Sword Art Online Alternative – Gun Gale Online - Volume 12 - Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

Ten-Minute Massacre Again

“Viiiviiii! You biiiiitch! Time to answer for yeeeears of your criiiiiimes!”

“Oh no,” Llenn lamented, looking to the sky.

“This is a grudge maaaatch! A hundred years in the makiiiiing! I’m going to use my plasma grenades to blow that entire house off this plaaaaaaneeeeeeeeet!”

It was Fukaziroh’s voice.

It was her, after all.

Yes, I knew it was. I knew it was.

It was difficult to understand how Fukaziroh’s tiny body could project such a booming voice.

“Are there any baaaad little Vivis in the hooouuuse?!”

What are you, a demon?! Llenn snapped to herself. The sudden burst of mental activity got her brain working again.

What do I do? How do I resolve this situation peacefully?

The answer was simple.

I can’t.

With Fukaziroh here, there was no way the five of them could enjoy SJ5 together, giggling and laughing all the while. It was hopeless.

So into her comm she said, “Everyone, out of the building! Run!” to all of her current teammates: Vivi, Boss, and David.

Her command was nearly drowned out by the sound of grenades exploding against the house. The successive blasts rocked the walls of the building.

These were normal grenade rounds. They scattered shrapnel meant for soft targets in a radius of about ten feet. A tough brick building like this one wouldn’t fall from a couple of these hits.

But plasma grenades were a different story.

“Fuka’s got a dozen plasma grenades! Once she runs out of regular grenades, she’ll reload and fire all she’s got!”

They would create a blue plasma blast with a radius of ten yards—a diameter of twenty—that would destroy everything within its range. If she fired twelve of them all in a row, the upstairs of the house would be gone, along with the first floor. Only the foundation would be left.

Wherever Fukaziroh the big bad wolf was, she probably had a hazy view of the house through the mist. And with her Bombardment skill, she could easily blast a hazy target at this range.

The explosions continued to boom away. It was evidence that Fukaziroh was more than happy to empty out the six-shot capacity of her two MGL-140 launchers.

An MGL-140 twisted to move the revolving magazine, and it would take the same amount of time and trouble to expel an unused grenade as it would to expel the empty cartridge after shooting it. In fact, it would take longer to shoot them all out, but she was going ahead with it anyway. That was how Fukaziroh lived her life: manly. Er, womanly.

But because of that, it gave the people inside precious extra seconds to save their own skin.

“Exit to the west!” David shouted, seeing and understanding all.

He’d probably jumped out the window in his room. The better a player, the less hesitation they had when their lives were on the line. Instant, snap judgment.

“Llenn, what do we do?!” hissed Boss into Llenn’s left ear. It was a simple question, but Llenn understood the implication.

Fukaziroh was Llenn’s teammate, and Boss was assisting LPFM. Ordinarily, there was something only Boss could do in this situation.

She would have to kill Vivi right away and escape to the east with Llenn so they could reunite with Fukaziroh. That would be the most favorable outcome.

In other words, Boss was asking, Should I just kill Vivi? She’s tough, and ZEMAL is bad news with her leading them. Considering what’s likely to happen in SJ5, this might be the best possible outcome. It would be reeeal easy right now…

Understanding her meaning perfectly, Llenn promptly replied, “Both of you, get away from the building right now! I’ll go out the west side, too!”

“Got it! C’mon, Vivi!” Boss said, rushing the other woman.

Llenn exited her room into the hallway. She was moving west when she heard loud footsteps behind her, most likely from Boss and Vivi, but she couldn’t turn around to check. If Vivi shot her in the back, she wouldn’t see it coming.

But if she did, Boss would shoot Vivi next. Vivi wouldn’t go down without a fight, though. She’d put up resistance, and the whole thing would turn into a chaotic melee.

If you shoot me, so be it, but please don’t shoot if you can help it! Llenn prayed.

Ultimately, there was no shot. Llenn hurried into the west-facing room where Vivi had initially been, hurtling through the haggard bedroom.

She bounded over a crushed, rotten bed, leaping toward the broken window, and threw herself through it into open air.

GGO players had no qualms about jumping out of second-story windows, a drop of ten to twelve feet. She landed and did a forward roll, clutching her P90 to her chest. The fall did almost no damage. Everyone in the game did this all the time, to the point that you had to be careful you didn’t get carried away and do it in real life.

Right as Llenn recovered from her roll, she saw that Vivi was still airborne. Boss was in the window behind her.

Please make it in time! Llenn prayed, and took off running, hoping to get as far from the house as she could.

She looked over her shoulder once she was about ten yards away and saw that Fukaziroh’s rage was indeed being manifested upon the building.

“Oh no…”

Large blue spheres were blooming over the house—a bombardment of plasma grenades.

It was a Fukaziroh-like assault, very Fukaziroh-like, indeed. She unleashed a full twelve-spot of plasmas, her maximum firepower, with no thought for the lasting consequences.

The eerie, bulging blue shapes swallowed the large brick house, literally pulverizing it. Fukaziroh’s aim was unerring. She was an incredible shot with those launchers, but this was no time to admire skills.

The amalgamation of bricks could not withstand the force of sci-fi plasma explosives. The bricks were crushed into dust, practically returning to the dirt.

Vivi and Boss sprinted as hard as their legs would allow in the foreground of this vision of destruction. The ever-composed Vivi was actually grimacing with desperation, and Boss’s eyes were so wide they were white all around the edges, making her look like a slapstick comic book character.

Running for their lives paid off, because those lives were still intact, but it didn’t protect them from the explosions’ blast wind.

“Aaah!”

“Dwaa!”

They were buffeted from behind and hurtled straight toward Llenn.

“Eep!”

She had no time to dodge, so Vivi’s and Boss’s considerably larger bodies slammed into Llenn’s.

“Hya!”

“Gwufh!”

“Eeeek!”

All three of them tumbled spectacularly through the dark soil in the yard of the mansion.

“Yeeesh…”

Llenn opened her eyes, having been turned into a human pancake. The only thing she saw was Boss’s back, broad and flat like an aircraft carrier. Boss had landed facedown and was smooshing Llenn’s lower half.

I sure am getting knocked over a lot today, Llenn thought, checking her health on the readout in the corner. She’d lost a small amount of HP.

She was now under 70 percent, so she decided to be smart and just go ahead and take the emergency med kit.

Llenn was just lifting her head with her plan in mind when she saw a round gun barrel pointed right between her eyes.

It was the muzzle of an RPD light machine gun, a mere six feet from her face.

“Well, this is a problem,” said the beautiful owner of the gun. Contrary to what her comment suggested, she looked utterly cool and in control. There wasn’t the tiniest hint of fury over the slaughter of one of her precious teammates.

She was very, very calm.

Her eyes were not crinkled with a smile. There was only the faintest hint of amusement on her lips.

Ooh, how lovely. This is what they call an “archaic smile,” right? It looks even better on a beautiful woman.

Which is what makes it so terrifying!! Llenn shrieked internally but did not say aloud.

Instead, she said the line she’d been prepared to say: “‘If our teammates located elsewhere are shooting one another without knowing about us, there’s no blaming each other’…right?”

They were Vivi’s own words from not that long ago. A perfect quotation, word for word, in fact. The kind of thing you wouldn’t think you’d need to memorize.

