Disclaimer: Sword Art Online is owned by Reki Kawahara. I own absolutely nothing in relation to this work, except for the plot of this particular story.
Chapter One – Start the Game
The first thing Sachi heard as she entered the clubroom was a howl of outrage: "Dammit Satoshi, that shit is way too cheap!"
"And I keep telling you, you can counter it if you'd just calm down and time your moves right," Satoshi replied, over Keita and Takemaru's animated squabbling about the fairness of a Star Rod and how Keita should go screw – "Oh hey, Sachi!"
She smiled. "Hello, everyone. Would you all like some tea?"
"In a minute. After Daichi finally learns how to use Bowser properly," was the tall boy's distracted reply. In his hands was an ancient controller for the Nintendo GameCube, and on-screen, Link was agilely frustrating Bowser's efforts to make a snack of him. Their stocks were three to one, respectively.
"'Learn', my foot!" Daichi whined, and then he yelped, frantically clacking the analog sticks to keep his character moving and alive. "See, see!? Isn't this just you whaling on me!? What did I do to deserve – CRAP CRAP CRAP –" (He accidentally elbowed Keita here, prompting a "Hey, watch it!") "Gods, that was way too close! C'mon man, didn't I apologize already for taking your manga? And your notes? And your sports drink?"
Satoshi twitched. Link nailed Bowser with an arrow, nearly blasting him off the stage. "Huh, so the drink was you after all. Thanks for telling me that."
"Oh, shit –"
Sachi tuned out the profanity and yells as she reached for the hot water dispenser. The boys used to get someone to buy drinks from a nearby vending machine if they were thirsty, but Sachi had put a stop to that by hauling the machine here. Making tea was cheaper in the long run, and besides, it made her feel pretty good. She tried not to fall into the "mother hen" archetype of their little group, but it was hard not to find it funny that, at one point or another, her friends all expressly thanked the heavens for her being there, lest a teacher shut them down for how much their clubroom would end up looking like a hurricane had gone through it.
It still wasn't up to how she would've liked it, though. The room, even if bright and welcoming, felt fairly small; they had divided it in half, one side for "working" and the other for gaming. With the cabinets they had already crammed in, containing their collective hoard of videogames and their consoles (most piled on top instead of inside), there was almost no room for the couch they usually played video games from, let alone the cushions that were in theory for extra people to sit on the floor and in practice were just used to bash each others' noggins out. It was almost a joke to look at the sunbathed other side of the room (the only part someone would see, if they looked through any of the windows), relatively sparse with a table, a few stools and some things they might need to "work"; a school computer, scarce reference books, paper, and "a pencil case of everything" as Takemaru put it. That side was so neat, tidy and spacious that she almost got whiplash looking from one direction to the other. Sachi sometimes wondered if generations of mothers' naggings to clean up their room gave boys immunity to this sort of thing. (The water dispenser and the tea leaves were placed at the middle of the divide.)
Still, it was warm and it was cozy. Seeing that, Sachi really hadn't the heart to tell the boys to clean up after themselves.
There was a cry of "ATTAAAAACK!" as Keita joined the fray, taking Daichi's side. Beside him, Takemaru set down his controller and stretched, his character having lost. "Hey there Sachi, thanks as always."
"Anytime," she replied amicably, mischievously thinking to herself that it was a bad idea for him to look over at this moment. "Were you guys waiting for long?"
"Not too long, don't worry about it," Takemaru said. "This is a good warm-up before the main course, anyway. Though," he continued, turning around, "what did take you that long –?"
His eyes found the answer, and froze.
Called it, Sachi thought with a bit of guilty pleasure.
The black cat she had set on the table earlier let out a cute meow.
"Is that Kuroneko?" Keita said, glancing back, an instant before he realized exactly how screwed he was.
Kuroneko, or just Kuro-kun as Sachi had taken to calling him, was something of an accomplishment for her. With her younger years dominated by a crippling fear of harm, Sachi had never grown comfortable with animals any bigger than a mouse, and she was quite afraid of most insects smaller than a mouse, too. When they found Kuroneko, without a collar, loitering around their middle school, Keita decided to remedy Sachi's problem. It took several scratches, a nasty crawl through a bush, and one very long afternoon chase, but Keita, Daichi and Satoshi had finally managed to catch and tame the cat. Then, once they were relatively sure the animal had calmed down, they spent the rest of the day coaxing Sachi into carrying it.
By this point Sachi received regular infusions of hemophilia-negating medicine, so there really would be no problems even if she was scratched – her injuries would heal like a normal person's. But mental scars were harder to repair, and it took much of the girl's courage to finally accept the cat that her friends had offered to her. In the end, though, it was all worth it. The cat felt so warm in her arms that Sachi had started crying anew, sending her friends into a panic. The animal in question had started licking her on the cheek, as if to comfort her. In later years the cat would come to her periodically; even now, when Sachi was a high school second-year, the cat would sneak into the school to see her, like it had done today. Sachi, in turn, would name the cat Kuro-kun, and always kept some fresh cat food handy to feed him. It was a beautiful friendship, one that Sachi would cherish forever, just as much as her friendship with the four boys who stood up for her.
