A/N: I've decided these chapters are going to be shorter than To Hyrule and Back Again's chapters, and that I'll try to get them out a few days after the latest THaBA chapter comes out.


Kirito's Point of View

Year 1, Day 1

Floor 1

Alexandria

I'm in the temporary apartment my guild rented in Alexandria. The rest of my guild are here too, anxiously waiting for the outside streets to calm down. All we can hear is screaming and other outrage; after the news that there are no more safe zones in the game, meaning anyone can kill anybody at all times, everybody's losing their minds.

I give this playerbase about a week before they toughen up.

And I know that someone, somewhere is going to take advantage of this new rule change and these people are going to figure out that this isn't just a game anymore.

The announcement has had the worst effect on Gabe, who hasn't uttered a word since said announcement. It's bad enough that if you die in the game, you die in real life, but this is just insane, man…

"Are we just going to sit here or are we going to get moving?" July asks in a concerned tone. Laker turns his head towards her, who is nervously pacing around the room.

"What are we supposed to do? If we stay in here, we won't make any progress and level up like the rest of the players, but if we go outside we could get killed on the spot easily. I just-I-I don't know!"

"Laker, calm down. You're clearly too anxious to be making any decisions," I tell him. I don't blame him for being scared in a situation like this, though.

"Then what do you suppose we do, Kirito?"

"We need to eventually make our way outside but we have to plan it. What that plan may be, however, I have no clue."

He takes a seat on the closest couch and thinks for a moment.

"Lonius," he says, talking to his quiet, older brother. "Thoughts?"

"I guess I agree with Kirito, but we'd have to plan fast. I don't know if players can break through locked doors or not, but it'd best if we don't find out while we can't properly defend ourselves."

"Can't properly defend ourselves"... what?

"Do you guys have any weapons?" I hopefully ask. To my dismay, they all shake their head, except for Mell, who doesn't respond.

"Mell?" I ask. She looks up at me, and reluctantly says, "Yeah?"

"You have a weapon?"

"Uh- yeah, I have this cheap sword some NPC sold me. Why?"

"Just asking."

"Well, guys," July starts, "we need to figure things out quickly and also escape from this town as fast as possible."

"Where would we even go?" asks Mell.

Something comes to mind.

"Before I arrived at this city I found this other abandoned one way up north. I'm sure nobody's there right now, you guys wanna give it a try?"

"WAIT!" Laker shouts. "CAN WE TRANSPORT TO THAT CITY?"

Annoyed, July replies, "No, we can only transport somewhere if we've been there, and all of us have only been in this city except for Kirito."

"Oh."

. . .

"Hey, uh, Lake - is it okay if I call you Lake? - do you have that picture I gave you earlier?"

"Yeah, and don't call me that."

"Well, um… before we do this, is there any chance I could… have it back?"

"I guess, I mean I don't really need it… who is this, anyway?" he asks as he takes it from his inventory. "Your girlfriend, possibly?"

"No, no, no, no, no, she's… that's… can I just have it back?"

"Alrighty then, here's the picture of your girlfriend. Don't cheat on her!" he teases.

I don't even know why I have this, I think, looking down at the picture of the mysterious girl. But I feel the strange need to carry it with me.

Anyway, the guild comes up with a plan to ensure our way out of this city without anyone getting killed. Mell's insisted that nobody will probably even try to harm us because they're too scared until we witnessed a certain player murder an entire small guild from out the window; needless to say, she's convinced now.

I'll teleport to the entrance of Alexandria to see if it's safe. If not, I'll try and hide, and if someone tries to kill me I'll teleport to that one city up north I traveled to earlier and message my guild to wait. If the entrance to Alexandria is safe, I'll message everybody and we'll leave safely. I don't know how it took an hour to figure this out, but I'm glad we at least have some kind of plan.

My entire guild looks at me with different expressions: some confident, some worried, and one bland.

"Ready, Kirito?" Laker confidently asks.

"Ready."

"Remember, don't die," he says as I say, "Teleport, Alexandria!"

I disappear and reappear at the overarching gate that leads into the bloodbath known as Alexandria, which was once a prosperous city. I take a good look at my surroundings, seeing nobody in sight, except for shadows lurking inside buildings. I spot my guild's apartment and see somebody looking out the window at me.

I jog out of Alexandria and search out in the field for any looming figures; nobody's there. I check the streets one more time, and then search in the dark alleyways. Nobody again. Right as I'm telling my guild it's okay I hear someone say, "Are you really that stupid?"

