CHAPTER 8
What M Did
“Well…”
M met the 1:10 marker while on the ground floor of a building.
His starting point was in a city.
The abandoned city biome was a common one in GGO, as seen previously in SJ1 and SJ4.
The thick fog covering everything gave him little visibility, but based on what he could see, it was fairly easy to predict.
There would be a cross pattern of streets like a classic American city, with imposing buildings dropped onto each block between the intersections. At their biggest, a single structure could occupy the entire block. On the smaller side, it could be several buildings.
The empty buildings were plain and geometric. The shorter ones were about ten stories, while the tallest went up to thirty or so.
And every now and then, you saw an example of a building with an especially elaborate design that an artist really wanted to create—and nobody bothered to stop them from doing it.
Others looked like they’d had their budget accidentally allocated to an extra digit and stood over seven hundred feet tall, like chimneys towering over all.
M started the game on one of the major roads passing through this city, so he immediately took refuge in the nearest building. He was probably invisible thanks to the mist, but he did so just in case.
Any fight here would inevitably be an urban battle. In GGO, as in the real world, urban battles involved many places to hide and thus often became close-range altercations that could be extremely intense.
And his enemies could very well be in the next building over. Or even in the next room over.
Each street and building was a territory to fight over. You’d have to shoot at any enemy you saw, toss a grenade, or resort to hand-to-hand combat. Urban combat was a nasty, violent phenomenon. It was a good thing this was a game.
But for M, this ruined city was the perfect place to hide until two o’clock. There were any number of hiding places. It was much easier on the mind than Clarence’s situation, that was certain.
Bold action was meaningless until two o’clock, when the mist was clear. Best just to find a hiding spot and hunker down.
He made his way through the rubble of the building, occasionally moving it out of the way in his search for a staircase. Soon he found it, and quietly climbed the steps, watching his footing.
His gun was the M14 EBR, a 7.62 mm sniper rifle accurate to eight hundred yards. Although he would be hiding, it would be useful for shooting at the road from a high point.
On the downside, if someone knew he was here, they could wait on the first floor, making it much harder for him to escape the building. But only if that enemy was working with a team. In this case, ease of sniping would win out.
M’s considerable size moved quietly up the darkened stairs.
Ruins in GGO sometimes surprised the player with crumbling step traps, so he took his time, carefully testing each step before he put his full weight on it.
On a landing, he saw a sign on the wall that indicated in fading writing that the building had about twenty floors.
M finished his ascent at the fifth floor and made his way through an office area, careful that he didn’t fall through any weak spots in the hallway. Soon he reached the exterior wall of the building, offering him a view of the street.
He approached the window, which ran from ceiling to floor with the glass blown out, and stopped short. Next, he materialized a small mirror.
It was a rounded convex mirror, like a smaller version of the blind-curve mirrors placed on roads.
By looking through a mirror like this, he could keep his back to the tough, protective wall and see the street below from considerably higher safety.
While it was faded by mist, he could indeed make out the ground, just barely.
The street was very wide, perhaps a hundred feet across. There were three lanes in each direction, six in total. Even the sidewalks were built to be very spacious.
The concrete here was relatively intact, with a flat enough surface that cars could ostensibly ride over it. But there were no cars on the road. No burned-out wrecks or usable cars, at least within the range of what he could see.
It was just a clear, fairly nice stretch of road.
“Interesting…,” he murmured, having recognized something.
But none of his teammates were around, so there was no one to ask him what he noticed.
He glanced at his wristwatch: 1:14.
And from this point on, let’s just watch and wait.
Here you’ll see M, watching and waiting.
His body was as large as a boulder and, for the time being, as still as a boulder, too.
M, or more accurately the player controlling him, Goushi Asougi, was used to waiting.
He was stalwart—a very patient person who would happily wait for hours doing nothing if that was for the sake of his goal.
Soon it was 1:20.
“Let’s see.”
He took out his Satellite Scanner and placed it inside his bush hat, which he held in front of his face. That was to ensure the light didn’t escape.
The scan started up, displaying its results.
Ten minutes ago, the LPFM dot had been at what appeared to be the edge of the map, and it was still around the same spot. He knew from the display of his teammates’ names on the left that Llenn wasn’t dead, but he had no idea what she was currently doing. Hopefully, something good.
As for his own location, he had done almost no two-dimensional movement, so there was no real mapping done. Even zooming all the way in, he couldn’t see very much detail.
He couldn’t do anything about that, though. It wasn’t wise to run around just to get more map info. M decided to wait in the same location for another ten minutes.
Eight minutes passed.
The universe was utterly silent in that time.
It was frighteningly quiet, in fact.
Every other player in the area had clearly chosen the same strategy. They weren’t going to take risks before two o’clock, either.
There were no nearby firefights, no wind, and thus no sound, just time slowly ticking away.
M had plenty of time to himself to think.
He thought about a great many things, in fact.
About his time as Goushi Asougi from birth through college, a dark time of youth that left him unfulfilled and unhappy.
About the goddess he met out of the blue one day.
About his fateful choice to follow his goddess home.
About coincidentally getting beaten to a pulp by his goddess.
About the days of happiness, pain, and fulfillment ever since.
And about the days in which he understood why he’d been born.
About the days he spent in a video game with his goddess, after she claimed she was going to risk her life inside the game.
About when he nearly learned how he was going to die.
About the little thing named Llenn who saved their lives.
And about everything from that point until today.
