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Yuuri had only bought the damn game to stop his parents’ constant worrying over his lack of hobbies outside of dance and skating, which, he supposed, could really be called obsessions with the amount of time he dedicated to them. The game at caught his eye online and he’d decided to give it a try. It looked interest. Besides, he’d thought, what harm would it do. A lot apparently. He logged in quickly designing his character to look like an older, fitter version of himself and equipped a sword as his weapon of choice. He paused at the name section. He didn’t want to use his real name, he was new at gaming but he knew you weren’t supposed to give your real name to other players. After a moments deliberation he typed in Kosetsu and began what would become a life changing experience. He’d been having fun messing around in the Town of Beginnings looking for some decent armor and health potions when a teleport had been forced and he, along with every other player in SAO had appeared in the town square. Large crowds would usually made him nervous, but the reminder that it was all VR calmed him so that he had no problem standing among the hoards of people other than the gnawing feeling that something terrible was about to happen. The sky stated to bleed and formed into a huge cloaked figure, Kosetsu was sure he wasn’t going to like whatever happened next.“Ladies and gentlemen. I am Kayaba Akihiko, head programmer. Welcome to the unparalleled online experience that is Sword Art Onlin-“ The huge figure paused as many of the players began chatting amongst themselves. “Uh. Hello? Hel- Hello? Um, hello? People? Kinda talking here. Focus” He was ignored. “Kay. Yeah, I’m just gonna go ahead and disable general chat her-“ A mute icon appeared above the figures head and Kosetsu sighed.“Do you think he realizes he just muted himself?” he heard someone to his left ask.“Give it a minute?” said the someone on the other side of the man who had spoken.“Alright, I just realized what happened there. It’s very funny. But right now, serious time. How many of you have seen Tron?” Dead silence. “Eh? Eh? W-What, seriously? None of you have seen Tron? Sh*t, I was really banking on that. Okay. Okay, no prob. I can wing this” He, because Kosetsu found it exhausting to keep calling him the figure, cleared his throat. “Much like the World of Warcraft, none of you are here by choice anymore. Unlike WoW, however, you are being held here by me, not by your need to escape your empty f**king lives. The is no longer any way to log out of Sword Art Online. If someone on the outside attempts to log you out by removing your NerveGear, well… has anyone seen Scanners?” More silence and Kosetsu tried not to sigh, despite the seriousness of the situation if this man was telling the truth. A quick glance around showed that the man two too his left was feeling the same. “Uh, Scanners. It’s- It’s a movie that-. Seriously? Okay, give me a sec. Let me just… Alright, here we- here we go. Watch this” He pulled up what looked like multiple tabs on a computer. One of tabs increased in size and depicted a short video of a mans head exploding. Quite graphically too. “Okay, that was from Scanners, and basically that” The large crowd gasped at the realisation and Kayaba seemed to take this as a positive. “Okay, finally! Seeing some gears turning. We’re making some progress”“Why would you do such a thing?!” One of the players demanded. Kayaba clearly recognised the man as he called out,“Stephen? Stephen, is that you? Stephen, how are you enjoying that advanced copy?”“I’m playing with my family!” Kayaba’s laugh sent shivers down his spine.“Oh, that’s right! Happy birthday, Timmy!” A young boy, Kosetsu assumed the aforementioned Timmy, made him cringe and was glad none of his friends or family had also bought the game. “Ah, they grow up so fast. Cherish these moments, Stephen. Cherish these moments. So, as I was saying, the only way to keep the NerveGear from going all Gallagher on your grey matter is to make your way through castle Aincrad and beat Sword Art Online!” Another player spoke up, clearly sceptical.“So… you want us to beat an MMO?”“Essentially”“F**k you!”