I called out to him, catching his attention towards me. I couldn't help but want to swoon at the avatar he created. It was a tall, muscular man with a chiseled chin, short pepper hair, and wolf-like gray eyes that made almost any woman want him. I couldn't help but giggle at the sight of him.

"It's about time you showed up Tiger-Lily." He said to me as I slowed my pace up to him.

"We were supposed to get here together, remember?" I said, giving him a slight pout, it was the one thing I knew would make him laugh, which he did.

"Sorry, but I waited to find you elsewhere." He said with a grin.

"You can make it up to me by helping me level up." I replied with a sly grin of my own.

I followed him where we fought a few wild boar monsters. It took a while, but we both managed to defeat a good number of them and gained a few items and Col, the game currency. After a while, dad and I decided to take a break in a field just east of the Town of Beginnings. When we sat down I took notice of the time. It was 5:24, I knew it was getting late and it was almost time for me to get dinner started.

"Hey dad," I said to him, speaking to him out of character for the first time. "It's starting to get late, what do you say I log out and get dinner started while you keep playing till you get to the next town?"

Dad looked at me and smiled. "Sure, so long as you make sashimi tonight and you got a deal."

I giggled and got up to my feet and said to him, "You got it dad."

I then opened my menu and went over to the player options and scrolled down. But then I noticed something odd, where the log-out button was supposed to be, there was nothing. I looked at the other options in my menu and tried again, nothing.

"That's odd," I said, perplexed by this strange turn of events. "There's no log-out button."

I heard my dad say "huh" and walked over to look at my menu to confirm what I said.

"Did you get a bad copy of the game?" Dad asked me, opening his own menu but his eyes widened and I looked at it and noticed that he had the same problem.

"That's weird," I said, closing my menu. "Do you think it's a bug in the system?"

"Possibly," Dad replied with a shrug. "I'll try contacting the GM to see what the problem is." He then opened another option in the menu and a screen came up that said, 'Unable to connect to GM, please try again later.'

"I don't like this dad," I said, my voice was trembling a little as worry began to seep into my body.

"Now calm down, Kurumi," Dad said, placing a hand on my shoulder. "I'm sure there's a very logical explanation for this."

Suddenly, as though to answer his statement, a loud bell began to ring from a tower in the center of the first town. We turned towards it as it rang 4 or 5 times before something unexpected happened. My dad and I were suddenly transported into the city center with hundreds of other players, who were all confused and a bit frightened as to what was going on.

"Now what's going on?" I questioned as I observed everyone else before the artificial sky above us showed multiple screens saying 'Warning: system announcement' appeared above our heads.

The next thing that happened is something I will never forget. Several streams of what looked like blood began to ooze out of the panels and began to form into the shape of some robes and a human figure that a few of the beta testers recognized as a game master. People all around us were voicing their confusion; I on the other hand kept my mouth shut and gripped my father's shirt sleeve as the figure above us began to speak.

"Attention, players. Welcome to my world." He said in a relatively calm voice.

What he said got players questioning on what he meant by that statement. I had to admit, I was a little confused myself. In all my years of playing games like this, I never met a game master who said something like that.

"I am Kayaba Akihiko." The robed figure introduced himself, continuing his speech. "I am the only person who can control this world."

"Dad, isn't that the game's creator?" I asked him, looking up at the avatar of my old man.

"It is," Dad replied with a nod. "But what does he mean by only he can control this world?"

"I am sure that all of you have noticed that the logout button has been removed from the main menu." He continued, opening his menu as though to prove his point. "I assure you that this is not a bug in the system. I repeat, this is not a bug. This is one of the features of Sword Art Online."

My eyes were wide at that point. "What? What does he mean by that?"

"You cannot log out of SAO yourselves," Kayaba continued, as if to answer my question. "And no one on the outside can shut down or remove the NerveGear. Should this be attempted, the transmitter inside the NerveGear will emit a powerful microwave, destroying your brain and thus ending your life."

The moment he had said that, I felt a deep sense of foreboding in my stomach. Instinctively, my grip on my father's shirt tightened and I felt him wrap an arm around me, as if to protect me from this madman who had just declared us all his prisoners. But our gazes never left the robed figure in the sky as we heard other players around us mutter words of disbelief and shock. Who could blame them; being told that removing a VR headpiece would cook your brain would make anyone a little antsy.

"Hey, we can't get out!" I heard another player's voice over the crowd and looked in the direction of the voice and saw that a girl and guy player had attempted to leave the town center only to be stopped by a barrier of some kind.

"He must want everyone to hear this," My dad said, as he narrowed his eyes at the game's creator. "Why else would he bring us all here?"