“Hmm?”
At about 1:28, M heard a faint, distant, but deep noise.
It seemed like the sound of combat in some far-off location, perhaps a grenade explosion in another building, but there was no sound that followed it, and everything went quiet again.
“……”
M silently turned so that he was looking out the window with his own eyes, rather than through the mirror.
The mist-shrouded dead city was just as it had appeared earlier: quiet and foreboding.
“……”
M’s craggy rock face and firm rock body returned to their prior position.
A short time later, his wristwatch vibrated.
It was 1:29:30.
At one thirty, everyone’s ammo and energy returned in full, but it meant nothing to M, because he hadn’t fired a single shot in SJ5.
He used his bush hat to cover the screen once again while he watched the third Satellite Scan.
Llenn had moved farther to the northeast.
He couldn’t tell what she was doing from here; he could only hope it was good. Llenn would probably be fine, though.
She was strong; there was no doubt about that. She was the only character whom he and Pitohui really feared.
Similarly, the other corner teams—MMTM, SHINC, and ZEMAL—had moved slightly toward the center. Either they had steadily started creeping toward a meetup or they had reasons they couldn’t stay put.
There were thirty other teams. None of them had been fully eliminated yet.
That was about all he learned. The scan was finished.
He was preparing to go into another ten-minute period of Zen meditation.
When…ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-tat.
Tight, crisp, percussive gunfire broke the silence from the distance.
Then the sound happened again, but a bit louder, as though a volume knob had been turned from two to four.
Someone was firing a gun on auto. Whether it was combat or a test-fire or a trap meant to lure out foes into the open was unknown.
Because the building walls caused echoing, it was difficult to pin down an exact location, but he could tell generally which direction it was from.
The gunfire was coming from the right side when he faced the street out the window.
Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-tan, do-doom. Ta-ta-tan, doom. Ta-tan, doom.
It was getting louder, and other types of guns were joining in.
Unless it was one very talented freak shooting two different kinds of gun at the same time, it was now two players firing different guns together.
Based on his ears and brain, M could hazard a guess.
The first, lighter gunfire was probably a 5.56 mm assault rifle. The louder, heavier shots that joined in came from a 7.62 mm battle rifle.
There were other things he could tell just from hearing the sound.
They were not fighting against each other. It was not a firefight. They were firing at the same enemy.
M moved to stand against the wall near the window. But not right up to the edge, where he could be seen from outside. He was well away, about six feet from the actual window. Then he surveyed the area.
He was checking to see if anyone else was hiding inside like he was but had come to the window to see about the noise.
It seemed to be all right. M turned to the direction of the gunfire, the right side of the street before him.
And then he saw something.
Someone was running down the wide street, visible through the thinning mist. And he could tell right away who it was.
It was a woman with long blond hair wearing Russian-style camo with speckled green dots. She also sported sunglasses and a camo beanie.
It was Anna.
She was the Dragunov-SVD-toting sniper of SHINC, their sister team.
On the inside, she was Moe Annaka, a second-year high school student who looked chill and reserved—and indeed was chill and reserved. Goushi had met her at karaoke.
And now she was running desperately down the street.
She was moving down the middle of the wide road, holding her narrow Dragunov in both hands. At times, she threw in a side step in either direction, and she was constantly looking over her shoulder as she sprinted. Her wavy golden hair was trailing behind her.
She’d already taken a number of shots; red spots glowed on her body. The spots on her legs had to hurt pretty badly, but she kept running regardless. The fact that her core was so steady was a testament to her player’s innate athletic skill.
Bullet lines and their bullets flew past, chasing after Anna.
M instantly understood the situation.
It would be silly if you couldn’t. Anna was being chased by at least two enemies. The end.
Because of the mist, you couldn’t see any enemies at least thirty yards away. That was why Anna kept running so hard.
Most likely, the enemy was about as fast, so they were maintaining a distance that just barely gave them a glimpse of her shadow. And their plan was to keep shooting as they ran, hoping they could at least get a coincidental hit on her.
Anna could see the bullet lines, so she kept sidestepping and dodging bullets as she ran.
She did not run into any of the buildings on either side of the street.
If her pursuers saw her do that, she was trapped. They could follow her inside, and then she’d be at an extreme disadvantage. She’d die in battle for sure.
So she was running for all she was worth in the open, hoping to leave her foes behind in the dust—or rather, the mist.
“That was a good call,” M said, in the past tense, notably.
He watched her pass right beneath him, set his scope to the lowest zoom level, and lifted his M14 EBR. He was not aiming it yet.
Then he moved over to the far wall and looked down at the street to the right of his position.
His eyes picked up on two men emerging from the mist. Though they were hazy, he could still identify them.
One was in reddish-brown camo and shooting an AC-556F. He was in a team that had been competing ever since SJ1.
The other was a man styled like a Rhodesian Bush War mercenary, holding an FAL assault rifle and wearing a unique camo outfit and chest rig. He was a member of NSS, the historical cosplay team.
With one smooth, speedy motion, M steadied his gun and first placed the scope sights over the man in the reddish-brown camo, who was looking ready to fire.
Because he was running, M aimed a bit ahead of his position. The instant his finger was about to come into contact with the trigger, he tugged it in and pulled.
Bam!
The M14 EBR emitted a short, fierce burst. The loading lever on the right side of the gun cycled violently along with the bolt inside. An empty cartridge shot out of the gun and the next bullet loaded into the chamber, all in a single instant.
