CHAPTER 20
Final Showdown
“She did really, really great, but it looks like this is the end…,” someone in the pub said sadly.
From the moment Llenn started her mad dash, nearly everyone watching had been on her side. From her brilliant trick under the Humvee to her flying leap over it that succeeded in wounding the enemy, each and every maneuver brought a rousing cheer from the audience.
So when the merciless bullets struck her and she sent up plumes of water as she collapsed into the puddle, screams broke out around the pub.
At last, the final moment had come.
On the screen, the Humvee rolled closer to Llenn. Standing in the sunroof’s opening was her opponent, aiming right at her. She couldn’t miss from this distance.
When Llenn started firing the P90 into the air, public opinion was split between those who thought she was doing it out of terror and those who thought it was a symbol of her last regrets.
When the woman took aim again and put her finger on the trigger, someone jumped the gun a bit and said, “Rest in peace.”
So when the explosion caused an enormous pillar of water to appear—kaboom!—a number of people screamed.
“Yeep!” “Hyaaa!” “Dwoah!”
However, Anna and Sophie instantly understood what had happened, simultaneously muttering “Ooooh” and “Uh-huh…”
“I see… So the firing into the sky was meant to cover up the sound of her partner’s grenades,” Sophie said.
“And coincidentally, their car was moving at the time, so the other engine sound was covered up,” Anna concluded.
But Sophie smirked and said, “Are you sure that was a coincidence?”
Different things happened all at once on different screens.
On one screen, as the shock wave of the water geyser passed over Llenn, she leaped to her feet, used an emergency med kit on herself, and clicked in a fresh P90 magazine.
On a different screen, Pitohui did a one-eighty and pointed the KTR-09 directly behind the car.
And on the final screen, another Humvee was racing across the plain. It was close to two hundred yards from the pond and closing in fast. The light angled through the cabin, revealing that the driver behind the wheel was a little girl, her hands and feet intact again.
“Tch! We played around a bit too much!” spat Pitohui, blasting away with the KTR-09. The bullets seemed to home in on Fukaziroh’s Humvee, but naturally, they all bounced off it.
After ten shots, Pitohui gave up on that. “Aaargh, forget it!”
The enemy Humvee was coming straight at them.
“It’s gonna smash into us! Grab something—I’m gonna gun it!” M shouted, stomping on the pedal. Pitohui pressed her butt into the back seat.
“Yaaaaaah!”
Fukaziroh had her tiny foot jammed against the gas pedal as hard as she could. Her hands clung to the big steering wheel. Through the windshield was another vehicle of the same type.
“Outta the waaaay!”
On the video stream, the newly arrived Humvee plunged toward M and Pitohui’s vehicle. The new one still had armor around its sunroof, so it was easy to tell the two apart. The armored Humvee’s rush brought some life to the crowd that had until recently been funereal for Llenn.
“Ooh! It’s gonna slam ’em!”
“That’s the best way to destroy the chassis, for sure.”
“But…isn’t it gonna hurt the girl driving it, too?”
“Who cares? One of us for two of them? Bring it on!”
M turned the Humvee to face directly toward the oncoming arrival. Once he knew that the other car was going to ram him, there was no point in turning sideways to flee. It would just be that much easier for the other car to get an angle to upturn his. At that point, it was inevitable that he’d roll. They’d get thrown about the interior and hurt badly. If the program calculated that you broke your neck, that could mean instant death.
The best option, of course, would be to turn tail and escape. That would be the effective way to minimize any collision damage. But when that wasn’t possible, facing directly forward offered the highest chances of escape. The driver could spin the wheel left or right at the last possible moment and hopefully clear out of the way.
The two vehicles rushed across the grassy plain toward a headlong collision—until one of them abruptly changed course.
“Whoa!” “Huh?”
The audience was taken aback—and for good reason. It was the truck with the armor plating still on it that moved.
The two cars passed by each other at breathtaking velocity. The one heading toward the pond plunged straight into the water. It sloshed through it and promptly arrived at the side of the running girl in pink, then turned and slid to a stop to its right to shield her from any incoming gunfire.
Through the bulletproof glass, Fukaziroh leered and said, “Hey, baby! How’d you get so drenched? Why don’t you take a tour with me in my sweet ride?”
“Yes, yes! Take me with you!” Llenn clamored, covered in filthy water.
Fukaziroh smirked. “I like a girl who’s honest about her desires! You’re not goin’ home tonight, sweetheart!”
“It’s so heavy!” Llenn yanked on the rear side door, which was like a bank-vault door with all the armor plating it featured. She did get it open, though, and got inside before slamming it shut.
Inside, she made her way to the middle of the vehicle and popped her head out of the sunroof to look behind them.
“Hyaa!”
Naturally, M’s Humvee was bearing down on them, descending from the plain into the water. It was just forty yards away.
