This is a story that started bouncing around my head sometime in the last year or so, after I'd watched up to episode 25 of SAO, and has been added to since I started writing it. I'm not going to say anything about it, other than that Silica has been aged up a year for plot purposes. She still looks and acts exactly the same, she's just a year older. This was written by me, with Slicerness helping me flesh it out more.

The Beastmaster and the Reincarnated One

Chapter 1

Most people would think being reincarnated would be useful. Most wouldn't realize that while you have experience, or memories of the past - if you're lucky - you would still need to hone your abilities again in your new life, lest you slip up. Naruto was one of those lucky enough to gain memories of his past lives.

The reincarnation cycle skipped a generation, but luckily Naruto had left a will stating that if someone came forth, calling themselves Naruto, and could actually give intimate details about their "past life", so to speak, they would inherit his savings and the rights to the Icha Icha series that Jiraiya left him. This Last Will and Testament was to be repeated every life, so that there wouldn't be any problems in the future.

This had naturally caused a lot of skepticism in modern society, and even more false claims by greedy individuals, but the system somehow actually managed to work, and Naruto was able to retrieve his possessions with fairly little difficulty.

But that was in the past. This is a story about Romance, Fantasy, Virtual Reality, and a Death Game.

This... Is the tale of Sword Art Online, a Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.

The first thing Naruto did when he heard about SAO being beta tested was preorder a copy and buy the hardware for it. It wasn't hard, what with him basically having a bottomless pit of money for a bank account; having the rights to having the Icha Icha series as well as his sensei Jiraiya's lesser selling book "The Tales of an Utterly Gutsy Ninja" kind of did that for him. The books even sold well overseas.

It was under an assumed name, so nobody bothered him about writing it.

But, we're getting away from the main point here.

The reason Naruto ordered the game was because he thought it would let him feel danger again. How right he was...

Naruto now had to wait a few months for the Closed Beta to end, and by pulling a few strings (Read: bribing the official with a signed collection of one of many spin-off series of the main Icha Icha books), he was able to get a copy of the data of people who were in it. One name in particular made his senses tingle.

Kirigaya Kazuto. He was a smart kid who seemed to be bored with regular games.

Naruto didn't know why his senses were tingling, but chalked it up to the influence of the fox sealed in his soul.

Said fox was currently sleeping, as there hadn't been anything really dangerous since the Fourth Great Shinobi War, after which the shinobi age ended, and the history was lost to the annals of time.

You may be wondering why the fox wasn't dead. The reason was because the seal was only meant to break down chakra, not the fox's soul.

The Shiki Fuujin that contained the fox was emblazoned on Naruto's very soul - way to go Minato, great job - so he and Kurama were literally stuck together for all eternity. the upside of this was Naruto would, in every reincarnation, have Chakra Coils. the enormous ones he was used to, as well, since Kurama's chakra would always leak into them. The difference between being born with Kurama's present in his body and having him shoved in there a few hours after birth was also surprisingly large. Naruto could use every scrap of Kurama's chakra from day one. The tainted stuff, not just the golden chakra the two created when they worked together.

He never had a chance to actually use it, being a world largely without danger, but it was still an interesting tidbit of knowledge. He also doubted that he'd be able to use it in the Virtual Reality world that he was looking forward to playing in. It'd be worth a test, but it wasn't likely to work, seeing as how the game wouldn't be coded with that energy in mind. He could probably still use a sort of sensory ability, but again, that would require testing.

Now, let's rejoin Naruto. He was currently waiting near his front door for the delivery of his game. It was the day of release, and he was very excited. You'd think he'd be jaded, what with the centuries of memories kicking around inside his head, but he wasn't.

The doorbell rang, and he answered it quickly enough to startle the postman.

"P-Package for Uzumaki Naruto?" The delivery man uttered with an owlish blink, tempted to step away from the wildly grinning teenager. Something about the combination of the fox-like grin and the six lines on his face that looked to be scars was just off-putting.

"Yeah, that's me!" Naruto answered cheerfully. Taking his family stamp, he stamped where it was required.

"Thanks, and have a good day, sir." The delivery man said woodenly, slowly stepping backwards like a man trying not draw the attention of a T-rex.

"You too!" Naruto replied with a cheery wave before closing the door, not hearing the deep sigh of relief the person on the other side released.

After the initial setup of his new game was done, Naruto logged in.

The first thing he did was check his map for the exits to the Starting City. Then he ran towards one, hoping to train on whatever enemy he could find.

The first enemy he found was being attacked by a girl whose avatar looked to be 17. She was trying to hit the enemy, but kept missing. So Naruto (whose character name was Kurama, after the fox that was currently connected to his brain, watching and sarcastically commenting on the various thing he saw, first of which was how realistic the enemy - the boar - looked) decided to help her out with what he knew.

"Excuse me, miss? You look like you need help. Would you like some assistance?" He asked her.

