AN: Shhh, no complaining. If I wanna make the beta for SAO international, I can. Authoress' prerogative :). In SAO the Rapier is treated as a separate weapon skill, so I imagine there are other weapons that have their own individual skill. Also I'm setting Dante's home to be in New York, yes in the previous chapter I said they were in an empty park, but Shh! Don't nitpick. Anyway I looked it up and some sites say New York is 13 hours behind Japan, (I used Tokyo as it was easiest), others say it's 14 Hours behind. So I'm just gonna say its 13 and a half hours behind.

It had been eight years since Marzanna and her mother had moved in with her father and his family. Now Marzanna was excited. Sword Art Online was finally launching. When she'd heard that they were making the beta for it international, she'd signed up with little hope of actually being picked. However to her delight she was lucky enough to become one of the 500 beta testers from outside Japan. Originally the closed beta was supposed to be limited to Japan, but when Argus, the company who developed the NerveGear and SAO, realized the interest gamers outside Japan had in SAO, they expanded the beta to 1500. 1000 beta testers from Japan, and 500 international beta testers.

SAO was incredible. It was beautiful, amazingly realistic, and completely awesome. She couldn't even complain about the sword fighting, as merely wildly swinging ones sword would get you nowhere, you needed actual skill and technique. Something that pleased her greatly. Having actual skill with weapons or being naturally proficient with them made a huge difference, people with such skill were immediately on another level then regular players. It upset her that this kinda unbalanced the system, but the other players could develop skills with weapons with time, so she wasn't overly worried.

Glancing at the second clock she'd bought just so she'd know what time it was in Japan without having to waste time figuring out the time difference, she saw it that it was 12:55 November 6th in Japan, five minutes till SAO launched. Though it was 11:25 pm November 5th for her, since New York was 13 and a half hours behind. She wouldn't be able to play long since it was almost midnight, but she couldn't wait till tomorrow to play. She'd get no sleep whatsoever if she tried to.

When her secondary clock said it was 12:58 she put her NerveGear on and laid down. The second the clock inside the NerveGear, which was also set to JST (Japan Standard Time), clicked over to 13:00 she immediately closed her eyes and said, "Link start."

Instantly the startup sequence began, it checked over her sensory connections, then automatically selected 'Japanese' in language select, since it was the only language to choose from. When she'd been accepted into the beta test, she'd immediately been grateful to her Uncle Vergil and mother for insisting on teaching her some languages when she was younger. She wasn't prefect at it, but practice born from a month of taking to mostly Japanese players in the beta assured that she didn't speak in broken sentences.

Once she'd finished logging in, the now familiar 'Welcome to Sword Art Online!' appeared before her, then a rush of color and suddenly she was standing in the main plaza of the Town of Beginnings. Grinning widely she looked around to familiarize herself, vaguely she heard another player murmur, 'I'm finally back', but ignored the obvious beta tester. She was more interested in running off to utilize what little time she had today to make as much progress with her character as possible.

Heading in the direction of a good shop she knew of she started going through a mental list of things to do, 'First things first, I need to sell the standard «One-Handed Strait Sword» all players start with and buy a «One-Handed Curved Sword» so I can train it up and unlock the «Falcata» skill. Not to mention even if SAO's «Claw» weapons have the claws extending from the knuckles instead of the fingers like I'm used to, I'll need to get a «Claw» for my off hand eventually, but the ones in the starting city just aren't worth the Col. I'll just wait till I get a monster drop. You start out with two healing potions, but I'd like to have a bit more than that if I can afford it. It depends on if they updated the starting shops, and what sword I buy. The starting armor will do for now.'

Arriving in what had been the best shop in the beta, she found that the shops had been updated a bit, but she could afford a decent sword and four healing potions. After checking to make sure she didn't need anything else she confirmed her purchase. Now done with her shopping she took off for the best grinding spot for level 1 players.