The man in the reddish-brown camo was shot through the neck. His neckbones were shattered, putting him on course for an unavoidable death within the next few seconds.
While he fell, still technically alive, M was already aiming at the Rhodesian mercenary to the right.
The second shot emerged in quick order, passing through the man’s head from the upper diagonal through the bottom on the other side. He didn’t even realize his friend had been shot yet.
Anna heard two shots overhead and noticed that everything went silent after that.
“……”
After a moment’s indecision, she stopped running.
If the shooter was an ally, they could team up.
But if it was just another enemy using the opportunity to score some quick kills, then she would be the next target.
Anna looked up at the building on her right.
In a broken windowsill on the fifth floor, she saw a hat and arm waving wildly at her.
It was 1:33.
“Thanks for saving me, Mr. M. I really owe you one,” said Anna as soon as she reached the floor where M had camped out.
“That’s not necessary. And please, no formal titles. It’s just more syllables you’ll feel compelled to say out loud when you should be conveying information as quickly as possible. Also, you’re welcome, Anna,” he replied.
He was keeping his eye on the two bodies with DEAD tags down below and did not turn to face Anna.
Anna crouched just past the entrance to the floor, keeping her eye on the hallway and anyone who might try to come up toward them.
A forty-eight-inch Dragunov was a difficult weapon to use indoors, but her only other weapon was a 9 mm Strizh pistol, so that left her with little choice. She opted for power.
M brought up his game window and requested Anna hook up her comm to his. They were several yards apart, but it was still close enough for the request to go through.
With their earpieces connected, M asked her quietly, “How’s the damage?”
“About half; I got shot all over. I used an emergency med kit earlier.”
“That was a close one. Glad I was able to save you. I started here. What about you?”
“I was a bit to the northeast, right near the northeast corner of the map. I’m actually the team leader this time. I was staying hidden, but two guys nearby easily spotted me after the scan, and that’s why they were chasing me.”
“Ahhh, I see…”
He was drawing a map inside his head.
Now he knew that SHINC was placed to start at the opposite corner of LPFM, since Llenn was in the southwest.
Because Anna was placed there, that told him he was somewhere in the northeast quadrant of the map. It also meant that as long as he was with Anna, his location was being revealed, too, every ten minutes when the scan arrived.
“We can’t stay here until two o’clock. Let’s move toward the center of the map,” he decided.
“Got it,” she replied.
“But before that, I want to see your map.”
He approached her and took out his Satellite Scan terminal, holding it near hers so their maps were synced.
“That gives me more information. Thanks.”
Now the screen in his hands featured a map of the route that Anna had run to escape.
She had followed a zigzagging path of over a mile southwest from her starting point in the upper right corner of the map, at which point she turned to the south. From there, she went straight south for two thirds of a mile.
This straight line clearly represented the main road outside. It ran north to south, and if followed, it would eventually lead to a different zone, whatever that turned out to be.
“I want to get past this street as quickly as possible.”
“Meaning…in a vehicle of some kind?”
“Yes. Let’s do a quick search to see if anything is nearby.”
Anna checked her wristwatch: It was 1:35 now. In another five minutes, the scan would start and reveal their location.
“What if we wait here, and then I act as a decoy five minutes from now, and you shoot whatever enemy shows up?” she suggested.
But M was quickly descending the stairs. She followed after him.
“We’ll walk and talk. I thought about a leader-decoy strategy, but I got a bad feeling about some bad opponents, so I’d rather not.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you watch the replay video of SJ4? When we were trying to cross the river and swampland at the start of the game.”
“I did.”
“The self-destructing team called DOOM really busted our ass on the bridge. They’re bad news to deal with. They’re not trying to win; they just want to perform suicide attacks on famous teams and players. It’s not a good idea to antagonize them.”
“But that name wasn’t on the list of participating teams. We all confirmed it before the match started.”
“Right. Which is why I relaxed and let my guard down. That was a mistake. I heard a distant explosion earlier, around 1:28. It was a sound just like distant thunder, when you hear a fireworks show from the next town over. But now I think that was probably a DOOM self-destruct explosion. Their name wasn’t on the entry list because they must have figured out that people would know their strategy by now, and they used a different name. There’s no rule against it.”
“I see…”
M and Anna descended to the first floor and then the exit of the building.
They kept their eyes and ears open for anything out of the ordinary. Once they felt it was safe, they exited onto the street, one at a time.
Once they had walked past the bodies of the two men M shot, they started running south.
“Let’s go.”
“Roger that!”
Instead of the center of the street, however, they took the left edge.
That gave them a better chance of darting into a building if they started getting shot at. M didn’t forget to check upward for open windows as they ran.
Anna followed his example, keeping a distance of at least twenty feet at all times. That was so a single burst of automatic gunfire or a hand grenade couldn’t take out both of them at once.
She was the rear guard of their two-person team, so she kept her gun pointed in every direction she looked, including frequent checks behind her. The scariest thing was that someone could wait for them to pass, then sneak up from the rear to ambush them.
Anna was faster than M, so she didn’t have to worry about him leaving her behind.
At some intersections, M used a mirror to check around the side. Once they knew it was safe, they would cross the space one at a time.
At 1:36, Anna murmured, “May I ask something?”
“Yeah.”
“The suicide-bombing team has five members left at maximum, right?”