“Just drive, Fuka! Anywhere!”
“You got it! Are there sleazy motels in this world?” Fukaziroh slammed on the acceleration pedal.
And thus, the first—and no doubt the last—car chase of SJ2 began.
The floating camera captured the image of the vehicles, one fleeing and one pursuing. They crossed the pond and got back onto dry land.
In one Humvee, Pitohui yelled, “M! Take out all the grenades you’ve got!”
He complied with her command. With his right hand on the wheel, he opened his menu with the left and selected everything with the word grenade in its name, plasma or not, then materialized them all.
When the light had coalesced into matter, a variety of explosives landed and rolled on the front passenger seat.
In the other Humvee, Llenn asked, “Your shots will blow up even if you throw them?”
Fukaziroh’s MGL-140s and backpack were resting on the passenger seat. The owner replied, “Nope, doesn’t work. Gotta shoot ’em.”
“Damn!”
“Wanna drive for a sec?”
“I can’t do it! And…when did you get your license, Fuka?” Llenn asked, unable to resist her sense of curiosity.
“I started going to driving school not too long ago. It’s just too inconvenient not having a car. If anything, I shoulda gotten it earlier! Forget studying for tests! Huh…? Wait, didn’t I tell you about that?”
“No, you didn’t! But that’s awesome! No wonder you can drive this thing so well!”
“All I did was finish the entrance ceremony at the school. If anything, I’ve been too busy with all this to practice driving.”
“Huh? Then…how can you drive it?”
There were little streams along the plain, and each time they crossed one, the tires lost a bit of traction and destabilized the car, but Fukaziroh’s fine handling kept it under control so that they maintained a direct path over the empty plain. It was excellent driving.
“Oh, simple. I play some driving games on a different account.”
“With all the time you spend in GGO?! How much gaming do you do?!”
“Hey, it came in handy, right?”
“Huh? I guess so,” Llenn said, right as the back seat rocked to the right. There was an explosive boom.
“Whoo!”
Fukaziroh swerved sideways, straightening out the vehicle to counteract the sudden shift in momentum. She did an admirable job.
Llenn poked her head out of the armored sunroof. Through the bulletproof glass, she examined M’s car pacing them about twenty yards back and to the left.
Pitohui’s hand appeared from the round hole in the roof and tossed something. It arced through the air toward them—a plasma grenade.
“Eep!”
It hit the rear of the vehicle with a thud, and Llenn ducked her head back into the chassis. But the projectile did not explode on impact. It rolled off the rear slope of the car body and onto the ground, where it blew up about five yards behind them.
Apparently, the timer on the fuse had been set too long, which saved them. But the shock wave of the blast rattled the vehicle, and it killed much of their speed.
“Dammit!” Llenn popped her head out of the sunroof again, aiming her P90 at the rear Humvee. Because the car was rocking and rumbling, she couldn’t get a good aim, even at this close distance. But that didn’t matter; she shot about ten bullets, full auto.
Sparks burst off the vehicle’s hood and roof, but nothing hit Pitohui inside the Humvee. As evidence of that, she tossed another explosive.
This time, her aim was perfect. The plasma grenade hurtled exactly toward Llenn.
Uh-oh, that’s going to land inside the car. If it blows up in here, both Fuka and I will die, she understood, everything playing out in slow motion.
Llenn had two options.
The first was for her to jump out. In midair, she could turn around and manage to slide with her feet without taking fall damage.
But Llenn chose the second option instead.
She lifted the P90 with both hands. “Hi-yah!”
Gonk!
With the side of the gun, she struck the plasma grenade back before it could land inside the car. The orb fell outside the vehicle instead and exploded on the ground far behind the two Humvees.
“Whew!” She exhaled.
“That was so mean, Llenn! How could you use me as a bat?” P-chan whined, but she ignored it.
She readied herself for the next projectile, but this time, M’s car was slowing down, putting distance between the two of them.
Did they give up? she wondered for a brief moment.
“Llenn! Up ahead!” Fukaziroh nearly screamed. Llenn spun around and could scarcely believe what she saw there.
About a hundred feet ahead, there was another small puddle-ish pond, from which rose a geyser over thirty feet tall. This was not the plume of some projectile landing in the water. It was an actual geyser of water from the earth, like a fountain. It had not been there when she looked earlier.
“What the hell is thiiiis?!”
“I don’t knoooooow!”
The car carrying the screaming Fukaziroh and Llenn plunged toward the fountain. Fukaziroh was just barely able to adjust their path to the right to avoid completely crashing headlong into it. The giant fountain passed just feet to the left of the vehicle instead.
The falling water thundered into the Humvee’s sunroof.
