SAO Fanfic Chapter One - November 6, 2022: Launch Day
Today was the big day. Today the world's first VRMMORPG, Sword Art Online, was being released to the public. The beta testers, a mere 1000 or so people, had been raving about how amazing SAO was, and sales had broken countless records.
The pre-order had sold out in seconds, and she had been lucky enough to get a copy. The NerveGear had arrived yesterday along with her copy of SAO. Today the SAO servers went live for everyone who had a copy of the game.
People had been camped out for days outside retailers who possessed copies of Sword Art Online. Thousands of gamers were probably just now calibrating their NerveGear.
She sat down. She was wearing a large white t-shirt that fell to about mid-thigh level, with panties on underneath.
After checking the cables hooked up to her NerveGear, she took a deep breath, strapped the NerveGear on and laid back in her bed. She looked through the NerveGear's visor at the ceiling of her room. The digital clock read: 12:59. She counted the seconds until the clock flipped to 13:00, then closed her eyes.
"Link start!" She exclaimed. She felt the connection to her body's actual senses server as the NerveGear activated. She felt a rush of sensations as the NerveGear checked her senses.
TOUCH...OK
SIGHT...OK
HEARING...OK
TASTE...OK
SMELL...OK
The screen changed once each sense had been checked. She selected Japanese on the language selection screen. The game now prompted her to login. She entered her username and password and the process continued. The center of the screen now contained five words.
WELCOME TO SWORD ART ONLINE
After a few seconds the screen changed to a character creation screen. "Please select your gender and enter the name you would like to be known by." She tapped the F for female and entered "Ayako" in the username slot. She then created her avatar then looked it over. Her avatar was a girl who looked to be about 19, with brown hair that hung down to mid-back level.
Her avatar was wearing a tan and brown skirt with tan sleeves. The sleeves had a singular 1 cm brown stripe down the outside of each sleeve. At the end of the sleeve, there was a brown turtleneck. The collar of the skirt was brown and wide, so wide that it hung on the edge of her shoulders.
The skirt's upper torso area was brown, with brown straps going over her shoulders. Below the upper torso, there was a tan apron-like thing that fell halfway down the skirt and was thinner at the back. The skirt itself only came down to mid-thigh level. Below that she had knee high socks and plain brown shoes.
Her avatar had purple eyes and a normal sized nose and lips. The avatar's hair was held in a ponytail that hung down the left side of her chest, stopping just above her breasts. Satisfied with her avatar she selected {Finish}.
The screen disappeared and then she was standing in a courtyard, her heart pounding loudly. She took a shaky breath and looked down to see her avatar's legs. She couldn't believe it! She was in a virtual world. She jumped backwards as blue lights appeared everywhere. She watched as the blue lights turned into players.
Marveling at the world around her, Ayako looked over and saw a castle right outside of the town center. The castle's roof was domed, and it had several small towers around the perimeter of the wall.
Ayako closed her eyes, trying to remember the manual that had come with the Sword Art Online cartridge. To open the menu she had to...
Ayako opened her eyes and snapped her fingers. "Aha!" Ayako exclaimed, her silvery voice filling the courtyard, virtually the same voice she heard everyday when she talked. Ayako raised her right hand, her index and middle finger pressed together, and swiped downward.
With a jingling of bells, a purple UI appeared. The elongated window was purple, with several menu tabs on the left and a human silhouette on the right detailing her inventory and equipment. She glanced at the uses of the menu, then closed it and began walking.
She followed the flow of players as they started to leave the courtyard, heading towards the vendors to buy their first gear and weaponry. Ayako looked at all the vendors lined up and down the street. Some sold beautiful jewelry, others weapons, and others sold food.
Ayako wandered around until she found something that caught her eye. She walked up to the NPC and said, "Umm... Hello." "Welcome to my shop!" The NPC replied, "See anything ya like?" Ayako paused, confused by whether she should talk to the NPC or….. "Well?" the NPC asked impatiently. "I'd like the…. Beginner's Rapier." she said, addressing the NPC uncertainly. "That'll be 500 Col." he said, a purchase window appearing in front of Ayako, she tapped the button that confirmed the purchase. "Here ya go!" the man said, handing Ayako the rapier. It dematerialized into her inventory once she touched it. She swiped her hand downwards, activating her menu and navigated to her weapons. She dragged the weapon from her item storage to her equipment mannequin. She felt something materialize on her left hip.
When she looked, she saw a sheathed rapier hanging from her hip. Ayako drew it and inspected it. The blade was sharp, and appeared to be made of an iron-like material. The hand guard was simple. A circular metal disk below the blade, and the hilt was plain. She swung it around a few times. She noted that it was fairly light.
