CHAPTER 9
What MMTM and ZEMAL Were Doing
Memento Mori, abbreviated as MMTM, spawned in the middle of a forest in the northeast corner of the map.
The east and northeast parts of the map were tree-covered flatlands. Many of the trees were deciduous with wide leaves, and the plains featured tall, waist-high grass, so it was a place with little long-term visibility.
At worst, they could only see ten feet in front of their faces, and at best, they could see about a hundred feet away. It was similar to the jungle environment from the last Squad Jam.
While the elevation was essentially flat, the ground itself undulated a fair bit. With the addition of fallen trees and heavy patches of grass and shrub, it was a very difficult environment to run through.
The sky was also almost entirely hidden from view behind all the branches and leaves, making the surroundings very dark. There’d be a picture of this forest in the dictionary under the word gloomy.
It was brighter to the north and to the east, but they quickly learned that was because the trees ended in ocean there. And not only that, the water level was rising.
“Aha, so that’s what they’re doing to us,” said MMTM’s team leader, grinning to himself. He gazed out at the approaching sea. “Sounds fun! All right, boys, let’s make use of this!”
12:10.
MMTM hadn’t appeared on the monitors at all, because they hadn’t been in battle. The audience in the pub had no idea what was happening with them yet.
When the first Satellite Scan arrived, the results were displayed on-screen for them to follow, too.
“So MMTM’s in the upper right,” they said, confirming that the four strongest squads were in the four corners of the map. “So what are they going to do first?” they wondered, anticipation running high.
On the map, they saw MMTM in the northeast corner, with a number of other teams scattered around them at distances of at least two-thirds of a mile apart.
At that moment, the screen switched to another team. They were in a dark forest, so it had to be one of the teams close to MMTM. Six men huddled deep in thick grass, watching their surroundings warily.
They all wore camo patterns of black and dark gray. They also had black beanies and goggles that hid their eyes, plus masks featuring gray skulls.
They wore military headsets with mic arm attachments. These were useful tools for talking to remote team members in the real world, but since GGO already featured tiny communication items as small as hearing aids, these were probably more for effect than any practical purpose.
Every last member of the team carried an HK416D 5.56 mm assault rifle.
The HK416 series was essentially Heckler & Koch’s line of M16 rifles, and they were excellent examples within that category, some of the most expensive that players could find in GGO. There were barrel options of various lengths; this group had chosen the shorter ten-inch variety for greater mobility.
Not only were all six decked out in the same gear, they even coincidentally had avatars of similar builds—average heights and average weights. It was impossible to tell any of them apart.
Unlike T-S, they didn’t feature numbers on their uniforms. It was like looking at sextuplets. It would’ve been very considerate of them to distinguish themselves with individual color themes.
This was all intentional, of course. Making themselves look identical served a tactical purpose of deceiving the enemy. Then again, when they were this similar, they’d have to worry that they might not actually be able to tell one another apart, either.
One of the men put his device back in his pocket at the end of the scan, pulled a signal flare from his vest pocket, checked the color, then shot it.
The shining blue light rose upward—and then it fell back down.
Huh?
The man’s skull mask hid his expression, but anyone could easily imagine him wondering that, as the blue flare fizzled on the ground near the group of six.
“Uh, what were those guys trying to do exactly?”
“Beats me,” muttered the audience in the bar.
The team was aware of the plan to shoot up flares, like all the others were doing, but the canopy of the forest prevented them from actually sending up the signals. And even if it somehow got through, no one would be able to see it from the ground under all the trees.
The audience in the pub wouldn’t figure that out until a little later, but for the skull-mask team out in the wild, it was an extremely pressing problem. A huge one, in fact.
“Dammit! They’re useless to us now!”
The name of their squadron was Hohoemi Tayasars. It was kind of a cheeky way of saying “Never-ending Smilers,” in the way that some old-fashioned Japanese folk singers might have named their band. Whoever came up with the name, it seemed intended to clash with their visual aesthetic, what with all the drab colors and menacing skulls.
It was clear they were making the most of their time in GGO, however. Their abbreviated tag was HTS, and this was their first Squad Jam.
They were survival gamers.
Their type of game was the offline sort that used low-pressure gas or air-powered guns that did not violate Japan’s strict laws against weapons. When shot, it was on the victims to uphold the honor code and announce their casualties.
This sport started in America as paintball and evolved into airsoft gun battles in Japan. It was a popular sport all over the world, and as of 2026, airsoft guns were manufactured everywhere. It was very common for a proper gun maker to announce a new model, then produce airsoft versions of it to sell as additional products.
Because learning to handle a gun was much safer when it was airsoft, and they made for good close-combat training, militaries around the world began to use them in official training exercises.