She looked at him and blushed. She'd seen attractive guys before, but he looked like more than those other guy around her age. She shook off that thought, he probably looked nothing like his avatar. The game was a chance to be whatever you wanted, the chance of him actually being that handsome, with her luck, was virtually zero. "Um, sure."

"Alright! My username's Kurama in here, but if you want you can call me Naruto."

"Oh, I forgot to introduce myself... Stupid me..." She said, the last bit being said under her breath. "My name is Silica. Pleased to meet you, Naruto."

"Pleased to meet you too, Silica-chan. Now, the key to fighting in this game is apparently motion input. You have to lock yourself into a position that the game recognizes as a 'Sword Art', or Sword Skill. Watch me and then try and replicate it."

With that he turned his attention to the boar. He readied his sword in a stance that the system recognized as the game's first One-Handed Sword Art, «Horizontal». He waited for the light to stop building up - indicating the technique was charged and ready for use - and released the stance, causing the system to move his body for him.

The result was the boar's HP being taken down by half as Naruto blurred forward, the Art jerking his arm to perform a horizontal slash halfway through his dash that struck the pig monster in the forehead. He would really need to work on his aim, as well as his control. The system worked, but it was really rough, plus there was a Critical Hit system that dealt extra damage for hitting the targets neck or eyes or other vulnerable spots. A blow like that just a little lower likely would have ended the battle.

The girl was in awe.

"Now you try it." He suggested over his shoulder with an encouraging smile.

"O-okay..." She stammered lightly, gripping her Starter Dagger with her right hand, keeping an even tighter grip on her Starter Buckler just in case.

She pulled her right arm, equipped with a dagger, to her side in a mirror of how Naruto had moved. This was the starting point for the generic starting skill «Horizontal».

"YAH!" Silica shouted, while releasing the Sword Skill at the poor Boar, who gave out a dying squeal, then burst into polygons as it's Hit Points plummeted to zero and briefly into the negatives before the game registered it's death. The damage wasn't enough to trigger the Overkill XP bonus, sadly, but it was still a kill and they were level 1, so the XP gained wasn't anything to complain about even for a standard kill.

"I... I did it? Hahah! I DID IT!" Silica exclaimed in happiness, glomping Naruto. Luckily, the system didn't recognize that as an attack on a player.

"Yeah, you did it," Naruto said with a proud smile; he always loved teaching, mostly because the look of accomplishment on his students faces was just so heartwarming. "Now, are you ready to keep going? If we party up we can both get Experience Points for the kills, no matter who deals the finishing blow, which should make hunting these Boars really easy." He fiddled with his menu for a second before it chimed and closed itself.

Silica stopped hugging Naruto, blushing lightly as she suddenly got a Party Request from her fellow player. "S-sure!" She pressed Accept, only to squeak, clamping her lips shut as her voice sounded way too eager to spend more time with him than she would like. She forced herself to calm down, and slapped the handle of her dagger against her shield, pumping herself up in a different way. "Let's go, Naruto!"

It was the start of a beautiful friendship.

After Naruto and Silica had hunted boars enough together to level up 4 times each, they stopped. "Well, I'm about ready to log off. How 'bout you, Silica-chan?" Naruto asked.

"Yeah. It was nice meeting you." Silica replied before brightening. "Oh! I know! How about we register each other as friends?"

"Sure." Pulling down the menu and accessing the Friends tab, he typed in her username and sent her a request. She did the same, and instead of needing to accept the system did it for them, taking both requests as acceptance on the other, and their names instantly appeared on each other's Friends List.

"Well, I'm going to log out now," Naruto yawned. He pulled down the menu yet again, and accessed the final tab, where log out buttons are usually kept in MMOs, but there was a problem. "... Huh? There's no logout button..."

"Eh?! Lemme check…" She tilted her head cutely as she found nothing. "Oh, there isn't…" She hummed thoughtfully, looking up at him. "Is this a bug...?"

He shook his head absently, "Probably not… The beta for this game was, what, three months long? This is a pretty major bug. It would've been fixed long before it was released." He explained. "So, following that logic... It's a planned feat- OH, Shit!" His brain had just realized what he'd come to the conclusion of.

At that moment, they were forcibly teleported back to the plaza of Starter City.

Author's Notes:

Originally, the Naruto in this story was immortal. I talked about it with a friend, and he talked me out of having him be immortal, as having him (Naruto) paired up with any of the girls in SAO would be like robbing the cradle to the absolute extreme. To be honest, I agree. So I decided on something else, which the latest chapters of the Naruto manga lend credence to. I decided to have him be reincarnated every few generations. The manga was what gave me the idea for the generational gap,

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*Spoilers if you haven't kept up* because Naruto is technically Hashirama reincarnated, and Hashirama is the Six Path Sage (AKA the Rikudou Sennin)'s son Ashura reincarnated. *Spoiler end*

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Anyways, this idea was kicking around my head for far too long, and I'll say this now, it won't be abandoned, but the updates will come slowly. I have a serious issue, namely my massive lack of motivation for anything other than reading.

Also, Please Review, it might make me become motivated for this story.