Then the next day, they learned that not only was Takemaru violently allergic to cats, having a sneezing fit every time one was within two meter to him, he was, for some reason that he refused to explain, downright terrified of them.
Also, his typical reaction upon seeing a cat was to scream like a girl and then take cover behind the object closest to him. This time just happened to be Keita.
"KYAAAAAAAH!"
In a display akin to one who had just been emasculated, Takemaru dove at Keita and latched on with an iron grip, sending both tumbling to the ground, Keita cursing and Takemaru screaming, "KEITA THERE'S A CAT THERE OH GODS MAKE IT GO AWAY I DON'T WANT IT NEAR ME WHY IS IT EVEN HERE –"
"Dammit Takemaru, gerroff! I can't see the screen!"
Indeed, Satoshi had already taken advantage of Keita being distracted to lob several bombs around the field. Bowser was finally disabled with two negligent slashes, and then Link was free to tango around Keita's Samus, peppering in kicks until the character fell off the stage and exploded into a burst of light.
"Game," Satoshi said.
"Like hell," Daichi scoffed. "If Sachi hadn't come, me and Keita would've kicked your butt."
Sachi hmphed. "Oh, fine then. Since you obviously prefer that I'm not here, Daichi-kun, I guess that means you don't mind missing out on drinks."
"...I take that back. You're an absolute godsend, Sachi..."
Let it never be known that there was no price for crossing the cook. It helped that Sachi's teas were actually quite good.
Keita waved at them. "Uh, guys? Help?"
Takemaru whimpered. "Why, Sachi, why? Why must you torture me so? Haven't we been the closest of comrades for these last seven years? Didn't the hundreds to exams and thousands of tests we've gone together mean anything to you? How can you so cruelly punish me with such an innocent face?"
"I'm not being that mean!" she protested, a pout on her face. Meanwhile, Daichi was busy prying Takemaru's arms open. "If Kuro-kun comes to see me I can't exactly stop him. Besides, isn't he cute?" She patted the cat on the head, making him stretch out in bliss.
"You never have a reaction until it's two metres to you," Satoshi added, "so stop worrying, Takemaru. So long as it stays away and we clean the place later, there shouldn't be any problems." Then, holding the controller out to Sachi: "You want a go?"
Sachi quite liked Satoshi. He was the "gentle giant" among the group; taller than even Keita, but really a nice and considerate person (his teasing of Takemaru notwithstanding). He was once scouted into a basketball team on account of his height; he quit after a while, saying it wasn't for him, even though he was doing fairly well. Satoshi was the kind of person who, when asking a question, would only give an answer after deep thought.
He wasn't the best gamer out of them, but he was the one with the fastest reflexes. In-game, he tended to use the name "Tetsuo"; the same kanji as his real name for "Tetsu", and then an "o" kanji added in.
Sachi shook herself back to the present and smiled. "Sure!" She set the tray of tea onto the coffee table in front of the couch, took the controller, and then flopped onto the armrest with playful zeal. (Takemaru sneezed once and gave her a reproaching look.)
"All right!" Daichi yelled, resetting the stage. "Round Two, here we come!"
The battle degenerated into a mass of cries and curses, mainly by Keita and Daichi. Takemaru lost early, which wasn't really surprising considering he kept glancing in fear at Kuro-kun quite frequently, and then spent the rest of the game comically huddling and trembling ("The whiskers... The whiskers..." he kept muttering. Sachi really did wonder what happened to him). That left it a three-way, mainly between Daichi and Keita with Sachi trying to run interference or do sporadic damage, but somehow Sachi's character Peach got hit by a stray missile ("Okay, that's new," Daichi chortled in mock admiration) and she didn't manage to jump back onto the stage before she fell. The match finally ended when a Beam Sword dropped onto the stage ("Grab it! Grab it!" Sachi had cried when she spotted it first) and in the ensuing struggle to get it Daichi had almost accidentally Up-Smashed Samus, sending her out of the game.
"In your face! I win!" Daichi hooted.
"You won incidentally, while you were trying to get an item," Satoshi pointed out amusedly.
"Shut up and talk to the victory screen!"
Keita turned the TV off. "Okay, time to get down to business."
While Daichi bemoaned the loss of his proof of victory, Sachi went over to Kuro-kun and patted him on the head. "Thanks for visiting, Kuro-kun. I'll have to see you later, okay?"
Their clubroom was on the first floor, so Sachi could let the cat out from the window. Once dangling outside, Kuro-kun slipped from her grasp, landing on the ground smoothly and giving a good-bye meow before walking away. Sachi waved once before closing the window.
"Is the furball of doom gone now?" Takemaru asked shakily.
"Really, 'Maru-kun?" Daichi said. "'Furball of doom'?"
"You don't know what those things can do!" Takemaru grabbed his head. "Oh my god, don't make me remember it, don't make me remember it..."
"I said we're getting down to business," Keita said crossly. When Takemaru coughed embarrassedly and settled down, their leader continued. "All right then, I think we all know the subject of this meeting." His eyes burned in that determined way of his, that Sachi sometimes thought was a defining trait of a manga protagonist.