“WOAH! Getting a lot of hostility here. Don’t appreciate it” Kosetsu honestly struggled to repress a snort at that. He’d always had a whacked-up sense of humour, and this damn death trap of a game seemed to bring it out of him in buckets. The boy who’d sighed earlier seemed, once again in the same boat, and Kosetsu felt a sort of kinship with him. Before dismissing it knowing it was unlikely they’d ever formally meet.“Well honestly! When was the last time you heard of someone beating EverQuest?” demanded the same player.“When was the last time you heard of someone PLAYING EverQuest?” The player paused.“That’s fair”“Anywho, for all you guys who wanted to play as girls, and you know how you are, well… I’ve got a surprise for you” A mirror suddenly appeared in every players hand. Kosetsu looked down at it seeing his avatar. He, along with ever other player, was suddenly surrounded by a bright light. When it receded Kosetsu looked down at the mirror in his hands and was stunned when his face, his real face, looked back at him. He ignored the conversations happening around him to look back up at Kayaba knowing he wasn’t finish yet.“As you can see, I have peeled away your petty facades and revealed you for what you truly are… Fairly attractive twenty-somethings, apparently. Good for you. Kinda undermines the whole ‘cold light of day’ thing I had planned, but still. Way to break down stereotypes. ‘Cept you, fatty. Way to bring down the curve. Oh, oh, oh, one more thing, one more thing” he spoke laughing again, “I should probably mention if your health points reach zero, your real bodies perish as well” Kosetsu and the two players to his left gasped, but seemed to be the only ones with half a brain as someone yelled out,“What?!”“Uh, okay. If you die in the game… you die for real”“What?!”“Really?! Okay. Sometimes… things are born… They live… and then they stop. Forever”“What?!” Kosetsu buried his face in his hands. Kayaba seemed to feel the same as he merely sighed and brought up the video he had used earlier. The players gasped.“Oh my God! If we die in the game, we die for real!”“Yeah, I’m just gonna keep that tabbed… And with that, I bid you all adieu. Oh, oh, oh, last thing, I swear. I disabled the profanity filter. Have fun with that” He disappeared into a cloud of red smoke leaving behind a very shocked, very stupid, in Kosetsu’s humble opinion, crowd of gamers. Silence reined for a few moments before a cry of,“We’re fucked!” ran out across the crowd. Kosetsu left quickly having no reason to stick around in the square. He quickly made his way out to an empty field, hoping for some peace and quiet to figure out what he was going to do. Staying in town seemed like a valid option, certainly the safest. He wouldn’t level up, but he wouldn’t have to, towns were a safe zone. On the other had if he left the Town of Beginnings he would be in near constant danger and could die at any point. But wasn’t that true for the real world as well, he wondered. You couldn’t spend all your days looked up in your home IRL so why should it be different here. Because there are monsters here, the anxiety inducing part of the mind whispered. He found that he felt remarkably detached from everything. His anxiety, which should have incapacitated him by now, seemed to have shrunk and hidden behind a wall as though it was too frightened to manifest properly. He knew that was ridiculous, but if it helped him remain it control and not turn into a blubbering mess then he’d roll with it. Kosetsu eventually decided that he hunt the fields while he thought. He was almost run over by a couple of players running away from a boar. A freaking boar. Anyone who died via boar, Kosetsu thought, automatically deserved it. He dispatched the ‘foul beast’ and contained on his way ignoring the men he had just saved. They’d probably be dead by the end of the day anyway. That incident made him realize that if he left it to the other players, then they’d never get out of this game. So, with his mind made up, he proceeded into the nearby forest to level up before heading to the next village. He equipped a dark brown leather armor that he’d picked up in town, and checked his inventory of potions. He sighed as he heard a scream and shattering of pixels in the distance and delved quickly past the treeline that indicated the start of the forest, not looking back.