I heard another player explain to another that the NerveGear had a transmitter that worked like a battery and that if the safeties for it were removed, it would indeed fry the human brain. He also explained that the NerveGear had an internal battery so cutting the power wouldn't do anything but make you die slower. At the time, I had hoped this was all just a big joke, a prank the creator had done for some publicity; but Kayaba was going to throw that theory out the window with his next words.

"Unfortunately, several players' friends and families have ignored this warning, and have attempted to remove the NerveGear. As a result, two hundred and thirteen players are gone forever, from both Aincrad and the real world." He continued, making my eyes widen even further in fear.

"No way…" I muttered disbelievingly, my voice sounded like a weak child who had just saw her puppy kicked by a bully.

To emphasize his point, screens showing news reports appeared around him showing images of grieving families and friends along with people being hauled away in ambulances wearing NerveGears or body bags. I even saw the images of the players themselves in school uniforms or pictures of themselves from their ID cards and rivers licenses. I knew that in my heart, my dad and I were among those being transported to a hospital if news had reached my mother or relatives who knew we were playing the game.

"As you can see, news organizations across the world are reporting all of this, including the deaths of those players." Kayaba said, ignoring the words of disbelief coming from all of us. "Thus, you can assume that the danger of a NerveGear being removed is now minimal." I gritted my teeth at that part, it was as if he was trying to comfort us with those words; but I knew that no one felt any comfort from that statement. "I hope you will relax and attempt to clear the game."

"'Clear the game?'" I echoed out loud, looking at my dad again. "Does he mean…?"

"Sounds like it." Dad said, lowering his head a little.

"But I want you to remember this clearly." Kayaba continued as the news reports around him disappeared one by one. "There is no longer any method to revive someone within the game. If your HP drops to zero, your avatar will be forever lost; and simultaneously, the NerveGear will destroy your brain."

I and many other players sucked in air in shock when he said that. Unconsciously, I looked over to my HP status bar and noted that I had 219 HP; two hundred and nineteen points were what separated me from certain death. Normally, being trapped in a video game sounded like a gamer's dream come true; but this dream was now a nightmare. Not only could we not log out, but if we died in the game, we died in real life. It was like being trapped in the Matrix, except in the Matrix you can actually feel the pain dealt to you; in this game, you felt no pain at all. But that didn't make me feel any better.

"There is only one means of escape, to complete the game." The madman said again, opening a map and showing our current location in Aincrad and the rest of our new home for the next two years. "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 boss on the 100th Floor, and you will clear the game."

"All 100 floors?" I queried, noting how many floors there were. I knew that in every game, as you progress the main bosses always get tougher and tougher. If this one was no different, then everyone was in for a fight that could take us years to complete.

"Even the beta testers didn't make it as far as Floor 10." Dad said, clenching his fist angrily. "How does he expect us to clear all 100 and make it out alive?"

"Finally," Kayaba's speech continued. "I've added a present from me to your item storage menus. Please confirm this."

As if, wanting to see if this was all a dream, I opened my menu and accessed my storage for items. Sure enough, there was an item labeled, "Mirror". Perplexed, I accessed it and a small hand mirror appeared in my hand. I looked over and noted that other players were holding the same thing. Suddenly, players began to glow a bluish color, as did my father. Looking at the reflection of my avatar, I soon followed suit and my vision was blinded by a bright light. When it was all over, I noticed that every player was now different; gone were their avatars that they had created for the game and in their place were normal looking people in what could be described as a massive cosplay party. I looked towards my father and sure enough, he now looked exactly like his real world self.

He was tall, about 182 centimeters with short wavy dark hair with small traces of gray hairs that had grown through age and stress. His eyes were a dark green; his skin was slightly tanned and had a few wrinkles around his eyes and cheeks. He also wore a pair of eyeglasses with square frames that I knew he wore for his nearsightedness. He looked like an average man you'd see on the street; but to me, this was the face of my real father.

I looked in the mirror I held in my hand and was shocked to see what was looking back at me in it. Gone was my beautiful blonde avatar, and in its place was the face of a teenage Japanese girl with short brown hair that ended above my shoulders, eyes that matched that of my father's, a few places where I had acne just as I had grown into my teens, and pale skin that wasn't as smooth as my avatar's. I dropped the mirror and it shattered into pixels just as I did so and I then I looked down and noticed that my body was now my average height of 160 centimeters. I even noted that my chest size that my avatar had shrunk to my normal chest size that my friends were always jealous of. I was a size C, about 23 centimeters.