"Hey, sweetheart!" She heard someone yell. Ayako pivoted and looked straight at the guy who had yelled at her. "Yes?" She replied cooly, furious on the inside. "You better be careful, that's a dangerous weapon. We wouldn't want you to get hurt, now would we?" He replied cockily.
"I can use it just fine. In fact, I bet I could beat your sorry butt any day of the week." She challenged. His face turned red, making his short blue hair seem out of place. "Fine!" He shouted. "We'll duel then." He said venomously. He opened his menu and tapped a few buttons.
Within seconds, Ayako received a pop-up that challenged her to a duel. She hesitated. Did she really want to fight someone? She remembered how rude he had been to her. Yes. Yes she did. She accepted and chose half-loss mode. "First person to drop below 50% health loses." She said to the man. "Fine by me." He spat.
The duel HUD appeared between them and started the 60 second counter. Ayako sheathed her rapier and took a few calming breaths. He looked stronger than she was, but slower. If she could dodge his first swing, she could duck in and jab him a few times in the side.
The timer slowly ticked towards 0. 5...4...3...2...1...0. {GO!} the HUD said. The man charged towards her with a roar. She calmly drew her rapier and ran at him nimbly, her rapier leveled at his chest.
He swung quickly. Too quickly. Ayako realized her mistake, and quickly tried to deflect the blow, but it was too little, too late. She felt a strange tingling sensation as the sword tore across her chest. She flew backwards and landed a few feet away.
She looked down at her chest, there was a gaping slash starting at her hip and stretching to her shoulder. On the inside of the gash, instead of blood and organs, Ayako saw only a red grid pattern. She also noted that she felt no pain, only a tingling along the wound and the lingering sensation of being cut open.
She struggled to her feet and looked at her HP bar. 170/250, one more hit and she'd lose. She quickly thought through what had gone wrong. The man had moved too quickly for a person of his size, and she vaguely recalled his sword glowing a color when he struck.
Then, it hit her. The game had sword skills to assist players in combat. The skills allowed the game to do most of the work, while characters just had to start the move, then the skills took over. Ayako recalled that her weapon was a stabbing weapon, so most of her skills would involve stabbing.
Ayako started towards the man slowly. He laughed and brought his sword up to strike Ayako. As the glowing blade fell towards her, Ayako jumped to the side. The sword smashed into the ground, creating a cloud of dust. Ayako pushed her rapier towards her foe and felt the game guide her strike.
She felt the rapier hit home, and quickly stabbed him twice more, without the system's help, taking advantage of his skill cooldown and surprise. The man didn't even have time to react. He flew across the clearing, and slammed into a building. Where he landed a warning popped up. {IMMORTAL OBJECT}. Ayako watched his HP drop slowly until his health bar turned yellow, then fell below the 50% mark. The duel window changed and said: {WINNER} with the picture of her avatar and her name highlighted, and her opponent's grayed out.
Ayako sheathed her rapier. The crowd of people that had been around her when they dueled, started cheering. She even heard a few catcalls. She sighed. Even in SAO, boys were annoying. She walked over to the man and extended her hand.
"Get away from me. I don't want your pity." He said, slapping her hand away. Ayako recoiled from the blow and looked back at the guy, who struggled to stand up. "You dirty little-" he began. "We can duel again. If you're man enough to lose again." She replied sharply.
The man's face turned red again as he said, "Like I'd waste my time dueling a little girl again." He turned and abruptly stomped away. "What was his deal?" Ayako huffed.
She opened her menu and looked at her skills. Her one-handed sword skill was halfway to level 2. She recalled that the max level for a skill was level 1000. "Man, I've got a long way to go." She muttered. She looked at the skill list and saw the Rapier skill grayed out with a lock to the left of the skill. She tapped it and an alert appeared:
LEVEL 2 ONE-HANDED SWORD SKILL REQUIRED!
Ayako tapped the one-handed sword skill button and a list of sword skills and the level they unlocked at were all displayed. The only one that was currently unlocked was "Slash" which unlocked at one-handed sword skill level one, the basic level. 'Fine then, I'll farm for XP until I unlock my Rapier skill.' Ayako thought
Ayako closed her menu and started running towards the city wall. 'Time to see what this world has to offer.' She thought as she ran outside the city limits. She sprinted through an empty field, one hand on her rapier, marveling at the beauty of the world around her.
In the distance, she saw a huge stone column that led into the ceiling. The sky above her looked real, but on closer inspection Ayako saw that it was stone with artificial lighting that made it appear to be the actual sky.
