I swipe down and my menu appears floating in front of me, I scroll all the way down and the spot where the logout button should be is blank.
"Huh..." I say closing the menu. "It's release day...so there's bound to be a few bugs, I'm sure the devs are already working on a fix." I shrug.
"Ugh... yeah your right." Grover says. "OH NO!"
"Uh what?" I look at him.
"It's 5:25. My pizza gets here in 5 minutes!" he yells. "Is there any other way to log out?" he asks as he stamps around yelling logout.
"No... there's nothing in the manual for emergency logouts." I say.
"You have to be kidding me... we are trapped inside this stupid game..." he sighs in defeat.
A feeling of uneasiness builds inside me.
"I live by myself, so I'm screwed... what about you?" He asks.
"I live with my mom and sister." I say.
"How old's your sister?" he asks.
"None of your business... One of them can pull the gear off." I say. "This is really weird... Yeah SAO is the first VRMMO, if this turns into a scandal the entire genre can get banned... and the longer this lasts-
A bright shining light grows from Grover and envelops me also. A shower of pixels dissolve around me, and I'm right back in the square of the Town of Beginnings....and it looks like every single player had brought her too. The crowd murmurs in confusion, packed in like sardines.
"What's happening?" a girl says clutching her boyfriend's arm.
"I don't know." He replies.
Someone bumps into me from behind. "Oh, I'm sorry." I say.
"It's ok." She says.
NEW ITEM IN INVENTORY.
"Huh....what's this?" I pull the item out of my inventory, a fancy handheld mirror. I look into the mirror and the entire crowd flashes white. Everybody looks different now.
"What the... YOU'RE A GUY!" the boyfriend yells at his girlfriend.
"Eheh... sorry." He rubs the back of his head.
"Percy... you look different." A guy says next to me.
"Who are you?" I ask staring at his curly brown hair and ugly red bandana.
"It's me Grover..." he says.
I look back into the mirror, instead of my created character... it's my real face and body.
"Dude... you look better than your created character." Grover says. "Like a dam Greek god." He stares.
I examine Grover's real face, instead of a full beard, a little scruffy goatee, long and curly hair and very skinny.
"You look better like this." I smile at him.
"I CANT BELIEVE YOU ARE A GUY...I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT A CUTE GIRL WOULDN'T FLIRT WITH ME!" the boyfriend continues to freak.
"I said I'm sorry... if it helps I do really like you." The guy wearing a frilly dress says to the boyfriend.
The sky fills with red error messages with flashing and alarms. They start to melt into blood and drip down forming a guy floating in the sky.
"YOU CANNOT LOG OUT UNTIL YOU HAVE CLEARED ALL 100 FLOORS OF AINCRAD, THE FLOATING CASTLE!" The floating guy announces loudly. "THIS MIGHT BE A GAME...BUT IT'S NOT SOMETHING YOU PLAY." He stares at all of us. Blood red robes flapping in the wind and a blackened helmet covering his face.
"WELCOME TO MY WORLD, DEAR PLAYERS. MY NAME IS ZEUS, AS OF THIS MOMENT, I AM THE ONLY HUMAN BEING ALIVE WITH CONTROL OVER THIS WORLD." he says.
"Zeus... he created the Nervgear and SAO." I say.
"What?" Grover says breathlessly.
"IT'S LIKELY YOU HAVE NOTICED THE LOGOUT BUTTON HAS DISAPPEARED, THIS IS NOT A BUG. IT IS A FEATURE OF SWORD ART ONLINE. FROM THIS POINT ONWARD, YOU WILL BE UNABLE TO FREELY LOGOUT...UNTIL THE SUMMIT OF THE CASTLE HAS BEEN CONQUERED." He says. "FURTHER MORE, THE NERVGEAR CANNOT BE REMOVED OR SHUT DOWN VIA EXTERNAL MEANS. IF SUCH FORCEFUL MEANS OF EXIT ARE ATTEMPTED, THE HIGH-POWERED MICROWAVES IN THE NERVGEAR WILL SCRAMBLE YOUR BRAIN AND SHUT DOWN YOUR VITAL ORGANS."
"What is he talking about?" Grover starts clawing his head. "Its not possible, the Nervgear's just a game system."
"The gear sends false sensory information directly to the cells of the brain... they are tiny waves emitted from inside the helmet..." I say my heart beating fast.
"WHAT IF THERE'S A BLACKOUT?" Grover yells.
"The gear has an eternal battery." I say.
"We cannot contact the outside world." A guys says near us. "What if someone tries to take the gear off?" he says.
"AT PRESENT THE FAMILY AND FRIENDS OF SEVERAL PLAYERS DECIDED TO IGNORE THE WARNINGS AND ATTEMPTED TO FORCEFULLY REMOVE THEIR NERVGEAR. THAT SADLY 213 PLAYERS HAVE ALREADY BEEN PERMANENTLY RETIRED FROM BOTH AINCRAD AND THE REAL WORLD. BUT THERE IS NO NEED TO WORRY ABOUT PHYSICAL BODIES. THE CURRENT STATE OF THE GAME AND TODAY'S FATALITIES HAVE BEEN COVERED FAR AND WIDE IN THE MEDIA. THE TWO HOUR- OFFLINE LEEWAY PERIOD SHOULD BE ENOUGH TIME FOR YOUR PHYSICAL BODIES TO BE TRANSPORTED TO HOSPITALS AND OTHER LONG TERM CARE FACILITIES." Zeus says.
The media has dubbed this, "THE SAO DISASTER."
