CHAPTER 2
The Man Named Fire
Hey, all you gun freaks squatting in GGO! How ya been?
I’m good, by the way! Good enough to announce a fourth installment of the Squad Jam series! I’m talking about SJ4!
Let’s get together and fight next Wednesday, August 26th, at noon!
The usual Squad Jam sponsor’s message was as flippant as ever.
If memory served correctly, he was fifty-four years old, but he wrote like a child. It was almost laughable, in a sad way.
The message came with the title: Announcing SJ4 and Open Registration. Every player who had ever competed in a Squad Jam received it at 10:00 AM on August 21st.
“Let’s goooooooooooooooooooo!” screamed Saki Nitobe, the player of Eva (aka Boss), leader of SHINC, as she sat at the table eating a late breakfast at home during summer vacation. Her mother scolded her fiercely for that one.
“No phones at the table!” she snapped. Saki put all her concentration into finishing her breakfast. She was having French toast, but in her mind, she was already in a one-on-one battle with Llenn.
How should I beat her? How should I kill her? she wondered.
Currently, the gymnastics team was in trouble, as they hadn’t gained any new first-year members. The team captain, however, didn’t seem particularly concerned about it for now.
David, the leader of MMTM, had a day off from his job as a delivery truck driver, so he’d been playing GGO from early in the morning, practicing his shooting by himself.
He noticed a blinking signal in the corner of his vision indicating a new message and paused in the act of firing his Steyr STM-556 assault rifle so he could wave his left hand and bring up the player menu.
“Ha-ha-ha!”
He read the header and laughed. Then he emptied the rest of his magazine with a smile on his face. Every last bullet vanished into the human-shaped target five hundred feet down the shooting range lane.
“Just you wait, Pitohui!”
He, too, was wondering, How should I beat her? How should I kill her?
The rules will be essentially unchanged from the last time, and the seeding and preliminary rounds will work the same way. Nothing big will change.
This will be the schedule for each step of SJ4. All of these dates are in August.
Monday the twenty-fourth, 9:00 PM, is the entry deadline.
Tuesday the twenty-fifth, 12:00 PM, is the start of the preliminary round.
Wednesday the twenty-sixth, 12:00 PM, is the start of the main event.
How-ev-er!
There will be another set of special rules for SJ4! Very special rules!
Nearly every player reading the message at that point thought, Ugh, not again! Give it a rest! Just because you’re the sponsor doesn’t mean you should abuse your sponsor’s privileges!
But not all of them were fuming.
The woman who played Pitohui, the popular singer-songwriter Elza Kanzaki, was wrapped up in the sheets atop her large bed, completely nude, AC turned to downright frigid in her bedroom.
Outside the window was a forest of Tokyo high-rises. The image of bright sunlight shining through lace curtains onto a black-haired beauty resting on white sheets was stunningly artistic.
Any Elza fan who witnessed such a sexy and beautiful sight might die of shock.
There was a large monitor on the wall of the bedroom. The sight of the words on the screen made her grin with demonic glee. “Ooh, I can’t wait! What kind of ridiculous rule is it going to be this time?!”
“I’m coming in,” said Goushi Asougi as he entered the bedroom with a cup of hot black coffee and offered it to Elza.
“Thank you,” she said as she took it and lifted it quietly to her lips.
Incidentally, Goushi was wearing an apron and nothing else. He was bare-assed naked.
“Mmm, delicious. Turn around. Here’s your reward.”
Elza wound up and kicked his bare ass hard.
Any Elza fan who witnessed such a violent and beautiful sight might die of shock.
But rest assured—it won’t be the Betrayer rule from SJ3!
It’s no fun doing the same things all over again! Nobody likes a writer who runs out of ideas!
So this time, I won’t be splitting up any team that shares a bond of blood and friendship!
SJ4’s going to be a hardcore battle royale, designed to determine the best team of all!
* * *
At that point, Huey, the rooster-headed member of Team ZEMAL, screeched, “The hell you say! We ain’t bound by something wimpy everyone shares, like blood! We’re connected by frickin’ belt links!”
It was an odd thing to get worked up about. A belt link is the piece of metal that strings together the ammo a machine gun uses. The problem is, those tear apart into individual pieces once the bullets are fired, but we don’t need to point that out to him, do we?
