Speedrun

Link Start

"Bro come on! We're going to be late!"

Ah.. that's today, isn't it?  The day Sword Art Online releases... 

Akio has been nagging me about it for the past months, It's been his dream to swing a sword for years now; of course, he wanted me there with him.

He's known to be impatient... Hence why I'm currently being jumped on by a hyperactive pipsqueak...

A sigh escapes my lips "Alright alright I'm up..."

"Hurry up! It's starting soon!"

I check my phone and see it is 8:15 am

"I'll be there in 30, ok?"

Akio nodded, maybe a little too aggressively but sped out the room nonetheless, singing down the halls at volumes that were sure to wake up the neighbors.

"Sorry Miss Tsukumo.." I chuckled to myself, taking a quick shower and putting on some fresh clothes.

Entering the kitchen I see some plates on the table, Mom always made us breakfast. 

"Morning..." I say to her, still tired from Akio's jumping alarm clock.

"Morning sweetie, eat up quick. You don't want your brother to get upset" She tells me with a joking tone 

"Yes Ma'am" I follow her joking tone as I give her a light salute, and a laugh follows suit from both of us.

I grabbed my plate and sat down, munching on the crispy bacon while scrolling through my phone, checking for any news about SAO, Reading about some news about the beta ending a few days ago, and what to expect.

"I shouldn't tell him..." I mumbled to myself.

I was an ex-beta tester, but I never told anyone because Mom would surely slip it out near Akio, and it would break Akio knowing that I had played it before him. But I wanted to know extra stuff about the game so I'd be able to help Akio as much as I could.

I finished breakfast and thanked Mom for the meal, she took the plate from me and began to wash it.

"Don't worry about the dishes, I'll do them for today so you can set up the game with your brother."

I give a nod of thanks to her as I step into Akio's room and spot him jumping around on his bed.

"Calm down pipsqueak... The game still doesn't drop for a few minutes." I tell him as I ruffle his hair a bit. 

"Hey!" He violently shook his head to "fix" his hair, really it just made it look worse. "And I'm not a pipsqueak!"

"Shorter than me, younger than me, and your voice is higher than me. According to the laws of pip squeaking, You are a certified pipsqueak."

He let out a groan of annoyance as I stepped out of his room into mine, making sure the nerve gear is set to go.

"You ready Akio!?" I yell across rooms as I received a very loud response.

"YEA!"

Slightly covering my ears in response to the sudden screech, I head over to Mom to tell her. 

"Me and Akio are going in, we should be back for dinner."

She gave me a kiss on the cheek before speaking "Alright than, have fun. And try not to bully your brother ok?" She tells me with another joking tone.

"No promises" I responded as I walked back to my room and placed the nerve gear on my head, laying down.

Hearing Akio yell the words "Link Start!", I said it as well with a much less excited tone. 

"Link Start"

If only I knew how much I would come to regret saying those words...

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My mind is flushed with a bunch of colors as it soon turns to black, slowly opening my eyes I see the place I'm now at.

"The town of beginnings..."

I look around for Akio, soon spotting a worried looking pipsqueak.

"Found him."

I decided to give him a little scare as I sneak around different players to get behind him.

"Boo!" I jump at him as he shrieks in fear. He turned around with a pissed expression as he took out his starting dagger, wilding swinging it at me. 

I began to out run him and jump over obstacles to get away from his scare caused rampage.

"You and your stupid parkour!" He yelled as he continued trying to slash me with sloppy strikes.

I tended to do parkour in my spare time despite my mother HATING it, always thinking that I'd one day get injured from the danger of it. But that's what made it fun, the constant thrill of having no one but myself to rely on... it was an addicting feeling.

"Can't keep up pip?" He got even more mad at the nick name as he tried and close the distance between us, I ended up tripping over a curb in the ground and gave him the distance to be able to close on me.

"I've got you now!" He yelled as he thrust the dagger forward, I placed my hands on the ground and pushed against it. Throwing my self over his body, flipping over him, quickly sweeping his leg as he's the one to now trip. 

I picked up his dagger that had fallen on the ground as was flipping it around. "Not bad pippy, almost had me there!" I taunted him with a cocky smirk as I notice a relatively large group of players that had watched the whole goose chase, giving them a joking bow as the "show" was now over. 

Many of them gave light laughs at the act as others clapped. "Look at that, we should have our own comedy show." I told Akio as I help him back on his feet, him holding a pouted face from the embarrassment of the situation.

As the group of players went away I gave Akio his dagger back, "Come on, lets go find some mobs to level up a bit."

Despite not wanting to listen to me after what just happened, he followed anyways. 

Soon we found some boars on the outskirts of the town, seeing two players in the near distance also seeming to be getting some early exp, one had shaggy black hair and the other had red hair, a bandana and a bit of scruff.

"Looks like we aren't the only ones with this idea..." I said to no one in particular.

"Wanna go talk to them? Maybe they have some pointers for us." Akio told me.

I was actually kind of surprised at him wanting to go talk to strangers, usually he's a very anti social person. Maybe because It's a game it changed that? 

"Sure" I responded to him as we made our way to the players, they soon took notice to our approaching presence. 

I began the greeting. "Yo, we saw you two over here farming some boars, we had the same idea and were wondering if we could join in on it with you guys. I'm..." Soon realizing I probably shouldn't be saying my real name to these guys I used my username. "Denji, and this is Tameru" 

Akio told me he was going to name his character Tameru after what it means in our language, "To save." He had read in a post about the beta how you could tame and get pets to use like dragons and dogs, so he wanted to become one. I was pretty impressed with his thinking for a username as he usually just puts his name, I guess this game is special to him.

The pair greet us as well "I'm Kirito, and this here is Klein. We had actually just met when he asked for my help. As for joining us, I'm not against it, it could be good to get an early party going on."

I nod at his response "Sounds like a plan to me than." I put my fist out for a fist bump as all four of us collide fists.

This... This will be a damn good team...
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AUTHOR NOTES


Hey! So these are just some quick author notes for a few things I wanted to say, this story was HEAVILY inspired by quite a few other sao stories such as, The Crimson Hunter, The lightning Swordsman, The Wolf Swordsman, Bury The Light, The Maverick and probably some more that im forgetting. So huge shoutout to those stories, they are really fucking good and I highly recommend reading them if your a fan of SAO fics. Anyways thats about it, Peace.