“That’s right. And make no mistake, their only goal is to cause an upset, so they’ll head right for the championship contenders. That means one of their targets is SHINC—and that’s you.”
“Ugh.”
She scowled behind her sunglasses. It felt like dealing with stalkers.
“It feels like dealing with stalkers,” she admitted aloud. It was probably showing on her face, though she couldn’t see it for herself.
“That would be a disaster,” M opined.
Really? Coming from you? was a cutdown that Llenn, Fukaziroh, or Pitohui would say if they were here.
“But—!”
M suddenly stopped before a particular building, swinging the thick M14 EBR stock at the glass window there. The sturdy glass shattered into pieces that soon vanished.
“We can get away with this.”
Beyond the glass was a vehicle waiting to be used.
In our real world, there is a car called the Volkswagen Type 1.
Most people would know it instead as a Beetle, or the VW Bug, and immediately envision the distinct, lovably rounded form of one of the world’s most recognizable automobiles: a German classic.
It was created quite a long time ago, in 1938, then produced from 1941 to 2003. A phenomenal number of them were made and sold.
There were modified versions of the Type 1 Beetle for off-road races. Because it was such a simple, plentiful, and cheap vehicle, the Beetle was ideal as a base body for racing modifications.
GGO’s version used the Beetle body, then fitted a sturdy pipe roll cage inside the seating area and under the frame for safety. It was tightly constructed, almost like a birdcage.
All extra body parts were also cut off to make it simpler. The lights were shifted from the protruding bumper up to the body, too.
Especially important for off-road duty was the suspension rigging, which was switched to a very sturdy arm system. The shock absorbers and springs were upgraded to a robust racing style. The tires were large and tough for off-roading.
These modifications all made the body considerably wider than the typical Beetle’s. Now it looked much more powerful, with longer “legs” that gripped the ground harder.
Tough metal pipe armor extended from the front and back of the vehicle, and sometimes special night-use high beams were attached.
The Beetle’s air-cooled flat-four engine was a rear-wheel drive, and this version of the engine was significantly beefed up.
The off-road buggy based on the Beetle chassis was so famously associated with races held in Mexico’s Baja California peninsula that the model was popularly known as a Baja Bug, based on both the phrase “Baja buggy” and the base VW Bug.
But M didn’t deliver a single word of that explanation. Standing before the bright-yellow Baja Bug on display on the building’s ground floor, he simply said to Anna, “I can tell this one will work. Keep an eye out for me.”
He waved his left hand to open a menu and started dematerializing his equipment.
The large backpack with the armor plating and the M14 EBR he kept slung over his shoulder vanished in puffs of light. Even the HK45 pistol he kept in a holster on his right thigh vanished.
Now he was unarmed. If an enemy attacked, he could only slap them, punch them, or give them a scissor-poke to the eyes.
He took off his wide-brimmed bush hat and jammed it inside his vest before opening the door to the Baja Bug and sliding carefully into the driver’s seat on the left side of the car. There was no window glass on the door.
It wasn’t a large vehicle to begin with, and the car had a safety roll cage on the inside. Plus, M was imposingly huge.
From a distance, it seemed impossible that he could fit inside, but this was a game, after all. It would accommodate you, up to a point.
Somehow he managed to get into the seat—and with the ability to reach the shifter as well. M pressed the buttons on the ragged old dashboard full of broken meters rather haphazardly. There were no keys conveniently left around for it.
Suddenly, the Baja Bug, which seemed like nothing more than an abandoned piece of set design, began to protest this assumption. Is that what you thought about me? Huh?
Skree-skrun-grun… The starter turned over, and the air-cooled flat-four engine started emitting dry puttering noises in the back.
It belched heavy black smoke that did not suggest the engine was in good shape, but M didn’t care. It just needed to run.
“Okay, get in,” he ordered.
Anna asked, “What about my gun?”
“Into storage,” he said simply.
“……”
Anna was aghast at the idea of going through the next stretch without any weapons but wasn’t really in any position to complain about it.
The time was just after 1:38.
In less than two minutes, the scan would start up, and many opponents would make their way toward her, the representative of SHINC on the map. Perhaps one of the suicide bombers would be coming, too.
With a wave of her arm, she put away her Dragunov and Strizh, then tried to get into the passenger seat.
“It’s too cramped!”
The pipes above and below made for a miserable experience.
What’s the deal with this horribly cramped car? Did they actually design this for people to sit inside?
Moe’s most common real-life experience with cars was her father’s Lexus LX SUV, with its luxury leather seats, spacious interior, and all-around comfort. She wished she could give this car a taste of the Lexus’s medicine. How did that work? Did you put the medicine in the gas tank?
When she got back to reality, she would have to thank her daddy for providing her with the ideal car to ride in. She just had to be careful not to say, “There’s plenty of room for a Dragunov rifle in here, Daddy!”
“Ouch!” She bumped her knee on the pipe frame and somehow managed to get herself into the hard, uncomfortable seat.
It was a small car to begin with, and when you added M’s size and her own not-insignificant height, their arms were basically in constant contact just from sitting there.
Maybe that would be a moodmaking detail if they were a couple on a romantic date, but this was definitively not that situation. Not in the slightest.
“Your seat belt’s a harness. Pull it over your shoulder and waist, then stick the metal buckle in around your midsection. Twist the lever when you need to release it,” said M, who was already strapped in.
Anna had an epiphany.
He wasn’t warning her because not wearing a seat belt was going to get them written up with a traffic ticket.