“Bwah! Owww!” Llenn howled, startled at the virtual pain signals the water was sending. In fact, her skin was actually glowing with the signs of damage effects. Her hit points were definitely going down, if not as much as when she got shot. She was at about 50 percent.
“It’s boiling water!”
“Huh?”
“This whole area is a hot spring! All those pools are just geysers waiting to erupt! I can’t believe what we wandered into!”
Llenn connected the dots. They had wandered into a deadly trap set by none other than Mother Nature herself.
“My goodness!” Fukaziroh exclaimed. “So we’ve got all the hot water we can use? Just the thing when you’ve got a cup of instant noodles to heat up!”
“Really? That’s what you’re concerned about?”
The audience in the bar was equally stunned by what they saw on the screen, but they’d seen a geyser eruption on the screen earlier, so that wasn’t what surprised them.
“How did M know to avoid it?”
The Humvee had altered course right before the eruption, as if M and Pitohui were aware that it was just about to happen. No one could answer how they’d done it.
Except for Pitohui, who had completely memorized the chart of the valley, the locations of the geysers, and their stated eruption times, as they were listed on the wall of the log house room. She sat in the back seat of the Humvee, checking her watch.
“Down to the second. Gotta love the virtual world.”
“Fuka! This is a bad place to be! We need to move!” Llenn urged, watching M’s Humvee to her left.
“Yeah, that sounds nice, but it’s not gonna happen” was the response she received.
“Huh? Why not?”
“Because this car’s about to stop.”
“Why?”
“Lack of gas. There’s a light blaring at me on the dash. And it even includes a readout that helpfully indicates how far it can go.”
“And what does it say?”
“About a thousand feet.”
“What—?!”
That would happen in just moments. Apparently, the vehicle hadn’t contained much gas to begin with. She recalled that the hovercraft from the last Squad Jam had run out of gas very quickly, too.
“What now, Llenn?” asked her partner.
“Well, I guess that leaves us no choice,” Llenn said, glancing at the car containing M and Pitohui. “Ram ’em!”
“Pito, we don’t have any fuel. Maybe fifteen hundred feet.”
“Oh, that’s sad,” said Pitohui without a trace of sadness, fixing a thirty-round magazine to her KTR-09. “Run into them, then.”
To the overhead cameras, two Humvees were running in parallel over a grassy field dotted with pools and streams here and there—only now the cars were rushing closer together.
A muddy little girl in pink popped her head out of the car on the right.
A woman with a navy-blue bodysuit popped her head out of the car on the left.
Llenn stared at Pitohui as she approached.
Pitohui stared at Llenn as she approached.
The two vehicles were going to collide, nose to nose, right there on the plain—except that just before it happened, they both leaped out through the sunroofs.
Rather than attempting to withstand the impact of landing and maintain balance, they both accepted the momentum and rolled on the grass instead.
Llenn clutched the P90 tight, making herself even smaller. Pitohui adopted a similar stance, but to her detriment, her gun was much longer. The KTR-09 caught the grass of the field and was ripped from her hands.
“Tch!”
“Hyaaaa!”
“Gaaah!”
While the women were rolling, the two Humvees flipped upward with the momentum of their impact and rolled over in opposite directions.
“Bwaahhh!”
“Hrrrgh!”
As the massive vehicles spun and rolled, their drivers, Fukaziroh and M, experienced a roller-coaster ride of centrifugal force. They gripped their steering wheels for dear life, pushing with all the muscle of their legs and arms to keep their backs against the seats and stay put.
If either got thrown from the driver’s seat, they’d either slam around the interior or get tossed right out of the open sunroof.
Each Humvee did five full rotations and ended up on its roof, stopping about sixty yards from the other.
“Gweeih…”
“Phew…”
Both Fukaziroh and M possessed a tremendous amount of strength. They had managed to survive their theme-park rides without safety belts and without being thrown around.
Fukaziroh’s chin strap was digging painfully into her neck.
“If this was real life, I’d be dead… Once I get my license, I’m definitely going to wear my seat belt and drive safely…”
Llenn leaped from a moving vehicle, did several somersaults, and still bounded swiftly to her feet.
Where is she?!
She spun around, P90 at her waist, looking for Pitohui. She’d seen her jump out. She must be close by.
Then she spotted her target, just over thirty feet away.
Pitohui, not yet completely on her feet, was without a gun in her hands.
“Aaaaah!”
She blasted the P90. A horizontal spray three feet off the ground, like shooting a hose sideways. If she tried to jump side to side, she would get hit.
Pitohui did not stand.
Instead, she fell straight onto her back, pulling XDM pistols from her thigh holsters and firing them.
The shot from her right gun grazed Llenn’s left shoulder, while the one from her left gun did the same to the right shoulder, leaving bullet effects like knife scars. Llenn took her finger off the P90’s trigger.
In that case—!