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Kosetsu hunted the outlying forest for two days before moving on to the next village. He’d been lucky not to have to use any of his potions on himself or anyone he happened to run across. His athleticism IRL had helpfully translated into the game, and in those two days he managed to adapt it into a fighting style that suited him. He found that his initial assessment of the crowd at the opening ceremony had been accurate, at best, or extremely polite, at worst. The general population of Aincrad seemed to comprise of a huge number of people who could barely tell one end of a sword from the other. He wasn’t exaggerating, he’d seen it happen. His hope of getting out of SAO and back to the real world was diminishing by the day, and he’d decided if he couldn’t live out there then he would in the game, death trap or no. He’d already decided he would be better off a solo player what with the sheer idiocy most of the other players seemed to possess, so it would bother him if people found him dislikeable to the other players as it had IRL. A month had passed and already 2,000 people had died. This, though not unexpected, was still a ridiculously high number. Kosetsu had hoped that the players that had survived would have more intelligence than the ones already dead. Or at least possessed more common-sense. This hope was instantly, dashed, however, at the meeting for the floor one boss. A semi-large group of players sat on the benches in a stone amphitheatre. Kosetsu, in an attempt to section himself away from the general idiocy, had seated him self on one of the very back rows occupied only by himself and two other solo players. A man with blue hair addressed the crowd from the stage.“Hey everyone. Thank you for coming to our little powwow. Now, I know many of you may be discouraged by the fact that two thousand people have died so far” He was cut off.“WHAT?!”“THOUSAND PEOPLE ARE DEAD?!”“IT HASN’T EVEN BEEN A MONTH YET!”“OH MY GOD, WE REALLY ARE FUCKED!” He ignored the exclamations of shock.“And I know even more of you are a little down because we haven’t even cleared the first floor yet”“WE HAVENT?!”“I THOUGHT WE WERE ALMOST DONE…!”“Uh, you guys do know there are a hundred floors, right?”“WHAT?!” Kosetsu sighed and leaned back to rest against the step behind.“This is gonna take a while” he muttered.“Tell me about it” responded the boy to his right. He was closer then he’d thought and obviously heard him. The other player was smirking at him, and he felt his own lips respond in kind. They turned back to the front as the man continued.“Oh jeez, I am just making things worse… Point is, we found the boss room!” Gasps echoed around the space, and even the two boys at the back leaned forward intrigued. “Now, we’ve formulated a few strategies with the help of a few beta testers-““BETA TESTERS?!”“Oh, goddamnitt. Kibaou what do you want?”“Beta Testers? They’re the reason we’re stuck in this game!” Kibaou exclaimed and Kosetsu found himself hoping that idiocy was not contagious. He realized he’d said this out loud when the boy next to him snorted into his closed fist.“What?” stage-man, as Kosetsu had now dubbed him, responded incredulously. “Do you have any evidence to back that up?”“Pfft! Evidence. I don’t need no evidence. Isn’t that right, Jesus?” He pointed to a man in the crowd whose username did in fact spell Jesus.“It’s pronounced ‘Hey-Zeus’, and I don’t know you”“Well, they still should’ve helped us newbies…”“If I may interject” a booming voice interrupted.“And who the hell are you?!” Kibaou sneered before spotting the large man heading towards them.“I am known by many names. Mountain Slayer. Thunder Lion, The Chocolate Axe. But you? You may call me… Tiffany”“T-Tiffany, huh? That’s a… pretty masculine name”“Shouldn’t be. It’s a woman’s name” Kosetsu fought not to burst out laughing at the sight of Kibaou’s scared and confused face.“Kay, I don’t know how to talk to you…”“Good, then you can shut up and listen” Tiffany pulled out a small brown book and addressed the crowd. “Does everyone here have this book in their inventory?”“Yeah”“Yes”“Yup”“Yeah”“No. Wait, can I change my answer?”