CHAPTER 16
Save the Last Battle for Me
Llenn raced through the vast hall at top speed without any vision. Her sheer physical ability carried her at speeds no other person could match, blazing across the open floor until she slammed into one of the pillars.
“Hrbegya!”
Fortunately, it wasn’t a head-on collision, so she bounced off to the left.
“Gaaah!”
Her momentum pulled her into a roll.
“Gubh!”
The rotation carried her all the way to the edge of the space, where she hit the wall and came to a stop.
“Come! Grab hold!” said a familiar voice from very close by.
“Okay…,” Llenn mumbled, dizzy and in pain all over. She obeyed the voice and saw through slowly recovering eyes the blurry image of a large hand reaching out to her.
“Can you see?”
“Barely. And you, Pito?”
“I’m fine. All right, let’s go and kill those two. Just the two of us in LPFM!”
“Gotcha!”
As the hall tilted further, the two women chatted happily—while they were somewhat deranged—as their eyesight improved.
“What about me?” asked the man nearby.
Pitohui’s answer was instant.
“If you get in my way, I’ll kill you!”
“I can see fine now. I’ll be all right. Thanks, Boss…”
“There we go.”
Llenn and Eva (aka Boss) were hurrying down the corridor of Deck 17 toward the stern. Boss had been pulling Llenn along by the hand, but she let go now.
It was a long hallway, running along the cabins on the port side of the ship. Though it was hard to tell because there were no windows, the incline was a gentle upward climb.
“We want as much distance as possible. Then we’ll wait for the scan. It’s about one…forty-four right now. We might not get the chance to see the next scan in time,” said Boss. She wasn’t slow, but obviously she couldn’t keep up with Llenn.
So the smaller girl followed behind her and muttered, “I’m sorry for…all kinds of stuff.”
In her hand was the Satellite Scanner. She scrolled the screen until it showed a clear, unmistakable message: You are a betrayer.
When the messages had gone out, she got so distracted by Pitohui’s joke that she never checked for herself, and she allowed Pitohui to take over the role she herself was meant to play. Because of that, she wasn’t able to have the direct confrontation with SHINC she wanted.
All of this demanded an apology.
“I’m…so sorry…,” she repeated.
Boss didn’t turn around. “Look, it’s fine.”
“But—!”
This time, Boss looked over her shoulder as she ran, and on her craggy face was the sweetest smile.
“We’re on the same team now, aren’t we?”
1:45.
Pitohui and Fukaziroh watched Llenn and Eva’s movement on the terminal screen.
“They’re running away! C’mon, come and fight us!” Fukaziroh said, incensed.
“But of course they are,” said Pitohui, calm and rational.
They ran and ran and ran, but the 1,600-foot ship would never end. Doors passed on the right and left as they ran up the hill that was the hallway.
The bigger and slower of the two said, “The slope is getting tougher, slowly but surely. The prow is dipping, so the stern goes up. Eventually, it won’t be able to stay intact, and the entire ship will crack in half, with the front end pulling downward and sinking.”
It was a remarkably accurate summary of the physical forces at work. For a teenage girl, she had quite a lot of knowledge about ships.
“I was on a site for classic movies recently and watched DiCaprio’s Titanic, so I know how it works,” she explained. “So what now, Llenn? If we keep running toward the stern and find a hiding place, or if we protect the stern and keep them at bay, we could force them to drown instead.”
The smaller one answered, “Yeah. If we kill them, we win.”
“I thought you’d say that.”
They ran past a wall upon which was scrawled the message We’ll live, survive, and create a world without war this time!
“…So she said.”
M had never turned off his comm unit, so he pulled it loose to relate Llenn’s words to the other two.
“Uh-oh, did we wake the sleeping child?” Pitohui wondered aloud, sitting on the floor of the empty hall.
“A bit late for that, Pito.” Fukaziroh smirked. “Was that a joke? Besides, we can just put her to bed permanently on this ship instead.”
They had finished prepping themselves for action. Pitohui had every magazine she could possibly hold now present on her person. The KTR-09 had a drum magazine with a full seventy-five rounds. The two lightswords were placed within easy access of her hands. Only the M870 Breacher shotgun was left on the ground with holster and all.
Fukaziroh’s double MGL-140s were fully loaded with grenades from her backpack. The first two in Leftania were the plasma grenades that could destroy the ship itself.
Also, she was no longer hauling that heavy backpack around. There were a few backup grenades in pouches on her bulletproof combat vest. Her M&P pistol was on her thigh, not that she could accurately shoot anyone with it.
“I wasn’t hearing Llenn’s voice anymore. They must have noticed and rearranged the team over there,” M reported. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take part in this?”
“Stop asking, M. Who wants to win a fight with a three-on-two advantage? Would you rather die right here?” Pitohui replied, pretending to point the KTR-09 at M. It had to be pretend, because otherwise she would have shot him. Pitohui didn’t point her guns at people she didn’t mean to shoot.