She turned her right shoulder toward Pitohui and held the P90 out in her right hand alone like a pistol, keeping a slim profile.
Pitohui’s next bullets passed around Llenn’s stomach and back. In combination with how quickly Llenn moved, it was like she had dodged the shots with sheer reaction speed.
I can do this! I’ll close in and finish her off! Llenn thought, placing her finger on the trigger again. “It’s your final job, P-chan!”
“You got it!”
The gun burst into motion. The rattle of automatic gunfire echoed across the grassy field, as did Pitohui’s shriek.
“Hyaaa!”
The P90 was tilted upward in Llenn’s hand. It pointed into the sky—and the bullets it was firing vanished there as well, naturally.
Pitohui’s third pair of bullets from dual pistols had landed just below the muzzle of the P90, deflecting it upward with force.
Llenn saw her, flat on her back with only her face lifted up, pointing two guns, smiling wildly. The pair of bullet lines extending from the XDMs spread just enough to jab at Llenn’s eyes individually.
And with nothing but red in her sight, Llenn thought, “I’m sorry, P-chan.”
P-chan replied, “Nah, it’s cool.”
Pitohui fired her fourth pair of bullets.
The two .40-caliber bullets emerged from their guns at the exact same moment, heading straight for Llenn’s face—until they struck the body of the P90 she held up to guard herself, breaking through the reinforced plastic.
“Taaa!”
Llenn started running, right at Pitohui. Holding up a shield twenty inches long and eight inches wide before her eyes.
“Haah!”
Pitohui fired for the fifth time. These bullets, too, struck the P90, hitting the body and barrel of the gun with a shower of sparks.
The sixth shots knocked the P90’s magazine loose, hurling its remaining bullets into the air with the internal springs.
The seventh shots—never came. Llenn’s speed already had her upon Pitohui.
“Taaa!”
“Gnnf!”
She planted her little foot directly into Pitohui’s face as she launched into a jump. She flipped in the air, removing the P90’s sling from her shoulder as she landed.
In that moment, Pitohui twisted herself up, face glowing as though she’d been given a nosebleed, pointing the heavily stocked XDMs at Llenn.
But before she could shoot them, the pistols themselves shot from Pitohui’s hands.
“Wha—?!”
Llenn had taken advantage of her agility to sneak closer and swung the P90 around by the sling. Even a plastic gun body full of holes, lightened without a magazine of bullets, could be an effective twenty-inch weapon.
“Nice move!” she heard Pitohui say gleefully.
They froze then—a ten-foot standoff.
Llenn let go of the sling, freeing up both her hands. The P90 could probably still shoot, but she didn’t have time to load a new magazine. Pitohui was also empty-handed, now that Llenn had knocked her pistols away.
“Llenn,” Pitohui said, smiling like she had when they’d quested together.
“What is it, Pito?” Llenn asked, smiling back. Her hand slowly crept behind her back.
“Thanks so much for coming out to SJ2. My back’s against the wall because of you! I’m so happy I get to have such a thrilling fight.”
“You’re welcome. But to be honest, this whole thing is giving me an ulcer!”
Slowly, very slowly, Llenn’s fingers crept for the hilt of the knife.
“Really? But you’re going to get a nice third-place prize for your trouble. Winner last time—third place this time. That’s very impressive! Of course, if I’d taken part last year, I would’ve won!”
“No, Pito, you can have third,” Llenn insisted, looking for any of Pitohui’s remaining weapons. As far as she could tell, there was nothing that looked like a gun.
All she could see was a thin knife on the outside of her boot. That made it easy to pull free, but it wouldn’t have enough attack power. Unless she hit a very vital point, like the eyes, Llenn had enough hit points to withstand an attack.
More dangerous was the photon sword. It was three feet long and could slice through a knife. Llenn didn’t stand a chance against it.
Where is it now?
Since she couldn’t see it, that meant it was likely behind Pitohui’s back, but could she draw it quickly enough? Was it placed somewhere that would allow her to draw and swing in one motion, like the famous iai katana move?
No, it’s not, she decided. Pitohui’s main weapon was the gun. She would prioritize firearms and choose to use them first, just as she did with the pistols earlier.
“Hmm, I’d rather not. I only need first place. In fact, I don’t even need that. All I want is to survive the battle royale. The top prize is just a side effect of that. But I will take what is mine.”
They were ten feet apart. Close enough that she could draw her knife and close the gap in an instant.
But if Pitohui went on the defensive, her attacks would essentially be useless. If she closed her legs, for example, or guarded her neck and face.
If she had any chance of winning at all, it would be when Pitohui launched a fierce attack of her own. It would be better if Pitohui’s photon sword was difficult to draw.
As she continued searching for a potential weapon, Llenn said, “Look, it’s just a game. Who cares if you die, right? It’s not like you’re actually dying.”
