Ashi Blades (An SAO Fanfiction)

Chapter 1

The minute the party was over I rushed upstairs to my room and put Sword Art Online into the NerveGear game slot. I slipped on the NerveGear helmet.
"Link start!" I yelled, activating the loading and calibration sequence. Circles naming each sense filled the screen, calibrating each one to perfection.
Then appeared a spinning, default avatar with boring features. On the side appeared hair colors and styles and the default starter outfits. Below those options was a gray box. I went to the box first, typing in Ashi as my username.
Then I turned my attention to the hair. I went with long, wavy, light pink hair, with a small ponytail on the back with a French braid. I chose the black female starter outfit, then closed out of the window.
Colorful sideways poles zoomed passed me, and I appeared in SAO. Text appeared in my eyesight: Town of Beginnings. I opened up my menu, looking around so I could easily navigate the menu later. Col, skills, levels, username, avatar. Then I scrolled through the options on the right. I closed out of the menu and made my way to a small group of people standing over by a hedge. Two boys, one girl. They looked to be like they are in a group.
They looked up at me with smiles.
"Hi, I'm Ashi," I said, "I was wondering if you could show me where the weapons store is?" They looked at each other with blank faces, then turned back at me and nodded. They slowly walked me into a more quiet area of the Town of Beginnings.
"Why would they place such major, needed shops back here?" I asked. The girl turned to me. Her bright, white and blue eyes looked at me softly.
"Blacksmiths around the floors needed more business. So, Kayaba Akihiko - he created SAO, by the way - decided to move the shops around. He did this in the beta, though."
We walked up a staircase, over a bridge and down more stairs. We turned left to go under the bridge, but we were frozen and we couldn't move, and our legs felt strangely tingly. We panicked and called out to one another, but it was no use. We suddenly appeared back at the spawn, which was now encased with red hexagons oozing red goop. From the red goop formed a robed individual, and a few people called out, "It's a GM?!" But soon enough, the robed thing spoke.

"Fellow players," his deep voice started, "welcome to SAO. As you may or may not have noticed, the logout button is missing from the menu." Everybody stopped and murmured to each other, checking their menus, and I copied. I gasped, yelling, "We didn't pay that much yen for this!" I was furious, outraged and scared.

"This is not a bug," continued the robed man, "I have a surprise for you. Please open your inventory." And so we did.

"A mirror?" I equipped it and looked into it. Gasps erupted around me. My boring, dark brown, long hair assumed itself. What?

"As you know, you had to calibrate the NerveGear for this game before playing it. The NerveGear is placed on your head at such an angle to where it can examine the whole human body. And, an additional announcement as well. If you die in the game, you die in the real world. The NerveGear will corrupt your brain, sending a strong microwave, thus destroying it. Play cautiously." And then he disappeared. I mean, just right then and there!

Furious, I found my friends and we quietly made our way back to our weaponry store hunt. Along the way, we saw a few players die due to the fact the NerveGear's were taken off. I frowned. We weaved our way back to the bridge, and walked along a few buildings.

That's when I saw it. A sign hanging off the side of a building bearing a picture of a sword and shield. We walked inside, the NPC greeting us. I looked around, examining glass cases filled with all kinds of iron swords. Greatswords, Katanas, Long Swords. That's when I saw an Iron Rapier. My Starter Sword would never do. I turned around and looked at them with a sorry face.
"Do you guys by chance have 600 Col? I'll pay you back every bit, plus 100." I asked. They looked at each other with smirks on their faces. One of the boys looked at me, smiling.
"We'll each contribute 200 Col, and then you give us each 25 extra Col when you pay us back." He said with a grin.
Without asking me if this was okay, I was loaded with 3 trade requests, each offering 200 Col... For nothing.
I accepted each one, then bought the Rapier. I nodded, "It's heavy." I smiled, liking it.
"Thanks... Um.... Name...?" I said.
"I'm Usu. The boy with the black hair is Komi, and the other one is Ruce." Said the girl, pointing with her thumb at the boys. I nodded, pulling down my menu. I went to the second option, which showed two people on it. It opened up a window with three more choices: Friends, Party, and Guild. I tapped "Party" and then tapped on invite. A list of nearby people popped up next to the button, only consisting of Usu, Komi and Ruce.
I tapped on the top name, Komi, assuming they're all in a party, and the invite was sent.
Komi smirked. "Ah, we only allow people of certain strength and level into our party. Just show us you can kill five Dire Wolves in the field, and then we can make an exception." Usu looked at him with wide eyes. She said, "Are you sure? A Dire could kill her in about 3 hits, idiot." Komi nodded in reply.
Ruce, the red haired boy, smirked as well.
"Let's get started, shall we?"