Ahead of her, a boar spawned in a flash of blue light. She drew her rapier and looked at the boar. A yellow cursor appeared over the boar as well as a name appeared; "Frenzied Boar". Ayako dashed forward and closed the gap between her and the boar. The boar pawed the ground and charged towards Ayako. She lunged forward, and with a mighty cry, drove her blade into the boar's side. The boar's momentum pulled it off Ayako's blade.
Ayako turned and whipped her rapier into position. The boar turned as well, it's health almost depleted and it's cursor swapped from yellow to red, showing that it was currently in battle. It dashed forward with remarkable speed and slammed into Ayako. She fell backwards with a shriek and slid on her butt for a few feet before stopping. She wobbled to her feet. 'Crap!' She thought as she watched her health deplete to around 147/250 HP. She narrowed her eyes.
The boar spun around again. Ayako rushed forward, readying her rapier. The boar grunted and dashed forward, it's red eyes focused on Ayako. Right before the boar slammed into her again, Ayako leapt out of the boar's path, slicing her blade along it's side. She sheathed her rapier, which was still slightly glowing from the sword skill she had used. She heard the boar explode behind her, and when she looked she saw a bunch of glowing polygons dissolve where the boar had been.
A purple reward interface popped up:
{Result}
Exp 24
Col 30
Items 1
After closing the purple reward window, another window popped up:
LEVEL UP
ONE-HANDED SWORD
12
Ayako dismissed the message and opened her menu with the now-familiar downward swipe of her fingers. She navigated to her skills page and equipped the "Rapier" skill, thus filling her two allotted skill slots. Ayako checked to see the Rapier skills she had. Unsurprisingly, there was only one: "Thrust." She closed her menu.
Ayako looked at the clock on her HUD in the bottom right corner of her vision. It read 15:00. She didn't have any plans until 6:00, so she had 3 hours to explore Aincrad. Ayako looked around. There didn't seem to be very many players around where she was. Which was surprising, considering the 10,000 other players that should all still be in the general area of the Town of Beginnings.
'Maybe I should join a party or something.' Ayako thought as she laid down in the grass where she had dueled the boar. 'That boar was tough to beat. It'll take awhile to get used to fighting with my own body, rather than using a controller.' Ayako yawned. The breeze rustled the grass near her. Before long Ayako fell asleep.
Ayako slowly opened her eyes. She looked around, still half-asleep, then laid down again. Ayako reached her hand out in front of her face and inspected it tiredly. 'I'm in a game...' She thought, feeling the excitement she had felt when she spawned again. It was now 17:26. Ayako noted this tiredly and stood up.
After she stretched her muscles, she tiredly opened her menu. She went into where the logout button was supposed to be and froze. There was no logout button. 'Where is it!?' Ayako thought frantically. "Where is it!?" Ayako asked angrily to no one in particular.
Ayako felt her heart rate increase. She closed her eyes and started rationalizing why there was no logout button. It was the first day out of beta, maybe it was a bug? She took a few deep breaths and opened her eyes. At least she got to stay in Aincrad longer than she would've normally. Ayako started walking towards the Town of Beginnings to see if anyone knew what was going on.
Suddenly she heard the bell from the center of town start ringing. 'What's happening?' Ayako thought. She yelped in surprise when she was engulfed by blue light again. She felt as if she was being moved very quickly. Suddenly the blue light faded and she was left standing in the center of the Town of Beginnings. There were countless other lights around her, they all quickly became players again.
Ayako realized what was happening. The GM had probably forced a teleport to tell the players that the logout button was missing, and explain that everything was OK. Some small part of her doubted it. If they wanted everyone out, they could shut down the server and force logout everyone. The bell stopped ringing.
"It'll be OK." She said to herself, "It'll be OK." "Look, up there!" Someone shouted. Ayako looked up and saw a small red hexagonal shape that flashed into and out of existence every second which read, "WARNING". Suddenly the shape duplicated in all directions incredibly quickly, until the whole sky read: {WARNING} {System Announcement}
With the whole world covered in an intimidating red glow, red liquid, blood, fell through cracks between some of the hexagons. The blood fell down and then started flowing upwards. Lightning sparked over the surface of the liquid, until it solidified into a giant entity. Floating menacingly above the players was a giant red robe with golden embellishments. Instead of hands, it had empty white gloves, and where it's face should've been was nothing but darkness.
"Attention players," the figure said, extending it's arms, "I welcome you, to my world." Ayako looked up at the figure curiously. His world? "My name is Akihiko Kayaba, and as of this moment, I am in control of this world." Ayako looked at the figure, Akihiko Kayaba, with awe. It was HIM! The genius who made SAO and the NerveGear!
"I'm sure most of you have already noticed an item missing from your main menus. The logout button." He said, opening his menu. "Let me assure you this is not a defect in the game, I repeat this is not a defect. This is how Sword Art Online was designed to be."
