When the woman she had just bothered turned to face her, there was a split second that Sparrow was sure that she was going to be told off. She held a breath as she watched the stranger's icy expression barely shift, but when the woman responded to her question in what Sparrow was going to take in a positive way it took all of her restraint not to jump up and down in glee. Until this moment her only interaction with other people from the game were NPCs and none of them had made very pleasant conversation.
Her grin brightened as she regarded the blonde's words.
"Oh cool! I should--hey!" Sparrow's smile dropped as someone pushed past her, knocking her toward her new 'friend'. Her bright expression crumpled into a scowl as she turned toward the retreating blur that had nearly barreled her over.
"Rude!" Before she could say anything more, she realized that she was still holding onto the woman in front of her for balance. She quickly released her grip on them.
"Sorry about that…," she said sheepishly, her cheeks coloring in embarrassment as she brushed the back of her neck with her right hand.
Figures, the first non-NPC she encounters and she's already making a fool of herself. She supposed there were worse things that could happen. Like the sky suddenly bleeding with warning signs and a figure not unlike the Grim Reaper appearing before them. Sparrow was taken aback for a moment, her eyes widened in fear before excitement bubbled forth. Like a child she pointed up at the figure, stretching up onto her tippy-toes to get a better look over the shoulders of taller players.
"Oh, oh, oh! It's starting!"Sparrow was beside herself with glee. How perfect could her timing be that the moment she logs in to explore the game a major event was about to be under way? Briefly she scanned the crowd, wondering if
he was hiding behind any of the avatars. In her search she barely noticed the screens that had popped up around the figure, but as he mentioned a gift Sparrow immediately perked up and looked toward the NPC expectantly. When the item appeared in her hand, she was surprised to find...
"A mirror?"Clearly amused by the new trinket gifted to them, Sparrow lifted up the mirror to inspect her hair. As her eyes met the reflective surface the item cast its blue glow. Sparrow gasped as she visually shrunk a few inches and the silky pin-straight hair she had chosen for her avatar morphed back into the familiar curly mess that she could never quite tame. She was burning with embarrassment as she realized she had 'accidentally' revealed her true appearance to the rest of SWORD ART ONLINE. Sparrow assumed that she had somehow triggered the item's effect on herself, but when she noticed the other players in the crowd beginning to change shape she realized that the mirror had fulfilled its intent: it had revealed the truth of who they were.
With wide eyes she watched as the tall became short, green hair became brown, men became women and vice versa. Rarely did someone barely change at all, just as she had, but everyone was shocked to find that there was change nonetheless. Sparrow glanced anxiously at the blonde woman, who comfortingly hadn’t changed much, then back to the figure in the sky.
And
that’s when she noticed the content of the newsfeeds floating in the sky.
While Sparrow could read what they said - cases of players going comatose, of NERVEGEAR going defective - she didn’t quite understand what was going on. Then she read a word in one headline that stuck with her:
Hostages.
As Kayaba spoke to his new world, Sparrow quickly realized that ‘hostages’ was a pretty good word to describe what they had just become. And as much as she wanted to scream and cry and deny that all of this was her new reality, everything she felt caught in her throat. Like a bird caught in a predator’s gaze she froze up, petrified from the cold realization that she was never going to make it to the top of Aincrad. She had barely touched a game since she was a child, and now she had to somehow climb her way to the top in an MMORPG? How was she was supposed to do that? How was she ever going to...
That’s when it hit her that none of that was going to matter, because the moment her parents saw the NERVEGEAR attached to her head their first move was going to be to rip it off. Sparrow wasn’t just trapped in the game like so many others. As far as she was concerned Kayaba Akihiro had personally handed her a death sentence.
When Kayaba vanished the square had gone eerily quiet, only to erupt a moment later in panic. Players began to screaming, running, pushing… Sparrow, who had gone into shock, was barely aware of the chaos. She remained frozen in place, a statue among a sea of panic, until someone once more collided with her and knocked her onto her hands and knees. The pain she felt from the fall woke her up, the pinch she needed to pull her mind from freefall. Tears slipped down her face as she looked up at the person who had knocked into her, who had asked her hesitantly if she was all right. She wanted to yell at him and tell him that of course she wasn’t. Instead she said,
“I think I’m going to be sick.”Sparrow crumpled at the waist, a wave of nausea hitting her so violently she was sure she would vomit on this poor guy’s shoes. Instead she just broke down, sobbing into her hands as she waited for the inevitable. Her parents had always said that video games would be the end of her brother. She never thought they would be the end of her too.