“Got it…”
It was because he was going to drive in such a way that a seat belt was an absolute necessity.
Anna did as he said and strapped the thick hanging belts—two over her shoulders and two around her sides—into the round metal buckle. In real life, she would need to tighten the straps according to her size, but because GGO was a game, it could manage all of that automatically.
In the good sense, it felt like her body was one with the seat. In the bad sense, the belts were like restraints. She had no escape.
“Okay.”
Satisfied that she was strapped in, M pressed down on the accelerator.
Braam, brararararararam! The engine roared to life. He was revving it.
M was not doing this just to hear a lot of noise and annoy the neighbors. By jamming on the gas pedal, he was checking to see if the engine could still accelerate properly.
If you started moving the car without checking, you might promptly stall out in the middle of the road and make a fool of yourself.
M’s reflection was in Anna’s sunglasses. “Um…just please…drive safely…”
He stomped on the clutch with his left foot and yanked the stick into gear with his right hand.
“Sorry. Just gonna apologize ahead of time.”
“Eeeek!”
He pounded the acceleration pedal and violently removed his foot from the clutch.
Gaga-shunk.
The Baja Bug leaped out into the street, shattering the remaining pieces of glass and frame in the ground-level window of the building. Then he yanked left on the wheel.
The Bug’s longer suspension sank deep, and everything in the car leaned to the right.
“Hyaaaaaaa!”
Anna screamed again, terrified that the car was going to flip itself over.
Instead, the Baja Bug made a ninety-degree left turn and began to race south down the street.
M put the gear in second, despite the fact that he couldn’t see a thing through the fog. Once he got the car good and speeding, he shifted it up again. His use of the stick shift and pedals was ruthless, rapidly bringing the car to a roaring pace.
Once it was in fourth, he let the gas level off. They were already going fifty miles per hour at this point—at least, going by feel, since there was no working speedometer.
Their visibility was about a hundred feet at best, due to the mist. If there was anything in their way up ahead, they would never stop in time, traveling at this speed.
“Um, i-is this s-safe?! If there’s anything ahead of us, we’ll run into it!” Anna stammered nervously.
“We’ll probably be all right,” M said casually.
“How can you say that?!”
“There wasn’t anything in the street earlier, was there?”
“Oh! Good point…”
Anna had been running down the street to safety and continued on after M rescued her, and she hadn’t seen any obstacles like abandoned vehicles in the way. Or building rubble, either.
The street had been very spacious the whole way, with no impediments and no cover that might actually block a bullet, which was why she had to run down it the entire way.
M explained, “If they’re going to put thick fog down, it would simply be too sadistic to have a lot of blockage on the roads that might kill you if you run into it. I’m guessing the game designer cut us some slack and cleared out the roads for that reason.”
Though Anna didn’t know this, M had figured it out earlier when looking down at the street. It was when he had murmured “Interesting” to himself.
“……”
Let’s hope that’s the case. In fact, please let it be so, Anna thought.
There was nothing but mist straight ahead, so M used the visible buildings on the driver’s side of the road to judge the straightness of his driving.
Since the road itself was flat, there wasn’t really that much shaking. Thanks to the blessing of the off-road-tuned shock absorbers, which gently removed much of the movement, the sensation of the ride was very strange, like the car itself was floating high over the ground.
“Okay, it’s nearly time. Watch the scan for me and point out where on the map we’re going.”
“G-got it!”
One forty had nearly arrived.
Thanks to her seat belt harness, Anna had trouble reaching her Satellite Scanner, but she eventually managed to work it out of the chest pocket of her vest. She turned it on to see that the scan was starting up.
The dot that said SHINC when touched was her location. The dot was moving, of course, making very fast progress south.
Nearby enemies would be aware of that, too, but unless they had cars of their own, they couldn’t catch up.
She reported in with the details. “We’re in the upper right quadrant of the map, a bit below the center and moving south! We should pass over the median line in another mile or so!”
“Good report. Is Llenn all right?”
“In the lower left!”
“Good enough. You can put that away now; I wouldn’t want you to drop it. Now comes the real test,” M warned.
And just to prove his point, someone showed up right then and there.
Not someone, but…some car?
The Baja Bug was just racing through a large intersection with another road about as big as the one they were on—when another vehicle roared toward them from the right.
Being in the passenger seat, Anna had a good view of it. “Car to the right!” she called out.
M glanced over briefly. The other car was a silver coupe with four round headlights and an emblem of a running horse in the center of the grill.
They must have known the Bug was coming; the car was already making a right turn to intersect with their path.
Fortunately, they didn’t have enough of a lead to collide. The coupe made a turn in the intersection, rear wheels sliding wildly. The pursuit of the Baja Bug had begun.
It took M only that single glance to identify the other car. “That’s a first-model Ford Mustang. A historical automobile. Haven’t seen one of those in GGO before. Is it a Squad Jam exclusive? I wanna ride in it,” he said happily.
“Is that all you care about?! It could be one of those self-destruct sickos in there!” Anna cried, watching the silver car behind them in the rearview mirror.
For about two and a half seconds, the two cars were simply going for a drive. The Mustang was following the Baja Bug at a distance of about seventy-five feet.
“No, it’s not them.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because he would have blown himself up already. This distance is close enough. We’d be dead.”
“……”
That’s a good point, Anna thought.
And right at that moment—crunch!
