AN: There have been a lot of changes to the first post of this concept including the addition of screen names, changing Tay's weapon choice, and removing Taylor triggering. That can wait until later. Don't get me wrong. "Hey you're trapped in a death world and you are not getting out" is trigger worthy. But throwing Taylor into the deep end as she tries to figure out, gaming, armed combat, and magic, on top of whatever powers is just waaaaay too much for her to deal with all at once. Never mind me trying to juggle it all. I'll put that off until later.

I've got some ideas to add SAO characters now as well as capes from worm, but I want to keep them a bit more balanced. For example, Kirito soloed a large chunk of the game. Sure, it's possible, theoretically. But I haven't read the light novels so the how is a bit iffy in my mind. Now if you downgrade him from combat savant to, guy with seriously good stealth who picks his fights? Say, he takes out a mob or two by surprise, and then either slips away or hides until he can repeat the process? Then you have a scout set for spec ops… or an assassin. Lot more believable than solo berserker who one v ones a freaking floor boss. I've got some ideas for him. And no none of them are shipping related. Tay x Kirito would just be so damn uninspired. If that happened it would be down to the characters surprising me, but I'm not seeing it.

Thinking I'll keep skills and levels very straightforward. Strength, speed, endurance, and mp go up if you feed them stat points. Attack, defense, and hp, all go up as you level. Beyond that it's down to actual skill. Then you get experience towards mastery by actually doing things. So for example, spend months killing level one mobs, the xp return would be pitiful, but you get points towards mastery with whatever weapon you use which increases your damage modifier. That goes up just as quickly as if you were using it against ever stronger mobs. Though that's the sort of thing that's going to take a long time to build up. Killing mobs and completing quests gives xp towards leveling up which gives you stat points to spend.

Please note even when I actually played video games I was a casual gamer at best and these days I don't play much at all so if anyone read that and noticed any big neon flashing issues please pm to straighten me out before I steer myself straight into a corner without realizing it.

Endurance ups your max flight time though. That I'm sold on.


{}{}{}{} hours later, randomly selected inn.

Emma and I clung to each other as we sat on the edge of the bed. Emma's naginata rested against the wall. The belt harness with my cutlass rested next to it.

"Taylor, what are we going to do?" Emma cried into my shoulder. I shook my head as I tried to get my own thoughts together. I wanted out. I wanted to talk to Dad. I wanted to be safe at home. I wanted to smack Dad for ever buying the stupid game! I wanted to hug him and tell him how much I loved him.

There was only one way out of the game.

That had to be a lie. There were hundreds of other tinkers out there. Never mind all the other kinds of powers. Someone had to have some way of getting us out, right? But if Cardinal really is an AI made by a tinker… She called Aincrad her world. She might as well be God here.

If she was telling the truth. If there really was no other way out except to fight? How long did it take to beat games like this? How much longer would it take to beat if everyone was being painfully careful not to get killed? What the hell were we even supposed to do?

{}{}{}{}

Emma had cried herself to sleep hours ago… but I couldn't fall asleep. I felt exhausted and wrung out. But despite that my mind refused to stop running in circles. Eventually I had decided to get up and pace. It hadn't helped. Now I was sitting in the room's only chair staring blankly at Emma's naginata and my cutlass. I don't even know how to fight. That thought more than any other was driving me mad. I didn't know how to fight, and I had no idea what else there was to games like this that I didn't know.

Idly, more for something else to look at than for any other reason, I swiped down with two fingers to summon the game menu. Eyeing all the options I jabbed the first things that jumped out at me and tapped the 'help' icon. My eyes blew wide open.

Build Tutorial
Weapon Tutorial

Magic Tutorial

Flight Tutorial

Skills Tutorial

Basic Strategy Tutorial

Party Ballance Tutorial

Raid Ballance Tutorial

The fact that Cardinal had included tutorials for people like me was nearly unbelievable considering what she was doing to us all. But I wasn't about to complain. If she was willing to just give me the information I needed to survive this mess, then I wouldn't complain. I was going to learn everything she offered. And if this wasn't enough? I would just pester more experienced gamers for anything they might know. This was life and death. I wouldn't rush into it when there was something, anything, I could do to prepare.

I paused three paragraphs into the first tutorial as I realized exactly what I was thinking. As I realized what I intended to do. I was going to fight. Yes, I was going to prepare as best I could first, but I was going to go out and fight. I was going to try and clear this game, even though it meant risking my life. Glancing at Emma made me hesitate again though.

I was willing to risk my own life, sure. But was I willing to risk Emma's? Would she be willing to risk it? Did I actually have a choice not to? Just this one cheap room with a single bed for a night had cost fifty col. Between the two of us we only had enough money to rent the room for a few days. Less if we were going to have anything to eat. We needed to make money. I didn't know a lot about games like this but the normal way of making money was to go out and fight things. And of all the things for this stupid game to get right simulating hunger was one of them.

We needed to eat. Which meant we needed some way to make money. And the only way I knew of was to go out and kill things. Maybe Emma would have some other ideas, but she wasn't big into video games either.

I mentally pushed those thoughts aside. I'd read the tutorials tonight. Tomorrow I would talk to Emma. We would figure this out together, and go from there. Whatever we were going to do we would do it as a team.

{}{}{}{} Aincrad day two: 12:30 PM

"Taylor, get up." I rolled over and grumbled, "Taylor it's after noon already and I want to get something to eat. I'm not going anywhere alone without you." The voice scolded which really only made me moan into the mattress, "GET UP!" Emma's shout surprised me so much that I tumbled out of the bed with a shriek.

"What the heck Emma?!" I shouted from inside the mess of blankets that held me trapped on the floor. Then I caught sight of her pointed ears and remembered where I was. "Crap."