“Maybe for you, Llenn. But for me…it’s a little bit different.”
Pitohui’s voice was harder now, heavier. So Llenn intentionally lightened her tone. “Oh? What do you mean? Could you tell me, right before the end? You won’t be able to say after I kill you.”
All she needed was a moment of opportunity when the other woman attacked. But it had to be a very big window.
There was one thing she could do about that.
“Well, I don’t know that you’d understand if I told you. But if I had to describe it, it’s more like…I’m really risking my life in the game, maybe?”
Pitohui’s tone was casual, but Llenn saw a seriousness in her eyes that she’d never seen before. Her smile was conveyed with her mouth and nothing else.
Maybe it’s time to finally anger the demon. Scary as it might be…
Llenn inhaled slowly and prayed.
Please, AmuSphere. Just don’t auto–shut down on me.
“Risking your life for a game? You mean like that game that was all over the news, Sword Art Online? Isn’t that—?”
“‘Isn’t that’ what?” Pitohui asked, her eyes like gun barrels.
Llenn felt her pulse racing, but there was no backing out now. She put on the biggest smile she could possibly make. “Isn’t that incredibly stupid? I’m so glad you didn’t have to play that legendarily shitty game!”
But Llenn did not anticipate that Pitohui would look so…
…sad.
So ready for tears.
So hurt.
Llenn leaped.
Her hand was on the knife before her first step landed.
She was in range of the taller woman, pulling out the blade backhanded, on the second.
She passed through her legs, slicing open the inside of the left thigh on the third.
She jumped hard to the right, twisting her hand on the fourth.
The blade slashed the left side of Pitohui’s throat, adding a new marking to her facial tattoos.
“Gafhk!”
Pitohui toppled to her right, red damage light streaming from her neck—and when her hand hit the ground, she bounced back upward like on springs.
“Huh?”
It was the sort of physics-defying maneuver you expected to see from a break-dancer. Pitohui caught her fall and not only supported herself with just her right arm, she pushed herself back to her feet.
Then her arm continued, shooting toward Llenn’s face with tremendous speed.
All Llenn saw was a gray cylinder.
Gonk!
There was a strange sound in the middle of her face. She shot back a good ten feet, then slid another fifteen over the grass, until she finally splashed into one of the pools of water.
It all took just an instant to happen, but Llenn was cognizant of the entire string of events in frightening detail.
Pitohui had drawn the photon sword and struck her with it. The only silver lining was that she hadn’t had the time to hit the switch and activate the actual blade of light.
Her hit points dropped to about 40 percent. It was practically a miracle she still had the knife in her hand.
Then Llenn looked at Pitohui. Her left femoral artery was cut clean through, as was the carotid artery on the left side of the neck.
That ought to be enough to kill your average character.
Oh, right. Pito’s anything but normal.
It was a bit late to be remembering that now.
“Whew! You got me good.” Pitohui looked up to the sky wistfully. “I’ve only got twenty percent health left.”
You’ve still got twenty?! Monster! Zombie! Llenn thought but did not say. She was at the lip of the thirty-foot pool, mind racing for what she could do in this situation.
She was a good twenty-five feet from Pitohui. If she attacked with the knife, she’d either be rebuffed or be sliced in two by the photon sword.
So what do I do what do I do what do I do what do I do?
There was nothing she could do. Llenn didn’t have the throwing skill to hit her target with the knife from a distance.
I’m stumped. I’m screwed.
She was going to die in moments.
Speaking of which, how was Fukaziroh doing now? She still had plenty of HP remaining. Good old hardy Fukaziroh.
But that didn’t mean anything now. It was completely beside the point for Fukaziroh to kill Pitohui.
It just wasn’t going to work out.
She couldn’t think of an idea, so she gave up.
Then Pitohui engaged in a most puzzling course of action. She picked up the P90 Llenn had used to bat her pistols away. The magazine had blown out when it got hit by the bullets, but there should still be one in the chamber. One bullet left to fire.
Pitohui carefully pulled the loading handle halfway to confirm that the bullet was indeed there. Then she set the gun against her shoulder.
“Is this P-chan Number Two?” she asked, making it sound like some kind of weird home address. Llenn nodded. “Then I’ll at least let you die by your own gun. Don’t move.”
Pitohui put her finger against the trigger.
She had used just about any and every gun in the game, so of course she had experience with a P90. There was no way she’d miss at this distance.
The only thought in Llenn’s mind was that she would die by her favorite gun, P-chan. She wasn’t thinking about winning SJ2 or killing Pitohui or anything else like that.
“Why, P-chan? That’s so mean,” she pleaded to it.
Immediately, it replied, “Don’t give up! Look closer!”
“Huh?”
“Look closer!”
“Pardon?”
“Look closer!”