The Mustang’s driver sped up rapidly and hit them with the priceless vehicle. Although faded and dusty, the body had been pristine—until now. There was a big dent in the front, and one of the headlights was broken.
It was a ruthless attack that jolted the Baja Bug violently. M carefully adjusted the steering wheel and kept their course straight.
“Yep, they’re faster than us. No wonder, with that sports coupe.”
“Now’s not the time for being impressed!”
“But they’re not good at collisions. You can’t stop a car by ramming into it. If you want to stop the car in front, you’ve got to push on one of the two rear tires. That’ll make them go sideways or spin out. The police use that technique all the time in America. It works in GGO, too, so remember that one for later.”
“Now’s not the time for giving educational speeches!”
Anna did not want to ride in the car anymore while M was driving.
Prattattattattatta!
Some lightweight gunfire erupted behind them.
Clank, cla-cla-clank.
The bullets bounced dryly off the body of the Bug.
“We’re getting shot!”
“Right. You get shot?”
“No!”
This, frankly, was a confusing sequence of statements. Let’s translate them into a more helpful vocabulary.
“I can confirm by observation that this car is being shot at by a gun, M.”
“That is true, Anna. By the way, I am just fine. Did you happen to be struck by any of those bullets? I’m very worried about your safety.”
“Your kind concern is most appreciated. Fortunately, I am not aware of any such damage.”
With busted-up side mirrors that were somehow still attached, Anna and M took a look at the Mustang trailing them by seventy feet.
There was someone sitting in the driver’s seat, of course, but there was also a passenger leaning forward with a gun. It was an MP5A4, an H&K SMG.
Whomever it was, they fired again.
M pulled the wheel a little bit to avoid the bullets. They didn’t make any sound on the Bug.
“There are two of them. Not any of our friends obviously.”
“Wh-what should we do?”
“We’re in trouble if they pull up alongside us. Maybe we can lose them.”
He turned the wheel slightly, bringing the Baja Bug over to the left side of the street. The wheels were almost coming into contact with the raised sidewalk.
This was to prevent the Mustang from getting on their left side. The passenger seat was on the right side, so this meant the armed man there couldn’t shoot directly at them.
Then M put the car back down a gear and floored the gas. The Baja Bug’s body tilted backward as it bolted forward. The engine in the rear was practically screaming with the revolutions per minute it was doing now. This was just before the red zone, where you weren’t supposed to put any more stress on it. Or maybe it was already there.
“Aieeee!”
Anna’s face was locked in a grimace. She clutched the seat belt, not that it was going to make any difference if they got hit.
M took them as far as he could in third gear before putting the car in fourth, the top gear. At this point, he was bottoming out the pedal; it couldn’t go any farther. The Baja Bug’s speed felt like it was topping out at about sixty miles per hour.
That was its highest speed as an item, it seemed.
And it was not a speed to be driving at in heavy fog. Even without the visibility issue, that was not a city driving speed.
But that was not enough.
“They’re still back there.”
The Mustang was hanging around at a distance behind them. It was probably holding back some power, since that type of muscle car could do better. It was staying behind them, figuring the route was safe if the lead car didn’t hit any obstacles.
Anna was disappointed. Sooo disappointed.
They’d decided that there wouldn’t be any obstacles in the road, but did neither M nor the Mustang driver consider the possibility that they might come up on a T-intersection and run straight into a building?
“Ah!”
The next moment, she saw something.
Through the windshield, a person emerged from the mist.
It was just for a brief moment, but the person was neither a teammate nor one of the familiar other members of LPFM. It didn’t seem to be a person from any of the heavy favorites.
And the instant she saw them, they were already out of sight.
Boom. The player was thrown over the top of the car by the Baja Bug’s pipe-frame bumper, where he promptly vanished.
“Huh? O-oh…was that…?” she stammered.
“Yeah, I ran someone over,” he replied. “But I saw them in that split second. Don’t worry—it wasn’t a friend. And even if it was, Llenn would have jumped over us, I bet.”
“……”
Whichever team and whomever it was, they were really unlucky.
It’s just a game; forgive us, Anna prayed to their memory.
M glanced at the side mirror and saw the Mustang was keeping pace. “They’re still hanging on. I was hoping the guy I just ran over would have hit them on the way down,” he said casually. It was only a game.
The two in the Mustang seemed to have decided that shooting or hitting them was needlessly risky and had switched to a more reliable plan. They were going to keep following, persistently ensuring that the other car didn’t get away. And that kind of foe was a much more annoying problem to deal with than someone who would keep attacking.
After another ten seconds of parallel racing, M said, “We’re nearly at the median line between north and south.” Though this was based on nothing but a physical hunch, since nothing on the dashboard worked. “I wonder what’s beyond that point. Let’s just pray it’s terrain we can cross safely.”
Apparently, he intended to keep racing through without slowing down.
Anna blanched. “Wh-what if it’s a wasteland?”
“That’s not bad. We’ll be fine as long as we don’t run into the rocks dotting the landscape. We’ll just keep riding and staying away until we run out of fuel. And if it’s a residential area, there will be streets. If it’s a river, we’ll jump in and then swim. The worst would be forest, I suppose. If we slam into a big tree, we’re dead,” he said, strangely pleased with the options.
Anna definitely did not want to ride in the car anymore while M was driving.
Onward through the valley of buildings, the Baja Bug fled and the Mustang pursued.
On the left-hand sidewalk stood a player.