Emma reached out and pulled me to my feet with a sigh, before handing me my sword belt.

"Come on, I'm starving and we need to find some food." She said.

"And then we need to figure out a plan." I added as I buckled on my sword belt.

Emma just nodded grimly as she returned her weapon to her inventory on the way to the door.

{}{}{}{}

The loaf of bread we were splitting for lunch was dry, tasted vaguely of coconuts, and seemed to disintegrate in our mouths after only a few seconds of chewing. It was filling, but that was about all that could be positively said about it.

Water to wash it down with had only cost us each the price of a canteen, after we found a well to fill them at. Sadly it still reduced our rapidly shrinking funds. When the last of our meal was gone Emma and I flew to a nearby rooftop to hash out a plan.

"We need more money." The fact that Emma was the one to say it was a promising start.

"I know. I know you can get money in games for killing things, but I'm not sure if there are any other ways." I shrugged.

Emma nodded thoughtfully. "I think there are, and it's not just killing things that gets you money. Stuff you kill will drop stuff you can sell. I… don't know what other ways there might be to make money." She admitted with a scowl. "If we could make weapons or armor, or maybe potions?" She glanced up uncertainly, "But I wouldn't even know where to start with something like that."

"So we need to find out, or we need to go out and kill monsters. I say we kill monsters."

"Taylor, we don't know how to fight." Emma countered quietly.

Moving over I sat next to my best friend and pulled open my menu. With a few deft movements I opened up the help menu. Emma's eyes widened at the list of tutorials.

"I spent all night reading the tutorials." I admitted, "I don't think I got to sleep until four. I just couldn't relax until I'd gone over everything. It's all useful information, but the best bits are the weapons and magic tutorials." My grin might have been a bit unsettlingly toothy, "There are video walkthroughs of the basics on how to use whatever weapon you are holding, and on how to use magic."

Emma, with wide eyes, pulled up her own menu before equipping her naginata and pulling up the weapons tutorial just to confirm what I was saying.

"We need to practice," I admitted, "but we can't just wait around until we master this stuff first. Levels matter, and it'll take ages to master any weapon. But if we work at it as we level..."

"We can do this. We can really do this." Emma muttered as she bit the tip of her thumb.

"Yeah."

"Ok," She said as much to herself as to me, "Let me watch this and the magic tutorial. Then we'll head out and see what we can find outside the city."

{}{}{}{}

What we found was chaos, pandemonium, shouting, shoving, posturing and screaming. The fields around the city were packed with groups of players. Some alone and some in groups. The larger groups seemed to be working together to keep other players away from the monsters while the smaller groups tried and often failed to fly or sprint past such defensive groups to get their own shots at the monsters.

"We're not going to get anything in that mess." Emma growled. I nodded my agreement. "The stupid bullies are hogging everything for themselves and if they get carried away…" She trailed off.

"It could end up just like a gang fight." I finished the thought for her.

"What do we do? We need more money." Emma muttered to herself. "We could try going farther from the city, but the monsters probably get stronger farther out, and if we get into trouble it's farther from the safe zone."

I chewed on my lip. I had an idea. Not an idea I really liked, but it would probably work. Glancing around I checked to make sure no one was in hearing range.

"We practice with our weapons and magic for a few hours." I spoke slowly. "Then we catch a nap and get some food to bring with us tonight." Emma's head whipped around to scrutinize me.

"Tonight? You want to go out at night?"

"Spriggans get night vision. And the first spell we get access to is to give night vision to our party members" Emma nodded slowly.

"So we get a little practice now. Rest. Then when everyone calls it a night…"

"We sweep in and have the mobs to ourselves." I finished.

"And if we don't have to share as much, we'll probably even make better progress." Emma nodded firmly. "Let's do it."

{}{}{}{} Nightfall

Emma and I waited for the last stragglers to wonder back into town before heading out. There were a few scattered groups that seemed to have similar ideas, but it was a drop in the bucket compared to the crowds earlier

There was a sort of soft pale light emanating from the floor above us, but it wasn't much. It was more than enough for me but Emma was squinting at every shadow.

"gweledigaeth nos rhoi." I incanted in a near melodious chant. Emma blinked rapidly before giving me a wide grin and summoning her wings. I followed her lead and then the two of us were off racing along low to the ground in search of targets.

We'd spent something like an hour plotting how best to go about this before finally settling on a simple strategy we hoped would work in spite of our inexperience. Emma took the lead and I trailed behind her by a few body lengths.

When she spotted our first target, a grown boar with piglets she started her own chant, and the first phase of our strategy.

"pelen o dân!" A dull red fireball, barely the size of a soccer ball raced ahead of us before impacting the ground to the left of the grown boar. A miss, but that was to be expected with so little practice.

Emma adjusted course and held her naginata so that the blade was off to her left. As she blew past the boar at full speed, her blade sliced through the boar's side leaving a glowing red line in its wake. The boar squealed and turned to follow Emma, showing me it's back.

Following behind her I swung for its head as I passed by with a scream. The boar squealed and as I pulled around for another pass, I was just in time to see it shatter into red pixels as Emma dropped onto its back, blade first.

We could do this. We could really do this!

{}{}{}{}

Stumbling into an inn at seven as yawning exhausted messes, with weapons chipped and in need of maintenance. Emma and I were no less thrilled with reaching level two and a half after an entire night spent grinding. Curling up in bed with tired grins and the knowledge that we could actually handle this was worth every aching muscle and exhausted yawn. When our alarms went off at five, we should have plenty of time to sell off our loot and get our gear repaired. Then we would start the process over again.

It was a weird, sucky, schedule. But it should work. And if it got us through this, and gave us an edge? So much the better. I was going to get home to Dad. We were both going to get home. No matter how many monsters we needed to skewer to do it.