The orders were getting so annoying that Llenn did as she was told. Pitohui with the P90. Her finger resting against the trigger. The muzzle pointed at her.
“It’s not there!
“I don’t see it!
“I don’t see the bullet line!
“There’s no red line that should be pointing from the end of the gun straight to my forehead!
“Why? How come?”
There was only one possible answer.
Splosh. Llenn got to her feet in the water.
“Taaaa!”
She clenched the knife and began running. Right for Pitohui, who smiled at her.
“Time to die, Llenn.”
Pitohui’s finger pulled the trigger.
“I’ll keep you safe, Llenn!”
There was a muffled burst.
Pitohui shrieked. “Aagh!”
P-chan made its last act of resistance in her arms. The barrel had burst. All the pressure of the bullet and the gunpowder explosion erupted not from the end of the muzzle, but somewhere inside the gun, rupturing the metal and cracking the body from within.
It was already in tatters from when Pitohui shot it, and now the gun was truly destroyed.
Llenn foresaw all this happening.
There was only one reason she could imagine that there would be no bullet line coming from the gun in that situation: It was that the gun couldn’t fire.
No bullet lines appeared for guns whose ammo had all been fired or never loaded in the first place. And neither did they appear for damaged guns.
That was why Llenn noticed. But Pitohui did not. And this was because regardless of the circumstances, a helpful bullet circle always appeared for the shooter.
Llenn banked on this to launch into her final charge. And her bet was a winner.
Not only was it a dud shot, it was more than that. At the very, very end, P-chan had protected her.
“Thank you, P-chan!” she exulted, racing toward Pitohui, who was momentarily blinded by the shards of plastic and metal that assaulted her eyes.
Llenn added her left hand to steady the backhand grip on the knife and held it in front of her chest. It was almost like she was praying to God.
Water burst from the pool at the exact moment that she leaped out of it. It was a geyser eruption, and if she’d been in there, the scalding water would likely have killed her instantly.
Against the backdrop of the towering fountain and the roar of its eruption, Llenn closed the gap to Pitohui in an instant. She leaped at the end, raising the tip of the knife to the level of Pitohui’s face and swinging.
She lunged for Pitohui’s eyes, which were still glowing with the damage effect.
“Yaaah!”
Despite the fact that she couldn’t see, Pitohui’s hands closed over Llenn’s wrists.
It was just inches before the tip of the knife stabbed her eye. She couldn’t have seen it coming, but she had a steady, accurate grip now. She either sensed the incoming attack or just had a hunch.
Pitohui toppled backward, pulling Llenn with her and planting her foot on the girl’s midriff—and launching the judo throw known as a tomoe nage.
The world flipped upside down in Llenn’s eyes, and she landed hard on her back in the grass.
“Gre-gok!” It was the sound of a frog being squashed. Because it was grass, she didn’t suffer any numerical damage.
“Haaa!” But the very next moment, Pitohui stood and lifted her by the arms, causing Llenn to dangle in the air. Pitohui had her hanging, both hands around the knife completely trapped in just her right hand. There was a huge gap between her toes and the ground.
“Whewwwwww!”
The demon queen exhaled a huge breath, her eyes flashing.
“Verrrry interesting. Even your precious gun tries to keep you safe, eh?”
Dammit! Leggo!
Llenn flailed and kicked, but there was nothing for her legs to do except attempt to knee and kick Pitohui’s stomach—and it had absolutely no effect on the much stronger woman.
She tried and tried, to no avail. Llenn’s physical-combat ability simply wasn’t good enough to do any damage to other players.
The geyser eruption behind her was waning now. Once it had stopped entirely, Llenn gave up her fruitless struggling.
The knife, then?
If she let go of the knife she was still holding, wouldn’t it hit Pitohui in the face? It took willpower to let go of her actual, honest-to-goodness final weapon, but she didn’t have any other option.
Llenn opened her hands, praying for a miracle, and dropped the knife toward Pitohui’s face.
“Haah!” the other woman snarled.
Chonk. She caught it in her teeth.
“Huh?”
Yes, the eight-inch knife blade, sharp edge inward, was trapped right between her teeth. Pitohui suffered no damage at all.
“Ahhhh.” Worst of all, she had given her enemy another weapon. Pitohui grabbed the hilt with her free hand and continued, “This is a pretty sweet knife. Are you giving it to me? Or are you indicating you want me to kill you with it?”
“Neither!” yelled Llenn, somewhat childishly.
“Then let’s just throw this away,” Pitohui said like a nursery school teacher, and with a flip of her hand, she tossed the knife into the grass.
Now Llenn was truly trapped.
“This is incredible, Llenn. I ought to learn by your example—the way you never give up, all the way to the end,” Pitohui said. It was hard to tell whether it was meant to be serious or a joke.
Then she called out, “M! Come over here.”
