Hanako Ishii had a very normal, happy, life up until she was eight-years-old. Everything in her life fell apart shortly after she turned eight. Herself and her brother were part of a car accident. They had been walking home from school when a car jumped the curb. Seven people died that day, the driver of the car included. Hanako herself got a broken arm, a large gash across her back, and a cut on her forehead. Both cuts forever scarred her, showing her survival of the crash. Her brother, however, wasn't so lucky. Her brother had protected her and in doing so got so injured that he fell into a coma. Her brother never woke up from his coma.

What happened to her brother destroyed her parents. Her dad became distant, staying away from home for long periods, throwing himself into his business. Her father was a very wealthy man and all of the extra time put in at the company made it flourish. Her father ran a technology company and with how well it took off he was now one of the richest men in Japan. She guesses that he figured that if he could throw enough money at the problem then her brother would just wake up. Her parents refused to unplug her brother, even though the doctors told them that there was no way he would ever wake up. To put it lightly her mother became insane. Her mom was an engineer scientist and she became obsessed with uploading her brother's brain into a computer. Her mother realized that while his body would never wake up, she could still save his mind. Whatever was left of it anyway. Whenever she wasn't at work, she was at home getting drunk. Her mom was a very mean drunk. As her parents threw themselves into their respective jobs to try and save her brother, they became more and more negligent of her. Hanako learned early on how to take care of herself. She learned how to lie about the bruises and making excuses for the lack of her parents. Then the fights between her parents started. The nights grew loud with the yelling, and her parents seemed to forget about her a bit more and more each day. Within a year her parents got divorced. Her dad abandoning her with her drunk and absentee mother. She went to visit him every other weekend, but him being home was rare. He really only came home from the office to sleep. But even then, he did have a small apartment at the business he owned and most of the time he slept there. He did expect her to keep up to his expectations, however.

The years flew past and Hanako drew away from people more and more. She didn't have many if any, friends. She spent most of her time at school avoiding other people, so they wouldn't ask too many questions about her home life. She learned how to perfect her mask, showing a happy go lucky girl who was bothered by nothing. On the inside, she was slowly dying. While she absolutely hated her mother, she also didn't want to get thrown into the foster system. She had found her sanctuary in a corner of the library; she had found she could lose herself in the fiction stories. Her love of sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, and adventure stories had led her to want to experience them herself. That train of thought had led her to gaming. She loved playing games, and she was very good at playing them. Then when she was eleven years old the company her mom worked with came out with the nerve gear. Along with that invention came with the beta-test for Sword Art Online or SAO. Now, while Hanako was a big gamer she had some pretty good times with VR, but she wasn't so sure about full diving. She didn't really want to lose herself into a game completely, what if she started getting confused about which world was the real one? Her mom, however, had a different plan. Her mom had forced her to be one of the beta testers for the game. Her mother actually picked her up after school and took her to work with her. She usually just walked home herself to her empty home. She did her dives from the lab that was coming out with the game. They took tests of her vitals and monitored her while she was in her dives. She knew that they recorded everything that she did in the game so they could get rid of any glitches or anything like that. For an entire month, Hanako did her best to get as far as she could through the SAO beta. As the beta came to an end she ended up as the second-best player. A player called Kirito had been slightly better than her; she had never actually seen the player, but she had heard a lot about him.

Then on November 6th, less than a month from her twelfth birthday, SAO launched. Her mom once again forced her to participate. She actually got to do it from home this time, so that was nice. Right as she was about to start the game her mom had sat down on the edge of the bed and said something that she would never forget, "Make sure to enjoy yourself in there sweetie, there is a fun surprise today." She had said with a crazy smile on her face.

With a sigh, Hanako activated her nerve gear, "Link start." Suddenly she was in the character creation screen. Her eyes lit up slightly when she saw the option to load an old character. Deciding she didn't want to waste time she loaded up her beta game character. It didn't really matter what she looked like in-game. She really didn't plan on being here long, she had homework to do and a test to prep for. She pressed accept and seconds later she got dropped into the town of beginnings. She stretched slightly as she looked around, all she would have to do was waste a few hours before logging out.

Well if she was being honest with herself, her mom will most likely make her play more than just a few hours on the opening day. So, she might as well start leveling herself up. Being under-leveled seriously sucked and usually ended up with her dying and losing a ton of supplies. She planned on going with the same strategy in the beta, so her first stop was the weapons shop. She sold her starting weapons and bough the most expensive dagger she could afford. She liked going the assassin route, it fit her small and fast stature.

Hanako; well her character was named Hana, oh so original she knew. She didn't feel like being called a name that was too different from her own; and she figured if she did have friends, they might have called her Hana as a nickname. Hana made her way out of the town of beginnings to start killing some boars. She had been killing boars for a little over half an hour and she was already level four. She had gotten some good drops that would sell decently well too. Suddenly she heard a couple of other players, she hadn't actually run into anybody else yet.