But Llenn thought, If I don’t say this now, I might be dead.

“…All right. No blaming each other. Besides, I don’t exactly want all of us to wind up dead here,” Vivi said, raising her gun.

“Hmm?” Llenn replied. Something caught her attention.

“Agreed,” said Boss, slowly lifting herself from Llenn’s lap and revealing the object that was tucked into her left hand. Then it all made sense.

At some point, Boss had pulled out the grand grenade. If Vivi had decided to fire her machine gun to get rid of Llenn and her likely future opponent of Boss, all three of them would have died together.

Once again, Boss had saved her life.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Llenn screamed internally. Another part of her mind, however, was focused on something that didn’t really matter at the moment.

If that had happened, who would have gotten the last attack on me and earned the one million ye—I mean, hundred million credits? Would it have been Vivi? Or Boss?

And also, if I off myself in SJ5, do I get the hundred million credits? Not that I would…

She managed to shove all these thoughts out of her mind and give back to Vivi what she’d been meaning to return. She grabbed the LED light on the hood of her poncho and tossed it underhand to Vivi.

She caught it and put it into her chest rig. “The next time we meet, we’ll be enemies.”

“Got it.”

Vivi motioned with the end of her shortened RPD. As Llenn got to her feet, she reached out with the silenced barrel of her P90 and tapped it against the other woman’s gun.

Clink.

The metal made a nice, ringing sound.

Once Vivi’s figure had vanished into the mist for good, Llenn sucked in a huge breath.

Hfffffffffff.

And then let it out.

“Fukaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

“Eep!” Boss, who was taken by surprise at close range, winced.

It was a choice of action that could easily be overheard by enemies, but that was far from Llenn’s chief concern at this moment. If she didn’t do it, they could be bombarded at any moment by a fresh rain of reloaded grenades—twelve of them.

Fukaziroh’s explosions had reduced the house to its foundation and momentarily blown the mist clear, but the haze had since rushed back to fill the space.

Llenn’s range of vision was maybe a hundred feet at best. She had no idea where Fukaziroh was, of course. She was presumably on the other side of the foundation and not that far away.

So the only option was to shout.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?” came Fukaziroh’s skeptical voice out of the gloom, like a foghorn. “Is that youuuuuuu, Lleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenn?”

“Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

“You’re not a ghooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooost?”

“I almost was because of youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!”

“Oh maaaan! I could have been riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiich!”

“Screw youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!”

Llenn rushed toward the voice, holding her P90 at the ready. Boss followed behind her.

“I’ll go right.”

“I’ll take the left, then,” Boss said.

Thanks to all the stupid noise they were making, any nearby enemies would surely be aware that Llenn was in the area. Their eyes were going to be replaced by yen symbols.

Keeping an eye on the sides between the two of them, prepared for the possibility that someone could burst out of the mist at any moment, Llenn and Boss crossed the home they had briefly occupied, which was now just a flat foundation.

“If I can use it, I’m taking that,” Boss said.

On the right side of their path, Shinohara lay dead with a tag rotating over his head. At his side was a 7.62 mm machine gun, the M60E3.

The reloading system on his back had been destroyed by the grenade hit, but he seemed to still have plenty of ammunition belts. The gun was intact, too.

If they picked it up, it would be a very powerful weapon gained for free, but there was no point if you couldn’t use it.

“Fukaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! I’m heading your way, so don’t shoot!”

“I guess we’ll have to seeeeeeeeee about thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!”

Llenn ran toward the voice, which seemed to be to the east through the fog. Around the area were several leveled homes due to the shock wave of the self-detonation perpetrated by that member of Team DOOM. It left them as nothing but foundations and rubble.

There was no cover to hide behind or use to shield oneself from shots. It might as well have been a flat field.

They had traveled maybe a hundred feet through the mist.

“Hey, Llenn! I see her! This way! Hurry up!”

Llenn followed the voice and found her at last. The figure up ahead could only be Fukaziroh.

In the foundation of one of the houses blown away by the blast, there was a little basement. It had a cramped, steep set of stairs that could barely fit one person, leading down to a little underground space about the size of a single tatami mat.

It was so tiny, it made you wonder what the design intended for people to do in such a space. The developers were likely just too lazy to go to the trouble of designing an entire basement, data-wise.

In the midst of that space huddled tiny Fukaziroh. She popped her head out of the rectangular opening, which was exposed to the outside without any house around it anymore.

There was a smirk on her lips.

“Yo, Llenn! And, oh…I thought there was a female gorilla hanging around behind you, but it’s just Boss. Glad to see you both alive and kicking.”

“Same to you,” replied Boss with a smile.

Llenn boldly glared at Fukaziroh. “Yes, we’re alive! But I thought I was going to die!”

“Yeah, you said that already. Look, I’m sorry. I never would have dreamed that you’d be working with Vivi like that.”

“We just ran into each other at random and temporarily teamed up! And thanks to you, that’s all been ruined!”

“Listen, I know I’ve been tellin’ you this for over ten years, but…if anyone’s with Vivi in a game, the flat truth is that I’m gonna attack them, even if it turns out to be you…”

“You’ve never said that! And VR games haven’t even been around that long!”

“Hey, don’t sweat the details! So I assume that Vivi perished in my attack of righteous fury?”

“No, she’s alive. Like us, she jumped out of the house and ran before the grenades hit. It was a really close call.”

“Ah. But then you finished her off after that, right? Cut off her head, maybe?”

“I let her go.”

“What the hell were you thinkiiiiiing?!”

“That’s what I’m saaaaaaayiiiiing! If you hadn’t shot Shinohara, you could have spent all the remaining time until two o’clock in a safe house with a team of crack snipers!”

“I’d rather die than be on a team with herrrr! I teamed up with Shinohara so I could shoot Vivi in the back! I had him all fooled because of the Shinohara connection! Now I’ve wasted my plasma grenades!”

“No, we’ll get them back. Ugh, we can talk about this later!” Llenn snapped, quickly patching her comm to connect to Fukaziroh again. The connection to Vivi and David had been lost when fate broke them apart.

“Can you hear me?!”

“Sure can!”

Now Llenn, Fukaziroh, and Boss were on the same channel.

“There’s no time to sit around and relax. The scan’s already started,” said Boss, tense and alert.

Llenn glanced quickly at her watch. “Ugh!”

It was five seconds past 1:40.

She had totally missed the vibration she’d set for thirty seconds before the scan started. She hadn’t had the frame of mind for it. Because of Fukaziroh!

Watching the scanner, Boss announced calmly, “We’ve got Fuka’s map added now. The north side is much more filled in. What is this, train tracks? That aside, there are three leader marks near us… I don’t know any of them. I assume there are other enemies around, too, of course.”

And then, more bitterly, she said, “They’ll all be rushing toward us in moments, I’m sure.”

Fukaziroh added gleefully, “Because of Llenn’s bounty!”

It’s your fault! Llenn kept herself from snapping. Half of it was Llenn’s fault. That much was certain.

“There are going to be enemies in any direction we run, and they’ll come from all directions, too. Of course, none of them are likely to be our friends, so we can just kill everyone we see without a second thought…”

Boss was right. None of the idiots who were going to charge Llenn in this situation were members of LPFM or SHINC. Her teammates knew it would lead to a battle, and they’d get mistaken for an enemy and shot at.