An hour and a half later she finished clearing the hunting grounds one more time before sighing, she had to log off now. Between shopping and grinding she'd spent a little over two and a half hours online. The time display in the bottom right read 15:57, which meant it was roughly 2:27 am in her own time zone. Opening her menu she soon found out that the 'log out' button was missing. Marzanna, currently under her player name Hanna, a joke to herself, stared at the menu with only one thought running through her head, 'Fuck.'

Despite the fact it was almost midnight, Dante was still awake. Even though as a Nephilim they didn't even need six hours of sleep a night, Dante had agreed to let Marzanna stay up and play her new game 'Sword Art Online' as long as she was logged off and asleep by 3 am. He wanted her to get six hours of sleep before the two of them went to investigate some reports of demonic activity at 10 the next morning.

Normally he wouldn't spend as much as the combined cost of the virtual reality device, NerveGear and the game SAO, for something as simple as video games, but he hadn't been the one to buy it. Marzanna had saved up to buy it herself. When they were hired to hunt demons the person who went to hunt the demon didn't actually get to keep all the money themselves. They got to keep a portion of it and the rest went to the house for necessities like food and toiletries, along with an emergency stash and funds to repair the house whenever demons attacked them at home. Since Kyrie and Lily didn't go on hunts they got something akin to paychecks every week, since even if they didn't like fighting they did other stuff, like cooking and cleaning. They could go demon hunting, with a little training, if they wanted to. If two people who belonged to separate species that had different natural life spans were soulmates, the person from the species with the shorter life span would become a half breed of their mates species upon bonding. In other words, when Kyrie and Lily underwent the soulmate bound with Nero and Dante respectively, they both became half Nephilim. Ergo with a little training they could hunt demons if they wanted to, but Kyrie didn't like fighting and Lily had gotten sick of fighting during the war with Voldemort.

Marzanna had started hunting two years ago, though she still wasn't allowed to go on hunts by herself. Usually if it was Marzanna's job, one of them would volunteer to go fully knowing they would getting a smaller cut of the payment than usual. On the other hand if Marzanna tagged along on someone else's hunt, she was the one who got a smaller portion. Marzanna hadn't been tagging along on other people's missions in a while though, choosing to take her own. That was because she had been saving up for the NerveGear, and later SAO.

Abruptly Dante was jerked from his thoughts as the TV, which he'd been watching before he spaced out in thought, suddenly stopped the show it'd been playing, and switched to an emergency news report. As the news immediately started off by warning people not to forcibly remove NerveGear from anyone playing SAO, Dante froze in horror. As the news reporter continued by saying that over 150 people in Japan, and an additional 50 people worldwide, had already done so, resulting in the death of the player, that it wasn't a joke and the threat was completely real, Dante felt like he would throw up. They continued by reporting that Akihiko Kayaba had turned the innocent game into a death game, wherein if the player died in the game the NerveGear would fry their brain. After that they urged watchers not to touch the NerveGear, especially not for forcibly remove it, and to call a certain number if someone they knew was playing SAO, or it they suspected they were playing SAO.

On and on it went, but Dante couldn't really focus anymore. The information swirled in his head, and when it finally sunk in Dante began shaking his head in denial. Roughly grabbing his phone from the coffee table, he went on the internet, and to a news site he and his family trusted. The story was confirmed quickly, since it was all over every site that even remotely dealt in news.

Dante stared wide eyed at his phone for a moment, then immediately woke the entire house with a horrified yell, almost a scream, "Marzanna!"

Marzanna had tried calling a GM every half hour, nobody answered. In between those unsuccessful calls, she'd been carefully leveling. She had a horrible feeling she needed to become as strong as possible, as quickly as possible, and she felt strangely on edge, in a manner that she'd only experienced during the first few Demon Hunts she'd gone on.

She'd discovered her missing log out button, a little over an hour ago as it was now 5:10 pm. She was now making her way back to the starting city, as a low level character she couldn't carry that many items, and being on edge had caused her to grind like crazy. So she was now incredibly close to her weight limit. About halfway between the grinding spot she'd been using and the Town of Beginnings she saw two male players relaxing on a hill.

Considering no GMs had been answering her calls she was fairly certain of the answer already, but she decided to ask the two if their logout buttons were available, or if it was just her glitching. So she called out to them, "Ah excuse me? Can I ask you something?"

