Chapter Text
“Ow.”
“Oh, what the hell man. What just hit me?”
Kirito blinked at the sound of another voice. It was...familiar. Oh! That was right. He was...talking with someone. Klein! He was talking with the newb player about-
“We're still in the game,” Kirito noted slowly, sitting up as he looked around. The outskirts of the [Town of Beginnings] rose up just past the hill on his right, the sun still high in the sky.
“No shit?” Klein asked, obviously still a bit shaken up. “Was that a bug or something?”
“I don't know,” Kirito admitted hesitantly, standing cautiously as he looked over his body. To his left, a...herd? A mob of low-aggro boars were grazing close by at the foot of a hill. “Nothing like that ever happened in the beta.”
“...don't most MMOs have, like, a lot of glitches around start up?” Klein replied, frowning worriedly. “...and isn't this thing, like, plugged into our brains?”
Kirito felt a thrill of fear pass down his spine. “They do, occasionally,” he confirmed with a frown, “but...SAO isn't a normal game. There's hardware safeguards to keep the system from hurting players. Even then, about the worst that could happen would be your classic server crash.”
As Klein's eyes began to widen in panic, Kirito shook his head rapidly and held up his hands. “That would just boot us from the game and turn off the nervegear! There's no way this can hurt us. They did extensive testing way before even the alpha versions came out!”
Unbidden, though, Kirito's mind began to ponder the problem.
It had just been a short moment of...disembodiment? A second or two, if that, of feeling as though you were no where and everywhere at the same time. Then, he'd been back where he was, staring up at the false-sky of Aincrad's first floor.
Everything felt normal, though. It didn't seem as though anything had changed...
Could it have been a bug? A glitch? Maybe a microsecond's worth of lag in the connection? Or the spike of so many players logging on really was messing with the servers?
Given the fidelity of the signal and the amount of processing power they needed for this kind of imaging resolution and the robustness of the data involved....
...well, there was a reason Argus had only done a limited run of ten thousand copies for the initial release. Although, at least theoretically, the nervegear couldn't harm the brain...well, as Klein said, it plugged directly into your head...specifically next to the back of the neck, where a significant amount of your bodily functions were controlled.
No one really wanted to take the chance that a catastrophic server overload would cause some kind of error in the software and lock people into a coma-like state until Argus could get the game back online and log people out.
“Hey! Kirito!”
The black-haired boy's head shot up, “Huh?”
Klein frowned worriedly. “You were spacin' out there, dude. You okay?”
Kirito felt his cheeks heat slightly. “Oh, yeah, sorry. I just...well, I told you I was in the beta, right?” Klein nodded. “Well, I did a lot lot of background research. I was really excited about the release and everything, so...I was just thinking about what might have happened.”
Klein nodded again, slowly. “Well...think of anything?”
Kirito pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Not really. I mean, it probably was just a glitch...”
He forced himself to say it casually, as if it wasn't a big deal.
Klein grimaced. “Well...I gotta' go anyway. Might check my unit over and make sure there's nothing on the net about it...and I'm getting pretty hungry.”
Kirito nodded. “Right, yeah. You mind if I add you to my friend's list? That way you can call me if you need any more help.”
Klein hesitated a moment, then grinned. “Sure, yeah! Thanks, man. I was really lucky to meet a beta tester who's as good a guy as you.”
The black-haired boy ducked his head slightly, looking off to the side as he flushed in embarrassment. “No problem. I was glad to help.”
With a few quick swipes of their hands and information exchanged, Klein adjusted his motions to log out. His brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed in confusion.
“Hey, Kirito,” the redheaded man began, “total newb question, but...how do I log out?”
Kirito frowned. “Oh, uh...that's easy, all you have to do is...huh.”
The log out button wasn't there.
“The log out button's not there,” Kirito stated dumbly, staring at his menu in consternation.
“Then...how do we get out of the game?” Klein asked in reply.
Kirito frowned. There...weren't actually that many options. “We...should contact a GM, I guess. Do you have anyone at home who will remove your nervegear if this takes too long?”
Klein shook his head, “No...I, uh, live alone. How 'bout you?”
Kirito sighed, “there's...my mom and my sister, but one's at work and the other just left for kendo practice. Shit.”
There was a moment of silence as they considered their options.
“I guess we can't just take the nervegear off, huh?” Klein asked hopefully.
“No,” Kirito replied definitely. “It's designed to intercept signals from your brainstem so you don't move around while you play.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah,” the black-haired youth frowned, thinking furiously. “Other than the GM...”
A sensation not unlike a vibration cut Kirito off as he reflexively opened his menu and looked towards Klein. “One minute. I've got a call request.” Tapping the acceptance screen, he held his palm up to his ear. “Hey Argo, what's up? I'm kinda' in the middle of something, here.”
