Earlier that fateful day...
Oh boy.
It's here.
Here it is.
Finally.
Maya's heart was racing as she ran through her apartment with the box, right up the stairs into her own gaming/"research" room. In the young lady's hands was a cardboard box addressed to a particular teacher at the Chiba Institute of Technology's School of Engineering, a box that the student had wasted no time in grabbing, bolting out of the classroom and heading straight home... well, at least, she wished that had been the case. Sure, she had bolted out of class, much to her professor's dismay, but afterwards, even after dropping the box at home, she had to attend a meeting with some members of her father's company as part of an internship, then a party for a friend, do the daily shopping (while, bizarrely enough for any onlookers, still dressed in her party attire, a cosplay the aforementioned friend had her wear of some magical girl character that was popular as of late, complete with mismatching color contact lenses), and then, only then, could she return to her abode, where the box awaited her. Oh yes, the box. One might say the box contained her hopes and dreams and they wouldn't be far off.
You see, Maya Maebara, a young woman of the age of twenty-two and of mixed American-Japanese descent, was something of a prodigy in the realm of virtual reality. By the age of 16, she had managed to refine the optical technology used in most gaming virtual reality systems to allow much higher performance than what was available at the time, letting even more realistic graphics, higher frame-rates and sharper resolutions on weaker hardware by combining the rendering technology inside the systems with the power of the visual cortex by sending false signals through the eyes, distributing half the work of creating a scene to the brain of the user. Furthermore, she released this technology for a tiny licensing price, allowing any creator of virtual reality equipment to use it, rich or poor. By the time she was twenty, she was already closing in on graduation in the Chiba Institute of Technology and created a thesis proposing using the human nervous system as the "graphics card" running a game or film, which, while overshadowed by the works of Kayaba Akihiko, was noted by her close peers as potentially spelling the future of VR.
Along with this, Ms. Maebara was also notoriously into video games. She had been a spoiled youth, and often spent time ditching school to either start a new game or burn through the latest one on her list, spending most of the money her parents gave her on games and gaming paraphernalia, which eventually lead to her interest in virtual reality when she became frustrated with not having many people to play with among her friends due to the high price of VR-capable hardware. Throughout her increasingly accelerating studies, this love for games simply would not die, leading us to the present events, and to the box. In that box, bought ahead of release thanks to a formal request for "research purposes" by the CIT, was a bundle of two of the latest innovations in the VR space; the NerveGear virtual reality headset and its launch title, Sword Art Online, the first ever Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Game, or VRMMORPG. Actually, it wasn't really the launch title for the headset, numerous puzzle and educational games had come first, but they were met with little praise beyond being promising, SAO, however, was the first AAA game for it. Plus, the headsets were relatively rare, with the two-hundred-thousand being sold out quite fast, even when the games weren't all that impressive. SAO meant that so many more were manufactured, giving her the perfect opportunity to grab the game.
To say Maya was excited was an understatement. Certainly, she had obtained the bundle through the School of Engineering thanks to using the excuse of it being material to write her latest thesis (in reality, she hadn't the slightest idea what to write the thing on), but it was all too apparent that she wanted it for the game. Indeed, as promised to her professors when they reluctantly set up the order in her place in order to get her a spot in the initial ten thousand copies without her needing to wait in line for hours or wait until ungodly hours in order to pre-order it before it went out of stock (though God knows she was definitely capable of it), she would simply play for a while, then log-off and take notes, then "dismantle the hardware". Quite the shame she would "forget" that last part and instead log back on for hours more of gameplay. She had cursed herself over the last months for not getting into the beta testing which would have allowed her to spend enough time researching the game that she could now play without interruptions, but she'd figure something out.
And thus, here she was, standing in her room and making a complete mess throwing off the cosplay to get into the pyjamas she had prepared the day before just for this event, along with a mini fridge stocked full of food. In order to log in as soon as she could, she decided that she would wait until dinner to call her father, hell, he was probably in another one of his meetings anyway, he was a busy man, working hours away as one of the higher-ups in one of the country's many large business conglomerates. He could definitely wait an hour or two! Once she had finally changed, it was time to tear into that box. A knife was drawn, tape was violently cut and packing peanuts were strewn across the room like the viscera of a wild beast, with Maya taking away the prize of a large box, with a fancy logo on it and a colorful landscape, showing the game's setting, the massive floating castle of Aincrad. Soon enough, this box was torn into as well, with her final prize being the game with box art similar to the larger box it had been in and a comfortable looking helmet, reminiscent of older virtual reality headsets, but Maya knew that this blew everything else in history out of the water. Hell, she had practically invented it, had it not been for Kayaba claiming to do so first, and he wasn't wrong, being the first to put it in physical form.