The two males turned to her and the redhead immediately jumped up saying while blushing, "Of course! I'd be more than happy to help you in any way you require!"

She saw the black haired boy shake his head, and heard him mutter, "First my sister now some stranger we just met."

Vaguely she realized that she recognized his voice, it was the same beta tester she'd heard muttering about being back when she first logged in. She shook it off though, and explained her problem, "Well you see, my logout button seems to be missing, and the GMs aren't answering. I was just wondering if it's just me glitching, or if the problem is plaguing the entire system. So basically, are your logout buttons showing, because mine isn't."

The redhead frowned heavily and opened his screen, the black haired male stared at her in shock for a moment then quickly asked, "Are you sure you didn't just overlook it? If not that's a huge glitch to have on the first day the game launches."

Marzanna, or rather as her avatar name proclaimed her, Hanna(1) shook her head then explained rapidly, "No. I was in the beta test, I know where the logout button is, and the game designers didn't have any reason to move it."

His eyes widened, but before he could reply, the redhead interrupted, "Umm... Kirito, I can't find it either."

The black haired male, now identified as Kirito, turned to him then said, "It should be the bottom button on the main screen Klein."

The redhead, Klein, shook his head, then said, "Dude it's not there. See look, I'll make my window viewable to you."

Putting actions to words, Klein pushed the option to make his player window viewable, then tilted his screen towards Kirito. Kirito leaned over saying, "See it should be-"

Kirito had begun to point to where the logout button should be, but had frozen upon seeing it missing. A moment later he jerked back, and immediately called his own window out. Neither she nor Klein needed to see his window to be able to tell his logout option was missing as well. The way he froze again was telling enough.

Sharing a worried glance with Klein, Hanna spoke up again, "I though as much. I figured it wasn't just me since the GMs weren't answering. If it's a system wide glitch, their probably swamped with calls from distressed players."

Klein nodded absently before saying, "No logout button. Man that's a serious glitch to have the first day you launch your game. Hey Kirito? Is there any other way to logout?"

Hanna immediately shook her head, but Kirito actually gave it a moment of thought. Then a moment later he agreed with her, saying, "No the only ways to logout are with the option on your main menus window or being forcibly logged out by the GMs. The GMs will probably log every player out in a bit, so I suppose all we can do is wait."

Klein glanced down and to the right before exclaiming, "But! I ordered that pizza remember? It's supposed to arrive at 5:30, and it's already 5:16!"

Kirito glanced at Klein and sighed before saying, "Ya and I've got homework I need to get started on. Don't misunderstand I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just saying, we've all got our reasons why we need to get back soon, but it won't change when we get logged out. We have no choice but to wait for the GMs."

Klein looked put out art Kirito's word's, but glanced at her and asked, "What about you? You discovered it before we did, so obviously you were trying to logout. Why do you need to logout?"

Hanna titled her head before saying, "Well, in not actually from Japan, when I said I was in the beta I meant I was one of the 500 chosen for the international side of the 1500 beta testers. I'm actually from America, I stayed up just to play a couple hours before I had to go to bed. Let's see it's now roughly... 3:46 am where I live. My dad said I could stay up to play, but only if I was logged out and asleep by 3 am. He's not overly strict, so he'd probably be understanding of the fact the systems glitching, but still..."

They both looked startled when she told them she was from America, and Kirito opened his mouth to reply, but whatever he was about to say was cut off as a loud bell began ringing, a moment later all the of them were subjected to a forced teleport.

Dante was holding onto his sobbing wife, rubbing her back in an attempt to comfort her, he knew it wouldn't help in the slightest.

It had been four hours since he saw the news report, and went running to check on Marzanna, praying that something had interfered with her plans to login to SAO for a few hours. Hoping she'd fallen asleep before the server launched, or something, anything, else that would mean she was safe, and not in that death game.

