Player Killer Killer

Chapter 1

Hi everyone, SemiInsaneCentipede here with my first fic! I had no clue what to write for the summary, so I think I made Rin sound a little more badass than intended. Anyway, I do not own Sword Art Online, the characters, or anything to do with it other than my own characters.

Have you ever wondered why the completely useless people in our societies are allowed to live? They provide no benefits to anyone and bring the rest of the world around them down with them. Some people exist solely to mess with and ruin the lives, hopes and dreams of the people around them. How do I know this, I hear you ask, the answer to that question is quite simple. Three of the aforementioned useless people are standing in front of them. I hate them. Now while I dislike all those kinds of people in general, these three are special cases, yes sir, they are the whooooooooole package. Why have one when you can get three? That's right, in front of me I have a perfect display of all the crappy aspects of humanity mixed into one person, and then multiplied by three. But seriously, these guys probably had a combined IQ of twenty. Also, I just can't stand it when they talk; their voices irritate the crap out of me.

"Hey losers!" one of the three jeered, probably the leader of the three. I don't know the names of any of the three, even though they've been harassing me for about a year and a half. It's not that they've bothered to keep their names a secret, it's that I haven't made the effort to remember them. In my eyes, recognizing a pointless problem – the three people before me, for example – gives that problem a value, making it waste your time on it, whether it be trying fix the problem or simply fretting about it. I make an effort to not know their names, that way I can spend less time thinking about them or acknowledging their existence.

Shino, my best friend, groans, he knows what's coming, he's been by my side throughout my year and a half of harassment. I feel a fist hit me in the stomach and I stagger backwards, winded. Shino was worse off than me though, he got punched in the face, which pisses me off a whole damn lot. I couldn't give less of a crap if these arseholes hurt me – that I can deal with – but harming my best friend? No, nuh-uh not happening. I feel a surge of anger build up inside of my chest, but the next punch to my shoulder knocks it out of me. "Gah, screw you!" I snap as it's the best I can come up with while my lungs beg for a reprieve. Why couldn't these guys have attacked us at school? Not only because there are teachers there, but because I happen to keep a sizeable knife among my things specifically for these types of people. The only reason IU haven't used it is because there are too many witnesses around. But we are not at school; I have no weapon here.

Shino has a bruise on his face, it looks nasty, and his face is contorted in a grimace of pain as proof. Rage wells up inside me again, and this time I am not stopped from acting. I grab the nearest prick's head and jerk it down violently, at the same time I bring my knee up to meet their jaw. The sickening crack of revenge as my knee makes contact brings an uncontrollable grin to my face; I love it when these kinds of people get what's coming to them. Hands wrap around my body and my feet leave the ground and I am thrown – none too gently, if I might add – into the cement sidewalk, my head hits the ground with a crack that echoes through my mind. "N-no, Rin! D-don't…" I hear Shino splutter, his hand outstretched to me. I grit my teeth, I won't allow myself to fall into the depths of unconsciousness, if they see that I'm out of it, they'll all just turn to Shino.

After a minute of kicking out grounded bodies, the three apparently gave up, or just got bored – either works – but it means they finally left us alone. "C'mon guys, let's go. SAO starts in an hour and I'm not missing it." With that, the three leave and bless my vision with their absence. Shino manages to sit up, his head in one hand while the other searches for blood. "You okay, Rin?" he asks and I try to sit up, but my whole being still feels jarred from the impact of hitting the concrete and I groan. "Don't worry, I will be." The sound of footsteps getting closer registers in my mind. "Hey, are you boys alright?" A woman leans over me, a police officer by her uniform, she looks concerned, but this only serves to make me angrier. I grab her by the collar of her uniform and pull our faces closer. "Where the hell were you thirty seconds ago?!"

"Hey Rin," Shino says "remember what that guy said?" We're walking back to our houses now; we were neighbors and had become friends while walking to school. "Which one?" I ask, I'm still a bit annoyed; the officer had only helped us to stand, surely it's obligatory to drive the victims home? Well apparently not. "C'mon man, it was like, three minutes ago." Shino tries to jog my memory.

"One of those three, I don't care." I snap in return, but he just smirks.

"He said that SAO starts in an hour, less than." I look up at my friend and smile. We've both been looking forward to this day, in fact, that game is the reason I'm in Japan in the first place. My father is a well-known graphics designer, so when he got a personal call from Kayaba Akihiko – the creator of Sword Art Online – he told me to put more effort into my Japanese classes and pack my bags because this would be the biggest job of his career. Being a major part of the creation process, my dad received a free NerveGear and a copy of SAO once it was released, which he graciously gave to me for my birthday. From there I managed to pull some strings to get the same deal for Shino, who was utterly ecstatic when I gave it to him, he probably would have hugged me if the risk of dropping the gifts was not so real. We'd promised each other that we'd meet up in-game and adventure around together. "Haha, yeah, he did say that. C'mon, race you home?" I teased.

"Let's go!" he responded and we both took off. Or at least, we tried to.