"How, is this possible?" I asked, my voice wavering as I noted my hands, while feminine still, were slightly calloused from years of playing video games with my father.

"The NerveGear," He answered, causing me to look up at him. "It covers your entire head, which means it's able to scan our faces perfectly."

That made perfect sense, and then I remembered something else. "Now that I think about it, remember how we were instructed to calibrate them?"

Dad nodded at my question. I then felt a blush come to my cheeks as I remembered exactly how we had to calibrate our NerveGears. We had to touch our bodies from head to toe. It included touching certain parts of my body that a girl like me would be too embarrassed to even admit.

"But why is he doing this," I asked, feeling my knees grow a little weak. "Why go out of his way to make a video game and then use it to trap thousands of innocent people and condemn them like this?"

"I'm sure he's about to tell us," Dad said, making me look back at the robed figure who had just condemned us all to certain death.

"I'm sure you're all asking 'Why? Why would Kayaba Akihiko, developer of Sword Art Online and the NerveGear, do all this?'" He said, as though he could read everyone's thoughts. "My goal has already been achieved. I created Sword Art Online for one reason: to create a world and intervene in it."

I growled in anger at what he had just said, he was basically telling us that he had created this game just to play God!

"And now it is complete." He said, with a slight tone of what sounded like…sympathy, empathy, I couldn't tell. "This ends the tutorial for the official Sword Art Online launch. Good luck, players." With that, his body began to disappear. Once he was gone, the sky above us turned to normal, and the barrier that had trapped us all in the town center was gone. After a minute of silence, the entire town erupted into chaos.

Dad then took me and we ran into the town, which was relatively empty by now save for a few NPCs. After a few minutes of running I looked at dad as we stopped in another clearing in the town. Despite the fact that everything was pixels and computer data, I still felt the exhaustion that came from the running.

"What do we do now dad?" I said, knowing that no one else was around to hear me call him that. "Unless someone manages to find away to either shut down the game or take the NerveGears off of us safely, we're stuck here."

"I know, Kurumi," Dad said, his voice raised a little. "But right now we have only a few options." He then counted with his fingers. "We can either stay here in the Town of Beginnings and let everyone else do the fighting for us, we could level ourselves up so we can take on the floor boss wherever it is or develop our in-game skills, or…" He paused, looking very hesitant to finish his statement.

"Or, what?" I urged him on, almost fearing his answer.

"We could jump off the game's grid." He said after a few seconds of silence, causing me to gasp. He had basically said that we should commit player suicide to test what Kayaba had said and risk logging out that way. He quelled my fears with the next thing he said. "But that option is only a last resort, I hope we never have to do that."

I said nothing for a couple of minutes. Finally, I dropped to my knees letting it all sink in. The options dad had presented me were the only options any player in this game now had. The first and last options were the coward's way out. But I knew that dad was no coward, and neither was I. But I had to admit, I was scared; scared that I would never get out of the game, never see my friends again, never see my mother again. It all just came crashing down on me that day on just how important everyone out in the real world was to me.

But if what Kayaba said was true and that our only way out was to complete this death game of his, then dad and I had only one option: we had to fight. Again I looked at my health bar and noted the 219/219 just above it. I also took note that I was still just a lvl.1 player like everyone else. I'm sure dad was looking at his and noting what stood between him and death. But right now, I didn't care, I just sat there on my knees looking blankly at the brick laid street I was sitting on.

I then felt a pair of arms wrap around me, snapping me out of my thoughts. I knew these arms; these were the same arms that always comforted me when I was a little girl whenever I was upset about something. The same arms that held me when I was a baby and pushed me on swings. These belonged to my father, who had noted how everything that had just happened finally hit me and decided to do what he always did whenever something like this happened. After a few seconds, I couldn't take it, and I immediately clutched onto my father and began to sob my heart out.

"It's going to be alright, Kurumi," My dad's voice said to me, but it sounded hoarse, as though he didn't believe his own words. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. "It's going to be alright."

I wished I could've believed him. I wish that I had said to him that we weren't going to be alright. I just wish that I could've done something to prevent us from getting trapped in the death game we were in. But I knew that nothing I did would matter. Nothing I said would change our situation. The only thing I could do at that moment was look to my father for what little comfort he could offer me, but I knew he was also feeling the same despair that I and many other players were feeling in that moment. But at the time, we all knew one thing; the next month within the game would affect us all in the days to come.

A/N: And that's it for the Prologue, the next chapter will be based on what I saw in the second episode of the anime, somewhat so the main characters WILL be featured in this. But I again, I will be accepting OCs for future chapters, so please PM me for details.