A/N: Here's the pilot, as promised. Wanted to try something different.

"Wh-… HEY!"

"Are you kidding me?! Guards!"

November 6th, 2022 – 13:04 Japan Standard Time. Two NPCs, one managing a jewellery stall and the other vending weapons, cried out in anger as my player cursor turned orange for stealing.

If I could get away with all that I swept from the counters and shelves, I could sell off 29 assortments of necklaces, bracelets, and rings to another NPC, along with seven sphere-cut gemstones. I could still hold onto the two copper ores and two tungsten ores also lifted from the jeweller, and I could get some use from the three daggers I pinched from the other stall.

Seven guards spawned at the end of the alleyway, in the direction I was headed; my only option was leaping up onto the roof of another stall and sailing over their heads. I could not afford to take even a single hit yet – city-tier guards like in the Town of Beginnings, had 100% paralysis chance added to all their Sword Skills, which would allow them to take me to the Black Iron Palace without doing much damage to my HP. Of course, if I'd stayed green, not committing any crimes, I wouldn't even take any damage anyway – though, I was still protected from players and monsters.

As it was in the beta, even though debuff resistance effects applied to the guards' attacks, they had another feature programmed in, which would further increase the infliction chance as the target gradually lost more HP. However, as service had just launched a couple minutes ago, I would be fully vulnerable to the debuff, as I only had my starting sword, the three stolen daggers, and my first two assigned skills, «One-Handed Sword» and «Extended Weight Limit». I took the latter because I knew how long it could be between when I stole stuff, and when I could get a chance to sell it, as yet more items would pile up in my inventory.

Why did I start the game with a crime? It was simple, really: I figured I'd try an all-orange run, as my first full playthrough of Sword Art Online. When the beta started back in August, guards were able to pursue criminals through doors, but after seeing how easy it was to beat guards in single file in front of door frames, it was patched in the first week to have them pile up outside instead, knowing the player would have to go outside eventually. This meant that I could still get shopping done while my cursor was orange, but I would need to be ready for fancy acrobatics once I opened the door.

I knew there was no way I could get through on one life with this setup, but mechanically, everything pointed to the game being possible to clear while orange. And that was my goal.

Not everything could go too smoothly, though – the one guard armed with a one-handed sword, was also the only one in full plate armor. All metal used in NPC guards' equipment was steel, compared to the bland pig iron of the starting player weapons and shop weapons. The blade compatible with my skills, which I had intended to start using immediately, was held by the one who would be the very hardest to hit with enough force to potentially cause a fumble.

Fortunately, because the plate-wearing guard also moved much slower than the others, he got left behind when I routed the other six through another alley. I circled back to where only he would see, and then tucked myself into a position around the corner where I could snag his foot with one of the necklaces I stole.

As insane as the plan was, his boot got caught by the chain as I yanked it back, causing the rest of his body to continue forward and crash to the ground. As he tried to put his hands ahead of himself, he lost grip of the steel sword. I promptly scooped it up and took off as the other guards caught up, and then once I had run far enough to line them up in order from fastest to slowest, I began fighting.

The first thing I did, was slip behind the two leather wearers, take their belt daggers, and jam them both into the guards' backs without the need for Sword Skills. The game's damaging function was strange, in that as long as a blade remained embedded in a target's body, it would continuously do ticking damage. What made this better, was that the guards didn't have the AI to think about any attempt to remove blades from their allies, so without the impaled ones being able to reach their backs at all – or at least, reach the part of their backs where the daggers were, while still able to get good grip on them to pull – they would keep taking damage while I stalled for time. So, I ran again once the guards wearing breastplate armor caught up.