“You and everyone else, Kiri-bou!” Argo's normally energetic voice replied over the pseudo-telepathic line, filled with an unsettling frazzle. “Your logout button not working? Where are you?”
Kirito stiffened.
If it wasn't just them...
“I was running a new guy through a tutorial on [Sword Arts]. We're out in the boar fields south of town,” Kirito replied, dread lacing his tone. “You're...having problems too?”
“Pretty much the whole flippin' town is!” Argo hissed back. “You heard anything about glitches or...I don't know, some kind of special event or something?”
It was clearly a desperate attempt to grasp at some level of normalcy, Kirito knew. No one in their right might would lock someone inside a game like this. With a game like SAO, disabling the logout feature was tantamount to kidnapping or hostage-taking. It would be a public relations nightmare and practically kill the launch of their flagship game. Unless Kayaba Akihiko had gone completely insane, this almost certainly wasn't anything planned.
“No.” Kirito replied shortly, sighing. “What's going on in town?”
“...nothing good. The safe zone inside the [Protection Wards] seem to be holding up, so no one's gotten really violent, but...they're scared, Kirito.” Argo replied, her voice dwindling to a near-whisper at the end. Kirito swallowed. It would have to be serious if she was using his full character name.
“...have you tried one of the GMs at the basilica?” Kirito replied, declining to press on her tone. Argo, he knew, wouldn't appreciate it.
“I tried.” Argo affirmed, frustration evident in her voice now. “Besides the fact that they're swamped, they're not really...responding right.”
Kirito blinked. What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“Okaaay,” the black-haired swordsman drawled. “Are they...not answering questions or something?”
“More like they don't seem to understand them,” Argo replied curtly, then caught herself. “Sorry, Kiri-bou, it's just...well, it's like trying to talk to actual people, as weird as it sounds. I mean, actual priests. They don't seem to understand what 'GM' or 'logout' means, at least, not how it applies to games.”
Kirito was quiet for a long moment, rubbing at his forehead with his free hand as he tried to think. Finally, he settled on the only thing he could say, “do you need help?”
There was a stretch of silence on the other end, which probably said more than Argo would be willing to admit, even to him. Finally, a sigh came over the line. “If you think you can help, Ki-bou, sure. Fair warning, it's a bit of a mess here, so be prepared.”
“Alright. I'll try to get back soon,” Kirito replied, nearly drawing his hand away from his ear.
“Your call.” Argo's airy, devil-may-care attitude revived a bit. “Hey...Kiri-bou? Keep an eye on my icon, right?”
“Sure,” Kirito nodded, not even having to think about his response.
As his hand dropped, Klein stared at him with a worried expression. “That...didn't sound good.”
“It's not really,” Kirito sighed. “That was a...friend, another solo player I used to team up with on occasion. Her name's Argo and she's an info broker.” At Klein's clueless look, he elaborated. “She sells information about drop rates, where mini-bosses are, things like that. Odds are if it can be known, she'd know it...and she told me to watch her icon.”
Kirito put his hand on face, using the heel of his palm to massage his forehead tiredly.
“Uhh...what's that mean?” Klein asked, frowning.
“Okay, you know how the resurrection system works, right?” Kirito replied, thinking furiously. “Basically, when you get killed by a monster or another player, you drop a certain amount of your items, maybe some gold too if you have enough. That's all random, but depending on what level you are, it costs a different amount to rez you. Higher level, more gold, right?”
Klein nodded, recalling some of the standardized tutorial. “At the basilica, right? You pay the priest and he rezzes you, right?”
Kirito waggled his hand. “Sorta. If you're low enough level, it's almost automatic. I think the fluff is that the NPCs pay tithes to the church and the priests will rez players to keep the monsters at bay. Anyway, if you run low on gold and you're high enough level, you have to get a friend to rez you...or log in with another account and rez yourself. That's why Argo told me to watch her icon. An icon on your friends list will tell you whether the person is alive or is waiting for a rez.”
“Huh,” the redhead nodded, satisfied with the explanation, then stopped. “Hey, I thought you said your friend was in town. I thought the [Town of Beginnings] was a safe zone?”
Kirito pressed his lips together grimly. “It is.”
Klein might not have been the...brightest bulb in the bunch, but even he could read between the lines well enough. “Shit. I should...some of my friends are logged in, too. I should get back to town. It was this way, ri-”
“Watch out!” Kirito shouted, even as Klein stumbled into one of the boars, triggering it's attack reflex. The black-haired boy cursed and leaped forward while the boar butted Klein away. Sweeping in with a sword art, he made quick work of the animal. “Are you okay?”
Klein didn't answer, merely staying where he was as he gasped for breath. “Fuck, that hurts.”
“No it can't-” Kirito stopped himself, his eyes slowly widening.
“Shit,” he muttered, the bottom falling out of his stomach.
Something was really, really wrong.