Although perhaps some of her teammates would shoot the people going after Llenn, from behind. Pitohui. Shirley. Oh man, they would so do that.

“That aside,” Boss asked, “What do we do?”

It was a very disadvantageous situation.

They had only three people.

And one of them had an extremely enticing bounty on her head. They were surrounded by enemies. Attempting to flee in any direction would mean certain conflict.

While the fog was thick, the terrain was flat, with almost nothing to hide behind. They could try to squeeze into the tiny basement space, but the moment they were found, they’d be helpless.

Llenn alone might have been able to pick a direction and rush past any enclosing circle. But it would be much, much less likely for all three of them to get through unharmed.

Llenn needed to make a decision.

Llenn made a decision.

It took zero point two seconds. They had no time to waste.

She waved her left hand to remove the poncho she’d been wearing this whole time, then shouted, “Fuka! We managed to meet up again… It’s time to do the switchy thing with the alternate gear! It’ll work in this terrain!”

“Ha-haaa! I thought you’d say that, pardner. Now’s the time for our new killer technique. Let’s show off the benefits of our after-school detention training!”

“What?” asked Boss, alarmed.

Their gear-switch was probably supposed to be the ace up their sleeve. And they were doing it already? What was this “new killer technique”?

She had no idea what it could be. But it was surely going to turn out to be the one means Llenn had found that would help them survive this desperate situation.

Llenn looked up into Boss’s eyes and said, “I want you to stay hidden in this basement for a while! If you’re too near…the consequences could be extremely dangerous! We’re going to go buck wild out there, so I don’t think they’ll find you down here!”

“All right… I want to ask what it is you’re going to do…”

“No time!”

“Didn’t think so.”

“If we survive as planned, I’ll tell you what it is!”

“Looking forward to it. Good luck.”

Boss swiftly turned on her heel and took Fukaziroh’s place in the basement shelter. The stairs were there, so once she was underneath, they could put some boards over the space to hide it.

If anyone tried to get in, she could shoot them with the Vintorez, so she’d be safe for a while. A grenade tossed down there might be trouble, but she could worry about that if it happened.

“I’m sure the enemies will be coming after us, but if anything happens, tell us,” said Llenn, now dressed in her most characteristic pink battle fatigues.

Anything could mean a super-dangerous foe or a friend in disguise—literally anything. Boss got the gist of it.

“All right. But I’ll stay quiet because I don’t want to mess you up.”

“Thanks!”

Their comms were still linked, so Llenn and Boss finished their conversation, and Boss retreated fully under the basement opening. A gorilla silently vanished from the misty lot.

The teeny-tiny combo of Llenn and Fukaziroh were left alone in the haze, surrounded by a devastated suburban street.

Below her helmet, Fukaziroh’s mouth curled into a leering smile.

“Hey, pardner… Do you remember the catchphrase we agonized over all night…when we brainstormed it together?”

Below her pink cap, Llenn’s mouth smirked as she chuckled.

“I sure do remember…that we didn’t come up with anything!”

Llenn and Fukaziroh waved their left hands in unison to call up their game windows.

There was now a GEAR-SWITCH button that hadn’t been there before, which they hit in perfect sync.

“The time is 1:40! It seems there’s some action on the field!”

A man dressed in brown camo was hissing under his breath. He carried an SDF-issue Type 89 5.56 mm rifle, with the folding stock.

Yes, it was him. Thane, the live commentator.

In the midst of wrecked houses and milky-white fog, he stood, surrounded by several other players.

Five yards to the right of Thane was a man in green camo with an AK-74, and beyond him was a man in reddish-brown camo, faded by the fog. About ten yards behind them was a man in the US Marines camo pattern holding an M40A3 sniper rifle.

About five yards to the left of Thane was another player holding a Croatian VHS-2 assault rifle.

Yes, he too had joined forces with players from other teams, and they were fanned out in a formation that gave them just enough visibility of one another that they could proceed slowly but securely.

“The pink shrimp might be around. We’re going right for the spot we saw the LPFM dot!”

They were on their way toward Llenn’s position.

A bit earlier, during the forty minutes between the beginning of the game and the present moment, Thane executed his own particular survivalist methods upon starting in a forest of huge, vine-laden trees growing in black dirt.

Meaning that just after learning of the special rules and losing contact with his team at 1:10, he loudly called out with his name and location, flickering the flashlight he’d brought and generally drawing as much attention as he possibly could in a bizarre mix of Japanese and English vocabulary.

“Hey! Everybody! Listen, please! I beg of you, listen! I’m talking to the alliance of gamers who say fuck you to these shitty rules! Would you like to join me? Say yes! I’m Thane! Thane, the commentator! Anybody want to be in one of my videos? Got any lonely rabbits out there running away and trying not to die? C’mon, join me!”

In a sense it was a gamble—a desperate play that could have gotten him immediately shot and killed…but this time, it just so happened to work.

Someone saw the white light, recognized that it was not a muzzle flash, and decided to call out from a distance, “Oh, it’s you! Fine, I guess I’ll team up with you. C’mon, let’s do this.”

“Welcome, sir!”

A team of one became two.

And then…

“I’ll do it! These rules suck, man! Let me join up!”

“Yahoo! Anyone else out there? Anyone wanna be our friend?!”

“Me, me! Don’t shoot me, okay?”

“Welcome, welcome, one and all!”

He repeated his pitch over and over, and by 1:23, he had succeeded in gathering a battalion of nineteen men, including himself. Along the way, no one took advantage of their increased visibility to attack. Thane’s wild idea had been a wild success.

The teams represented in this forest gathering were impressively varied.

Not a single pair of players was from the same original team. Considering that each group of six was scattered as widely as possible across the map, that was to be expected.

In terms of recognizable players, the one in the reddish-brown camo with the AC-556F rifle was from the team that tried to reach out and form a patchwork alliance in SJ2. He’d been in the game since SJ1. That was a team that had a long and boring Squad Jam history.

There was also a member of the Ray Gun Boys (RGB), who insisted on using optical guns despite the disadvantages. They had been given a good chance to show off in SJ4, though, and they had made it a memorable one.

According to him, the teams that Fire had recruited for SJ4 hadn’t shown up in this game at all.

Of course, Thane and the others had no idea those teams had merely been mercenaries whom Fire Nishiyamada hired for the sake of personal romance. Whatever those players thought of their job once they learned the actual result of it was unknown. Maybe they did their best to console him?

The man with the G3A3ZF automatic sniper rifle and the West German army uniform was one of the members of NSS, the historical cosplay group. There was also a member of T-S, the sci-fi-suited team and one-time champions. He stood out, both in style and in height.

There was a player dressed in a light outdoorsy style, as though he were about to take a nice day hike. His gun was an M2 Carbine, a pretty old-fashioned light rifle used by the Americans during World War II.

The others were either impressed or annoyed that he had survived the preliminary round, but they understood when he explained that his teammates were all heavy firepower types and he just took it easy. His GGO playstyle was to keep it light and nimble. He was just enjoying a little walk.

In addition, there were other folks who had never spoken to one another but had been in plenty of death matches.

“Oh yeah, that was me who killed you that one time.”

“It was a nice kill. Good job.”

They sounded like old classmates at a reunion. The men in the mist were having a grand old time, despite uniformly being enemies. It was one of the strange bits of camaraderie that Squad Jam fostered. It’d probably be fun to do an IRL meetup.