"Stop, damn you!" one shouted as I sprinted toward the exit leading northwest, still a number of streets away. Another seven guards spawned in the plaza after I had passed through it, and I knew upon returning to the streets, that another set would spawn near the predicted exit, and close in on my location. Noticing that one of the new guards wore leather, I circled back to get close, and then stabbed him in the back with his own belt dagger, as well. Then upon seeing there was a guard in studded leather, I did the same with his belt dagger, before flipping over the small shockwave left behind by the battleaxe-wielding guard's «Smash» as the two-handed weapon chipped the cement between the pavement tiles. Without hesitation, I gripped the halfway point of the axe's shaft, and used the weight of the head as a lever pivot for the handle as I ripped it from the guard's hands.

Now that I had another weapon, I slipped between the guards to get out to the last street before the exit gate out of town, more than grateful for the ability to navigate menus and re-equip my starting smallsword while running. The fourth guaranteed-to-spawn wave of guards was the squad waiting near the exit gate, who would engage any orange player entering the street leading to the gate. But, as luck would have it, there was only one guard there. Seeing one more opportunity to taunt the law mobs, I looked back to see how the leather-wearing guards were doing on health. I noticed that the first two were down to the red and decided to finish one off.

As I spun 180 degrees to face them again, the mace user readied «Silent Blow», a heavy horizontal swing which flew over my head as I ducked, my arm back for «Horizontal» to attack during the delay experienced by all Sword Skill users after their use. I sliced into the guard, kicked his relaxing arm to shake his morningstar free, and claimed the weapon for myself as the guard froze in the air before shattering into blue glass. Narrowly avoiding a «Twin Thrust» by the two-handed spear of another guard as I regained motion, I proceeded to hightail it out of the Town of Beginnings, as golden light surrounded my avatar while I kicked off of the gate's archway for height over the guard there.

That golden light meant I levelled up; it should have been no surprise that the guards were so highly levelled, as to yield enough XP for a full level. From what I could tell, equipment with its own stat bonuses had more commonly boosted Agility than Strength, so I had to allocate my attribute points entirely to Strength, to keep it kept up with the Agility I would eventually have.

Gee, I spent over 20 minutes on that already, I thought to myself as I stashed the morningstar in my inventory, opened my level-up pop-up, and invested my three points. While Agility would help most with this kind of run, Strength would allow me to more easily steal weapons from the guards, be it knocking them away with heavy attacks, or pulling them from their hands with brute force. Without weapons, I'd have less attacks to dodge, and I can either flee without worry, or kill more guards for significantly faster levelling in the early game.

This would be much, much harder if it were a speedrun with all-orange rules, but I was just playing a regular all-orange run. Hell, if it took a month to beat ten floors, there probably wouldn't even be much of a speedrunning scene, if at all, with the thought of taking almost a year for the hundred.

I made my way northwest to Horunka Village, slicing up three Dire Wolves on the way with my Beginner's Smallsword. As soon as I stepped across the area marking line, three guards spawned in the square ahead, before making a beeline in my direction. Despite village guards being in smaller numbers than city guards, and a little weaker, I had to pass them by for now, as I had to take care of everything I planned to do in town, before too many new waves spawned.

As I got into the general store, I checked the time: 14:23. Making sure I wasn't here for too long, I headed over to the counter, and the clerk rattled off a generic merchant line before the shopping interface opened. I proceeded to sell all the jewellery and gems, and bought a leather half-coat, matching the boots dropped by the guard I killed, as well as a couple of potions and antidotes. I also bought a pickaxe, just in the event that I needed a little more metal alongside anything gained from melting down the stolen weapons.

I left the store, and the guards immediately began the ready motion for various Sword Skills. I rolled under the arm of the leftmost guard, and fled as they were all forced to execute skills on nothing. Included in this mess, were the two extra guards who had spawned while I was in the shop.

After selling jewels and buying some supplies, I headed down to a house in the back of town, only to find the door closed and unopening. Across the upper third, was a panel with text:

"Residents have their hands full. Please check back at 13:50 tomorrow."

It looked like someone got here before me. Oh, well – I still had my steel. However, the only other particularly worthwhile questgiver, was outdoors; I could not talk to him while guards chased me. Although, I could try to thin them out; village guards weren't just weaker in raw stats – they also had lower paralysis chance on all attacks, 33%. But if that check failed, their attacks would try to inflict a simple stun instead, 65% of the time.

