This fanfic is a shameless self-insert and I'm writing to remain spitefully existent. It probably won't be that great, but my confidence in my own writing is non-existent and I don't really have anything to lose, so what the heck.

Death, and then life. Or life and then death. It was an infinite cycle that repeated itself time after time, and I was no exception. When I died. I had allowed others to live, saving them from the fate that had befallen me instead. I felt no bitterness, no ill-will. I had nothing to lose from the start.

Then I was born again. Nobody knows why, but I had white hair and bright caramel brown eyes. Nobody knew except me. I knew this was how I always reincarnated, the same hair and eyes, but with different facial features each time. My parents bore the family name Narusaka. My mother was Aoi, and my father was Yukito. And I had a twin brother, named Kazuto. My name was Yukiri and it seemed that this time… I was a girl.

I had no problem with that, beyond the fact that it was my first time being one.

During a family trip, we were in an accident and my parents died. We were then adopted by our aunt and gained a new sister. Suguha Kirigaya. Our surnames also changed to Kirigaya. It was then that I realized that my brother was Kirito and this was the Sword Art Online Universe. I lived, in preparation for that fact. I didn't warn my brother about the future. I couldn't. It'd just come across as the ravings of a mad child with white hair and bright brown eyes.

So I put those thoughts on the backburner for now. Becoming a girl after dying was a jarring experience. Growing up felt the same as always, except when I reached a certain age I started to have to change my habits and hang out with girls, change in a segregated change room with girls for PE and hide in stalls or corners to do it. I may have been a girl now, but that didn't change the fact that I was still attracted to girls, and I didn't want it to show, or be bullied because of the fact that I did. That aside, I had to learn to deal with those monthly cycles and figure out the art of wearing skirts.

Growing up, I was a tom boy. But now whenever I looked at myself in the mirror and forged myself into my own ideal waifu, I found myself cute, moe and probably the cutest person I've ever seen. This cuteness didn't stop me from having a flat chest, that was also fine. I preferred flat chests anyway, and it let me swim faster in the pool. Superior hydrodynamism. Being a girl also made me worry more about my appearance and despite liking girls, I always earned a lot of attention from guys. It felt awkward, being liked by my… kinsmen? My fellow cavemen? Just because I was a girl now. Not that I didn't understand how they felt. I just couldn't like them in the same way they liked me.

Beyond swimming, I took kendo with my brother Kazuto and we ended up in a few junior championships together. He was better at it than I was. But that was because I preferred swimming. Suguha was also there, she was five months younger than us though. It didn't seem Kirito caught on to that fact, either that or he didn't really care, maybe because he had me. His beloved older sister (by two minutes).

Speaking of Kazuto, his love of computers did not change and he was an avid gamer, and although at first he didn't let it get in the way of his Kendo, he gradually started to commit more and more time to it as he got older. Up until the release of the NerveGear. A virtual reality headset unlike the one that we had in my world. This one sent microwave signals directly to the brain to allow the user to enter a deep sleep and perceive the game through data on the cartridge and was also capable of frying the user's brain. They left that bit out, and I didn't tell him. He'd probably write it off as superstition. I felt it was during this time that he learned of the reality of our parent's deaths. Because he was a smart boy and knew that it took nine months for a baby to bake and the difference between our birthday and Suguha's was five months. Ours being October 7, 2008 and hers being April 19, 2009.

In any case, back to me and my shenanigans. When he stopped doing Kendo, I did too. Much to the chagrin of Suguha who begged me to stay so she wouldn't have to practice with a bunch of sweaty guys by herself. There were other girls of course, but they were born into it and took it very seriously. I declined, I had to work a few part time jobs ( definitely legally ) to earn enough money to be able to afford my own NerveGear before its eventual release.

So, by the time the beta released, I was no longer sharing a room with Kazuto. He was the only one who got beta access to Sword Art Online though. That was annoying. I really wanted to see how the beta differed from the main game, not that I actually knew much of the game itself because of the massive time skips in the anime of this timeline. So in actuality, I had no idea how this was going to go if I did get a copy of SAO and hop into the game with Kazuto.

Speaking of no longer sharing a room. Something that didn't happen previously, probably, was the fact that we moved to get more space and my own room. After we did, I came into contact with a girl named Shino Asada. She was being bullied in school. I knew this, I saw this. I did what I could to put a stop to this. She was obviously afraid of guns, or any reminder of guns and though I knew why, I couldn't tell her. Eventually she opened up to me and told me in the park one day after school of what she had done, why she was so afraid and what happened in the post office a year prior. She, with her own hands. Saved her mother, but killed a person and it scarred her.

Hearing the story in person was a lot different than watching an anime, and I felt like I had done something right when she told me this on her own. I hugged her, she cried, I cried. She thanked me for accepting her, and I said: of course. We became best friends. And I developed a crush on her because of how warm of a person she was. Though I didn't want to confess to her too early, or ruin our relationship so I kept these feelings bottled up until I was ready… until she was ready.

Fast forward to November 5th and Sales of Sword Art Online have just opened. Being the first in line, knowing people started camping several days prior to release. I was the first to purchase an archaic ( to me anyway ) hard copy of a VR Game and alongside Kazuto we each bought our copy of Sword Art Online.

Well. Now that we're all caught up...

"Link Start!"