Sword Art Online: Year One

Prologue

PROLOGUE

Akira rushed upstairs into his room and slammed his door behind him; he didn't slam the door out of anger, yet out of pure excitement. He wasn't excited over today being his 16th birthday, but instead the fact that he was lucky enough to be given The Sword Art Online NerveGear Bundle. Akira walked over to his computer desk and sat down in the plush chair, he then began to inspect the box. The bundle, as inferred by the title, included both the Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online game Sword Art Online and the virtual reality helmet known as The NerveGear.

Without hesitation, the 16 year old tore off the plastic seal on the box and then proceeded to open the bundle. Akira reached into the box and pulled out the NerveGear that was surrounded safely in styrofoam; he took off the styrofoam that was on the helmet and carefully set the NerveGear on his computer desk and continued his savage-like ravaging through the box. Next, the teen pulled out the game case of Sword Art Online; he opened the game's case, and placed the small cartridge into the NerveGear's main cartridge slot.

Akira lifted up the NerveGear and plugged into an outlet, which happened to be next to his comfortable bed. He placed the NerveGear on his head, tightened the chin strap, laid down on his bed and shouted the two words he'd wanted to say ever since he saw a NerveGear demonstration: "Rig, start!" As the word start left Akira's mouth, the helmet's on-screen interface instantly appeared on-screen on the NerveGear visor. The on-screen interface offered a selection of either Japanese or English by instinct he chose English due to the fact that his father was American and taught Akira how to speak English, thus he spoke English primarily and Japanese was his secondary language.

He had chosen English using purely his mental willpower due to the NerveGear restricting all body movement; after the language selection faded into darkness, the character selection screen for Sword Art Online came onto the screen. Except... he was no longer staring at a screen. Akira was virtually inputted into the game, at this point, his physical body was in a comatose state and his brain was powering all of this. After a few minutes, he had created his character to look as close to him as he humanly could. His avatar had dark tan skin, bushy dark brown hair, beaver colored eyes, and stood tall at a solid six feet. 

Lastly, and probably the most difficult step for anybody when it comes to any character creation, the name. But for Akira, this step was easily; he had used the same username since he was seven years of age. He delicately inputted the name Akio in the character name bar. After this he clicked the confirm button on the interface that popped up on whether or not he wanted to confirm his name. Akira was greeted with a giant flash of white before the light being overtaken by the darkness. Within a few moments, he was standing in a town. The graphics had Akira breathless, he would have thought this was the real world if he hadn't seen a health bar labeled "Akio" in the top right hand corner of his vision.

He could feel his heart beat, he felt the wind, he could smell the scent of NPCs baking food in the distance, this was a virtual world; and in this virtual world, he was his virtual self, Akio. Akira Miyamoto didn't exist in the world of Aincrad, but Akio thrived here. Akio could feel the weight of his starter sword on his back, without a thought he reached for the blade and drew it from it's slot on the back of his starter armor. He looked at the blade and examined it, not only did it have the appearance of a basic average sword and also the weight of one as well. Akio slung the sword back in it's sheathe and began to walk throughout the town he'd spawned in; he had watched enough leaked Beta videos to know what this town was, the name was The Town of Beginnings. 

Akio knew this was where all created characters were sent to first, to become familiar with the game's controls and mechanics. After a few moments of jogging he had reached the edge of the town and was staring at the grasslands that was the home to the easiest enemy in SAO: Frenzy Boars. Akio without a thought drew his blade and rushed through the lush grass, his hair slightly bouncing with every stride. He was amazed by the endless desert of grass, he could feel the wind slightly blowing through his thick hair. Akio was in denial that this was just a simple game, this was more than a game. The way the grass moved because of the wind, the way he could feel the moist grass beneath his feet, this was a fully fleshed out world. The boars even looked real, in fact, one was a few yards from where he stood.

Akio was so drawn in by the realism of the game, he barely had enough time to raise his blade in front of his face to block the boar's surprise attack. The late block sent Akio stumbling backwards only to land on his back; the Boar took the initiative and leaped towards Akio as he was downed, the teen was barely able to charge and release a slash upon the boar, killing it instantly. Akio was breathing heavily, he didn't expect the boar to surprise him like that. He expected a "Initiating Combat" feature or something similar to that, however, he loved the lack of that feature. Akio felt like every mistake he made in the game wasn't because of lag or because of glitches, his mistakes were purely based on his skill. He had been in Sword Art Online for less than 30 minutes and he could already say that was probably his favorite game of all time.

Akio laid down on the grass, still breathing heavily from the combat with the boar. He was staring at the ocean colored sky that he could have sworn could be endless, Akio felt as if he could fall asleep right here. His relaxed attitude came to a sharp turn as the blue colored sky turned into a terrifying blood red, "What the hell?" Akio shouted out loud, sitting up straight. Is this an in-game event? Akio asked himself silently. After he had asked himself the question, Akio saw a pop up box appear and read it. Auto-Teleporting to Town of Beginnings, Akira couldn't explain why, but he knew this was bad news. Something wasn't right, was the game about to shut down due to the immense traffic on the server? He asked, continually asking himself more and more questions and not receiving any answers. After a few seconds, he was no longer sitting on the soft moist grass of the grasslands; but instead sitting in what appeared to be the Town of Beginning's Capital Square. Akio looked up towards the blood sky and saw a giant levitating cloaked monster. "Is this a boss? No... the targeting system isn't picking it up... what the hell is that?!" Akio asked out loud, not expecting a response. "It's... it's a GM." A nearby girl's voice responded, shocking Akio.

Akio's head followed the voice of the girl all the way to her body, his eyes made contact with the teenage girl. The teenager's avatar was what anyone in their right mind would consider attractive, she had been blessed with mocha skin, hazelnut colored eyes, and bouncy obsidian hair. The beautiful girl glared hard at what she claimed to be a GM, "How... how do you know?" Akio asked, wondering how she could make such a bold assumption. "I used to be a Beta tester for SAO... the GMs wore those same cloaks." Akio let out a sigh of relief and began to chuckle, "Then this isn't bad! Maybe they're just addressing a glitch?" The dark eyes of the girl had finally left the GM and had landed on Akio, "They're probably addressing the log out bug." The girl responded as she folded her arms, clearly not amused. Log out bug? Akio had heard so such thing of it, which after a moment he verbally voiced "What log out bug?" The girl sighed at Akio's ignorance, "Check your menu and try to log out." Akio shrugged and swiped his fingers to open the menu, when the menu was open he began scrolling through the menu options... something was missing from here. "Uhhhh... where's the log out button?" Akio asked, answering his own previous question. The girl chucked at Akio, "You're really not that bright are you? I just told you that there's a log out bug." Akio felt a wave of stupidity hit him as he facepalmed, "I... I knew that." The girl responded with another chuckle, this time Akio chuckling in sync with her.

Their small moment of happiness came to a sudden halt as the GM's loud booming voice began to explain what exactly was happening. Little did Akio and his new friend know, the explanation that the GM would give would change their lives forever...