With that in mind, I took the belt daggers of the guard in leather, and the guard in studded leather, stabbing both in the portion of their backs unreachable by their own hands. I ran back to the square, only those two guards keeping up, and I used the opportunity to strike the sword-wielder with Slant while the hammer-wielder lowered her shield upon realizing she wasn't my target, and activated the hammer attack, Flat Nailing. I regained motion as the skill glowed, and rolled under the swing as the sword user readied Vertical. Seeing the light metal-armored guards catching up, I dashed off toward the previously-mentioned NPC's ranch, just to create more distance between the leather-wearers and metal-wearers again.

As I got down to the ranch, I noticed that the man cradling a pitchfork did not have a quest marker floating over his head. Intrigued, I decided to get in a word as the guards kept up.

"Hey, sir? You got anything that needs doing?"

The man shrugged, pitchfork in hand. "Can you come again at 8:05PM?"

I guess I should have expected quests to get cooldown times in the released version of the game. However, 24 hours seemed a bit much for getting a new sword, and six hours seemed excessive for what should have been just a large sum of XP. Putting this frustration aside, I lowered my arm into activation for Slant, and then lurched forward as the guards stopped, catching the sword-wielder in my blade's reach again. Just as I regained motion, I was struck by the hammer-wielder's Flat Nailing, though I was perfectly capable of moving afterward – no paralysis or stun. Seeing the light metal wearers catching up again, I ran to the side of them and returned to the square, forcing the heavier guards to grind to a halt in order to change direction as I passed them.

Luckily, there were a decent handful of generic quests that only had one or two lines of dialogue, surely unnecessary to restrict with a global cooldown. I could just run up, listen for just a couple of seconds, accept, and take off again. Grabbing about three of these, I headed back to the village gate with guards in hot pursuit, turning back only for one more Slant to finish off the sword-wielder and gain a few minor drops, while snatching the sword and shield. Then, I was out of the jurisdiction of Horunka's guards for two whole hours.

When I came back, only one guard was visibly ready: a hammer-wielder like the one I spared, also utilizing a shield, but wearing a breastplate. The marker was darker than I would expect on day one; was someone really going out of their way to level up already?

Though I couldn't fight them anymore, it was only important to me that I could swipe things out of NPCs' hands or off of their belts. I took off to turn in all the quests, kicking me up to Level 3, and I allocated all three points to Strength again, before retreating out of town once more. Without much more to do in Horunka, I had little choice but to try to make my way north. However, I was only just barely able to reach Level 4 in the Rata Plain against the lesser kobold enemies – something I could never have done this early without steel weapons – before I heard dull ringing from the bells at the Town of Beginnings. I opened my menu to check the time, and it was roughly in the range between 5:40 and 5:49, as I was then suddenly enveloped in light before I could see the last digit.

When I regained my vision, I was back in the plaza of the aforementioned city, alongside almost all other players in the game. I wondered how this would affect the guards, as I still had the same color cursor, orange contrasting to everyone else's green.

I then heard a deep whine repeating in the sky, looking up to see a hexagonal prompt colored in red and reading 'WARNING' while flashing. Then, it spread itself across the sky, though some of them displayed 'System Announcement' instead. Goopy blood dripped from the sky and coalesced into a scarlet robe with golden trimmings, pale white gloves, and an empty hood. From what I understood when I played the beta test, this was the robe worn by the Game Masters.

The robe raised its sleeves outward in invitation. "Attention, players. I welcome you, to my world."

Okay, it's clear that he's the one speaking. Now we just had to hear him out.

"My name is Akihiko Kayaba. And as of this moment, I am in control of this world."

…Okay? We kind of knew who made it, I thought, with chatter coming from behind me. "Seriously?" "Is that really him?" "Wow, that's some entrance."

Mr. Akihiko continued. "I'm sure most of you have already noticed an item missing from your main menus: the logout button." He then opened his own menu, visible to us, to demonstrate. Although, that was certainly news to me. I opened my own as well to be sure. He was right, it was gone.

