The plane ride took forever. 8 hours on a plane; I'd consider this worth it. I looked up at the buildings around me, lost in the memory from the last time that I was here. I shook it off, not wanting to remember what I had left behind. I was here for one purpose: the VRMMO Sword Art Online. Only something like that could draw me back to the place of my birth. And the place of my curse…
"Taxi!"
ΔΔΔΔΔ
30 mins later.
"Hi there, I'm here to check into my room. I made my reservation three months ago under the name Sigalo," I said to the hotel concierge.
"I see the reservation; may I see some I.D?" I handed it over. "Excuse me sir, I hate to pry but are you the real…"
"Please, don't tell anyone that I am here," I said forestalling the question. "I'm only here for one thing."
"What would that be sir?" I could tell that my statement had piqued her interests. I felt that she would keep my secrets.
"I'm a gamer; so when I heard that Kayaba had developed the first full dive MMORPG, I knew I needed to get it fast."
Her eyes gleamed. "So, you're a gamer that will do anything for a new game?" She sighed; "I wish I had the money to afford the system with the game."
"Then how about a deal?"
"What sort of deal?"
"I have more than enough money and time to get you a NerveGear if you want. If you keep my real identity a secret from most of your coworkers, I can get it for you. Think of it as a favor for a favor."
I immediately wished I hadn't worded it like that. She reached across the front desk and grabbed the front of my shirt with her left hand, ready to punch me with her right.
"WAIT, PLEASE! I did not mean it like that!" The anger was still there, along with a glimmer of amusement that I didn't fully understand.
"Well, maybe next time you should choose your wording carefully!" she said, her fist still ready to punch me. She loosened her grip, and carefully dusted off my jacket. "Against my better judgement however, I will accept your offer and take a copy of SAO. Where can I pick it up from you?"
"Would you be working here the day after? The game comes out in two days, so I'll be camping out tomorrow and coming back to play it here at the hotel the day after. Thats the only reason I decided to rent a hotel room for a couple of days so I could play it for a little while before going home. If you meet me here, I can give you the system. Heck, I could rent you a room if you would like. It would be the least I could do for you keeping my secret. The reason I picked this hotel was because they had Lan-cables next to the beds."
"That would be quite nice. I suppose I could repay you by keeping your secret and joining you in the the game," she replied. "I heard from some buddies of mine that the game was going to be insanely hard. Two of them were Beta Testers."
"Wow, are they hardcore gamers?" I replied, astonished.
"Yep, they are normally some of the toughest players to face off with in game. I used to run with them more, but as they kept getting better and better while I fell behind, I figured that I should just let them go without a lower leveled player like me slowing them down."
I shrugged, "You know, you didn't have to quit playing altogether though, why not play by yourself."
"I just didn't find it as fun, thats all."
"Very well. By the way, what's your name? If I'm going to give you both a NerveGear and SAO, you might as well give me your name so that I know who's helping."
"Oh right, my name is Shisuda. If you are going to rent me a room, you might as well do it while you are here. By tomorrow when you come down, all the rooms might be booked."
I nodded. "Can you hook me up with that? I feel like you know what to do…."
ΔΔΔΔΔ
two days later.
She had told me that it was room 112. I was sincerely hoping that I hadn't misheard, because I was tired of carrying the equipment. I went up to the door and headbutted it, since my arms were full with her NerveGear equipment. In order to keep the fact that I was back in Japan a secret, I felt that this was the least I could do. My parents did not know my whereabouts; neither did any of my old friends. I had achieved what I had so long desired: to disappear. Now, I had finally come back to the town of the misunderstanding, and one of the first people I talk to recognizes me.
While I was musing over this, I heard her coming up to the door of the room. I smiled, knowing that she would be looking through the peephole. The door opened, revealing Shisuda smiling at me.
"Well, you kept your promise. That's a relief; I was worried that I might have to call up everyone I knew and tell them that you were in town," she said jokingly.
I walked into the room and set the NerveGear down onto the bed. "Well, Miss. Is there anything else that I can help you with?"
"Can you tell what I am supposed to do? I have no clue how to I am supposed to work it. I want be on the server right when it starts."
"Sure. The main thing to remember is that you can't move your body once you activate the NerveGear. To start, you might as well put it on. It'll perform a scan to process your brains output and make sure that it can replicate the different sensations. After it does that, it will ask you to pat down your body with both hands. Thats the calibration, it tries to replicate the feeling of motion from your own body. Thats really all you need to know."
"Ok thanks! You've really helped me out. When's the server for the game open up?"
Looking at my watch, I saw that it read 12:35. "In 25 minutes. I'd suggest starting the NerveGear up soon, cause the server starts at 1:00."
"Right, I'd better start getting ready. I'll see you in the game."
I backed out of the room, waving to her. I was really pumped up for the game, and I could feel the same energy coming off of her. I hurried down to my room.
ΔΔΔΔΔ
24 mins later.