“This book is full of tips and strategies on how to survive this game, put together by the beta testers. Everyone read it, yet some people still died” Kosetsu highly doubted many people had in fact read the book based on what he’d seen so far. “The beta tester did everything they could”“Actually, I didn’t read it”“Yeah, I didn’t read it either”“I skimmed it”“What? Didn’t ANY of you read it?! It Is literally a matter of life and death” Tiff exclaimed.“Well, dude. It’s like eighty pages…”“Two thousand people are dead!”“THEY ARE?!”“I am SO done with you people” the man sighed returning to his seat, Kibaou followed him. Kosetsu and the boy stared at the crowd in horror and resignation.“We’re so fucking dead” he sighed. Kosetsu nodded.“So, as Mr. Thunder Chocolate was saying,” stage-man continued, “this book has some great strategies, including how to beat the first boss, Illfang. ‘So, as you enter the boss room, he’s gonna throw wave after wave of disposable minions after you… and you must answer in kind?” Kosetsu leaned back and tuned out already knowing the guide book would be a bust. Instead he pondered the boy to his right. It was the same one from the opening ceremony, he realized. The fact it had taken him so long to recognised the older boy made him worry that stupidity was in fact contagious. He tunned back in when he heard stage-man sigh and say,“Fuck it, group up…”The boy on his right looked at him and gestured to the cloaked girl too their left, an eyebrow raised. Kosetsu got the picture and shrugged.“Sure” he said. “Kosetsu” he introduced holding out his hand.“Kirito” the other responded shaking the given hand. They shuffled along the bench.“So… why aren’t, uh, you joining anyone’s group?” Kirito asked the girl.“I have my reasons” she responded coolly.“Is it because you’re a girl?”“No! It’s because… I don’t know how to play”“because you’re a girl?”“NO!” Kosetsu found it was like watching a tennis match and wish wasn’t sat between the two. “It’s just… I don’t know how to open the menu…”“What?” both boys exclaimed.“But you can’t do anything in this game without the menu” Kirito protested.“How have survived all month?” Kosetsu asked, shocked.“It’s… been a challenge… What about you guys? Why haven’t either of you joined the others?”“I’d rather not catch whatever mental affliction the population of this game seem to have” Kosetsu answered and looked to Kirito, who was smirking again, for his answer.“Oh, lots of reasons. Mostly because they’re a bunch of mouth-breath neck beards who think ‘LMAO’ is how French people laugh” he shivered disgusted, and Kosetsu held back a snort.“Wow. You certainly… speak from the heart” The girl commented looking between her two party members.“Funny, I thought I thought I was speaking from my mouth. But, eh, shows what I know about biology” Kosetsu did let out a snort this time and grinned.“No one else wanted either of you in their group, did they?”“Shut up! It was mutual!” Kirito defended. Kosetsu shrugged. She wasn’t wrong. Those gathered finally agreed to meet up the next day at two-thirty in the afternoon. By the time they arrived at the boss room, and had taken and hour break to let the more unfit players, read everyone bar the obvious, get their breath back, it was closer to six in the afternoon. Stage-man was clearly not happy. Even less so when the other players threw out their, sort of, plan and attacked the boss individually. Stage-man tired to direct players but only Kirito’s party were listening. Kirito attack one of the minions and went to direct Asuna, but she rushed past and killed one of the minions without help. Safe to say, Kirito and Kosetsu were impressed. Before she ruined it.“Hey guys! I killed the thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad?! Am I dying?!”They sighed and Kosetsu saw a minion attempt to sneak up on her. He propelled himself forward, flipping over Asuna and killing it. He never noticed the impressed look Kirito gave him.“Alright, men! This last part is gonna take careful coordination, which is why I’m just going to do it myself!” They heard stage-man shout speeding forward. Even while distracted Kosetsu heard Kirito yell out, though he’d didn’t catch what he said. He did, however, see stage-man flying through the air and crash into the ground. Kirito ran to him, while he and Asuna finished off the last of the minions. He heard the shattering of pixels and walked over to stand by Kirito, Asuna having done the same on the older boys’ other side.