"Let me assure you, this is not a defect in the game. I repeat: this is not a defect. This is how Sword Art Online was designed to be. You cannot log yourselves out of SAO – and no-one from the outside will be able to shut down or remove the NerveGear from your head. If anyone attempts to do so, a transmitter inside the NerveGear will discharge a microwave signal into your skull; destroying your brain, and ending your life."

"What are you talking about?" "Oh, come on, that's such BS!" "This game sucks!"

While I didn't agree with the latter two statements, I couldn't help but wonder how possible it was. However, the thought was interrupted by the sound of two players bumping into a barrier.

Looking in that direction, I saw a young couple knocking on a clear wall around the plaza. "Hey! We can't get out!"

I looked to the opposite side, and behind the barrier, a small squad of NPC guards were waiting in a street out of the plaza, staring directly at me before my vision was obscured by other players. After shrugging slightly, I returned my attention to the GM.

"Despite my warning," he resumed speaking, "The families and friends of some of the players have attempted removing the NerveGear – an unfortunate decision, to say the least."

At least he gave the outsiders a warning… "As a result, the game now has 213 less players than when it began. They have been deleted from both Aincrad, and the real world."

"That many…!?" I gasped, instinctively touching the upper third of my head, where the NerveGear would be in the real world. The real world, where the real Valerie Kurokaze lay on a bed, her life and future only spared by the technological common sense of her mother.

Screenshots of news articles surrounded the GM. "As you can see, international media outlets have round-the-clock coverage of everything – including the deaths. At this point, it's safe to assume the likelihood of a NerveGear being removed is minimal, at best."

I moved further inward in the plaza, hoping to try to read one of the articles, but I had no such luck.

"I hope this brings you a little comfort as you try to clear the game."

Okay, that got my attention again, I thought as Kayaba continued. "It's important to remember the following: there is no longer any way to revive someone within the game. If your HP drops to zero, your avatar will be deleted from the system, forever."

And…

"And the NerveGear will simultaneously destroy your brain."

And, there it was. I knew this was going somewhere. I just didn't want to see it come to fruition.

One thing I knew for sure: an orange run would be impossible. I would have to seek out the special roaming questgiver to remove my criminal status. Wouldn't want anyone to think I killed anyone except for NPC guards and field monsters.

The only thing giving me hope at the moment, was that I had steel-forged weapons. Maybe I could donate some of them, instead of hoarding reclaimed ingots for later forging.

"There is only one way for a player to escape now: you must clear the game." Kayaba then displayed the basic map from his menu. "Right now, you're gathered on floor one – the lowest level of Aincrad. If you can get through the dungeon and defeat the boss, you may advance to the next floor. Defeat the boss on Floor 100, and you will clear the game."

Many reactions came from all around me. "Clear it?" "What's he talking about?" "Why should we believe any of the crap you're saying?!"

I shook my head and moved through the crowd, away from the less bearable voices. And then my attention was drawn to a more unique response, in a tone very unique for this situation.

"Why would we have been given an opportunity to finish the game before it's out?"

Oh boy, did someone say something really smoothbrain? I stuck close by, in case it got sassier.

Of course, Kayaba still had more to say. "Last but not least: I have placed a little present in the item storage of every player. Please, have a look."

We all opened our inventories, and sure enough, each of us got a small hand mirror. I glanced back toward the other players, as they were all suddenly enveloped in bright blue light, and I was very quickly consumed, as well; a few seconds later, the light faded.

"You okay, Kirito?" I heard nearby. Kirito? He's close by? I looked in their direction.

I didn't see anyone I recognized. Even from appearances I had memorized just a minute ago. I then heard many players expressing confusion at each-other's appearances, and then I looked into my mirror once again.

Where I had once seen an almost-perfect recreation of the NXT JP Women's Champion, Kumiko Hayashida, with her black ghost-girl hair, golden iris contacts, and early-teen stature; I now saw the flowing golden-blonde locks, ocean blue eyes, and the mature 'older-sister-type-friend' figure which were all aesthetics from my real-life body.

