PROLOGUE Sunday, July 5th, 2026, at 12:15 PM “Hyaaa!” Llenn shrieked as she ran. A little shrimp of a girl, no more than five feet tall, with pink combat fatigues, a pink ammo pouch on either leg, pink hat, and pink gun—she was running for her life with tears in her eyes, screaming “I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die! I’m dying! Dying! Dying! Eeeek, I’m dead!” She ran at a dead sprint. Her speed was astonishing. Pitohui’s utterly unconcerned voice came through a communication device into her left ear. “Oh, you’re fine! Smaller body means smaller target.” “Yes. And if it should come to it, I’ll collect your bones to bury back home, Llenn!” came Fukaziroh’s equally nonchalant voice. “Hang in there,” said M’s voice, as calm and collected as ever. “Ugh…” Even faster than Llenn’s sprinting speed were the bullets that tore through the air overhead. All around her, red bullet lines that indicated the path of incoming shots wove and wandered like searchlights. “If I die because of this, I’m gonna curse you! I’ll come back as a ghost and haunt you!” she screamed at her distant teammates. But her two female comrades didn’t care. “If you die in a game, can you really come back as a ghost?” “I think I’m skeptical on that one, Pito. But Llenn’s such a good student, she might just figure out a way to do it.” They couldn’t have cared one iota for the fate of the one under a withering hail of gunfire, running for all she was worth to avoid getting shot. “You’re terrible! I’ll curse you whether I die or not! If you weren’t on my team, I’d shoot you right on the spot!” Llenn swore as she ran—to keep from dying, to keep from getting shot, to keep surviving. The moment she had finally cleared the reach of the bullet lines aiming at her from over her left shoulder, a new bullet came whizzing past from the right farther ahead, grazing her helmet. “Aieeeee!” The people in the bar watching could see exactly what a predicament the little pink girl was in. “Oof, that’s rough.” “Think she’s gonna die?” Displayed on the screen was a massive railway facility.
Over a vast stretch of concrete and gravel, there were many, even dozens of sets of railroad tracks laid out in parallel. Far too many to count, in fact. Scattered along the tracks were a variety of stationary train cars. Some held shipping containers, some carried tanks, some carried metal boxes. Some of the cars were properly connected, and some just sat alone. A few had even gone off the tracks and rested upturned on the ground. This place was commonly known as a switchyard, a place where many sets of tracks were used to sort out incoming freight trains. And in this huge area, with no place to hide except behind the train cars themselves, the little pink shrimp was running for her life. All alone. All the dozens of people watching the live feed in the bar knew her. Llenn was the champion of the first Squad Jam event and the runner-up of the second. She was known for being a difficult target, small in size with tremendous agility. But even then, if surrounded by enemy teams shooting from all directions in a wide-open area, even she was going to get trapped and hit sooner or later. “There’s a limit to how much you can run…” On the screen, a signal flare soared into the air. The shining-red round leaped high into the dull-gray sky, then descended lightly on a parachute. “Oh, there’s another one!” That’s going to bring more of the surrounding teams in, the viewers in the bar knew. The flare was a signal to other teams that said Found Llenn and Pitohui’s team—help us corner them! They’d already shot a number of them up, and each time it happened, more squads gathered in the area. One of the many monitors hanging from the ceiling of the bar displayed a team in reddish-brown camo laying down an endless carpet of assault rifle bullets at Llenn. There were at least three hundred yards between them and the fleeing pink rabbit across the tracks, but they fired anyway, unconcerned with ammo stock or anything else. “Damn them! They teamed up again!” “These people never learn…but on the other hand, it might actually work this time.” Llenn ran and ran on-screen. She didn’t have time to fire the P90 in her hands. If she did anything but run, a bullet would surely hit her. This was the virtual reality online game Gun Gale Online, known as GGO. The third installment of the team battle-royale tournament Squad Jam, or SJ3 was underway. Only fifteen minutes had passed since its start. And the heavy favorites were already in major trouble. As she ran, Llenn screamed, “I knew I shouldn’t have entered!” But it was too late.
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