When he'd reached her room he hadn't even bothered to knock, almost taking the door of its hinges in his haste. When he saw that she really had stayed up and logged on. He just stood there, unsure what to do, and feeling like he was seconds away from passing out. By then almost everyone else had rushed out of their rooms, clearly thinking they were under attack by demons yet again. They'd been utterly confused to find Dante just frozen in the hallway, starting into Marzanna's room, no trace of any demons other than themselves around.

Vergil, Trish, and Lady had started chewing Dante out for waking everyone, but to their further confusion, he didn't even seem to hear them. It was then Nero spotted Dante's phone, clutched in the man's hand so hard it was beginning to break, and opened to the news site the family used most of the time. He'd carefully pulled the phone from Dante's hand, and looked at it. He only needed to see the headline, and glance into Marzanna's room to understand exactly what was going on.

The others had stopped yelling when they saw Nero pull Dante's phone from his hand, and Vergil had put a hand on Nero's shoulder inn concern when he'd yanked his head up, looking into Marzanna's room with horror clearly on his face. When he was ignored, Vergil mimicked Nero's earlier actions with Dante, and pulled the phone from Nero's hand. It hadn't taken long after that for the news to spread through the house.

Now they were all sitting in the living room, Lily crying into Dante's chest. None of them could sleep. Not with the knowledge of what had happened, was happening, to Marzanna, she was in incredible danger, and there wasn't a damn thing any of them could do.

Hanna was standing in the plaza staring wide eyed at the ceiling, where Kayaba Akihiko had just finished explaining the new rules of this death game. Hanna had always been taught to prepare for the worse and hope for the best. So with that her mind began racing, 'As a Nephilim I can survive a lot that humans can't, I can even survive having small portions of my brain destroyed by say a gun, and it'll regenerate without adverse side effects, but an electromagnetic pulse(2). I'm...unsure what that'll do to me, considering my Nephilim physiology.' Shaking her head she corrected her own thoughts, 'No. Even a Nephilim can't survive if their brain is completely destroyed. I have to assume it'll kill me, just like it'd kill a human.'

As though Kayaba could hear the people who had begun shouting in disbelief he added something else, "Then I will show you evidence that this is the only reality. In your inventories there will be a gift from me. Please confirm this.(3)"

Opening up her inventory, she and every other player saw a new item in their respective inventories. It was simply labeled «Hand Mirror». Materializing it with the 'make into object' option, Hanna caught the simple reflective rectangle that appeared. Thousands of chimes echoed around the plaza as every player pulled their own hand mirrors out.

At first nothing happened, all the mirror did was show the reflection of her avatar, then suddenly she was engulfed in a bright white light. When it cleared she saw similar lights either engulfing or dissipating around the other players. Looking into the hand mirror, Hanna gaped in shock. For reflected back at her, was her own face, her real face, not her avatars. Glancing over to where Klein and Kirito had been, she found the space still occupied by a redhead and a boy with black hair, but they were very different than the two that had been standing there previously. Considering her own change, she assumed this was what they looked like in real life.

Klein and Kirito seemed confused, and at first didn't recognize each other or her, then they glanced into their mirrors and realized what happened.

Comically pointing at each other the two yelled simultaneously, "You're Klein!", "Wait, You're Kirito?!"

Then the two turned towards her and Klein said, "Wait, that means... Hanna?! You're-You're! You're even more gorgeous in real life?!"

She abruptly felt like face planting, and from his expression it seemed the feeling was shared by Kirito, who after a moment covered his face with one hand and muttered, "So not the time Klein."

She agreed, but if they were evaluating each other's looks, she had to say, Klein had a rugged roguish look, while Kirito looked even cuter than his avatar. Shaking herself from those thoughts as like Kirito said, it so wasn't the time, she turned back to Kayaba, since he hadn't disappeared she assumed he had something else to say. In the background she could hear Kirito and Klein talking about how he got the information if how every player looked, but ignored them for now. The how didn't matter to her.

She wasn't disappointed, he did have more to say, but his explanation of why, of simply wanting 'to create, watch, and intervene, in this world(4)' just pissed her off. Clutching her teeth she furiously thought, 'So he did all this, kidnapped 10,000 people, killed 213 people already and who knows how many will die in the future, just so he could play God?!'