Of course, none of the nineteen were from LPFM, SHINC, MMTM, or ZEMAL. And they wouldn’t be.

“There’s no way those guys will pop up. I’m guessin’ they’re all keeping their heads down somewhere,” said someone, to firm and unanimous agreement.

“The first target for us should be LPFM, who are just to the west of us,” said the man in reddish-brown camo, who seemed to enjoy calling the shots.

“But the pink demon isn’t in this Squad Jam, bro. Her mysterious absence is a major blow, whether it’s out of fear or something else. This is a hard, cold place of strife, and that’s the brutal truth of life,” Thane replied.

One man ignored him and said, “About that… I think it’s a trap that M and Pitohui set up. Either she was already there ahead of time or jumped into the pub at exactly 12:50 so no one saw her.”

“Ahhhhhh. But the question is, why? Second to last letter of the alphabet, Y.”

“Because it’s a plot to confuse us and make us think the pink demon isn’t here. They’d do something like that, wouldn’t they?”

Yes, they would. They absolutely would.

All in attendance agreed on that point.

And yet…

Oh, they figured it out.

Not a single one of them could have guessed that Pitohui herself was in the woods nearby, eavesdropping on their conversation. She had them roughly in her sights at present.

Pitohui had started in this forest and chosen to stay hidden for a while. But when she learned there was a group making lots of noise to pull more players in, she couldn’t sit still anymore and decided to follow their trail.

She was dressed in a camo poncho, lying flat on the damp earth and listening intently to their chat. If she wanted to, she could use the KTR-09 rifle in her hands to fire until its seventy-five-round drum magazine was empty and take out at least half of them. But she didn’t.

She held it in.

They were going to make things fun for Llenn, after all.

“All right, so we’re in agreement on heading west to vanquish LPFM! Yes? Agreed? No objections, gentlemen?” Thane asked. There was no rebuttal. “Good! Then let’s go get that hundred million! Rejoice, regroup, and rejoin our fates! We set our sights on the pink devil! We fight back the punk devils! We spit fire with our assault rifles! And we’ll overcome all the trifles!”

His overexcited rap concluded at 1:27:34.

Which was the exact same moment that Team DOOM set off its major blast.

Despite the explosion occurring very far away, the light reached them in the forest, and over ten seconds later, the blast wind as well. What had been an utterly still world was instantly punched through by air pressure, shaking and rocking the trees.

Several players were truly shocked by the blast, which was unlike anything they’d experienced before in GGO. They thought their AmuSpheres were going to shut down and kick them out of Squad Jam. Thankfully, that did not happen.

When the forest was calm and the blue sky was once again full of fog, Thane jabbered, “Everyone all right? What a blast! An explosion of shock! It must have been them—the suicide bombers! If I die, I’m going to come back as a ghost to haunt you!”

“So they’re here, too,” said someone else. “If they exploded there, it means none of the other five are close! And even if there’s another enemy nearby, they can’t possibly kill all of us at once! That’s good news for us!”

He and Thane and the other seventeen headed for the residential neighborhood.

Have a good trip! Beat Llenn while you’re there! Pitohui thought. She stayed in the forest.

And then it was 1:40.

“The pink shrimp might be there. Let’s make for the signal from LPFM on the map!”

During the fourth scan, the allied team learned that LPFM was close by, and they executed their devious plan.

“It’s Operation Surround Her as a Group!”

As they left the woods, they fanned out as wide as they could in a plot to keep Llenn contained. More specifically, they spread out just far enough to where they could still see another member on the right and left, front and rear, and they slowly but carefully closed in.

They gave themselves numbers from one to nineteen, starting from the north end of the fan. It was easier to call out numbers than one another’s names when they were all connected over comms. They weren’t going to memorize that many names in such a short time anyway.

One through six were on the right side of the advancing group, seven through thirteen were in the middle, and fourteen through nineteen were the left wing.

If someone got shot, he would either call out his number before he died or one of his teammates would do it. In the mist, you had to be able to see a foe to shoot them, so if one of their number went down, it would mean an enemy was nearby, guaranteed, and then the players on the sides or rear would open fire in return.

The idea was that blanket fire in a space where you couldn’t see was guaranteed to do damage to the enemy. It was the most secure and effective plan for a group that was certain to have a numerical advantage.

The players with the best shooting ability were placed on the right and left edges of the formation. They were folks with machine guns or high-output assault rifles.

Thane kept his voice down as they walked. “The tension in the mist here is absolutely palpable. Nineteen brave heroes are making their way forward to vanquish a pink demon who may or may not be there. It’s very much like the domed jungle in SJ2, only this time we have our comms hooked up! They were unable to achieve secure communication back then, which led to a very tragic outcome. Speaking of which, when did it become possible to tune your comms with the enemy? I suppose that’s not important right now.”

Thane was tenth of the group. He had his Type 89 rifle’s safety-slash-selector switch set to “auto” and held at his waist, so he was prepared to fire at a moment’s notice.

“So will the pink demon worth a hundred million credits show her face…? If so, when…where…and how many?”

“Wait…there’s more than one Llenn?”

“Does that mean double the bounty?”

“I wish there were ten of her, then.”

Everyone else could hear his commentary through the comm, of course, so his new companions had plenty of replies for him.

“Thanks for the comments, folks. Remember to hit LIKE and SUBSCRIBE.”

“C’mon, don’t make us laugh. We gotta stay quiet.”

“Jawohl!”

“Why are you speaking German?”

“Because I don’t know how to say, ‘Yes, sir,’ in Russian!”

“Makes sense.”

Thane’s group continued their advance.

Slowly and quietly.

They’d already moved past the forest where they started, into the emptied parts of the neighborhood that the blast had flattened. There wasn’t much to see, aside from cracked asphalt, plain dirt, and flat home foundations.

Some of the group had started here, so they had their own map data and eyewitness memory to go by. They said there had been multiple houses here earlier.

And a single blast did this much damage? How much explosive powder did they bring in here? DOOM is crazy.

“Should be right around here…” Thane heard someone murmur. This was the place where the LPFM dot had been just one minute ago, at 1:40.

“Everyone, stop for a moment. Do you see anything? Hear anything? They might be hiding under rubble, totally still. If you see anything strange, speak up quietly,” said the man in reddish-brown camo, followed by several seconds of silence.

Thane peered for all he was worth. He kept his ears finely tuned.

But nothing was amiss.

The environment was littered with foundations, blasted lumber, window frames, shards of brick, scrap metal that had once belonged to a car, and something that looked like a metal box.

“Hmm? What do you suppose that is?” Thane said. Then he realized that no one else could see it, and explained, “About ten yards in front of me, there’s a box with four dull gray metal sides, about five feet tall, with something like a lid placed on top of it… Is that some part of a house?”

It looked just like some kind of industrial product.

The shape was like a tower or the tip of a chimney, only made out of strangely clean metal, with a bit of a taper at the top.

The player just to his left was able to see it, too. “Oh, that’s an American-style large trash can. It’s just been knocked over so that it’s upside-down. Hard to tell at first.”

“Ah, I see. Yes, it does look like a trash can now. And it doesn’t seem to be moving,” Thane reported.

The man in reddish-brown camo said, “Then we’ll move forward slowly. If anything moves, open fire and tell the group. We’re getting our ammo back anyway. Let’s use it up.”

