Kirito (Kazuto Kirigaya)

Name: Kazuto "Kirito" Kirigaya (He goes by Kirito in game.)

Appearance: he has slightly long but neat black hair and black eyes. His delicate face shows no trace of masculinity, causing people to mistake him for a girl. Kirito's clothes consist of black pants with a black belt with a large silver buckle, a black V-necked shirt underneath a black trench coat with gray lining going down the sleeves, and black boots with silver plates to protect his shins. He has a silver plate worn on the left side of his coat and a pair of black fingerless gloves. He wears a strap that goes over his right shoulder and under it to wrap around his left side.

Weapons: Elucidator: Elucidator is a pitch black sword with trims of gray. It has a black hilt connected to a hand guard that drops down on the right side. Attached to this elongated area of the hand-guard is part of Elucidator's blade, so as to better aid the user in retaining their grip on the sword when it is being used. The blade is completely black like the rest of the sword and the said blade is outlined in a light gray. Dark Repulser: Dark Repulser is aqua-colored. Its grip is a darker color than the rest of the blade and is completely straight. It leads up to a cross guard that is exactly perpendicular to the grip and is designed to look like a pair of conjoined dagger blades. At the center of the guard is a large aquamarine gem. The blade itself is a deep aqua color, and the base of the blade has a light aqua attachment that causes the blade to have a natural indentation when one traces its length due to the angle that the attachment bends at. Age: 18

Personality: Kazuto is someone who is not good with words and can be quite direct. This is due to him not having many friends and closing others off because of his love for computers. Thus, he can appear to be rude to others. Sometimes, he actually seems to enjoy angering and teasing people as well. Also, from time to time, Kazuto can be quite overconfident thinking he can do things others cannot. Kazuto is almost always a calm and collected character, rarely showing any signs of distress. When Kayaba Akihiko announced that Sword Art Online had become a Death Game, Kirito was able to quickly accept the new conditions of the game and take immediate action to increase his chances of survival. However, Kazuto is actually a kind person, willing to sacrifice himself to help others. When the death of Diavel during the 1st Floor Boss battle resulted in players accusing Kirito of withholding information as a beta tester that led to their leader's death, he decided to become a scapegoat by naming himself a Beater to distance himself from the average beta tester, ensuring that they would not become victims of unfounded hate by drawing all the ire of the players onto himself. He also tends to comfort others when they experience hardship. Kazuto is also a very emotional person and lets his emotions control him from time to time. The deaths of Sachi and the Moonlit Black Cats had haunt him to this day. Sachi's death, in particular, had a huge effect on his personality and motives, making him very distant from others for a while. Kazuto is a person with incredibly strong resolve, willing to do anything and everything in his power to accomplish something that is important to him without any hesitation.

Background: Kazuto was adopted by his aunt and uncle a year after his birth, when his biological parents died in an accident. Raised by his foster parents as a son, Kazuto was originally forced to train with his cousin in the neighborhood kendo dojo; however due to his aunt's influence as an editor for a computer systems magazine, Kazuto became more interested in computers and dropped kendo after two years. Kirito was one of the lucky 1000 players accepted into the closed-beta of Sword Art Onlune, Kirito logged hundreds of hours of playtime. He, along with the other top players, were able to reach the 10th Floor before the beta had ended. Shortly after logging in to the fully released SAO, Kirito was stopped by a stranger. Klein, a new guy, asks for his help in learning how to play. After befriending each other and training in the fields for several hours, they were forcefully teleported back to the Town of Beginnings, to receive an announcement from Kayaba Akihiko. He revealed that the lack of a logout function, which they had recently realized, was a "feature" of his new game, and that forced removal of the NerveGear headpiece from the other side would fry the person's brain using microwaves. The only means to escape was to clear the game, in other words, to successfully defeat all 100 floors of Aincrad and defeat the final boss. Kirito immediately took Klein and ran off, and after hearing that Klein would remain with his friends here, left him and headed off to the next town. One day, when Kirito was walking in the labyrinth area of a lower floor, he met Sachi and the others in the Moonlit Black Cats guild. After rescuing them from the labyrinth, he hid his higher level from them and was invited into the guild. He helped them reach higher levels, taught Sachi how to fight and, had fun with them. One day, Sachi ran away from the group and Kirito used his Tracking skill to find her. He talked with her and made her forget her fear of dying, while she helped him clear his conscience of lying to the other members of the guild. One day, the group decided to hunt for treasure while their leader, Keita, was off to buy their guild base. In a Labyrinth on a higher floor, they activated a trap, causing a multitude of Dark Dwarf Miners and Granite Elementals to spawn. The members, unable to use teleport crystals due to the room being an Anti-Crystal Area, were all killed one by one, except for Kirito. He returned to their temporary headquarters in Taft to inform Keita, who committed suicide out of shock at the loss of his friends and the reveal that their newest member was a Beater.

With the approach of Christmas Eve, all of the NPCs started talking about a mysterious monster which would appear on Christmas and drop rare items if defeated, causing players to look for clues regarding its future location. However, nobody could find a good lead, as the NPCs said that it would spawn at "a certain fir tree". Originally, Kirito and Klein had not cared about the boss until they learned that it would drop a resurrection item.

When Kirito found the spawn location of the boss within the Forest of Wandering, Klein and his guild Fuurinkazan followed him there so that they could fight the boss. Moments later, the Divine Dragon Alliance (DDA), who had followed Klein and his guild, showed up. Klein told Kirito that the alliance would do anything to obtain any rare items and then told Kirito to defeat the boss while they distracted the DDA. Kirito then arrived at the correct tree, and when the bell announced midnight, the event boss, Nicholas The Renegade, spawned and was about to begin its speech, but Kirito attacked it without listening to him. After a long struggle and barely surviving, Kirito defeated the boss and obtained the Divine Stone of Returning Soul. But, to his disappointment, the item only revived players up to ten seconds after they had died. After several minutes of mourning, Kirito then gave the item to Klein and slowly walked back to his inn. He stayed up until early morning, planning to die trying to solo the floor boss once dawn broke. However, at seven o'clock, when he was about to leave, he heard a strange alarm ring in his ear and noticed an item left in his shared inventory with Sachi. Once he took out the item, a recording crystal, he heard a message left to him by Sachi before her death, urging Kirito to survive. World: Prior to official launch, Sword Art Online Closed Beta was available to 1,000 beta testers for a one month period. During that period, Sword Art Online was lauded as an incredible experience, and it received extremely positive reviews despite the actual difficulty of the game. After the Closed Beta Testing ended, the Beta Testers were given the opportunity to pre-order the game. Only 10,000 copies were printed in the first batch of the game, and online sales sold out within seconds. Hard-core gamers waited in line for days to purchase the first few hard copies from many stores. Sword Art Online infamy when the creator succeeded in trapping 10,000 people in the game, and making it so that death in-game would mean actual death for the player. Sword Art Online evolved into an innovative yet complex society of individuals with mixed feelings about the possibility of clearing the game. Psychologically, many players experienced extreme despair, grief, insanity and sadness during the course of the death game prior to the 75th floor. Of the total 3,853 deaths prior to now, over half occurred in the first month of SAO. Combined with lethal dungeon traps and bosses, Player Killing (PKing), crime, suicides, a slowly dwindling population, and increasing difficulty on the higher floors, the prospects generally looked very bleak.