I sprint for the box of crates in the back part of the alley and hide. Someone walks into view. It's the guy who took down an entire guild from earlier.

"There's ignorant, there's stupid, there's stupid-ignorant, and then there's you," he says, as we accidentally make eye contact.

"Teleport- uh… uhm…"

WHAT WAS THE CITY'S NAME?!

Without thinking I yell,"Teleport Alexandria!" and I find myself right behind the man; he's wearing a white cloak, no armor, and has the same level sword as I. He immediately turns around, and I notice his name: Ulf.

"You're definitely something," he chuckles, before charging up his sword and slashing at me.

Somehow I abruptly block his strike and his sword goes flying in the other direction. Where did I learn to do that? Surprised, he takes out a small dagger and tries to land a blow on me multiple times, but I'm able to stop each one with my sword… Like, it feels natural. Eventually I knock the dagger out of his hand as well and he gets furious.

"You're a beta tester, aren't you, you little asshole!?" he yells at me before running for his sword lying in that one alleyway from earlier.

"Well, so was I, kid!"

Confident, I try to land a strike on him with my sword. He successfully blocks it. I hack, slash, hack, slash, and stab, but to no avail; we're equally matched. After a few minutes, he looks as if he's given up and stops attacking.

"Alright, I'm done here, you're free to go, kid," he says, as a smile forms on my face. I turn around and begin typing in, "It's okay, gu-" before a sword is driven through my chest. My HP bar starts lowering very fast.

"Shit, what the hell - what?" I struggle. After a few seconds, Mell transports in front of the gate, sprints towards me, and stabs Ulf in the face.

"Back off," she says in a threatening tone. The sword is taken out of my body and I fall down to see my HP in the red zone. The last thing I see is Mell's angry expression before I black out.

. . .

"He's an idiot, that's what he is. He didn't think the plan through. Almost got himself killed."

"I was the one who thought of the plan, it's my fault," Laker says.

"But it was his life on the line! He's responsible for his own life, okay? No more stupid plans like this, understoof, idiots?"

"Mell, why are you so hostile?" Gabe questions.

"BECAUSE KIRITO JUST ALMOST GOT MURDERED!"

"Yeah, that's something you can get mad about. But, he's alive, so there's that."

I open my eyes to see my guild arguing about the plan in the apartment; I'm lying down on a quite comfortable couch. Gabe notices I'm awake, and says, "Finally, you're awake!" and runs over to me.

"Dude, Mell says you almost died! Is that true?"

"I-I don't know…"

"He did almost die and if I wasn't there he actually would be dead."

Man, her attitude changed quick. Quiet and reserved to angry and frustrated.

I sit up on the couch. I notice everybody has a weapon sheathed.

"You all… got weapons."

"Yep!" Laker says. "And let's hope we won't be using them on the way to your city."

After a brief discussion concerning the whereabouts of said city we're travelling to, we all teleport to the entrance of Alexandria and immediately huddle up and look in every direction; there's only one person, and it's an unarmed guy, seemingly frightened by our presence.

"D-don't kill me!" he pleads. His name is Zefram, and he looks about thirteen.

"What are you doing on these streets?" I ask him. "Do you have a death wish?"

"No, I have no -"

"Come on, Kirito," Mell tells me. "It's not worth it."

We leave the town and begin heading north; we kill some monsters along the way, and I even level up to level 2, and one of the monsters drop a small dagger, which I name "Small Restructor." I start to recognize the field we're jogging through, and also the fact that we're almost to the city.

"How far did you run to get here, Kirito?" Gabe asks, panting.

"Far."

Not too long later the overarching gate comes into sight, and, after killing a few more monsters and Laker levels up, we reach the town. Excited, I sprint into the city and see it has a name:"Northern Lights." Mell runs up beside me and says, "Stop doing that! Be careful before you make blind decisions, okay?"

"This city didn't have a name last time," I say, not in response to Mell but to myself.

"What?" she asks.

"Someone's been here… someone or a group of people have named this town already…"

"Or, it's just pre-named. I'm pretty sure Alexandria was pre-named. Right?" Laker says.

"Yeah, we were one of the first guilds in Alexandria and that name's been there for a while," July explains.

I convince myself we're alone in the city as we traverse its streets, the NPCs desperately trying to sell us items and the concrete as clean as possible. The apartments are tall and seem expensive, yet there's no one to inhabit them; excluding us, I think.

Earlier we had sold our old apartment for half of the gold we spent on it, and as a whole we still have enough to buy one here.

"Let's go get something to eat," Gabe asks as we approach the tall, wooden building. Everyone looks back at him.