Got it, they thought. Nineteen players resumed their forward progress.

They were as slow and methodical as if they were mowing the lawn. They would move forward, stop, listen for sounds, take a look, then move again. The view within the mist did not change much.

It was extremely nerve-racking, knowing that bullets or pink demons might come rushing through the milky curtain at any moment.

But their numerical superiority and the allure of a hundred million credits gave them courage and kept them going.

If Llenn was here, she might possibly be working with another teammate, but the chances of her teaming up with multiple other groups like he was doing was low, Thane decided. Most other people would rather have the hundred million credits anyway.

Thane proceeded another ten yards, then observed his surroundings again.

The object he’d taken for a trash can earlier was now at close range, and he could see the stenciled paint on the side. It read COMBUSTIBLES but was flipped upside down and nearly faded out.

It was a long English vocabulary word that most Japanese people did not know, but the meaning was simple: trash you could burn.

So it is a stupid trash can in the end! Got me worried for nothing, my metal friend! Thane rhymed in his head. He was just walking past the trash can when he died.

“Huh? No way! Why?! How?!”

It was only when he appeared in the black space before the start of the game, the waiting area, that Thane understood that he had died and been bounced out of SJ5.

“Hang on a second! Seriously, why? Por qué? Pourquoi?”

He just didn’t understand.

Thane had absolutely no idea how he had been determined dead.

Normally if you got shot in GGO, your body registered an impact vibration, even if it was an insta-kill shot, which didn’t leave you with the opportunity to twitch a finger.

If you got shot in the middle of the forehead with a rifle round, you’d feel a virtual sensation like someone flicking you hard with a finger. The pain was very temporary, and it wouldn’t vibrate your brain, but you would notice it.

The same was true of getting stabbed or blown up. All physical sensations were re-created virtually and sent to the brain.

But in this case, Thane felt absolutely nothing. There was no bodily sensation.

Though he wouldn’t exactly consider it bragging, Thane was something of an expert on dying in GGO. He would know what it felt like to be OHKO’d, because it had happened to him so many times.

Yet this time, Thane didn’t even have the chance to feel any virtual pain. He died as abruptly as if he were a TV channel that had just been changed, and he’d been whisked off the SJ5 map just as quickly.

How could he have died to cause this phenomenon?

“I’m dead, y’all! I got sent back to the waiting room! But how did I die? Why did I die? What in the world is this strange sensation…? Is it…love? No, no, it’s not. Love is much more floaty, like a throbbing in your chest…”

His recording was still ongoing, so Thane didn’t miss a beat in continuing the running commentary.

Then he came to a realization: It would be easy to find out how he died. Thane waved his arm to call up his player window, pressed buttons here and there, and then projected the official commentated SJ5 video onto the wall of the waiting area.

Two large screens filled the space.

On the left was the live stream of the event as it was unfolding. On the right was a replay of his death. In the bottom right corner of each video was a label that said either LIVE or REPLAY.

Almost immediately, Thane saw, by complete coincidence, the events on each screen matched each other. In other words, what was happening live was perfectly in sync with the replay.

“Ohhh…”

From the seam of the “trash can,” a pale beam of light thrust outward about three feet—the sci-fi lightsaber of GGO, the sharp edge of a photon sword…

On the left screen was one of his companions, and on the right screen was himself. Both players walked right into the path of the blade and got their heads cut off.

The metal plate on the bottom of the upturned trash can pushed upward, revealing a pink object with the plate on its head that popped up and swung a photon sword with tremendous speed.

The beheading went from the back of the head through the eyes.

That would immediately cause the brain to stop functioning, leaving it with no time to even simulate any virtual pain.

And it explained the instantaneous warp-like death. It made sense. It made way too much sense.

A beat or two after he saw the video, Thane said, “Oh! Eureka!”

The pink shape, of course, was the pink demon: Llenn.

“Everybody, run! She’s inside that trash can! Er, it’s not a trash can—it’s just a thing! She’s hiding there! Look out! Dangerrrr!” he screamed.

But of course, no one still in the game could hear him.

“That’s three!” Fukaziroh shouted.

“Yesss!” Llenn added, riding on her shoulders.

Llenn and Fukaziroh were inside the object that Thane and his companions believed was a trash can.

It was four metal plates with a fifth one as a lid, and with both of them inside, they were packed about as tight as could be. Of course, it was not a trash can. If they were to give it a name…

“Let’s go, Pretty Miyu!”

“Is that the name? It’s too long! Let’s just call it the PM!”

“Ew, like the afternoon?!”

It was the PM.

The inner workings of the PM were actually quite simple. You could easily make it yourself with a bit of money, so it would be worth trying the next time you’re in GGO.

First get some sturdy but lightweight pipes. In the real world, carbon would be best, but GGO has some mysterious materials that are even lighter and tougher, so use those instead.

Then carefully and skillfully bend the pipes and combine them to create the frame of a large trash can structure. Of course, since it’s such a hard material, the existence of fashioning commands in the virtual world makes it so much easier to cut and bend things, as well as connect them again.

There you go, a trash can frame. Now you’re almost done. However, in this state, it’s just a large cage. We’ll need to put on the finishing touches.

This is when you firmly attach bulletproof plates on each of the four sides of the frame. You’ll need to carefully size them so that the edges are perfectly tight with no gaps in between. In those seams, you’ll apply an adhesive used for spaceships (according to the game) and metal fixtures to attach the plates to the pipe frame.

Then you’ll want to fashion another plate to be the bottom of the trash can. But this one, you don’t stick on. Although it’s the bottom, you’re going to flip the structure over, so technically it’s a lid.

Thanks to the pipe frame running to the corners, this lid can be lifted evenly and silently, without slipping off to the side. The frame also needs four tires, little rubber ones like the kind on grocery carts, for one very specific purpose.

“Here we gooooo!”

By pushing for all she was worth, Fukaziroh could essentially move the PM at the same speed that she could run. It was something that only Fukaziroh could do because she was such a musclehea—er, because she was so physically disciplined.

The tires, too, had a special mechanism. Two pipes inside the structure ran from front to back right at Fukaziroh’s shoulder height, so when she stood up, her shoulders would lift them just a bit.

Thanks to the bends in the pipes and the lever mechanism, it would lower the PM’s tires slightly, until they made contact with the ground. When she crouched a bit, the tires would lift again and put the outer plates in contact with the ground. At that point, it would look like nothing else but a trash can placed upside down.

Since there was no gap between the bottom and the ground, no bullets could ricochet and get inside the box.

Llenn’s feet were resting on that part of the inner frame. She was just riding on it. Fukaziroh was piloting the can, while Llenn was crouching over her shoulders, like getting a piggyback ride.

“Fuka! Fifteen degrees left, five yards! No obstacles! Full speed!”

“Roger!”

Llenn was peering out through a tiny gap left under the lid so she could give instructions to Fukaziroh, who was running blind in the middle of the darkened can.

On the inside where she could see, there were numbers indicating angles, so she just pointed in a direction and then ran.

I’ll have your life!

When right next to a foe, Llenn would flip up the lid and use her photon sword, the Muramasa F9, to slice them through the torso or neck.

There went another man, sacrificed to honor the God of Gun Gale.

This was a combination strategy devised, planned, bought, and even constructed by M: their second gear loadout.