“If you mess with Llenn, I’ll kill you. Got that? It’s an order,” she told him. “All you have left is the job of crowning the ‘true winner’ at the end. Now give me that.”
In a private cabin, Team Betrayers was properly reregistered, making sure that Llenn’s communication device was connected to Boss instead.
“I’m going with this and the knife only. No grenades. You?” she asked, gesturing with the P90.
Boss replied, “Vintorez and Strizh. And a combat knife, in imitation of you. I didn’t have much time to practice with it, though. A few grenades, too.”
“Ooh,” Llenn murmured, her eyes sparkling dangerously. “Any plasmas in there?”
“Yes. I’ve got twelve, since I was carrying for my whole team. I just had them in my item storage before, because I was afraid of them getting set off.”
“Any grand grenades?”
“Same. Half dozen.”
Grand grenade was a player-derived nickname. It was a massive plasma grenade with devastating power on par with Fukaziroh’s launcher grenades. It could obliterate everything within sixty feet of its blast.
But as Boss said, “They’re pretty much unusable inside the ship.”
The grand grenade was the poster child of GGO weapons that were ultrapowerful—but with major drawbacks. Fukaziroh’s launchers were safer in comparison, because they would only shoot if it was going to travel a safe distance. Now that she was an enemy, those last two plasma grenades were a frightening thing to consider. Between the signals and pushing back the sea, it was probably a very good thing for Llenn that Fuka had already used three of them.
Llenn thought it over, muttering to herself. “With this firepower… If we want to make sure we beat the two of them… Don’t have much time… How do we win, how do we win, how do we…?”
Boss decided not to cut her off. She waited.
“How do we win…? How do we…?”
Llenn’s eyes stopped doing circles and froze still. She turned to Boss.
“Give me a grand grena— No, all your plasma grenades.”
The huge crowd in the bar, including those competitors who had already died and returned to the main room, were about to witness the final battle of SJ3.
On the monitors, the ship was rudderless, still blazing along madly. Over half the prow was under the water now, producing tremendous waves along the sides. The five-hundred-yard ship was leaning far forward, and the stern was quite high up. The froth whipped up by the relentless screw propellers was even busier than usual. But based on the state of the tilt, it wasn’t likely to sink in the next five or ten minutes.
The camera angle switched.
“Oh-ho!”
“Here we go!”
Two female players were walking through the vast courtyard of Deck 10. Around them were abandoned storefronts and rusted amusement park rides. But they walked boldly right through the spacious center area, guns in hand.
Pitohui had her KTR-09. Fukaziroh had her MGL-140s, Rightony in her right hand and Leftania hanging from her left shoulder.
Both held a shield in their off hands, positioned out in front of their bodies. They were part of M’s shield.
The unfolding shield was made of eight plates measuring twenty inches tall and twelve inches wide. They had reconfigured them into personal shields of four plates each. There must be handles on the back for them to hold.
With a shield three feet tall and over a foot and a half wide, even Pitohui could defend a considerable part of her front—to say nothing of tiny Fukaziroh. Now they could walk out in the open around their foe and not have to worry about an insta-kill shot.
“That should protect them against Llenn’s P90, obviously, and even Eva’s Vintorez sniper rifle.”
“Oh, I can feel it! Shield soldiers! It’s gonna be the new thing!”
“They can only do this because they both have tons of strength! That’s not something most players can pull off!”
On the screen, Pitohui and Fukaziroh climbed the hilly road, chatting enjoyably. The battle would be at the top of the hill.
“It’s almost like a date. Oh, they laughed!”
“What are they talking about?”
“I’m sure it’s the strategy for how they plan to obliterate Llenn and Eva.”
No matter how pristine the video footage was, there were certain things that couldn’t be displayed on the screen.
Such as a trembling fist holding the shield handle. Only Fukaziroh, with her close proximity, could detect something like that. She brought up the sole conclusion that could be reached.
“Pito?”
“What is it, Fuka?”
“I can tell, you know.”
“Tell what?”
“That you’re scared of Llenn.”
Fukaziroh was parallel with her, facing forward to keep an eye out, so she did not catch Pitohui’s smirking grin.
They traded words as they walked, but not glances.
“In all my time playing VR games, there are only two times I’ve thought This person is stronger than me. Not just in terms of skill, but mentally, too.”
“Only? That’s happened at least twenty times for me. Sorry, I mean two hundred. So when was the first time, Pito?”
“Right after I started playing games. When I was a beta tester for Sword Art Online. It was the first real VR game in the world, so everyone was starting from the same conditions. But there were plenty of people there who were better than me. I ended up dueling one of them over the right to fight a monster that dropped a specific piece of loot. It was some beta-male pretty boy who thought he was so cool.”
“And you lost and got killed?”
“No. When my hit points were almost gone, the guy said, ‘It’s impressive that you can do that well, two levels below me. You can take the boss here. Let’s fight again once we’re the same level, heh, swish-sparkle.’ And then he put away his sword.”
“My goodness.”