"SAUER, you made your real self?" Well, I don't remember hearing that name in the beta, but if it turns out that he was in it for that whole month…!

"Yeah, I wanted people to recognize me," I heard a chuckle to my left. I immediately looked. Then, I quickly turned my head away.

Oh, no. He's in here. If he's not making Fairy Best Friends 8, then I can't…

Oh, right, I thought, shaking my head, I'm not gonna miss out when it does get finished.

…Unless either of us dies. Or both.

"The scan…" explained the very youthful teen boy beside him, "There's a high-density signal device inside the NerveGear rig, it can see what my face looks like… But how does it know my height and body type?"

"When you first put the NerveGear on," the maroon-haired man with them answered, "It had to do this calibration thing. It asked you to touch your body all over like this, remember?"

Well, this better be all that it was used for, because I did the full proportion adjustment…!

"Right now, you're probably wondering why," Kayaba's voice echoed from the empty robe again, as the crowd looked up and into the hood, "Why would Akihiko Kayaba, developer of Sword Art Online and NerveGear, do this?"

Yeah, give us a motive, you bastard…

"Ultimately, my goal was a simple one: the reason I created Sword Art Online, was to control the fate of a world of my design."

"Oh, for f…" You never heard of The Sims?! SimCity?! Populous?! I don't care if those are all western properties, you have to have encountered one!

"As you can see, I have achieved my goal." Kayaba's arms fell to his sides. "This marks the end of the tutorial, and the official launch of Sword Art Online. Players, I wish you the best of luck."

Red smoke then poured from the hood and sleeves of the robe, which collapsed and faded away, as the smoke returned to the sky and disappeared, along with the grid of alerts.

So, those were the stakes. We had to get up the floors of the floating castle, up to the hundredth, beating every labyrinth boss along the way, and break free at the top. And each of us only had one single shot at this, ending in real-life death if we lost.

For some reason, I felt like this was some Final Destination-style punishment for avoiding some big cataclysm that was due at the end of the last decade. Whatever it was, I wasn't about to let it win.

Of course, a shattering mirror on the ground told me that not everyone would think quite the same way as I did, the breaking sound followed by, "My god… Aah!"

Just a couple seconds later, more voices cried out in despair. "Let me out, let me out of here!"

"I can't stay here! I have a meeting after this!" "Stop pushing!" "You have to let us go!"

I saw the guards behind the barrier take ready stances again, as if they knew something.

"Wait, seriously?!" "What did we ever do to you?! We just wanted to play a game!"

As those last two voices flowed past me, the invisible walls vanished, allowing us out of the plaza. Glancing at the streets with the most waiting guards, I made my way off into a smaller alleyway, circling back around to the northwestern exit from the Town of Beginnings. Once I got out, I went further outward into the fields. While I waited for the redemption questgiver to spawn, I would put every ounce of energy into levelling off of the kobolds in the Rata Plain area near the swamp.

It would still be another couple of hours before the calf-rescue quest in Horunka would open again, but for the time being, I would try to get strong enough off the Rat Hunters, to start beating on the Swamp Kobold Trappers at some point.

Although… Maybe I should let the green players get a few cycles of each cooldown-bearing quest, within the time it takes me to obtain and complete a redemption quest. Plus, I probably wouldn't remotely get close to the essential quests' NPCs while I was orange, anyway…

Then, I looked up at the darkening sky, and realized that I would need to sleep in-game.

If I wanted to sleep somewhere safe, I would need to finish the redemption quest tonight.

Given that part of my crime was murder, even if it wasn't a player, I could not do it on my own that soon if I wanted to live through it. I would definitely need help.

Fortunately, I would have a ton of time to go and find that help, as I found the roaming NPC almost immediately upon reaching the edge of the West Fields, where the Town of Beginnings was a blur along the horizon.

"You look like a person whose soul is weighed down by their conscience. Is it heavy for you?"