The photon sword that had been borrowed from Pitohui and the relatively light vehicle pipes were Llenn’s second gear set, carried by Fukaziroh.

Thanks to her higher carrying capacity, Fukaziroh’s second set was the heavier metal plates, carried by Llenn.

When they performed the gear-switch function, the items materialized, which they then combined and used together. Something that only they could do, a combined ultra technique forged of pure friendship.

The Pseudo-Trash-Can Two-Man Human-Powered Armored Vehicle.

Otherwise known as the PM.

At the point that they’d slaughtered the fourth person, the men in the area finally began to realize that the simple “trash can” was, in fact, their enemy.

“There’s someone in there! It went toward the right wing!” said the man in reddish-brown camo, watching the trash can move from his left side toward his right. He opened fire with his AC-556F.

There were still allies through the mist and elsewhere nearby, but there was no time to be cautious now. If someone got hit by a stray bullet, well—my bad, bro.

The bullets he shot at the trash can all spattered against its surface—cla-cla-cla-cla-clang!—and ricocheted off.

“Wha—?!”

He fired and fired some more, to which the trash can turned on its heel—well, since it didn’t have any visible feet, let’s just say it rotated 180 degrees—and began to slide over the ground toward him.

Shooting had only revealed his location to the target.

The can was unbothered by slight imperfections in the ground surface and easily made its way over rubble, approaching in silence. It was extremely unsettling.

“Wha—?!”

He kept shooting. He shot and shot, but all the bullets were easily repelled. Soon his thirty-shot magazine was empty, and the can was still coming.

“Aaaah!”

He rushed to replace the magazine, and his handiwork was fairly dexterous, but the trash can was already right upon him.

The lid popped up several centimeters. From inside the can, he heard an adorable voice call out, “Yaaah.” And then a pale blade of light emerged and ran him straight through from stomach to back.

“What the hell is that? That’s not fair! I mean, I guess it is fair technically!”

In the waiting area, Thane watched the feed. He continued to watch. He had no choice but to watch as his companions were slain one after the other.

“No, I changed my mind. It’s definitely not fair!”

One of the players in the allied team fired his Remington Model 870 shotgun as fast and often as he could.

The Remington Model 870 was renowned as a hunting shotgun, but his gun was outfitted with tactical items like an extended magazine tube, an accessory rail, and dot sights—making it a combat model.

It was a pump-action gun, meaning that after firing it, he would pull back on the pump to expel the empty cartridge, then push it forward again to load the next shot. Every use of the gun involved a lot of movement with that left hand.

He was firing slugs—single bullets sized for shotguns—that were big and heavy and as powerful as rifle rounds at close range. Each one hit the target, and each one bounced harmlessly off of it.

The trash can took each shot without wobbling and continued to slide forward over the ground, from left to right, about ten yards away from him.

Then, at that very moment, a glowing blade appeared from a crack between the lid and the body. And one of the companions he’d just met today, who was trying to flee the area, got sliced into two pieces, his upper and lower halves crumpling to the ground.

“What the hell…?”

Shock overrode any kind of momentary mourning. Then the trash can brandishing a blade came rushing toward him.

“Aaah! Stay away!”

It was too sudden to call out the number of his dead teammate, and though he tried to pack more shells into his Remington’s empty tube, it was already too late.

The trash can knew he couldn’t fire the gun he was carrying, so its lid slowly, silently rose upward, until his eyes met those of the person inside.

Within the darkness, he glimpsed a pink hat and a pair of gleaming eyes watching him closely.

He stopped reloading, knowing it was pointless, and mumbled, “P-pink demon…”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” said a cute voice, followed by a photon sword that viciously stabbed him through the throat.

She really is a demon! he would have shouted if his vocal cords had still been intact.

“Right wing, what happened?!”

Slightly earlier, the nineteenth man—meaning the one on the farthest left point of their formation—yelled into his comm for clarification and received no answer.

He’d been hearing confused shouts and death screams for quite a while now, and to his right through the mist, in the direction they were traveling, there were raucous, wild gunshots.

“What is happening…?”

It was impossible to tell from where he was hearing the noises.

He would have liked if they’d at least explained how they were being killed, what kind of enemy it was, or what weapon they were using, before they all died.

But maybe the situation did not give them the wherewithal to explain.

In other words, it was bad.

Number Eighteen said, “Whatever! There’s clearly an enemy nearby! Probably that pink demon worth a hundred million! Let’s go! Everyone, move slightly closer together!”

“Okay!”

The six men from Fourteen to Nineteen started converging. They each turned ninety degrees to the right and arranged themselves in a tight—though still a bit loose—formation, then resumed activity.

“I’ll take lead, then!” said the T-S member, who was Seventeen.

“Great! Thanks!”

He was confident in his defense, so he would surely soak up some of the damage for the others.

Every other man in the group thought, Wow, he’s great to have on our side… My team really needs someone with that armor equipped, too…

Likewise, the T-S man had a feeling that all of them were thinking that. But scraping together a whole set of this armor is gonna cost you a whoooole lotta money. You got the guts for that, boys?

So the sci-fi soldier took the lead, rare HK GR9 5.56 mm machine gun at the ready, and the others lined up behind him. Each one maintained a distance of ten feet from the player in front of him.

Although they hadn’t decided on it, if the man in front was pointing his gun toward the right, the man behind would focus on the left instead. These were the instincts of veteran GGO players.

They would have liked to run right to the location in question, but that would involve too much risk, so caution demanded they take it slowly. You didn’t know what might come rushing out of the fog anyway.

The pack traveled at no faster than a speedwalk, following nothing but the occasional gunfire of their companions for clues.

Then a voice through the comm said, “Enemy alert! There’s some kind of weird blocky thing—”

And it stopped there.

Oh, he’s dead now. RIP. Still got a chance for that hundred million credits, though.

Five seconds later, someone else said, “What’s this? That’s not the pink demon…”

There was more gunfire and then: “Hey! There’s a boxy-looking—aagh!”

The sound stopped there.

No, seriously, what is happening out there…?

To the six unfortunate men who had no idea how to answer that question, the events happening in the mist represented pure terror.

They’d heard Thane’s conversation about the trash can earlier, but none of them were able to put two and two together that it was an enemy trap. Instead, their imaginations ran wild, filling their heads with visions of some massive monster preying on helpless humans just out of sight.

They soon found themselves looking higher up in the air. The toes of their boots caught on rubble, threatening to unbalance them.

“P-pink demon…,” a voice repeated. Whomever it was did not speak again.

There was no denying that the demon worth a hundred million credits was among them.

And the group with the T-S member at the lead decided…

“New group! Stop for a sec!”

“You got it.”

Llenn spotted the shape of a sci-fi soldier through the mist and gave a quick command to her driver, Fukaziroh, with whom she was currently in more or less intimate contact.

“It’s a T-S guy.”

They were larger than other players and had an identifiable silhouette, so it was easy to recognize them.

Fukaziroh stopped walking and lowered her shoulders so that the tires were hidden and the trash can was stabilized. Llenn lowered her head until the lid was closed. It was shut tight, without even a millimeter of a gap. Now it was nothing but a suspicious-looking trash can turned upside down in the street.

Hunching down, Llenn had her eyes at the perfect level to see out if she opened the lid the tiniest crack. It was a gap that extended to all four sides, which made it convenient for looking in all directions, but it was also the PM’s one vulnerable point.