“Oof…”
Despite the screaming of the engine, Anna heard M grunt. It was a pained, bitter sound the likes of which she’d never heard him make.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Brace for impact. Hopefully, we’ll both survive. Good luck,” he replied.
“Huh? Oh…”
Understanding sank in as the sounds escaped her mouth.
She had only seen a blur and no real physical details of the player. But M had.
And he saw that it was a member of DOOM.
When he saw two cars loudly racing down the street next to him, the man gleefully shouted, “One of them’s gotta be SHINC!”
He grabbed one of the many strings placed all over his body and pulled it.
“I’ll blow ’em both up!”
He exploded.
The second major blast of SJ5 was about the same power as the first.
The only difference was that this one happened between tall buildings.
Inevitably, the shock it produced struck the structures on either side, but while they deteriorated a little, the sturdy metal-reinforced concrete buildings resisted total collapse.
Meaning that they reflected the force of the explosion.
The force of the shock bouncing off one building proceeded to reflect off another building. As these reflections added up, they naturally made their way toward more open spaces.
In other words, over the street running between all those buildings.
Anna saw the reflection in the Baja Bug’s side mirror turn orange for an instant.
It was an almost romantic moment, like the sun crossing the mirror while on a sunset drive.
But in reality, it was the polar opposite of that: a moment of pure, ominous destruction.
The orange light disappeared, and the impact hit a second later.
The shock wave of the explosion caught up to the car traveling sixty miles per hour and blew past it as easily as taking candy from a baby.
While the street was very wide, it was still narrow for an empty space, and the shock wave that ripped through it was amplified by bouncing off the buildings, to an extent that only the computer system running GGO could determine.
At any rate, it was an incredibly powerful shock wave that first hit the Mustang, which was in the rear position.
The back of the car lifted easily off the ground, which only caused the boxy body to receive more pressure from the explosion, instantly flipping it into the air. The Mustang spun and spun, vertically and horizontally, like a dead leaf whipped up by a sudden gust of wind.
“Hyaaa!” screamed the man gripping the skinny steering wheel.
“Bwauh!” added the passenger with the MP5A4. Compelled by the power of centrifugal force, they were pulled right out of the car through the open windows.
This was at a height of about a hundred feet. The two men, much lighter than the car, were that much easier to toss around by the explosive force.
The driver slammed into the side of the building on the left side of the street, which killed him instantly.
The other one flew through a cloud of broken glass shards, one large piece completely bisecting his body. He, too, was done with SJ5.
The priceless Mustang floating through the air like a scattered piece of aluminum foil landed roof-first on one of the building’s supports, warping and wrapping itself around it, a total husk of a vehicle.
M probably would have lamented the loss of such a classic car if he had the time to actually react to it.
Boom!
The powerful sound enveloped the Baja Bug, and then M and Anna felt themselves flying.
The shock wave kicked the Bug into the air like an empty aluminum can. It was as though the car had suddenly turned into a rocket and shot at a diagonal.
With some vertical rotation as well, the rounded, small body spun and followed a parabola. And on the inside…
“Urgh!” M groaned.
“Aaaaaaaaaahhhh!” Anna shrieked, very ladylike.
There was nothing they could do now. They were trapped in the car.
“Stay calm, Anna. We’re both strapped in. We might still survive the fall back down.”
“Aaaaaaaaah!”
There was a gale-force roar outside, but because of the comm, they could each clearly hear the other.
“If you freak out too much, the AmuSphere will auto–shut down because of it.”
“Hyaaaaaaa!
“……”
A few seconds before the Baja Bug finally touched the ground once more, M murmured, “Elza Kanzaki’s next song is a tearjerker ballad.”
“What? Really? I can’t wait!”
“Now, prepare for impact.”
Boom!
The rotating Baja Bug landed—by sheer coincidence—facing the same direction it had been driving already, tires down.
But it was not the kind of cool, safe landing you saw in action movies.
Ba-gur-chank!
The shocks absorbed impact as they deployed, but naturally, they could not neutralize all of the force of the fall, and they blew right off the attachments.
All four tires immediately exploded, and the inner wheels themselves each shot outward like spring-loaded toys.
Having lost its legs in the moment of impact, the car’s chassis hit the ground at last, slightly softer than before but still with furious force.
“Hgah!”
“Eeeek!”
M and Anna were hit with fierce vertical pressure as well as a damage assessment. Both of them immediately lost two-fifths of their health, perhaps because the game decided they had broken their spines.
But if they hadn’t had the amount of impact absorbed by the tires and suspension blowing up or if they’d landed roof-first, they both would have died instantly.
And after hitting the ground—the car bounced.
With nothing left but the body, the Bug flipped headfirst, bounding to a height of fifteen feet, still soaring. At the peak of its arc, it lost balance and turned sideways, started falling, and landed again.
This time it tumbled spectacularly, flipping and turning as its forward momentum continued—beneath a reddened sky and over tight, packed snow.
By the time it had already done seventeen sideways rotations and failed to complete the last one, rolling back flat on the ground with a thud, the Baja Bug was no longer recognizable as a car.
It was merely a pipe-metal cage with a few metal panels that suggested the appearance of a car.
There were no doors left, no roof, and it might as well never have had an engine to start with. All these parts were now littered across the snowfield along the route the Bug had taken.
The top and bottom of the cage had reversed from what they were when it was riding on its tires.
But firmly located on the inside were two seats, along with seat belts that held their human occupants in place.