Belatedly, Llenn remembered that M was around, too. He’d been completely outside of her thoughts. If M had had his gun trained on her, too, she would’ve been dead already.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” said a voice from over Llenn’s right shoulder. She craned her head, still dangling, and saw the large man approach, carrying his M14 EBR. And to her surprise—
“Fuka!”
He was also escorting her partner, Fukaziroh.
Fukaziroh’s helmet was gone, exposing her braided blond hair. There was duct tape around her wrists—and one more piece over her mouth for good measure.
She’d known from the HP readout that Fukaziroh was still alive, and she’d considered it strange she never heard the girl’s voice. This would explain the combination.
And with herself trapped, too, that meant Team LF were PM4’s captives.
M marched Fukaziroh up to about five yards behind them and ordered her to sit. Her legs were free, but without the use of her hands, there was little point in trying to run. She sat down cross-legged without complaint.
Pitohui ordered, “Find me the XDMs. Just one of them will do—they’re lying around here somewhere.”
M looked around the grass and found one of the pistols right away. He brought it back to Pitohui.
“Thanks.”
She grabbed it from him with her free hand and shooed him back to Fukaziroh’s side. Llenn tried her best to kick the pistol away, but Pitohui just extended the arm she was using to hold her, putting her out of range. “We’re just going to keep you over here for a bit.”
Llenn knew she was light, but the way that Pitohui could keep her under control with just one arm—and extended at that—was nothing short of frightening.
Pitohui then reached over with her gun hand and pointed the XDM toward the other two.
Bang. She fired it.
Bang. Another shot.
Llenn had seen a number of shocking, unexpected things in SJ2—but this was easily the biggest shock of all.
“Rrgh…”
It was M who was groaning from the pain of being shot, glowing damage effects on his large cheeks.
He fell heavily to his knees. There was no DEAD tag over him, so he was still alive, but he’d been shot twice in the face. That had to mean huge damage.
Next to him, Fukaziroh was definitely just as shocked. Her eyes were so bugged out, it actually looked kind of comical.
“Wh-what are you doing, Pito?!” Llenn demanded, dangling from her other arm. “That is a no-no! I thought he was your pal-pal! Was that okay-kay?” she said, so bewildered by the event that had just transpired that she started babbling.
Pitohui glanced at her. “Was that a haiku?”
“N-no! Why would you shoot M? I can’t believe this! He’s your teammate!”
“I have my reasons. He shot you, too, last time. Didn’t he?”
“Oof… W-well, yes, but…”
“I’ll tell you why. Because that little M over there betrayed me.”
“Wh-whaaa—?”
The familiarity of the situation caused Llenn’s voice to crack. But that wasn’t what Pitohui wanted to say, apparently.
“Earlier, when your little partner drove the other Humvee up, he moved our vehicle just before she arrived. He said it would make it ‘easier to aim,’ but that was a lie,” she claimed.
“…”
Llenn was lost. She could only listen. For his part, M knelt in silence, light glowing on his cheeks.
“In the side mirrors, he could see the other vehicle approaching. And in order to keep me from finding out, he ran the engine and moved us when he didn’t need to. So what was it for? To allow your partner to arrive and keep me from killing you at that point. Of course, before that, I also allowed him to wipe out the Amazon team you were working with, just to isolate you, I guess. I can forgive him for that.”
So M—who had sworn up and down that he would not bring personal emotion into the game and would act only for Pitohui’s sake—had acted out of some kind of sentiment…
Llenn recalled how Goushi had looked back then. The handsome man who pushed her back against the wall and spoke of the strength of his love.
Pitohui asked the silent man, “Does the accused have a rebuttal?”
“No,” he said.
She pointed the XDM at him. “Any last words?”
“I love you.”
“I know that. But you’re not allowed to bring love into the game.”
Bang.
Just one shot at the end.
M slowly slumped forward from his knees, bullet between his eyes.
“Aaaah!”
He collapsed onto the grass, and this time the sign said DEAD.
“H-hey! Why would you do that, Pito?! I can’t believe this! You monster! You devil! You demon king!”
“Ooh, demon king. I like that.” Pitohui smiled. And then, still holding Llenn in one hand and her pistol in the other, she improbably began to sing.
“Mein Vater, mein Vater, jetzt faßt er mich an! Erlkönig hat mir ein Leids getan!” (My father, my father, he seizes me fast, for sorely the demon king has hurt me at last!)
Llenn recognized that song. It was “Erlkönig,” the piece of music written by Franz Schubert that was titled “Demon King” in Japan.
Her singing voice was shockingly clean and beautiful. There was nothing demonic about it in the least.
“Hey, Pito! Let go of my hands so I can applaud!”
“Ha-ha, very funny. I’m not falling for that one.”