There was a greater than zero chance that, by sheer coincidence, a bullet smaller than the crack could enter through it. But if it happened, you just had to tip your cap. That’s some lucky shootin’.

Llenn observed the group through the fog.

“Twenty yards. Coming almost directly for us. T-S machine gunner in the lead. Vertical line starting three yards behind him. I can see three, but I bet there’s more,” she reported, for Fukaziroh’s sake.

“Sounds like a lot,” her partner replied. “Should we slip past them?”

Llenn considered this and came to an immediate answer. “If they’ve heard about what we’re hiding in…that’s bad. The one thing we can’t survive is a plasma grenade.”

As a matter of fact, the news had not been passed on; however, Llenn had no choice but to be cautious.

With how tough the PM was, a normal grenade would only knock it over with the force of the explosion. That would be very bad for the two hiding inside, but they wouldn’t die instantly.

They had proven this in a joint training exercise after the PM’s completion. They called it a bulletproofing test, which mostly consisted of Pitohui chucking a bunch of grenades at them. They got hurtled several yards away. There was a whole lot of head-bonking inside the trash can when that happened. It really hurt.

But a plasma grenade was a different story entirely.

The walls of the PM were made of the same spaceship plating as M’s shield, the strongest material known in the game. But even that could not withstand the gradual melting effect of the plasma surge.

It wouldn’t happen immediately, but depending on the placement of the blast center, a single grenade might be enough to destroy the walls of the vehicle.

“I’m thinking it’s not a wise move to do anything right now,” Fukaziroh said. The group wouldn’t help but notice a trash can sliding around over the ground.

“We’re going to do the thing…,” Llenn remarked.

“Ah yes, the thing… Which thing?”

“I totally explained it to you! That if we get surrounded, I’ll jump out, so you stay in here!”

“Oh, right, you did say that. It was four years ago by now.”

“It was just the other day!”

Sometimes I can’t believe you, Fuka, fumed Llenn as she watched the approaching enemy.

The T-S member was now clearly visible at a distance of about fifteen yards, which meant he could surely see them, too.

If he came closer and showed any signs of recognizing them, Llenn was going to knock the lid off, stand up, and go in for a bloodbath with two photon swords. It was an ultimate technique that used nothing more than Llenn’s speed and a pair of lightswords.

“I’m gonna do it…”

“There you go, Battotai. I can remember the Battle of Tabaruzaka like it was yesterday…”

“Where is that?”

“In Kumamoto. From the Satsuma Rebellion.”

“Fuka, why are you so weirdly knowledgeable about history at random moments?”

“No idea.”

“Well, if I die doing this, you have to survive for me…”

“Come on, pardner. Don’t talk like that… You can’t die here. How am I going to collect your hundred million?”

“I knew you’d say that.”

“What is that?” asked the T-S member at the head of the line.

Through the mist, he could just barely make out a trash can. It was about ten yards away.

“Everyone, stop.”

He stayed standing, keeping the machine gun held at his waist, with the muzzle pointed right at the trash can.

It looked like a trash can to him. Although it was faded, COMBUSTIBLES was written on the side. It had probably flipped upside down from the big explosion, which wouldn’t be a surprise.

But something was off.

His instincts were telling him that it was just plain odd.

“Oh!”

He figured out what it was.

There were visible signs of being hit by gunfire. On a trash can. And the gunshots didn’t cause holes. When you fired at a thick metal surface, the bullets would shatter and leave a black stain mark. This trash can had many of those.

So he said, “There’s a weird trash can here. I’m gonna try shooting it. If there’s any reaction to it, I want you to shoot back.”

The men behind him chimed in.

“Roger that.”

“Check.”

“Yup.”

“Okay.”

The T-S man put his finger on the GR9’s trigger.

And the next moment—twang!

Sparks flew from the left temple of his helmet. He’d been hit.

“Rgh!”

But it wasn’t enough to kill him.

His rounded helmet was naturally sloped, meaning it had excellent bullet-deflection capabilities, and it ensured the rifle bullet bounced off. It also had firm support around his neck, which softened the impact of the hit. The man inside had to deal with only a bit of pain in his neck.

Then over ten bullet lines appeared through the mist from the left up ahead, reaching for him and his companions.

“Left angle! Enemies! Lots of ’em!”

He opened fire with the GR9 at the base direction of the glowing lines.

The trash can would have to wait.

All of a sudden, things were much livelier outside.

“What’s goin’ on out there?” asked Fukaziroh, who could not see.

“Lucky us!” Llenn replied, watching through the hole. “T-S got shot before he could shoot us!”

Things had been fairly chaotic already up to that point, but this is where it really ramped up.

In addition to the group sneaking up on Llenn, there was another impromptu tag team that had rushed to her location.

They, too, had no members from LPFM or other friendly teams. Of course they didn’t. But they did have the teammates of some folks she had already killed. You could tell by the matching camo. But the players themselves did not realize.

And these were all people so tempted by money that they stopped paying attention to the finer details—and were proactive enough to seize their chance when they thought it had come.

Their misfortune was that they didn’t try talking before they started shooting at one another.

“Something crazy’s going on outside.”

“I can hear it, at least.”

Within the universe as Llenn could perceive it, people were dying left and right.

The T-S machine gunner who got hit first was blasting and blasting away, but although his armor deflected many bullets that hit him, it could not prevent the large grenade blast from throwing him skyward.

While its defensive power was high, the suit fell victim to an explosion between the legs, and he hurtled six feet into the air, landed on his head, and flopped to the ground with a DEAD tag over him. Most likely the cause of death was a broken neck. Unlucky guy.

“Shit! Get ’em!”

“You bet!”

“Eat this!”

The men behind him rallied for the sake of the man who’d been their companion for only a few minutes, hoping to avenge his death. They responded to the attack with full force. They really needn’t have.

The other side assumed, naturally, that there were many more foes in this direction, and they fought back even harder, too. You couldn’t tell who was who through the mist, so they used bullet lines and muzzle flashes to see one another.

Right next to the trash can in which Llenn and Fukaziroh hid, a storm of bullets hurtled back and forth, along with a light show of bullet lines.

It was the start of a very flashy fireworks display.

A battle of group against group, desperate and pitched. The gunshots were wild and frequent, filling the world with noise.

Every few moments, a stray shot would hit the PM with a sharp clang, shaking the frame and deafening the two girls inside.

“You know, I couldn’t help but notice, it’s insanely loud when this thing gets shot.”

“M says his shield is the same way.”

“It needs improving.”

“But how? Lining it with soundproofing?”

“Guess there’s not enough room for that…but we could play classical music in here, maybe. Or Elza Kanzaki.”

“Hmm…”

“Do we need her permission?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

While Fukaziroh and Llenn enjoyed a casual little chat, the virtual slaughter continued outside.

Through her peephole, Llenn saw a man crawling on hands and knees about fifteen yards away. He was staying low to reduce his target size and creeping closer to the enemy on the left side of her field of view.

In his hand was a convergence grenade, the kind he’d used to blow up T-S a moment earlier. It was a grenade that took only the explosive part from the old-school stick grenades called “potato mashers” and tied them together.

It had excellent explosive power, enough to blow up vehicles. Even the PM would be in danger if it had to deal with that.

Please, just don’t throw it this way! Llenn prayed. Her plea must have gotten through, because the man suddenly stood up and hurled it for all he was worth, away into the mist.