"Agreed," I reply. Everyone else nods, and we head to the nearest restaurant, named "Lightning Bar." We all take a seat down at a large booth and an NPC waitress approaches us, and we order a meal. The sky outside is starting to get dark, and so far it's been a hell of a first day in Sword Art Online. I pull out the picture of the "FIND ME" girl and study it a bit more before my food comes. July looks over at it, as she's sitting next to me.

"That your GF?"

"Nope."

"Then who is it?"

"Honestly, I don't know. I found it in my inventory when I started. On the back, it says 'FIND ME,' look." I show her, and she seems to be intrigued by it.

"Hm. Maybe it's one of those quests with vague instructions that you have to solve for yourself."

"Maybe."

So we enjoy ourselves for that one moment, chatting away with each other; even Mell opens up a little bit more. The food tastes how it would taste in real life, and honestly everything seems like it's real life right now. The virtual sun is eventually replaced by the virtual moon, and around that time is when we rent another apartment which comes with a really cool lock system. We transfer our old furniture to here and a prompt comes up for Laker, who the apartment is currently owned by: "Name for place of residence?"

"Guys?" he asks. "What shall we call this place?"

"Well, what's our guild name?" I reply.

He thinks for a moment, before Mell speaks up, "It's 'The Strikers'. Could've been more creative in my opinion."

"That's a fine name. Then this place shall be called Strikerplace."

Everybody murmurs in agreement, and then we all settle down for the night.

Good night, Sword Art Online, I think, before dozing off to sleep in the room I share with Gabe.

. . .

I'm inside some kind of wooden cabin.

When did I get here? I look around; it all feels familiar. There's a little girl with long, black hair sitting across from me, talking with… with…

...the girl from the FIND ME picture. They're happily chatting away.

A minute later, as I rock in a wooden rocking chair, the two look over to me.

"What do you think, Kirito? Should we or should we not?" the girl from the FIND ME picture asks. Her name isn't showing, and neither is the little girl's.

"Should we what?"

"Should we find each other?" she asks, before I come to my senses.

"Rise and shine, Kirito," I hear Gabe say.

Year 1, Day 2

Floor 1

Northern Lights

Gabe looks half-worried but is seemingly calm as he stands beside my bed, waking me up. I notice his qualities: brown hair, freckles, skinny arms, and blue eyes.

"What's the matter?"

"We've got a small problem. There's a guild as big as us wandering around town."

He takes a seat on my bed and I sit up and listen.

"Is anybody else awake?"

"No, and nobody else needs to be awake, because I have an idea for just the two of us."

"What's that?"

"We're going to steal their stuff."

"Huh?"

"Yeah! I mean, we won't kill them or anything, but we can let them know that this is our town and also get some loot on the side. I got a pretty cool sword from a monster drop, and you've got your supposed sword skills Mell talked about, so I think we should do this."

"Why not tell the rest of the guild?"

"They won't risk it, trust me."

"Alrighty then. I'm down. When we doin' this?"

"I guess in a few hours. Let's go eat breakfast."

We eat the cereal Laker found somewhere (half the entire box) and carefully exit the apartment.

"Do we have a backup plan?" I ask Gabe.

"Of course," he replies, as we walk down the apartment stairs (we had bought the entire third floor). "If all goes to hell we'll transport back to our apartment. We can do that, apparently."

As soon as we're back on the streets a familiar voice calls out to us.

"KIRITO! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!"

Mell.


A/N: Character development and conflict development. Yup, getting a little more interesting. Thanks for reading and if you like this, please leave a review, as it lets me know that you guys want more of this fanfiction. Follow me on Twitter/Tumblr for updates as well.

Twitter: byzeldro

Tumblr: zeldro


Review Response for Chapter 1: New Game

Harvzy: Love the plot, very suspenseful and original :) can't wait to read more!

Thanks for the kind words! I'm not a one-shot type person, as if I make a fic it has to be as original and unique as possible, but still likeable.

Gussy Phantom: That was great! This guild Kirito joined seems pretty cool. It'll be nice to see him interact with more people. He was kind of a loner in the beginning of season 1, so it's good that he at least has people he can turn to since Asuna isn't with him. I can't wait to see when/if you introduce other characters from the series, like Lizbeth, Silica, and Klein! I can't wait to see what happens! Keep up the great work!

Yep! I wanted to introduce a lot of new characters so I could develop them as I please. And yeah, characters from the original anime will definitely take part. How they will be introduced… is a mystery. Thanks for the review!