So did the arrival of full-dive virtual reality games like Gun Gale Online completely wipe out the survival-game industry? The answer was no.
For one thing, many people were afraid of full-dive VR. There was no denying that the biggest contributor to that was the Sword Art Online Incident, in which nearly four thousand people lost their lives.
And even in the absence of any fear or distaste for full-dive VR, plenty of people still preferred to use their own bodies and muscles for the pleasure of engaging in simulated battle with airsoft guns.
It wasn’t an issue of one being better than the other. Plenty of gun fanatics enjoyed both equally. Some people started with survival games and migrated to GGO, and others got into the VRMMO first before trying out survival games.
The members of HTS were the sort who got into both real and virtual battles. They got their start in survival games, however—they’d been at it for over a decade.
It was five months ago that they started playing GGO together. They hadn’t been playing for very long, but they had a rich history of personal experience to back them up, and they used their well-oiled teamwork to hunt monsters, fight the occasional battle against other players, and power up their characters.
In the deep darkness of the forest, HTS spoke with muffled voices through their skull masks.
“What should we do? MMTM is close.”
“I don’t know if we have a choice… The flares are useless here.”
When the first scan arrived moments ago, they saw that MMTM was just over half a mile to the east, right at the border between forest and sea.
Not only that, HTS was easily the closest team to them. There were four others within a two-mile range.
If they could use the signal flare properly, their comrades would come to join them, and they only had to wait and defend themselves against a charge from MMTM.
“Ah, back to the drawing board! Forget the flare strategy!”
“All right. So much for that.”
“What should we do, then?”
“That’s easy!”
Five of them were looking at the sixth, who had to be the team leader, but as soon as they started moving, it would be impossible to identify him again. He said, “I didn’t like that pessimistic plan anyway! Let’s take this opportunity to bring the fight straight to them first!”
It was a bit of a Hail Mary strategy, but his teammates welcomed it.
“Hell yeah! Let’s do it!”
“Couldn’t ask for a better challenge!”
“Even if we lose, we’ll be famous if we manage to put the hurt on the heavyweight contenders!”
“I’m in! Let’s do it big, boys!”
“No objections here!”
The six survival gamers turned GGO players rushed through the woods. Visibility was poor, the undergrowth was thick, and the ground was loose under their feet.
Team HTS worked with all the leg power they had, but it still took them about five minutes to travel half a mile, including a number of spills along the way.
It was the kind of movement that was likely to transition into a sudden battle, so their charge was captured on camera for the audience the entire time.
The team of six proceeded through the forest, each member about five yards apart, HK416D in his hands, making an arrow formation. The point man was at the tip, with two men on his right, two on his left, and one more in the rear.
The audience had picked up on the problem with the flares at this point, so they reappraised the squad’s actions.
“I see. Guess they’re gonna try tackling MMTM head-to-head, then.”
“So they’ll just rush ’em and start an all-out battle? I got no problem with a mad charge that might go down in flames.”
“Yeah. And if luck’s on their side, and they take out even one member of MMTM, that deserves a medal.”
The audience was made up of fellow players of GGO, so they understood the rationale behind their strategy. It was going to be an all-out attack on MMTM. Since visibility was poor in the forest, they might even get into a close-range gunfight. Even better if it turned into a melee.
So how would the fearsome MMTM respond? The audience waited for the answer by holding their collective breath—or, alternatively, swigging from their drinks.
Bchonk.
The battle began with an explosion.
The point man for HTS died in a single shot.
He was running at full speed when an explosion occurred right before his eyes, and he blew into digital smithereens. He’d noticed something just before it happened and was in the process of moving the muzzle of his gun, but was not in time to do anything about it.
“A hundred feet! Grenadier!” shouted one of the men on the right wing of the arrowhead formation as he began firing. It was on semiauto, shooting one round with each pull of the trigger, but his interval was short and quick.
He saw the man who shot his teammate. It was a man in Swedish military camo hiding behind a thick tree farther away in the forest. He’d watched the video of the last time around, so he recognized the MMTM outfit and the weapon.
It was the handsome avatar of MMTM’s leader, who used the Austrian Steyr STM-556 assault rifle. Below the gun barrel, it had a single-shot grenade launcher attached.
His teammate had been unlucky to take a direct, fatal blow from a grenade, but it did tell him where the man was—very close. Given how much the tree trunks blocked their view, he probably couldn’t have gotten a shot until now.
As for the other members of MMTM, their locations were still unknown. But that didn’t stop HTS.
“I’m fine with one for now! Get him!”
“Yeah!”
