Tsukiko did one last sweep of her forums, making sure nobody wanted her attention before signing off. wheeling her chair in a semicircle, she pushed herself to her bed and, with a little skillful maneuvering, lifted herself into it. She held the Nervegear for a moment, admiring it, then settled it on her head. The day was finally here, the day she could feel whole again.

"Link Start"

---

Her avatar was already preloaded into the system, since she was one of the lucky few who had gotten her hands on a Beta Key. For the most part, her avatar looked nothing like her. Her normally short cropped black hair was long and starch white, her eyes were a bright silver, and her features were sharper. 

As soon as she got into the server, she took off running. She had to start farming fast if she wanted to get ahead of everybody else. Hopefully the spawn areas hadn't changed too much with the public release.

---

After killing boars endlessly for five hours, she finally took a break. She moved out of the aggro zone she had marked off and lay down on the grass, enjoying the feeling of the sunset on her closed eyelids. Even if this world wasn't real, she knew she would have no problem staying here forever.

When she opened her eyes again, she wasn't in the field anymore. She was standing in the main square of the Town of Beginnings. [i]At least I won't have to run back here,[/i] she thought to herself, pushing upright. She stared up at the sky when the announcement started, her jaw slowly working as she puzzled through what he was saying. Unlike most of the people in the square, she didn't feel angry, or scared, or betrayed. She understood that what Kayaba was doing was wrong, but she didn't particularly blame him. The mirror was a nice touch, forcing everyone to be who they actually were. She fingered her hair, still long and white. There was only so much you could see with such a roundabout method as microwaves, after all.

As the square erupted into panic, Tsukiya calmly walked towards the markets, basically empty now, with everybody running around elsewhere. Luckily, the automated merchants were still functional, so she started selling all the mob drops she had gathered. "Maybe I'll buy a new sword while I'm here..."