Even as the players began shouting denials or just yelling angrily, she turned to grab Kirito's hand and lead him and Klein away. To her surprise Kirito had already grabbed Klein's arm and was reaching for hers, they shared a quick glance upon realizing they had similar intentions. Then with Kirito dragging Klein they ran off.

They didn't make it far before Klein came to his senses and pulled back said, "W-Wait a minute, where are we going?"

Hanna shared a glance with Kirito, then she began explaining to Klein, "It's safer to assume we won't be getting any help from the outside world, rather than waste precious time we could be leveling up waiting to be rescued."

Kirito nodded and Klein looked at his feet before slowly shaking his head, then he said, "I can't just leave. Like I told you earlier Kirito, I've got friends in here. I can't just leave them."

Kirito glanced quickly at her, it was obvious he was thinking of the odds, if it had just been Kirito he might have been able to bring along Klein and one other person while simultaneously keeping them safe, with another beta tester, Hanna, coming along that number increased to 3 or 4 players they could bring along and still keep them safe. The problem with that though, was the fact bringing 4 people who've never played a VRMMO would slow them considerably.

Before either of them could reach a decision, Klein abruptly shook his head wildly then exclaimed, "What am I saying, I might've never played a virtual reality game before, but I've played MMOs. I've got at least ten friends back there, asking you to keep ten other people along with me and yourselves safe is just unreasonable."

Hanna started to protest, but Klein shook his head again and cut her off, "No. Don't worry about me, Kirito showed me how to fight earlier, I'll teach it to my friends, with that we should be able to protect ourselves."

Hanna frowned then said, "Are-Are you sure you'll be ok Klein? I can't speak for Kirito, but if you really need me to I can stay behind and help?"

Klein smiled while replying, "No it's ok, but before we part I wanna thank you two."

Both gave him looks of confusion, and Hanna said, "But I haven't done anything for you to thank me for."

Klein shook his head a third time before explaining, "You have though, when those people back in the plaza come to their senses, how many of them do you think will give a damn about anyone except themselves and their friends huh? You only met me an hour ago tops Hanna, yet your worried about me and my friends, and offered to stay behind just now even though we'd undoubtedly slow you down. So don't think you haven't done anything Hanna, because you've done a lot for me already. Not to mention, like I said earlier Kirito showed me how to fight, and you were both willing to take me with you, and protect me till I could protect myself. So thank you both, for everything you've done for me."

Hanna murmured, "Klein..." Then shook her head and brought out her menu and began manipulating it, a moment later a friend request popped up in front of Klein, Hanna have him a stern look while saying, "Kayaba said that our accounts would be erased if we died, so theoretically if you're on someone's friends list you should disappear from that list upon death. I won't take no for an answer, because this way I can be sure you're ok." Softening a bit she added, "And you can message me quicker if I'm on your friends list. So don't hesitate to message me if you need help. Or even if you just wanna talk."

Klein got a bit teary, but nodded firmly, accepted the request, and said, "You too. You don't hesitate to message me either, ok?"

Hanna nodded with a smile, and a moment later another friend request appeared in front of Klein, this time from Kirito. The only explanation Kirito gave was a simple, "What Hanna said."

Klein nodded again while accepting Kirito's friend request, but as he opened his mouth to bid the two farewell, Kirito interrupted, "Klein. I won't say goodbye, because that implies a permanent farewell. So I'll just say, see you later, ok?"

Klein nodded, and quietly said, "Ya, see you two later, Kirito, Hanna."

Hanna smiled then responded equally quite, "See you later Klein."

AN:

1: I think it's rather obvious, but this is my way of saying that I'll be referring to Marzanna by her username 'Hanna' for the duration of SAO from now on.

2: It says electromagnetic pulse in the light novel, but microwave in the anime. I just went with the novel.

3: Direct quote from 'Sword Art Online Volume 1'light novel. Not mine, don't claim its mine, so don't sue.

4: In the light novel he says to 'create and watch this world', but in the anime he says 'create and intervene' I liked both so I just combined them.