No matter, she wasn't too sour about it. The game more than made up for it, impressions from the beta showed it to be a piece of software that would change the history of gaming, forever. It's not like she could ever make a game, she lacked the creativity, but she'd be damned if she couldn't enjoy one. Without a second's hesitation, she unwrapped the helmet, plugged it in and inserted the disk. As she waited for it to install on her PC and install updates (a ranged weapon update? On day one? Really?), she busied herself with preparing the helmet. Interestingly enough, it seemed it needed some synchronization with her body, scanning and such. Hm, bizarre. The beta logs had never mentioned any kind of systems where the real body had any effect on the game. Nonetheless, she followed the device's instructions, letting it scan her face with her eyes wide open, then patting her body when it told her to, where it told her to, right down to places she'd be embarrassed to let even her closest friends and family see. Still, she found herself fascinated by the technology even as she used it for such a simple task; the idea that it was already reading her nervous system before the game had even started was incredible indeed...
Installation complete.
"Ooh, it's ready!" She cheered, rushing into bed as soon as the NerveGear had finished processing all the data. She decided to forgo blankets, it was reasonably hot in the room thanks to efficient heating and she didn't want to wake up sweating and uncomfortable. This, which was going to be her "best gaming experience ever", had to go as smoothly as possible, in the real world and in the new virtual one that she was about to dive into. Literally, considering the name of the technique. Finally, the time had come. Comfortable in bed, with a cool drink nearby and her head snug in the helmet, it was time to say the words she had been waiting to say for months.
"Link START!"
Present Time
"And now, the preparations are complete. This concludes the tutorial for the official launch of Sword Art Online. Players, I wish you the best of luck." The hooded figure above the plaza full of thousands of players spoke with authority and to Iris, it almost felt like her rival was taunting her personally. Then it was true. All along, she always had the suspicion that Kayaba would add his one little something to his version of the Full Dive concept. Something uniquely him, while many had always thought him to be an unassuming genius, Iris, while holding the man in high regard and giving him the highest respect, always wondered if he desired something deeper than creating the greatest MMORPG ever created. And here it was. Iris cursed herself for not thinking of it herself. It was painfully obvious, and now she and around ten thousand other people were the victims of the largest attack on citizens of Japan since World War II, though, as the man had said, even in the beginning, all the people in the square were survivors. The newbies who had died while hunting low-level creatures who Iris had seen while getting her own grip on the combat system? They were the first victims, they were already gone from this world.
And if she didn't act for herself and fight, she'd be another one. Biting her lip, she could simply imagine it. Her father was still waiting for a call from his oldest daughter, her sisters waiting to hear about the game she had chattered about for months, while their mother made another wonderful dinner. Her classmates and professors would be the first to hear about the crisis and soon the whole world would know. They were all faces she wouldn't see for years, if ever again. In a way, being this deep into an incredible game was something she always wanted. Iris, Maya, who was she? Looking at the mirror that had finally given her the solution to the question of the bodily scans, it was her, with the only difference to her true self being the pastel colored lenses she had forgotten to take off before calibrating the NerveGear. In a way, maybe that brought her closer to being Iris. A new self, and she would have to be that self, she couldn't distract herself with what was impossible to see or do. Maya Maebara was asleep, in her bed and probably in a hospital soon and indefinitely, Iris was here, in the union of fear, rage, courage, excitement and sorrow made by her and all the other players of SAO.
If she wanted to survive, her focus could not be the next big game or her next big breakthrough in research and development. No, now, her focus had to be on the next big technique for her weapon. She had already devised a combat style, but if the knowledge given by the beta testers months ago was to be believed, a simple strategy of blocking with her left arm and slicing and dicing with a machete or similar weapon would simply not cut it in the long run. Iris had to innovate and move forward, combining techniques to lethally destroy her enemies and protect herself from certain death. Would she have to kill? There was no doubt that in this situation, people may kill each other, and it would have the same effects as in the real world. Effectively, this was her real world now and she'd have to make decisions as such.
As clear as it all was to her, what she had to do, she was still lost. All the reason she had in her mind was useless against the feelings she felt. She didn't want to die. She didn't want to lose others or simply watch others die. She missed her family, her friends, she longed for her days of lazily lounging around at home, a controller in hand, a headset on her head, in the dark of her room as she beat the latest and greatest game of the season. It was not yet gone for long, but everything suddenly felt so distant. What would she do? Her eyes were tearing up, even though she hardly wanted to. Not just because there were so many people around her, even if so many others had broken into tears, but because weakness now would make her lose potential allies forever.
Suck it up... Iris. she thought to herself, looking around. A few characters stood out. A tall, muscular man, a fit looking girl in a pirate get-up, a pensive fellow who looked eerily similar to a certain anime character that Iris simply could not put her finger on, and finally, interestingly, a girl, with
fox ears and a tail, all in blue?! Iris' jaw dropped slightly.
Gee, Kayaba, how did you let that through? I thought you better than that. she remarked silently, grinning in amusement at her own quip. She wondered briefly if he could read her thoughts. Technically, within the realms of Full Dive, it wasn't likely, but today, the guy was just full of surprises.
