Sword Art Online Reprised

Chapter 2 - The Legend is Born

Chapter 2 - The Legend is Born

Once I turned on the nervegear I had to make a character‏. For my appearance I made myself have silver eyes with hair that was medium length and went down to cover my left eye, black near the roots but gradually fading to a dark blue near the ends. The clothes I made mostly black and dark grey with slight blue accents on the shirt and pants. I decided to forego my 6'5" real life height for a shorter 5'8" and make my figure a little more stocky. Next was the username, as per usual in this sort of game I went with "Ericlanis".

Once I entered the game, I decided that the first thing I should do is figure out the game's mechanics, but since SAO had just come out there weren't any guides that I could look up. I decided to learn from fighting some mobs near the Town of Beginnings. Before I left though I thought about creating an alternate persona so nobody could identify me later on. I decided to go by the name of Okami, I then set all of my profile settings on private so nobody could see my information. 

While I was out exploring I came across a couple of guys who were training as well.‏ One of them was a beta tester by the looks of it, he obviously already knew how the whole system worked, and the other was a noob like me‏. So I asked if I could train with them and they said it was fine. They introduced themselves, and I learned that the beta tester's name was Kirito and the scruffy haired noob's name was Klein‏. I introduced myself as Okami and they accepted me into their training sessions.

First off he had us practice the standard sword skills. I caught on right away but Klein took some goading to finally perform it correctly. Next, we did some individual sparring. First Kirito pitted me and Klein together, with a few simplistic swipes of my sword I had him disarmed. Kirito looked at me in awe and took up his sword to spar with me next. We both stepped back and readied ourselves while analyzing our opponent. Kirito was a little taller than me but was thinner. He wore blue clothing with black straps over it and he still had the starter sword just like myself. He held the sword like he had been using one all his life. Then in a flash, he covered the distance between us and swung an overhead swipe with extreme accuracy. I calmly slapped his blade just over my own head and placed the point of my sword under his chin.
"I win" I state in a matter-of-fact tone
"Holy shit that was impressive!" Klein said from the sideline.
"How'd you know what I was going to do?" Kirito asked with a sense of awe.
"You looked like someone who had been using a sword all your life. So I figured you had to be a kendo student, or something of the like, and the first move in most kendo matches is a quick overhead strike. So I made sure I was ready to defend against it." I say with a shrug of my shoulders. "But don't get me wrong. If I wasn't prepared I would have had an extremely hard time with that. You covered that ground incredibly fast!"

"Agility has always been my strong stat." Explained Kirito. "Getting to your opponent quickly is half the battle."

‎We spent the rest of the day enjoying the virtual scenery and eventually Klein had to log out to get the pizza that he ordered for himself before he started. We all said our goodbyes then we went our separate ways, but a startled gasp from Klein brought us all back together to see what was wrong. "W-Where is the log out button," he panicked.‏

‎Kirito explained that if you look at the bottom of the main menu it should be there‏, but when all of us looked there wasn't a button there to log out‏. Suddenly I got extremely worried, I forgot that Rachel and I didn't add each other to our friends list and we didn't set up a meeting place. Plus, I didn't even know what she looked like yet‏.

Suddenly, the three of us started glowing a bright blue color and we were teleported to this central plaza where everyone was gathered. Then the game creator, Akihiko Kayaba, appears from the sky. He explains that we are part of a social experiment where we must fight for our lives and complete every floor of this game. If we die in the game, the nervegear destroys our brain and we die in real life. My mind immediately turns to Rachel, lost somewhere among the hordes of confused people, probably scared to death of our impending doom. Kayaba then tells everyone about this "gift" in our inventories, I immediately became suspicious so I don't bring it out. Suddenly everyone started glowing blue again and when it faded  everyone looked quite different. "K-Kirito... Klein is that you" I asked looking to where my new friends had been standing. In their places were two completely different people but, as I figure out, its still them they just look as they do in the real world. 'Whew, I'm glad I didn't take that out of my inventory.' I thought to myself because I'd rather not have anyone recognize me. Suddenly a girl pushed past me and I caught the face of the love of my life. As soon as I realized I went to follow her, but she had vanished. 'At least I know she's still safe, that I haven't lost her to this death game.'