I nodded hastily. "Y-Yes, my shoulders are so sore." The NPC only needed to parse the first word, but my desperation to be clean in the system motivated my roleplay.

"You shall achieve balance with this deed: Bring me the disarming hook wielded by the Rata Plain's Swamp Kobold Trappers. The means to accelerate theft, surrendered by a thief, will equate to the worth of your loot. And the inherent danger will be proof of your life's value over those you took."

I glanced at the quest log in the corner of my vision: "Steal a «Weapon Dropper» from a «Swamp Kobold Trapper» in the Rata Plain."

"Where will you wait for me?" I asked the travelling NPC.

"You will find me near the woods to the west of Horunka."

I nodded in understanding, and the wanderer began to head northwest. As straightforward as retrieving one item from a single enemy seemed, the enemy in question was of a high level. If I had attempted the quest on my own, it would take several days to attain the levels to fight the kobold.

With this in mind, I headed in the opposite direction, returning again to the Town of Beginnings.

If I was going to survive this quest, and I wanted to ensure that the people I asked for help would not think I was attempting to monster-PK using the Swamp Kobold Trapper, I would need to hook a big group with my first search. I had to keep my eyes on every player I passed as I ran from the guards inside the safe zone.

Making it into the plaza, where hundreds of players were still wracked with panic, I saw a few cool heads in all directions. But to my right, I saw a group of four in conversation, including the guy with maroon hair I had seen during the announcement. Although, on closer inspection, I saw that it was more a red-brown. But I knew I was looking at the guy with the red open-hair bandana.

With him, were a guy in a closed-cap bandana – also red – with a moustache styled like a pair of eyebrows, a lean man with brown hair in a similar style to Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z… if said hair had been rendered on a CRT television, and a wider man with a short brown afro.

"Hey, you four!" I called out as I approached, "You all look organized together, yes?"

"Huh?" exhaled the four as I stopped in front of them.

"Do you think you can help me? I managed to pick up a quest to erase my criminal status and I need this quest done within the evening, so I can get into an inn without guards all over me."

After a couple of seconds of staring, the four raised a thumb each. "You can count on us!"

I flinched at the unison answer, and glanced over my shoulder. "Perfect, I'll give you all the details outside the northwest gate. Do not engage anyone behind me, or you'll turn orange like me."

"O-Okay?" answered the one with red-brown hair, as I took off out of the plaza once more, followed closely by at least eleven guards by this point.

When I finally got to the northwestern exit by my own means, the group was there. I waved for the four to follow me further from the city, and they did so, just into the west fields.

"Thanks for this. Though, I must say, you gave a definitive answer pretty quickly."

The man with red-brown hair smiled, his hand out to be shaken. "Hey, we can't turn down a lady in distress when the game's stakes are so high. I'm Klein."

"Valkyrie," I introduced myself as I shook his hand, "There are too many factors in the name choice, for me to explain right now."

He chuckled as he took his hand back. "That's okay. The big guy here is Dale, the one with the cap bandana is Dynamm, and the last one is Issin. We are Fuurinkazan, as we were in other games."

"Well, when the third floor opens up, you'll want to get the quest to unlock guild management as soon as you can, to secure that name."

"Guilds unlock in a third-floor quest, huh? Thanks."

I giggled as I began walking north. "It's the least I can do besides getting you a few early levels."

"Oh, right!" Klein replied as his party followed, "What's this quest to remove your criminal status?"

"Well, we're going to the Rata Plain," I answered as I accepted his party invitation, my quest info remaining with me as it was circumstantially exclusive, "It's a standard high-level mob which I had concluded can be treated like a raid boss by a big low-level party."

"What do you need to fight it for?" asked Dale, easily keeping up with his thinner friends.

"The enemy is a Swamp Kobold Trapper," I explained as I shattered my beginning sword with a Slant against the Dire Wolf that spawned ahead of us, "It wields a dagger and a rope-hook with a special disarming ability called Weapon Dropper. I need to get that hook and give it to the NPC from whom this quest was received. Giving up a thief-style tool will reduce the number of thieves in the world, thus excusing my thievery from NPCs throughout the afternoon."