She saw a black-haired man teaching a red-haired man the basics on how to attack. A smirk came onto her face, maybe she could help them. As the red-haired man's attack failed again, she called out, "Hey boys need some help?"

She spent the next hour spending time with Kirito and Klien. She was wondering if this Kirito was the same one from the beta test. If he was, she really wanted to have a long talk with him, he obviously must love games as much as she did. She actually had a really good time killing the starter boars with the two of them.

Then Klien tried to log-out. Hanako went into a panic when she realized the log-out button was missing from their menu screens. The last thing her mom had said filtered through her mind, "A fun surprise." Oh god did her mom know about this? Was this a planned thing? She clung onto Kirito's arm, fear rampant in her mind. All three of them were teleported to the town of beginnings and their lives in SAO started. Hanako came to the horrifying realization that yes, her mom did know about this and was equally responsible for 213 people's deaths already. She knew her mom was insane, but she didn't realize she was quite that crazy. Both Kirito and Klien had been shocked and horrified at her true age now that that truth of this game was revealed. After Kayaba had vanished, having delivered his message, Kirito had grabbed both Klien and herself and dragged them to the edge of town.

"Come with me?" Kirito had asked us.

Klien had declined, saying he had friends that were waiting for him. Kirito looked conflicted but nodded in understanding. He turned to her, "Hana?" There had been a pleading tone to his voice. He thought that her best chance of survival was with him, he just wanted to help her survive. At that moment Kirito reminded her so much of her brother, who was always so overprotective of her, that she couldn't say no.

"I'll come with you." Hana had answered.

Klien had sighed slightly before giving Kirito a look, "Keep her safe man, she's too young to be stuck in something like this."

The two boys had clasped hands and grinned at each other as Kirito promised to keep her safe. They had split up after that, Klien going to find his friends in the town of beginnings, Kirito and Hana delving into the woods to take on the slightly higher-level wolves.

A little under a month passed by and the date became December 1st. Hanako turned twelve and over 2,000 players had already lost their lives. Kirito had gifted her a simple yet pretty necklace. She had accidentally let her upcoming birthday slip a few days prior. They had just gotten to the town where the meeting to take down the first-floor boss was taking place. Both of them had made the decision that they were going to do everything they could to help beat the game. Not helping just didn't feel right to them, though Hanako's reasons were a bit more personal. She felt slightly responsible for her mother's hand in this death game. They got a room at one of the Inns in the town and had cake for supper.

A few days later the first-floor clearing meeting took place. That was the first day she met Asuna. When the leader of the meeting said to get into groups Kirito had grabbed her wrist and dragged her over to the girl in the cloak. When she had sent him a questioning look as they usually stayed to themselves, he had smiled at her, "Don't worry Hana, I ran into her yesterday. She seems pretty nice."

Kirito hadn't been wrong, Asuna was very nice. For a moment it almost seemed like their duo could become a trio. Then the leader of the clearer group, a beta tester going for the last kill bonus, died. Kirito and Hana got blamed as Kirito ended up getting the bonus, this really cool black coat. That was the day the term beater was created. Kirito and herself wore the term loud and proud so the other beta players wouldn't get ganged upon. They had to leave Asuna behind so she wouldn't be associated with them. Which kinda sucked, Asuna was really nice and super talented.

A few days later both herself and Kirito completed the quest to get the martial arts extra skill. The rest of the month passed quickly. The two of them spent that time leveling up and putting skill points into their appropriate battle technique skills. Kirito was focusing on swords (both one-handed and two-handed), strength, health, and martial arts skill. Hana was focusing on daggers, speed, strength, martial arts skill, and luck.

The next memorial moment was at the beginning of January they ran into a man wearing a cloak. They couldn't really see much of him other than his creepy smile. He had said, "It's showtime." Before walking away. Hana didn't really know why the short moment stood out to her so much, but she had a very bad feeling about that man.

The next few months passed by quickly, the two helping to clear boss floors. By March 31st up to floor 24 had been cleared and they were working on clearing the 25th floor. The clearing party planned on going later during the day when she saw the Aincrad Liberation Squad (ALS) head in towards the boss room.

That day over half of the ALS was annihilated. After that the ones that had survived disbanded, not wanting to follow the leader that had caused so many deaths. Hana had heard from Asuna, who they had run into every once in a while, and had become friends, that a new guild had been formed after they had left. It was called Knights of the Blood Oath, in memory of the fallen ALS members. Asuna herself had joined and was one of the higher-ranking members.