M could feel virtual blood rising into his virtual head. “Anna…you still alive?” he asked. There had been so much whiplash that his neck hurt too much to turn it.
“No, I’m already dead,” she replied firmly. “I’ve died at least three times, and that’s just what I remember. I am now a ghost. You can believe that because I’m the one telling you.”
“Owww…,” M grumbled, and craned his neck to the right, feeling about a hundred times worse than when he simply woke up on the wrong side of the bed. He saw the profile of a pretty blond girl there with her mouth hanging open. It was impossible to tell if she was alive or dead just from looking at her.
Her cap had flown off, and her hair hung in wild, loose strands.
But the sunglasses were perfectly on point.
“Don’t take your seat belt off yet. Watch how I do it,” M said. He was going to demonstrate how to properly escape the upturned vehicle—although the Baja Bug no longer qualified as a vehicle.
First he reached for the roof—which was now just the pipe cage—below his head with his dominant right hand and pushed. He also applied pressure with both feet.
Only then could he use his left hand to undo the buckle.
The instant he was loose, all of his weight was going to push downward, mostly on his right arm, so he held firm with his limbs and quickly added his left hand for support to keep himself from falling.
If you undid the seat belt without any preparation, you’d fall right on your head and possibly even break your neck. That was the one thing that had to be avoided at all costs.
Then M crawled out of the birdcage and tumbled onto the hard white snow. He got to his feet, fighting back dizziness, and circled around to Anna’s seat.
“Pardon my reach.”
He held up her upside-down body to help her get out of the seat. She, too, managed to crawl out of the car on her own.
Once out of the pipe-metal birdcage, they both leaned against it. Each one went into the menu to use an emergency med kit. The hit points slowly began to return to their avatars.
Only then did they finally survey the spectacle around them.
“Ooh…this is amazing…”
“It’s kind of beautiful… Both the sky and the town…”
M and Anna beheld the reddish-blue of the sky.
The air pressure of the explosion had blown clear all of the fog in the surrounding area, including the sky. Beneath that clearing, the ruined city area on the northeast of the map, where they had just been, was clearly, crisply visible.
They were standing witness to a sight that you would never, ever see in real life.
Half of the massive buildings had crumbled and fallen. It was literally a mountain of rubble. Around them, other buildings were still in the process of toppling, lifting huge dust clouds into the air. They could feel the rumbling of the collapse through their feet.
The explosion had destroyed dozens of buildings nearest to it and altered the landscape. The main road was now completely sealed off and inaccessible. They’d have to redraw the maps.
A massive mushroom cloud was rising over the city. It was like an actual giant mushroom, growing with the nutrients it had taken from dozens of buildings.
The field of snow they now stood in started as abruptly as if someone had drawn a line marking the end of the city. It was a brilliantly vivid boundary line and looked like someone had just pasted the map data there and called it a day. Maybe the person making the map had gotten bored of it.
The boundary, presumably, was the north-south median line.
They were now about five hundred yards south of that boundary line. They’d been hurled most of that distance by the blast and tumbled the rest of the way.
The fog had been too thick to see the actual explosion when it happened, and it’d been even less possible to be aware of what was going on once they’d been picked up by the blast, but it would seem that they had just barely gotten out of the city when it happened.
The fog was clear around the snowfield, too, and everything was totally flat.
M turned around to see. The horizon was not visible, of course, but they could see white for several hundred yards in each direction.
“Ugh!” he grunted.
He’d noticed a number of little sesame-seed dots. Not just on the snowfield but also at the base of the city and around the boundary line: little moving dots.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of time to relax.”
“Huh?”
The wind picked up.
A strong gale rushed out from the base of the mushroom cloud, picking up distant mist. The snowfield, the rubble, the massive buildings—they were quickly becoming occluded again.
“I saw one or two dozen people in the area. All the players who were staying put in the snowfield saw us and are on their way.”
“Whaaat?!”
Anna was finally coming to recognize the significant danger of their situation.
M swung his left arm to call up his menu so he could go through his inventory. Anna started the process as well.
They brought their gear back out. Motes of light appeared, taking the shape of guns and protective wear.
“Wh-what do we do?” asked Anna, who had only around half her health left.
“If we want to survive, we have to fight,” replied M, who had a bit over 60 percent.
“Can we run?”
“They were coming from the city side, too. We’re already surrounded.”
“Oh no… I think this is the end of my decoy stint as team leader, Boss…”
“Too early to give up.”
M lowered his newly manifested backpack off his shoulders. He opened it and turned it upside down, dumping out the contents.
It was the armor plating (or shield) that had played such a huge role in Squad Jams past, saving his life and the lives of his teammates on so many occasions.
He quickly undid the joints that held them together and explained, “We’ll make use of this dead car for a bit longer. I can attach these to the frame and set up a defensive outpost for us.”
“Oh…”
He pulled the plates into their individual pieces. Each one was twenty inches long and twelve inches wide. There were eight of them, so they could cover quite a lot of area in total.
But if their opponents were firing wildly at full auto, bullets would most certainly find their way through the cracks.
“Fortunately, we’re both snipers who can fire semi-auto. We’ll stay here and shoot back at anyone who comes for us as soon as we see them. Prepare yourself for combat.”
“……”
“Or would you prefer to surrender and leave your teammates behind?”
She didn’t answer him with words.
Instead, she picked up her Dragunov, pulled the loading lever, and sent the first bullet into the chamber.
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