They continued their forward movement, popping off shots as they went. Firing as they moved was an effective way of putting pressure on the enemy. Whether he reloaded his launcher or started shooting with the rifle, not many people could stay calm with so many bullet lines converging on their location.
Playing survival games had taught them that, whether in boxing or in gunfights, throwing more attacks than the other side enabled attackers to push them around.
“Push, push, push!”
The five men approached the place where they saw MMTM’s leader.
“Oh! Do you think…this is actually working?” one of the audience members asked hopefully.
The very next moment, a green mass swayed and rose on the screen, then smashed into the men in skull masks from behind.
It looked as though the forest itself was attacking them. Like the overgrown grass on the forest floor had just bitten human prey.
As a matter of fact, that was wrong.
The mass of green was people—people wearing ghillie suits that took camouflage one step past patterns and used detailed strips and twigs colored green to heighten the effect.
On top of that, the men had cut down all the grass in that area, then arranged it on their outfits to make it look like it was growing on them instead. The end result was a group of puffy green men who were indistinguishable from the forest background, even at extremely close range.
They kept their faces clear of grass for visibility, but a bit of green face paint went a long way in adding to the disguise.
“Gaagh!”
The men were completely taken aback by the blow from behind. They toppled forward or sideways, depending on the angle they were hit.
Then the mass of green folded in on the group of fallen men, who had lost the timing of their shooting.
Glint!
Dark blades flashed in the disguised men’s hands, mercilessly slashing at their victims’ throats and chests.
“Gweh!”
“Hurgh!”
“Aaah!”
One by one, they suffered huge HP losses and perished.
“Huh? Huh?”
The one man who was lucky enough not to be attacked panicked in the midst of the suddenly silent forest. His HK416D waved back and forth in search of a target.
Pshoom!
A single, perfectly placed bullet hit him right in the forehead, killing him instantly.
About twenty yards away, MMTM’s leader lowered his STM-556 and gave an order to his squadmates.
“Finish him.”
The last surviving member of HTS finally recognized the green mass that enveloped him as being an enemy—and then as a human being.
“Huh? W-wait, time out, wait—,” he tried to protest.
“…”
But the man with bright-green face paint merely lowered the combat knife onto his hapless victim’s goggles. The tip split the lens easily, then the eye of the avatar, and lodged straight into his brain.
“There they aaaaare!”
“Gotchaaaaa!”
At that very moment, two more carts came rattling around that corner—along with the machine guns inside them.
It was a very unlucky encounter at a distance of less than thirty feet.
Blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam!
Victory smiled upon the side with more firepower.
That was the power of the machine gun, even if it was only two against six.
The M60E3 and FN MAG lit up the unfortunate squadron with a storm of 7.62 mm bullets.
They tried their best to fight back, of course. They’d been taken by surprise, so they let loose with their guns.
But their shots all bounced off the metal pipe barriers erected around the carts.
The machine guns continued to lambast them with lead until all six were thoroughly dead.
The All-Japan Machine-Gun Lovers were in the middle of town when Squad Jam 3 began, in the center of the northern side of the map, about two-thirds of a mile south of the water.
Around them were cracked concrete roads, dilapidated buildings, overturned vehicles, tilted power-line poles, and dull-gray sky.
“Ooh, it’s an urban battlefield this time!” the tallest of the five men exclaimed into the stiff breeze. His machine gun was an M240B, a model used by the American military.
His name was Huey. He was a friendly-looking fellow with his brown hair slicked back except for a protruding peak in his forehead like a rooster’s coxcomb. Huey was a burly, macho man, if not quite to the extent that M was.
He wore a black pair of combat pants, a T-shirt, and a green fleece jacket. Rather than a vest adorned with pouches, he carried a large backpack.
This time, the whole team wore matching attire. Since they were sticking around, and people were starting to know their name, they decided that maybe it was worth settling on a look, and they made the wise decision to “spend money on something other than machine guns for once.”
So the other man who gleefully noted “Strong wind! Good for machine guns!” was wearing the same thing. Down to the same backpack.
His name was Peter. He was the shortest of the five, with a wide forehead and short, scruffy black hair. The tape he put over the bridge of his nose was his trademark feature. For his weapon, he used an Israeli Negev, a 5.56 mm machine gun.
“Hear us, god of machine guns!” prayed a man with a bandana wrapped all the way around his head. He, too, had a powerful, chiseled body.
He used an FN MAG, and his name was Tomtom. He wanted to go by Tom and nothing more, but there were so many Toms in the world that he chose to double it instead.
“The wind is blowing! Right at us!”
“Uh, isn’t that the bad way? We want it at our backs, right?”
Those were the last two members of the team.