“And if you’ll allow me to brag, he took a lot of damage, too. But in the midst of this fight to the death, he goes and acts all cool and cocky. At the time, all I thought about was powering myself up. I was ashamed of how weak I was. I reflected on my faults and realized I wasn’t good enough.”
“Yep. Reflection makes you stronger.”
“So I thought, when the game launches in full, I’ll fight that guy again and totally PK his ass…”
“But you just missed out on playing the full game, didn’t you, Pito? That probably saved his life.”
“Or…maybe mine.”
They walked past the spot where MMTM had been electrocuted. The tiled path, which was designed to look like cobblestones, was still wet. They had another 250 yards to reach the stern. The angle of their ascent was gently rising.
It was 1:48. No sign of movement from the enemy team.
“The other person, of course, was Llenn. The first time I saw her, I was mostly stunned at the way her core was rock-solid. She’s got an astonishing sense of balance.”
“I see. Well, since we’re here, I might as well tell you that before Kohi grew like a weed, she was really athletic. I heard it from her older sister. Whenever the two of them did some kind of exercise together, she always wanted to copy her big sister, and she learned how to do things right away.”
“I can tell. If she didn’t have a thing about her height and really worked hard to learn a sport under an excellent coach, she could have been an Olympic athlete for Japan right now.”
“When I heard Kohi say she was going to play VR games, I was really looking forward to what kind of character she would grow into…but it seems like she ‘grew too much’ over here, too.”
“Ha-ha-ha. Well, I always wanted to have a real, honest duel with Llenn, so when it came true last time, I was extremely happy about it.”
“And you lost.”
“Thanks to someone’s very precise help.”
“Ohhh? Who could that be?”
“When she bit down on my throat, I thought I was going to die. I thought I’d actually die. That it was all over for good. I thought it was a worthy end for me. And in the end…I didn’t die.”
“Like you sucked it up and jumped in front of a train, only to fall flat and have it pass over your head?”
“Kinda. Some other stuff happened around then, too, but in short, I decided that if I wound up alive anyway, I might as well take good care of that life…”
The trembling in Pitohui’s left hand stopped.
“But I’m still scared when I see that little pink shrimp.”
In the middle of the courtyard was an information board with a monitor set up next to a large flower planter. It had that huge i mark on it for identification.
As 1:49 approached, they stopped there. The two squatted next to the barren planter, hid behind their shields, and Fukaziroh pulled out her device while Pitohui acted as spotter.
“I see. So, to you, she’s kind of like a source of trauma that you have to beat and get past.”
“Oh, it’s not nearly as noble as that. It’s just a grudge. Hatred. She’s someone I want to beat the crap out of, that’s all.”
“Ooooh. Well, I’m here for you, Miss Pito, Miss Elza.”
“Thanks. You sure, though? She’s your good friend, right? I’d be pretty sad if you ended up fighting over this in real life.”
“If we were going to break up over something like this, we would have run the rivers of northern Japan red with blood already. The truth is we’re bound by such tight friendship, I don’t even want to point a gun at Llenn. How often do you think we fought at the all-girls high school we went to?”
“I couldn’t guess, but it sounds like a good story. You’ll have to tell me later.”
“You could probably write a song about it.”
“Well, what a delight.”
“And you’ll invite me to your concert, as the provider of the original song inspiration, of course. With airfare paid and all.”
“As long as you bring Llenn with you, you’re welcome anytime.”
“But she’s so uptight, I don’t know…”
“What, are you assuming that I’m going to try to sleep with her?”
1:49 and forty seconds.
Two people traded words through their remote earpieces.
“Let’s go, Boss!”
“Okay, Llenn!”
1:49 and forty-nine seconds.
“So where are they gonna be now?” Fukaziroh wondered, waving the Satellite Scan terminal next to the i on the wall. Pitohui kept an eye out on their surroundings, particularly in the aft direction of the ship.
The scan started from the top of the ship, going down one floor per second.
“What?” It showed the location of the enemy. Fukaziroh reported, “Eva’s on Deck Ten. Port side, near the stern, two hundred yards ahead of us. Llenn’s on the same deck, two hundred yards behind us. Right at the tip of the courtyard!”
Pitohui murmured, “They split up…?”
It was an impossible strategy, in a variety of senses.
For one thing, why would they isolate their valuable firepower individually? It would be a two-on-one fight if Pitohui and Fukaziroh went after one of them—a massive disadvantage to them.
For another, it made no sense that Llenn would head toward the prow, behind their current location. She’d probably gone down the hallway past the cabins to circle around. But if she ran away from them once, why rush back?
What was more, she would have had plenty of chances to attack them in the courtyard as she passed the cabins. Why hadn’t she?
On the other hand, Llenn’s sharpshooting ability was limited. But while she might not have been able to kill both at once, she probably could have managed to take out Pitohui, at least.
So if Llenn hadn’t gone mad with terror, there was only one possibility.
“Be careful, Fuka. They’re planning something big.”
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