"What!" Ayako yelled in shock. "He's kidding right?" Another person said. "You cannot log yourselves out of SAO, and no one from the outside will be able to shut down or remove the NerveGear from your head." Kayaba explained, "If anyone attempts to do so, a transmitter inside the NerveGear will discharge a microwave signal into your skull, destroying your brain, and ending your life."
"T-that w-wouldn't work! W-would it?" Ayako said worriedly. "He's gotta be kidding! It must be a ruse to help the 'Full-Dive', right?" A boy next to her said fearfully.
"Despite my warning, the families and friends of some of the players have attempted removing the NerveGear. An unfortunate decision, to say the least. As a result, the game now has 213 less players than when it began. They've been deleted from both Aincrad and the real world." Kayaba continued.
"213... Dead!?" Ayako yelled in horror. "As you can see, international media outlets have round-the-clock coverage of everything, including the deaths." Akihiko Kayaba continued, pop-ups appearing around him, showing various news channels. "At this point, it's safe to assume the likelihood of a NerveGear being removed is minimal, at best. I hope this brings you a little comfort as you try to clear the game." Kayaba said. "It's important you remember the following, there is no longer any way to revive someone within the game. If your HP drops to zero, your avatar will be deleted from the system, forever. And the NerveGear will simultaneously destroy your brain." Kayaba proclaimed solemnly.
Everyone stood, frozen in shock. "There is only one way for a player to escape now, you must clear the game." Kayaba said, opening a virtual map of Aincrad. "Right now you are gathered on floor 1, the lowest level of Aincrad. If you can get through the dungeon and defeat the boss, you may advance to the next floor. Defeat the boss on floor 100, and you will clear the game." Kayaba said.
Ayako heard several cries of outrage from players, but most were just silent or whimpered softly. "Last but not least, I've placed a little present in the item storage of every player. Please, have a look." Kayaba implored. Ayako, intensely curious, opened her main menu and opened her item storage. Inside was an item labeled "Hand Mirror." "What the-" Ayako said, pulling the item out of storage. She looked curiously at it. It was plain, and had a gray casing. She looked into it and saw her avatar's face. Suddenly the players near her were shrouded in white light. "Wha!" Ayako cried as the light enveloped her too.
As soon as the light cleared, Ayako looked around. Everyone looked different. But when she looked into her mirror she froze. She was looking at herself. Not her avatar, her real, honest-to-goodness self. She saw her usual brown hair, which hung down in the same way her avatar's had, except shorter. Her ocean blue eyes, her pink lips. Everything she saw was all her. In the game.
"Right now, you're probably wondering why. Why would Akihiko Kayaba, developer of Sword Art Online and NerveGear, do this." The cloak continued. "Ultimately my goal was a simple one. The reason I created Sword Art Online, was to control the fate of a world of my design. As you can see, I have achieved my goal." He said. "This marks the end of the tutorial, and the official launch of Sword Art Online. Players, I wish you the best of luck." Kayaba said ominously.
A horrible sound filled the air as the cloak started falling. It sounded like a computer's error tone but amplified 1000 times. The cloak flickered and fell, smoking. It dissolved into blood and left the way it came. Then, the sky cleared instantly.
Everyone stood, shell-shocked for at least 20 seconds until a girl dropped her mirror and screamed. Immediately the game erupted into pandemonium. Ayako was pushed and shoved among the surge of people screaming and running, until she was on the floor. People trampled over her, even though she felt no pain, she reacted to every crushed hand, every kick to the face. Until someone pulled her to her feet. The person was gone instantly. Ayako shoved her way through the mass of people until she reached an alleyway. She fell to the ground and knelt there, sobbing.
By the time she stopped sobbing, many of the players had left into the surrounding areas. Ayako looked into her mirror again and dropped it in fear. She wasn't supposed to be here, Her avatar was! This was a game, not real life! She stood up, feeling a little stronger and stumbled to the market area.
Once there she bought some faded pink hair dye with her Col. She pulled it out and tapped it. A warning appeared.
{'Are you sure you want to dye your hair?' Y/N}
Ayako tapped the Y. She looked at her reflection in some jewelry at the shop near her. Even though she still looked a lot like herself, the hair color helped ward off her panic. She wasn't her. Sort-of. 'Why did I dye my hair?' The sane part of her brain asked her. She took a few deep breaths. She'd dyed her hair in a panic, to try and trick herself into thinking that she wasn't there. But she was, and no amount of lying could change that. Eventually she calmed down completely and accepted the facts.
She was trapped in a video game. She wouldn't get out anytime soon. And if she died in the game, she'd die in real life...