A beat later, there was an explosion.

“Gyahk!”

There was a scream along with it, and red damage effects spread through the mist. Whomever it was had just gone to Heaven.

“Yessss!”

The man who’d pulled off that incredible blind grenade kill pumped his arm in triumph, just before a bullet went through his head.

“Dammit! They’re just normal players like us.”

“Where the hell is that pink shrimp?!”

Two men hissed at each other, hiding behind cover.

I’m right here, Llenn thought but could not say.

Because the men were using her very own trash can—pardon, the PM—as their shield.

It was a trash can of just the right size, and for some reason, it was blocking bullets for them, so they threw themselves flat on the ground right next to it. And now they were exchanging fire through the mist with their assault rifles.

The one on the right firing an M4A1 was wearing a navy blue camo pattern that made him look like a police tactical unit member. On the left was a man in American desert camo holding a Bushmaster ACR.

They were shooting at full auto into the mist, not knowing if they were hitting anything, and after a few moments, more full auto fire would come back their way.

If they hadn’t been able to duck behind the PM, they would have died a long time ago. The enemy had pinned down their location and was starting a furious automatic counterattack.

Naturally, being subjected to ten times the gunfire as before, the inside of the PM was a deafening clamor. It was like being trapped inside a very small bell that was ringing repeatedly between them.

Ugh, it’s so loud!

If she weren’t in GGO, the sound would have ruptured her eardrums. Llenn cradled her head in her hands, but she couldn’t jump out now. She just shrank farther into herself.

She didn’t know how many enemies were nearby. Many of them were already dead, that was certain.

Llenn glanced at her watch. After 1:48.

“Shit!”

The man in the desert camo looked ahead as he exchanged the magazine on his ACR, then fired back a few shots at the place where the bullet lines had been.

But the enemy wasn’t just sitting in the same spot, of course. His shots were futile.

“Whoa, hold on! Is that you, Hash? I hear that ACR!”

Somewhere through the mist was a real freak. He was able to identify the gun just from the sound it made.

“Oh?” The man he called Hash paused and pulled his finger off the trigger. The world was suddenly quiet. “Hey! That voice! Is that Dane?!” he exclaimed with delight.

“Yeah! I knew it was you, Hash! No way! Hey, don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! It’s just me over here!”

“Got it! There’s only two of us, too! Come straight in the direction you were shooting! I’m in front of a weird-looking trash can!”

Having called Dane over, Hash turned to the man with the M4A1 beside him and beamed. “Hey, partner. That’s my teammate. Looks like I’m not dying here quite yet.”

“Yeah, it’s a relief to hear.”

“Only speaking of me and my teammate, though. Sorry, bud.”

Brrrat!

Hash pointed his gun at the nearby man and shot him three times. The bullets went right into the other man’s heart.

“Damn youuuu! I’ll haunt you as a ghooost!” he shouted as he left SJ5 for good.

“Sorry about that. Do your best to move on. May you rest in peace,” said Hash, making a prayer gesture with just one hand. A spinning DEAD tag appeared over the fallen man’s head.

“Ah, there you are! Coming, coming!” said a voice, and then another man in the same desert camo came trotting out of the mist. It was a sign they were on the same team, if not partners matching for their date night.

The weapon belonging to the man named Dane was an M249, also known as a Minimi LMG.

The Minimi had way too many models, both in real life and in GGO, but Dane’s favorite was the vanilla classic.

In other words, the very first Minimi model, the simplest to use and the cheapest to purchase as an item. While its specs were the lowest of any model, many people liked its vibe and its no-frills metal pipe stock.

The newest model wasn’t always the ideal when it came to guns. Surprisingly, many people liked choosing older guns on purpose, just because they liked the aesthetics of those items.

He’d been heavily using the gun until moments ago, so the Minimi’s barrel was smoking white. If you stuck a piece of meat to it, you could probably put a pretty good grill mark on it.

“What about the others on the team?” asked Dane, who crouched next to the trash can and began to exchange Minimi gun barrels.

Hash kept an eye out on the horizon for him. “You’re the only one I’ve met so far. I teamed up with the commentator guy in the forest, then it turned into a group of nearly twenty, and we were looking to collect Llenn’s bounty around here. But instead, everyone went down without realizing why… That wasn’t you, was it?”

Dane stuck the fresh barrel on and swung it to the side. “We teamed up in an impromptu group on the highway to the north and then followed the scan…but along the way we heard a gunfight, so we were checking it out from a distance—and just when the action calmed down, we wandered over. I haven’t seen the pink shrimp. Awww, dammit. I guess I didn’t need to fight after all, then.”

“Hey, it’s all right. We’re both alive, and that’s worth celebrating. How are your hit points?”

“Took a bit of damage. Still at eighty.”

“Sorry about that. Mighta been my shot.”

“For this one day, I forgive you,” Dane said, beaming, right before his head fell off.

Hash hadn’t been watching in the moment, but he did notice his friend’s head rolling around at his feet.

“Eugh!”

He looked up with a start and saw nothing but a pale blade of light being swung right at him.

“Boss! It’s all good now! Come on out!”

At 1:48, near the ten-minute mark, Boss got the all-clear to come out of the cramped basement stairwell.

“Cool.” She popped right out.

The first thing she noticed, amid the slightly less dense mist than before, was a bunch of DEAD tags hovering all over the place.

“Talk about fear. Y’all had a massacre up here,” she remarked.

“You’re a rapper?” Fukaziroh’s voice replied.

“Oh, there you are. Ahead on the right, fifteen degrees,” Llenn’s voice said.

“What the…?”

At this point, Boss noticed a strange garbage can moving in her direction. She very nearly shot at it.

“This is, um, really something…”

Boss was impressed, if somewhat skeptical, of the PM.

It did indeed look just like a trash can, but it was probably the only trash can in the entire world with dozens of black marks from deflected bullets on it. In the entire virtual world, that is.

The lid flipped up off the top, and Llenn’s head popped out. She lifted the lid with her hand first, then pushed it loose entirely and tossed it aside.

“Hah!”

Her tiny body jumped and did a flip right out of the trash can. The landing was impeccable. The judges were sure to give her a high score.

“Whew, finally outside again,” murmured Fukaziroh, following her out like a woodland creature emerging from hibernation. “Okay, time to put the car back in the garage.”

“Good idea.”

Fukaziroh and Llenn both waved a hand to call up their game windows.

After they selected the GEAR-SWITCH button, the trash can—better known as the PM—vanished, replaced by Llenn’s and Fukaziroh’s main weapons.

Llenn now had her P90, not the Vorpal Bunnies. Fukaziroh, of course, had her two MGL-140s, the revolving, six-shot grenade launchers.

At that moment, Llenn’s wristwatch buzzed, warning her that she had only thirty seconds until the 1:50 scan started.

“Should we watch the fifth scan here?”

“Sure. I don’t think there are any enemies around. You killed them all. But maybe we should squeeze into that cellar, just in case,” Boss suggested.

“Roger that.”

“Okay.”

They crammed into the tiny basement.

“Hey, why’s it so cramped in here?”

“Because your ass is too big, that’s why, Boss.”

“Sorry. Good thing you two are so tiny.”

“Heh-heh-heh, aw, shucks.”

They waited for the fifth scan to arrive.