When Pitohui looked at Llenn, thus pulling her eyes away, Fukaziroh lifted her duct-taped hands behind her head. She wriggled her wrists, and the heavy, tough tape split right in half, giving her free use of her hands again.
Then she spun her right arm over the back of her head, grabbed a handle there, and pulled it out. Her long blond hair came undone and fell toward the ground, but not before she began to run. With her open hand, she ripped off the tape over her mouth.
“Owww!”
In her right hand was the “hairpin” that had held her hair in place. Her final weapon, which she had fashioned from a knife ground down to a thin point.
Pitohui noticed before Llenn did.
She fired—bang-bang-bang. The XDM’s bullets hit Fukaziroh’s shoulders and thigh but did not stop her charge.
“Haah!” Pitohui exhaled, impressed at Fukaziroh’s toughness, then swept back her leg and held out Llenn right before her face.
“Ah!” Fukaziroh hit the brakes suddenly, unable to stab her own teammate.
Llenn grasped the situation and shouted “Cut! Kick!” so quickly, it must have sounded like one word.
But Fukaziroh understood her meaning. “Roger that!”
She jumped toward Pitohui, who was holding up Llenn as a shield.
“Haaaah!”
The blade sliced sideways, a line of light.
Fukaziroh had swung a sword just about every day in ALO. “Missing her mark” was not in her dictionary any longer.
Even the stunted little knife hit its target perfectly: the arm.
Llenn’s thin arms. Both of them.
The blade perfectly severed her arms just below where Pitohui had them held.
And as Fukaziroh landed on one foot, she kicked out powerfully with the other.
It hit Llenn right in the back as she fell, propelling her forward.
At the cost of most of her remaining hit points, and her forearms and hands, Llenn gained her freedom. She also got the push on the back she needed.
“Gaaaaaah!!”
She opened her mouth wide and snapped down on the right side of Pitohui’s neck.
“Wha—?!”
Gla-jhurk!
There was a hideous noise, something she had never heard before, as her teeth sank into Pitohui’s neck. Red light shone.
“Aaagh!” Pitohui dropped Llenn’s hands and writhed in agony.
Hrrrrrnnnnnggg!
Llenn put all the effort into her jaw that she could, clinging for dear life.
Her only thought: Must kill Pitohui.
Pitohui was aware that her hit points were steadily dropping, with teeth in her throat that would not dislodge.
“L-Llenn…,” she murmured.
The girl answered with a tremendous burst of air from her mouth and nose. Frrrnt!
“Llenn… You really…will be…the…death of…me…”
Hurrrrrr!
It wasn’t clear whether that exhalation was meant to be affirmative or negative.
“I see… So I’m going…to die here…,” Pitohui mumbled, slowly toppling backward. She fell, and with her went Llenn, who was still clinging to her neck.
“Pwah!” Llenn finally let go.
She looked at Pitohui, who had the eyes of a dying person. “You’re not going to die, Pito! I mean, I won’t let you! Er, I mean, yeah, I’m going to kill you here and now, but I mean in real life!”
“Wh…at…?”
“M told me! He told me how you were going to die for real if you died in SJ2!”
“Oh…shit… That clown…,” Pitohui murmured, grinning.
“You and I made a promise that day, Pito! That one day, we’d have a real fight, and if you lost, we’d meet in real life. A promise between women!” Llenn bonked her with the severed end of her arm. “A ritual toast!”
“…” Pitohui stared at her with dying eyes, then erupted. “Pfft!”
“Keep the promise!” Llenn said at the same time, smiling. She opened her mouth wide and bit down hard on Pitohui’s windpipe, squeezing with all her strength to crush it.
The last remaining bit of Pitohui’s health vanished.
At the moment that Llenn ripped Pitohui’s throat out with her teeth, the bar was as silent as if it were empty.
In fact, it was essentially at capacity, between the audience and the various players who had returned already after dying, including the members of Team SHINC.
But at this moment, it was silent.
Then gunshots broke that silence.
“Huh?” “Whoa!” “What?!”
The pair of girls on the screen were riddled with bullets.
Damage effects glowed all over them, and they toppled over instantly, DEAD tags floating over their bodies. It was incredibly sudden and anticlimactic.
The camera angle switched to a grassy plain about a quarter of a mile away, where smoke rose from the guns of futuristic super-soldiers outfitted in huge armor.
In the sky behind them, a message said, Congratulations!! Winner: T-S!
“Oh…”
So Team T-S, which had spent the entire game running away from trouble, had snuck in and scooped up the biggest prize at the very, very end.
The storm of angry roars and boos couldn’t possibly have been audible in the event map, wherever that was, but regardless, the six members of T-S wisely did not return to the bar.
Time of match: one hour, thirty-five minutes.
The second Squad Jam was over.
Winning team: T-S.
Total shots fired: 79,408.
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