[[SP|F1]] Silk Suggestions(EaL:Tailor)

[Tauropolos 0]

Date: Three days after Kayaba's announcement.

Despite the many players that were in the same boat as her, Tauropolos was left feeling completely alone. None of her friends were interested enough in full-dive to spend money on the NerveGear and now she herself was wishing she had the same motivation they did. Trapped in a game of death with no familiar faces and only a few skills to boast about. The gamers amongst her were probably veterans to MMOs while she was simply an archer and tailor. How was that supposed to help her in a game called SWORD Art Online?

Over the past three days Alexis had sat on a cozy bed in a wooden cottage-styled inn near the outskirts of The Town of Beginnings. Her starting equipment was meager and pitiful to say the least: A dainty iron sword and a set of garments with a fairly generic modern-fantasy design combining small plates of armor over clothing. The metal was barely even enough to cover her small body and offered nothing legitimate in statistic additions. What happened after she ran out of money to live here at the inn though? The thought of being homeless in a video game trapped with no exit was weighing her down as if stones were nailed to her back.

A knock on the wooden door would soon break her out of her trance-like state, "Coming!" Her voice called over the soft taps of her footsteps on the wood. The door creaked open as she pulled it away from its frame, past that stood a woman almost as small as her - another player. Alexis was taller than her by a small margin but certainly not so light. She was carrying a serving plate with multiple sets of meals, one of which was her order.

"Taurpo- Um, Tourp-" The girl had trouble reading the name on the ticket provided. A chuckle escaped the blonde before she stopped her waitress.

"Tauropolos. Not bad for the first try, just call me Polos." Her awkward politeness might have come off as awkward but she was simply trying to be kind to a stranger.

"Oh... Sorry. I just didn't want to pronounce it wrong is all." She motioned to her serving plate for Alexis to take her order. The archer freed her from its burden. Though she expected the server to rush off to deliver the rest of the meals, the girl stood quietly for a moment. Perhaps she was lost in thought about the whole interaction? "You're scared about the whole situation right? Other players are already forming raiding groups to start clearing out the floors. How can people be so... collected and calm?" A bit of her anxieties came out. Alexis stuttered out an awkward laugh before responding.

"Oh- I uh... truthfully? Yes." Her fingers started to grow warm from the plate in her hands. "Would you... like to come in and talk about it?" She immediately regretted how quickly her manners had put this person at imposition.

"Sure- I-," The waitress entered quickly as she thought about how to answer the question. She would set the serving tray on the table provided in the room and take a seat in the wooden chair. "Truthfully? I'm scared too. I don't want to die."

[Tauropolos 0]

"I just realized you never gave me your name." The blonde would hint as she took a seat on the bed with her meal.

"Oh, right! I'm sorry. You can call me Natsumi." The other would oblige, though Alexis was unsure if that was her real name or her username. She wasn't really going press her on that either.

"Natsumi, got it. Nice to meet you! Like I said, you can call me Polos for short." The archer would reiterate. The food was nothing to write home about but she was just surprised that she could taste it to begin with.

"Polos." She smiled. "I wonder what my family is thinking right now. If time moves at the same speed in the game as it does in real life they surely found my body and didn't try to rip the helmet off my head."

"You mean the NerveGear? Yeah, I'm sure I've already been found in my hotel room in Japan. I don't have a very large family and I haven't talked to my mother in awhile. My friends probably found me and got hold of her, though." She didn't want to share too many details about her real life, and she was sure that Natsumi was withholding some details of her own.

"Oh yeah, looks like a big old helmet you'd wear on a motor-bike." Natsumi mimicked putting a helmet on over her head for some comedic effect but her serious tone never left. "That guy, Kayaba, said that if someone tries to remove the thing from your head you'll die... How unfair, people dying because of the concerns of friends and family. This is all so... meaningless."