"Sword Art Online – is coming out in five days!"
They all did know it. It didn't stop them from straightening a little, their anticipation stoked. They read the online reviews; SAO was the cream of the crop of VR games, even including the ones that hadn't come out yet. Gameplay, controls, visuals, audio... If what they heard was true, there was almost nothing lacking in it, and what little criticism there was could only be directed at difficulty and lack of overall plot – and even then, those criticisms had been halfhearted. By this time, no true gamer would ever question if they were going to get it – they would only question when they'd be able to.
Even Sachi couldn't contain her excitement, and she was the least experienced of all of them. She could still remember the first time they got her to play an MMORPG; she had gone and entered her real name as her character name, and stubbornly insisted to their later grins that of course she planned to do it, her name could be read as "fortunate" and she was going to need all the luck she could get. (Though it could also be interpreted as "spoiled". Her real name was in hiragana though.)
But the point was, even she realized the sheer potential of the game. It would be different from before, when she had to make do with watching her avatar on-screen. It would be everything she had ever dreamed of doing that she could never muster the courage for in real life. Mortality left behind by the magic of FullDive, she was confident – she will be the avatar, fighting with a sword in her hands, and the things she could accomplish wouldn't be attributed to some character she made, but to her.
"We're serious, huh?" Daichi said, an eager grin on his face. "We're really, really going for this, huh? To get in there and get to the top?"
"No point backing out now," Takemaru said, seemingly over his episode with Kuro-kun.
"And to do that, we need to train," Keita added.
"The NerveGears," Sachi said.
The club was barely legitimate, with the founders leaving last year and most of this year's recruits never showing up past the first meeting, but they did have enough members and so received funding from the Student Council. They kind of abused it, committing every yen that was allocated to their budget to the purchase of five NerveGears, which sure made a hefty discount. Oh, the StuCo President was furious all right, but with the VR games reviews that they produced for the school newspaper, he wasn't able to find a good reason to punish them.
So far, the games had been lacking – they lacked the inspiration needed to use the NerveGear to its fullest. There had been a flying racing game, but the sensation of height had felt really weird and no one felt like they were actually in the air. There had been a Nintendogs plus Cats game that Sachi got, but though they reproduced the feel of a cat right, the AIs were simplistic and not really realistic. (Though their bigger problem was getting Takemaru anywhere close to one to see if his allergy still worked in VR. That was when they realized another problem – though the physics were correct none of the humans had their strength outputs regulated, so if two or more people entered at once, expect several hours being spent on throwing each other clear across the room.) And finally, a simple title called "Gourmet", all about sampling food. It was actually the best game they had tried so far, having few problems up until the point where a slice of cake glitched and exploded in Daichi's mouth.
Sword Art Online would fix all that, created by the same person who created the NerveGear. True, their primary focus would be to review the game for the school. But as soon as that was out of the way, as soon as there was a clear way to the top...
"Most people are planning to get the NerveGear and SAO in a bundle to save on money," Satoshi said. "But if we want to be the best, we have to get accustomed to moving in a body that's not our own."
"Exactly," Keita said, a grin on his face. "We go in, and train like crazy. That way, when the real thing comes, we can level faster, form a guild, and dominate the front lines! That's the plan!"
There was a short pause.
"We still haven't made a guild name yet?" Takemaru said.
"I think Ducker's Cronies sounds fine," Daichi said.
"No," Satoshi sighed. "Just...no."
"Can't we use the names of guilds we joined in other MMORPGs?" Sachi asked.
"But that's not original," Daichi whined. "We need something, you know, totally us!"
"Told you we should've made a guild ourselves, Keita," Takemaru said.
"How about..." Sachi said, her mind whirring, thinking over Keita's line, "the...the...the Dominators?"
There was another pause.
"It says a lot about us that that's actually the best name we have so far," Satoshi noted.
"A-anyways!" Keita cleared his throat. "That's the plan! To train ourselves so that we're practically VR citizens! But, it won't be that easy in SAO. Nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-five other people will be competing with us for the exact same thing. It'll be grueling, it'll be fraught with difficulties, and our competition will be formidable. But despite that – no, because of that – I'm still willing to forge ahead. I'm still willing to fight my way through!
"Will you guys, stay by my side, all the way to the top?"
Keita looked at each of them in the eye. He must've liked what he saw, because his grin became wider.
"Then – let's game!"
He swung open the cabinet that held their NerveGears. They all knew their procedures. One, usually Sachi, would get to lie on the couch while the rest laid on the floor with a cushion. A note would be put up on their clubroom's door asking them to knock loudly and wait, while Keita had built a small device that picked up such sounds, communicating with a peripheral on his NerveGear that would send him an in-game notification that someone had knocked. This way, they wouldn't have to be rudely awakened by someone yanking the NerveGear off if they had business with their club.
Though, that was assuming they got that far into their procedure. As soon as Keita had swung open the cabinet, it became apparent to the five people in the room that there was one, rather conspicuous problem that hindered their ability to carry out such a routine.
Their NerveGears were missing.