"Ow, ow, my legs!" I cry out in pain, and Shino follows suit.

"Ah geez, those pricks screwed my ankle." In short, we kept walking.

It took us about half an hour to get home, which was probably for the best, we wouldn't have been able to contain out excitement if we got home with a whole forty-five minutes to wait. "See you online?" Shino asks, I smile and nod, he turns to leave but I call for his attention. "Shino! What username are you gonna use?" I call out, he stops and turns to face me. "Well, I was thinking Shiniki, a combination of Shino and Ikimatsu. What are you going to use?" he answers me with a question of his own, and it takes me a minute to reply. "I was thinking of sticking with Rin."

"Booooooooooring! C'mon man, you use Rin for everything."

"Because Rin is my name!" I reply automatically; we've had this conversation before many times over.

"Yeah, and the rest of Japan doesn't need to know about that." Shino counters. "Everyone knows you shouldn't use your real name online." He continues.

"Which is why, if I use Rin, no-one would suspect that it was my actual name now would they?"

"Stalkers are everywhere, Rin." Shino tells me, waving his fingers in the air at me in an attempt to appear creepy. "Yeah, and I've just found mine."

"H-hey!" Shino protests, but I'm already walking to my house's front door. "Get back here!"

"Bye." I accompany me farewell with a casual wave over my shoulder.

"Don't just leave with the last word like that!" he yells after me.

"Leaving."

"AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHH – yeah, I'm going inside too." Shino cuts off his own scream of annoyance and walks into his own house.

"I'm home." I call out like every anime character ever to exist as I walk through the front door, taking off my shoes and leaving them by the door, a habit I'm still getting used to. "Hi son, how was your- OH MY GOD, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FACE?!" Dad starts, but ends up screaming.

"Daaaaaaaaaad, that's not nice; I was born with this face." I reply, offended.

"You know what I'm talking about." Dad says, realizing that I can't be too badly broken if I can be sarcastic. "I ran into a big wall of nothing." I tell him. Dad is aware of my opinions of useless people like the three boys (I think…) earlier, so he knew I'd been bullied, and by extension, so had Shino. "Humph. If this continues, I'm going to have to talk to the Ikimatsu household about this problem." Dad tells me. "No! Don't do that! Don't recognize those bullies as existing people!" I cry out desperately, my hands in a flurry making gestures rapidly, all of them meaning stop. "Anyway, I'm gonna go play SAO now, Dad." I turn to leave, but Dad stops me. "There's still twenty-five minutes until the server opens, Rin, why don't we have a talk about your harassment problems in that time?"

"No! I don't wanna talk about them!"

"That's why it's a problem! If you just talked to me about it, then I could do something about it!"

"No! It's my life; I'll call you if I need help!" I argue desperately.

I'm in my room now, and there's twenty minutes to go, I'm lying on my bed having a staring contest with by digital clock. I stare deep into its digital soul, glaring down at all the tiny electrical pulses that fly through it every second. 12:41, damn, nineteen minutes to go. Tell you what, Sword Art Online had better be one hell of a game if it's going to keep me waiting like this. I make sure that me NerveGear is plugged into the power socket and that it has full battery. I've only used the NerveGear once before, and that was to configure it, but I don't think that that really counts as 'having used' the NerveGear before; I haven't played any games on it yet. Eighteen minutes, this is getting boring! I go out to my room's balcony, Dad and I live in a two storey house, which is very common for this area of Japan, and all the bedrooms have balconies. We're originally from Australia, which really goes to show that Kayaba Akihiko really went all-out on SAO if he's calling Dad out from across the world's largest ocean, I also heard that he hired some coders from Europe and found some of the world's best multi-linguists to help with translations.

Sixteen minutes. The house next to ours belongs to the Ikimatsus, Shino's family, I can see him in his room through his window looking just as bored as I am. "Shiniki, huh?" I muse; I'll admit that it sounds pretty cool. I think of my own last name: Waters. Can I make anything out of that? Nah, too much effort, besides, Shino's going to expect to meet up with a Rin rather than anything else. I guess I'll also be seeing those idiots who beat Shino and I up from before in-game as well, I wonder what their names would be? I doubt they'd point themselves out by calling themselves something along the lines of 'Douchebag,' now would they?

I space out for a moment, then bring myself back to reality and check the clock: 12:57, three minutes to go. I pick up my NerveGear and stare at it intently, it's quite heavy, which is why you have to lie down when you use it. Also because it makes your entire body go limp by disabling your motor functions, I wonder how it does that, anyway, does it probe your head or something to do it? Send out an electric charge? I don't really care how it does it; I'm just trying to distract myself so that I die from anticipation. 12:59, one minute left. I check that the SAO disk in the NerveGear, put it over my head and lie down on my bed. Okay, deep breaths, I know I'm excited, but I gotta have a cool face on before I lose complete control over my physical form. The visor of my NerveGear tells me that it still has full battery and that it is still 12:59. The only noise is silence as I stare intently at the small clock in the top right-hand corner, then suddenly: 13:00.

"Link, start!"