"You went and stole things as soon as you started?" asked Issin, somewhat concerned.

"I thought my knowledge from the beta would be enough to pull off an all-orange run in service. I understand that I should not continue to pursue this ambition."

"Yeah, that makes sense," Dynamm commented from the back, "Wouldn't want anyone making assumptions as to how you got the criminal status in the first place."

I looked back with a grin. "Sound advice from the one looking kind of like a pirate."

Klein chuckled as his pirate-like friend glanced to the side. "Well, we do like a bit of the rogue-style play, most of the time."

"Do you, now?" I giggled as I led the group across the floor, "I do have a thing for the scruffy ronin look, I'll admit…"

I made a mental note of the tone in Klein's gasp: excitement. He might be my Chekhov's Gunman, somewhere down the line…

"So, what is your name about?" Klein asked shortly after one encounter.

"I suppose we have time," I answered as I put away my sword, "The name itself comes from Norse mythology; a Valkyrie was a type of angelic guide, women who brought fallen warriors to Valhalla."

"Uh-huh…" The ronin nodded for a second. "Wait, then… What were these 'other factors' for the reason you chose it?"

I chuckled as I slowed my steps. "My original avatar was a recreation of a pro wrestler, the NXT JP Women's Champion Kumiko Hayashida. Her gimmick was based partially on her real-life home's proximity to Aokigahara, the suicide forest. She acted as a combination of the guiding angel I just mentioned, and a mild knockoff of WWE Hall of Famer, the Undertaker."

"Okay. Is that it?"

I thought on my response for a moment, and shrugged. "Nah. My real name is only one syllable off from the name I chose. I would thank you to stand by your cultural customs, however."

"Huh? Oh, yeah! That. Understood, Valkyrie."

I resumed my smile as I pointed them to their first kobold, a Rat Hunter. "Good. Shall we get on with the game, now?"

"O-Of course!"

We had been in the Rata Plain for about a minute before we ran into an encounter matching the regional roll tables, but this deep into the first floor, the group had fought enough other monsters throughout the previous hour, that this enemy scored them their first level-up.

"Nice job, you guys! There are only two attributes to allocate each level's three points to, they are Strength and Agility. From what I can tell in the ten floors I'd seen in the beta, agility-increasing accessories appear more often than strength-increasing ones. Make of that what you will."

After a minute of menus, and a few more encounters, we were in a position where the swamp in which the kobolds built a small village, was in sight. We weren't headed there, we just needed to be near it. And luckily, for just a few minutes.

"There!"

Ahead, I pointed Fuurinkazan toward the kobold I had described: dagger in one hand, swinging rope with a hook on the end in the other. While its enemy cursor was dark crimson for me at Level 4, it likely displayed as black to the Level 2 players behind me.

"As I said, we'll hit it like a raid boss: I'll draw the hook and get my sword pulled away. Klein, you will keep its dagger hand busy while I pick up my sword. The rest of you wail on it."

Four nods later, we engaged the Swamp Kobold Trapper, and the plan was rather straightforward. I dropped my sword, Klein blocked the dagger, Dale and Dynamm hit hard with their swords, Issin delivered an ex-spear-ience of pain to the kobold, and I got in a Slant with my retrieved sword.

When the kobold's HP got to red, I slightly altered the plan. "Alright, I'm gonna use both my hands to grip my sword. Hit him while he's trying to pull!"

"You got it!" Dale answered as the Trapper swung the hook once more. I caught it on my sword, and wrapped my off-hand firmly around the upper portion of the blade, just above the hook. All four of them executed their best Sword Skills on the defenseless foe, closed out by Klein with «Reaver», a One-Handed Curved Sword skill. As he leaped past the enemy, slicing across it along the way, the kobold cried out in anguish as the rope slipped from its hand, and I fell back with my own backward momentum, the hook sliding off my sword and landing in my lap as the kobold shattered.