A few days later the duo saved a group from a monster that was slightly higher than the group. The group had thanked them by buying them dinner. They had then been invited to join the Moonlit Black Cats when they learned they weren't part of a guild yet. They almost didn't join, but in the end, they did decide to accept their offer. They needed a break from the darker side of this game for a while, especially after the ALS fiasco. So as of April 8th, 2023, the two joined their first guild. Hanako could honestly say it was fun. The members messed around with each other; it was obvious they were old friends. They decided to hide their true level, and that they were beaters from them. Just for a little while, they wanted to be just normal players for a while. For two months life was good. Hana became really good friends with Sachi, who was really insecure about herself. Hana was trying to help her be stronger, just like Sachi wanted.

Then their arrogance got the best of them. The leader of their guild had announced they had finally saved up enough money to get themselves a house. So, while the leader went to go buy the house the rest of them went out to do a bit of resource gathering. They had never stood a chance. There had been a trap room, made to level the enemies to the highest leveled member that entered. Which had been Kirito and Hana, they were a good twenty levels above their fellow guildmates. The enemies slaughtered their friends. Kirito and Hana tried very hard to kill the monsters before they could kill everyone. The boys were lost causes the surprise attack, but Sachi was still fighting her best. They were too slow. The two of them killed everything in the room in a blind rage, though it was a hard fight. When they had to tell the leader about what happened, something changed in Hanako. After he found out the news he jumped right off the edge of Aincrad, killing himself. From that day Hanako swore that she would never, ever join a guild again. She was a curse to everyone around her; her brother, her parents, Kirito and all of their bad luck, the Moonlit Black Cats. No, she would not pull anyone into her cursed life, not again. Kirito was the only exception as he had been with her since the beginning, he was extremely strong, and he would never let her go off on her own. They were basically brother and sister at this point, they honestly thought of each other as family. They had been through too much together not to become close. Hanako hadn't told Kirito himself, but Kirito was her everything. If it ever came down to his or her life on the battlefield she would not hesitate to give her life for his. Kirito was strong, this bright light in this death game. She had a feeling that he was destined for something great. They had gotten past the whole not talking about your real-life thing and she learned a lot about Kirito's life. He had a loving family waiting for him, even if it wasn't his birth family. He had friends and a good future waiting for him. What did she have to go back to? If her mother had kept her involvement a secret then she would be sent right back to her abusive drunk mother that had willingly sent 10,000 people into a death game. If her mom was miraculously arrested then she would be sent to her absentee dad who forgot she existed unless it benefited him. She had no friends and no plans what-so-ever for the future. Kirito was so important to her. He acknowledged that she existed, he helped her all the time, he was super nice and she honestly thought of him as her older brother.

After the death of the Moonlit Black Cats, they dropped off the grid for a bit. They did some major leveling and improving their skills. The only time people saw them was during the clearing of the boss floors. They felt an obligation to help win this game. The sooner they cleared the entire game the sooner everyone could go home. Sometime in November Argo sold them some information that gave them a tiny bit of hope. There was a quest that appeared on Christmas day. It was a solo quest and the reward drop was a revival potion. It was a long shot, but maybe they could revive Sachi. Hanako turned 13on the 1st of December and she used that day as a countdown to the revival quest. On Christmas Eve the 49th floor was cleared and as it rolled over to Christmas day Kirito took on the 'Nicholas the Renegade' quest. Hanako waited in the hotel room they got, pacing back and forth in worry and anticipation. This quest boss was very high leveled and she was worried about Kirito. She knew he was strong, they were close to level 60, but he sometimes forgot about his own safety when he was focused on the fight. Not that she could say she was much better. Kirito had told her many times that she had a poor self-view and that she needed to realize that her life was just as important as everyone else's.

The moment Kirito walked through the door she knew that they wouldn't be able to revive Sachi. The look on his face said it all. "Kirito?" she had asked quietly.

He shook his head, "It had to be given within three seconds of death. I gave it to Klien in case one of his guildmates doesn't make it."

Hanako nodded sadly, "Good choice. Three seconds? How does that help anyone? You would need to be right next to the person with the potion already in your hand to be able to save anyone with that."

"Yeah, it's not very helpful in the long run. I'm sorry Hana. I'm sorry we couldn't save Sachi." Kirito said around a bubble in his throat. He wouldn't cry, he just wouldn't in front of Hana. He had to be strong for his little sister.

They spent the rest of the night in sad silence, finally giving up hope of saving their friends. They had traded presents and Hanako had sent Asuna a present via message gifting. She had gotten a gift from Asuna the same way. At midnight a present popped up in Kirito's equipment. Both of their breaths caught, it was from Sachi. They looked at each other before Kirito opened it. It was a message crystal. Hana saved a copy of it into her bag before he played it. Message crystals didn't last after the message was played and Hana wanted a bit of Sachi with her. Kirito activated the crystal and they held their breaths as the message started.