The one who mistook the direction of the wind played a muscled black avatar, of which there were many in GGO, with a very finely shaped fade cut. His name was Max, and he used a Minimi, the most famous of 5.56 mm machine guns. There were many models of Minimi; he used the Mk2 type. It was recognized by its longer fixed stock.
The last member, who had corrected Max, had black hair down to his collar and a sweatband tied around his forehead. His machine gun was the 7.62 mm M60E3. His name was Shinohara, because he didn’t feel like coming up with a creative name for his character and went with his own family name. He had no relation to Miyu Shinohara, of course.
When ZEMAL spawned on the SJ3 in their fresh matching duds, their first action was to examine the area. Then they looked at the map, and understood that the entire map, including the city they were in, was an island.
From there, they considered how they would fight.
Technically, the leader of the squad was Huey, the M240B user. But that was only a designation they had to make to participate in Squad Jam. In truth, they all got along well and weren’t sticklers about hierarchy.
In SJ2, they found a nice hilly area with good views where they could hide out, and they put together a pretty nice run, all things considered. They came up with some good ideas—finding another good vantage point, perhaps on top of a building, or moving out of the city, where battle range was often short and full of dead ends and blind spots.
“Say, are there any vehicles around here?” Shinohara wondered, and off they went in search.
If there was a car around, they could all pile in and shoot in all directions while moving quickly across the map. That was a very effective strategy for the paved city area.
But after five minutes, they found nothing. All the cars in the urban area were wasted away and ruined.
In the process, Tomtom, the bandana-wearing one, pointed out a building along the road they were walking down. “Maybe there aren’t any cars, but doesn’t that place look like it would have something useful?”
The whole city was run-down and ruined, but one of the buildings here was relatively well-preserved. It was a large, long building with a big parking lot. Clearly, it was a retail business of some kind, but the signs were all wasted away, so there was no way to tell what they once sold.
“Yep. It behooves us to enter.”
“Let’s do it.”
They walked into the building, machine guns first.
“Greetings! We are the All-Japan Machine-Gun Lovers!”
It turned out to be a home improvement store, where people could buy all kinds of tools and supplies for DIY projects.
It was on a much larger scale than the stores in Japan, so there really was everything there. If one had the spirit and the expertise, they could probably build an entire house with materials purchased just from this one business.
The roof had fallen in various spots, so the interior was bright. Naturally, all the wood material had rotted away, and the electric tools were entirely rusted and broken. However…
“Hey, think we can use this?” Max, the avatar with dark skin, wondered aloud. He had found a shopping cart with working wheels.
Bing!
Their eyes glinted with inspiration.
There were quite a few working carts, as it turned out. Plenty were crushed or disfigured, but there were so many to begin with that it didn’t take long at all to acquire five that would get the job done.
There was plenty of metal wire, too. And pliers. And duct tape. And metal pipes. And a pipe cutter, although it was rusty.
Then it was crafting time.
They propped a machine gun in each cart, making sure it was comfortably balanced, then tied it down firmly with wire. They cut the pipes to just the right length to bundle up with duct tape to make shields, then attached them around the outside of the carts, and…
“Wa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! This is awesome!”
They had five fully armed and operational shopping carts blazing through the city.
The connected ammo belts meant they could keep firing, and the metal pipe shields easily deflected enemy bullets. With the wheels, they were highly mobile, too.
They were practically technicals (improvised vehicles with a gun on top, like pickup trucks), except they were powered with good old feet rather than an engine.
With a little bit of ingenuity, ZEMAL had remade themselves into a much stronger force—and they raised hell accordingly. Every team they encountered in the city, they defeated.
Some teams even tried shooting flares to get them on their side instead, but sadly, the man in the red beret hadn’t gotten around to telling ZEMAL the big plan.
“What’s with that flare?”
“No idea. Shoot ’em.”
They came across Team NSS, a bunch of history-loving reenactors who role-played GGO as though they were soldiers from the past reincarnated into its future settings. As they went down, each of them cursed their opponents in ways that matched their backgrounds.
“Damn! No one alive in my time ever fought the way they do!”
“What a coincidence; I could say the same! Commie Soviets—what have they built?!”
“It’s a new Nazi tank! I must get word of this back to London…”
“I think it’s a new American weapon! If only we had a tool like that!”
Before the special rule went into effect, the last person ZEMAL finished off was KKHC’s leader. He was hiding in a large dumpster on the outskirts of the city, but the 12:40 Satellite Scan exposed his location.
“Wait up, wait up, here we come!”
He wound up being chased around by five gun-toting shopping carts until he was shot and killed. It wasn’t the kind of thing anyone experienced very often, in real life or in GGO.
It was in this state that SHINC, MMTM, and ZEMAL reached the announcement and activation of the special rule at 12:52 with all their members still alive.
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