All four members of Fuurinkazan levelled up again to 3, and I reached 5. I looked down to my lap, making sure the hook was still there, and I picked it up to ensure it was marked with my ownership.

Meanwhile, Klein and his friends celebrated behind me. "Yeah! That's what I'm talking about!"

"That was good," I congratulated them as I put away the hook, "But I would advise against trying to fight more of those anytime within the following few days. You may encounter Rat Hunters while moving around with the tactics we just used, and on top of that, an unrelated quest takes players down this way as well, and either they may mistake you for disrupting their quest, or your enemies could try to engage them instead. Hold off for now, and level up somewhere else until you no longer need to rely on raid-like strategy to defeat the Trappers."

Klein tilted his head. "What about you?"

I shook my head. "I'll be fine. There's a village northwest of the Town of Beginnings; that's where I'll need to go, to turn in this redemption quest. After that, I can go into the village and do the quests available there. At least, if those SAUER and Kirito guys aren't already there."

"Ah, well," Klein chuckled awkwardly with his hand behind his head, "That's where they said they'd wanted me to go with them, before I told them about my friends here."

I sighed. "Ahh, I should expect as much from fellow beta testers." Then I recalled the face I saw with Klein and SAUER, the cute one who mentioned the high-density scanning…

"Wait… Was Kirito the small one, with the black hair?"

The ronin blinked. "Y-Yeah, that was him."

Oh my god... Oh, my god…!

I struggled to keep my smile at a simple, reassuring level. "Alright, cool. I want to see what he can remember from the beta that I didn't. In the meantime, you all should head back to the Town of Beginnings and pass on what you've learned so far. Spread it around. We need every last player performing like we were just a minute or two ago."

Klein glanced back at his three friends, and then at me, hesitantly. "Yeah, you're right."

"Go, strike their flint and spark everyone's flames to rise!"

"Right! Thank you, Valkyrie!" As the four headed southeast, I waved them off.

"Take care of yourself!" Dynamm called back, followed by a shout from Issin. "Keep living, lady!"

I couldn't help but giggle as I headed southwest. "All the same," I muttered to myself, before then feeling the need to clarify my own thoughts. "The other three, the same as Klein, that is."

A few more encounters later, and with a sky as black as my former avatar's hair, I made it back to Horunka and passed the village gate to reach the forest to the west. I found the wandering NPC, handed over the Weapon Dropper, and he walked off into the distance without a word. A pop-up message appeared in front of me: «Your crimes have been forgiven.»

I walked back to Horunka, and passed the gate, relieved to see the typical «Safe Haven» pop-up without a single guard in sight. I made my way to the inn, and called it a day, knowing I wouldn't be waking up in the Black Iron Palace in the Town of Beginnings, the next morning.

A/N: Well, there you go. I had this idea about a week or two into my break from publishing. I was like, "Why don't I try to write from the POV of an orange player, even if that status was temporary?" So, no, this isn't going to go in a similar direction to Orange, where the entire premise is that the game's only real hope is a symbol of fear, or something like that. I just wanted a taste of orange-ness for a moment, and I want to see if y'all think I pulled it off.

This pilot is going up both on FFN and AO3, and I have my own method of determining if it will be continued based on what it pulls in from either site. The results will be determined when the next chapter of Virtual Immigration goes up next fortnight. Even if only one site seems interested enough, I'll still put it on both (I can because it doesn't cost anything unlike pilots for big corporate productions), but the content will lean favorably toward the audience of the more interested site (if it ends up being AO3, some content may not appear on FFN at all, due to the content rules).

If you want to communicate with other SAO fanfiction readers and authors in a more SAO-specific environment (though we do drift off to other things as well, it's majorly SAO - there are also plenty of people there who read Orange and could tell you more accurate things than I can about that fanfiction), there is a Discord server for that, which you can reach by entering this key: Sycypugbxq

Let's see how we go, hey? In any case, to readers of my main work: see you in a couple weeks.