One minute left, just one more minute of waiting. Then, the ping of my watch telling me that it was 1:00. I closed my eyes.
"LINK START"
Lights started to fly towards me. Suddenly, the hexagonal sensors flew past my face, indicating that everything was normal. This was normal. The text box, indicating that I needed to log in. The character creation screen.
"Hmmmm, what do I want to look like?" musing to myself. I decided to go with my standard character design. Ice white spiky hair hair, electric blue eyes, medium build. "That'll do it." Character name: Plasma, standard character name. Enter it. Suddenly, everything disappeared around me. I closed my eyes, readying myself for the impact. The little jolt of my feet hitting the ground. I slowly opened up my eyes, blinking into the harsh sunlight. I caught my breath.
"It all looks so… REAL," I breathed in awe. "Everything seems so much like something you could see in the real world." I walked forwards slowly, my first steps in a new world. Suddenly a voice I had heard not 30 minutes before.
"Well, your character design is very spiffy. How long did it take for you to think about that design?" she said, teasing me.
"Not to long, I use similar character designs for most of my games. What's your name going to be in this world?"
"I decided to use my standard character name: Lyra. It kind of fits how my avatar looks as well," she stated.
I glanced at her character. She seemed much less serious looking in this world, and I did not find it as stunning. I figured it was to lower a person's expectations of her in a fight. Her hair was brown, going all the way down past her shoulders. Her appearance was much more petite and feminine than that of her true self. She wore a longer skirt than the rest of the girls in the square, almost making it a gown. Her eyes were the first thing one would notice though. Even though the color had changed to a more sea blue, they were still intense enough to draw one's attention.
"Well," I said after a time, "Do you want to head out of town and get some XP going? I'm sure that some players are already out there farming up."
"Sure but," she hesitated, "can we go get something else for me to wear? This dress doesn't offer very good movement speed."
"Absolutely, I understand," I said, looking down at my cloths. "I might as well get some better combat gear too."
ΔΔΔΔΔ
Twenty minute later the two of us were trying to batter a boar down for our first monster kill. After five minutes of exertion, we managed to defeat the boar, giving us both a little bit of experience and a few items.
"There has to be a better way of doing this," Lyra breathed. "We spent five minutes on killing one of what's supposed to be one of the easiest things to kill. Do you remember anything from the guidebook?"
"Now that you mention it, yeah," I replied. "There was something in the guidebook about something called sword skills. It said that you have to equip them from the menu. Lets give that a shot."
Five mins later:
"This isn't going any faster," she complained. "We have to be doing something wrong; that's why we can't kill these stupid things."
I agreed with her, looking around at all the boars nearby. They weren't hostile unless attack, but that didn't make things any easier. Suddenly, I heard a yell to my left and turned. Another two players had arrived to the fields; it seemed like one was teaching the other about something. I saw the one with red hair stand up and get into a ready stance, his sword starting to get a dull orange glow. Suddenly, on the boars next charge, he attacked, killing the boar instantly.
"OHHHHH! So that's how you use those," I said, chuckling to myself. It was so simple, but we just hadn't seemed to think of it.
"What"
"The guy over there just used a sword skill. I know how he did it now too"
"Really?!"
"Yeah. You need to have your strike premeditated, then use it on your target. Basically, you have to use it earlier than your attack."
"Oh! So should we try it out on some boars? We might be able to get to level one in a hour."
"Great idea. Lets go until around 5:15? I might want to go get some food before playing more and then getting some shut-eye before my flight tomorrow. So lets go."
We'd had a very successful hunting trip; killing twenty boars in just three hours. I was keeping watching my time, when I noticed that it was already 5:15.
"Whoa, hold up. Its already time for me to go. I'm starting to get hungry you know."
"Oh come on. We're both only like 20 Exp away from leveling up. Just stay for a little while longer." Suddenly, she was running down a hill, chasing after a boar that we had just injured.
"Lyra wait!" I called, chasing her down. "I really can't stay. I need to go some food that way I can sleep easily tonight!"
"Okay then…." she replied, shuffling her feet. "Do you want to go get something together? I'd be willing to pay; it's the least I could do."
"Thats a very pleasant offer, but I thought that you wanted to do some more leveling? You don't have to offer just to be nice. If you want to continue leveling without me, you don't have to wait."
"No, I think I should come with you. That way people don't get any ideas about your identity. So we should both log out right now?"
Her point did make sense. I still wanted to remain inconspicuous, not giving away the idea that I might be back in Japan. "Ok then. If you want to, we can both log out from here. You can find the logout button in the main menu." We both went to our main menu buttons. I was looking up at her at the time, and when I looked down, I felt the blood run from my face.
There was no logout button.
"What the… where's the logout button." I looked up at the time, suddenly, the clock changed to 5:30 and the bells that hung in the town of beginnings began to toll.
"Plasma, what's going on…" and suddenly she was gone, with a blue light gyrating around her.