“Okay here’s what we’ll do. One counters his blows to knock him off balance and the others switch in to attack. Rinse. Repeat. Victory”“You came up that, but you can’t open a menu…” Kirito commented and glanced at Kosetsu who was smirking. “Alright, so yous counter and I’ll attack!” he stated running.“What? No, its my plan! I should attack!” she argued.“Fine,” he relented, “Kosetsu, go with her”“Fine by me” Kosetsu agreed. Asuna looked ready to argue but they had reached the boss. Kirito blocked and switched, Asuna attacking low, Kosetsu attacking high. Asuna’s cloak was ripped off, and all three of them ended up attacking. Kirito’s attacks consisting mostly of strength, Asuna’s of speed and Kosetsu’s of an odd, yet unique mixture filled with jumps and rolls. Kirito ripped through the boss with his sword and gained the last attack bonus.“Congratulations!” said Tiffany approaching them. “That was even more impressive than that cat that learned to play”“I can’t believe you guys were arguing the whole way through that” Kosetsu sighed looking between the two crazy people he’d been fight with.“You’ve led us to victory, Kirito. These men and I will follow you to Hell itself. Now… address your people” Tiffany exclaimed gesturing at the crowd behind him.“Oh, this’ll be hilarious” sniggered Kosetsu moving to stand behind Kirito to avoid being lumped in with the morons. Tiffany looked at him curiously, not that he noticed, all his attention was on Kirito, who sent him a smirk before standing and turning to the group.“I always knew this day would come. Ahem. Fellow gamers! We have travelled far and up may stairs to get to this point. Fighting sise by side, noobs and leets, alike. I’d like to take a moment to say that I couldn’t have done it without the help of each and every one of you”“Aw, hats a nice thing to say-“ Tiff began.“Wait for it” Kosetsu muttered, smirking.“Of course. I’m not a liar, so I’m not gonna say any of that”“Oh, shit…” Tiff had finally caught on and looked at Kosetsu who was enjoying the free show immensely.“I mean, really. I could’ve done this whole boss fight myself. But to be fair, I guess you did absorb a bit of damage for me, which was nice. You were an adequate meat shield, and no one can ever take that away from you”“Fuck. Fuck! Shut up! SHUT UP!” Tiff yelled.“So for those of you who came in late, and that one guy playing Bejeweled back there… shoot for the stars, it’ll make it more fun when I kick you back into the dirt”“You’re not better than us!” Kibaou shouted. Kirito opened his menu and activated a black trench coat which had been his last hit bonus.“My sweet ass coat begs to differ”“Dammit, he’s got us there” someone muttered. He turned to leave.“Kirito, wait!” yelled Asuna. “I want a third?”“I’m… sorry… what?”“I want a third of the coat. I did a third of the work, I should get a third of the coat”“Oi, don’t drag me into this one” shouted Kosetsu, as Asuna looked at him, making his way over. they continued to argue.“No! It’s not fabric I can cut! It’s a bunch of ones and zeros”“Fine, then give me the ones”“Fuck you! I want the ones! Ugh, I am not having this argument. I’m dissolving this party” He began to walk away as Asuna shouted at him. “You know what? Fine! I’ll give you the damn coat. Just send me a trade request” Kosetsu knew where this was going and tried not to grin as Asuna screeched at Kirito after finding out she’d have to open her menu to get the coat off him. Kirito let out an evil laugh as the doors opened and he walked out dramatically. The drama was somewhat lost when he popped his head back through, looking at Kosetsu and said, “Come on” motioning him over. He frowned in confusion, even more so when a party invite from Kirito popped up. He looked up at him and raised an eyebrow.“Uh, why?” he asked. Kirito sighed.“You’re one of the few tolerable people I’ve met and the only one with the same sense of humour as me. If you died I’d have no one decent to talk to”“Hey!” Tiff yelled, offended. Kosetsu grinned a Cheshire grin and clicked accept before hurrying up the stairs to Kirito’s side and walking away side by side.