Huey stood there, massive M240B machine gun in his hands, as his four nearby companions murmured and nodded to themselves. Once again, they were having fun playing GGO on a weekday morning. Several members of the team had jobs. Apparently, that no longer mattered.
When they noticed the messages, they all called up their menus and began reading atop the rocky mountain in the sun. They were wearing their usual team uniform: green fleece jackets with their logo, and black combat pants.
Each member carried his own machine gun with a special rail attached that ran around his side to a large backpack. This was their “backpack ammo-loading system,” which they used to great effect in the playtest last week, allowing them to fire up to a thousand bullets consecutively.
Now that they were completely distracted by the message about SJ4, a giant black bearlike monster snuck up on them, almost entirely silent. This area was dotted with boulders the size of trucks, which limited visibility. It was the perfect place for a surprise attack on unsuspecting prey.
The bear crouched down behind a large rock. It was ready to pounce on its five-course meal.
Whoosh! Without so much as a roar, the bear pounced with all its might, launching itself into the air over one of the rocks.
It was a tremendous jump, spanning a good thirty feet. The bear’s sharp claws were extended, and it plunged into ZEMAL’s midst…
Dak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak-gak!
A single gun fired. A stream of bullets pierced the huge bear’s body as it descended. Only a machine gun could do that much damage so quickly.
“Hah!” “Mmm!” “Fwah?” “Oh?” “Whut?”
The five men were stunned—to them, a giant beast, its body glowing red with damage spots, had appeared out of thin air, plummeting to the ground and slamming between them. The corpse quickly dispersed into particles and vanished.
The members of ZEMAL stood there, openmouthed in shock.
Though they’d nearly been eaten by a ferocious monster in their carelessness, they did have enough self-awareness to realize that someone else had saved them.
From atop a nearby rock came a high-pitched voice.
“Hi there! That was a close one!”
It was a woman’s voice. A soprano.
The five looked up with a start.
“But thanks to that, I got an easy kill! Lucky me! What a prize!”
Standing about twenty yards away was a woman they’d never seen before. Her avatar seemed to be about twenty years old.
She had fine facial features and pure, flawless skin. Her gray eyes were impossibly deep, her wine-red hair was cut short and fine, and there was a dark-blue beanie resting over it.
She was short and petite, though not to the extent of that pink shrimp. She wore a jacket and tiger-striped pants in shades of green. In her hands, she held the weapon that had riddled the giant bear with bullets only a moment ago…
“An RPD!”
“With a short-barrel alteration!”
ZEMAL’s love for machine guns was no joke; they recognized it at once.
The weapon she had slung from her shoulder was an old Soviet machine gun called an RPD. It was a light machine gun that used the same ammunition as an AK-47.
The slim design made it lightweight to begin with, and she had modified it from there. She’d severed the long barrel and taken off the heavy bipod, making the gun even lighter and more mobile. There were records of American special forces making similar customizations to this gun during the Vietnam War.
From their first glance, this woman with the fancy, customized machine gun was the picture of ZEMAL’s collective ideal.
Their hearts were swept away. It took only an instant.
A beauty carrying a machine gun. Wouldn’t that make her…our goddess?
I mean, she has to be. There’s no reason she wouldn’t be.
This is the goddess sent to us by the god of machine guns.
It was already a system of faith for them. Five true believers had been born in no time.
Faced with five men making the stupidest faces imaginable, the woman added, “Oh, you’re the machine-gun team that plays in Squad Jam, right? I saw you on the video.” Her voice was kind and gentle and friendly and beautiful.
Oh! She knows who we are! What a gift—what an honor. Their newfound faith was stronger than ever.
“But you know, you guys are terrible at strategy. You’ve got the most firepower by far, but it feels like you’re wasting it.”
Ooh! Our goddess speaks! They continued to worship.
“If you utilized more strategy, you could easily get into the top ranks, even win the entire thing, I think.”
“In that case—!” shouted black-haired Shinohara. “Please join our team and lead us as you see fit!”
Instantly, all five of the men took a knee. It was a pristine and unified motion, though no one had telegraphed the move.
The burly men lowered their heads to the beautiful woman standing atop the rock. She was wide-eyed initially.
“Pfft! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
She burst into surprised, extended laughter. Her voice was quick and sharp, like automatic gunfire in the wasteland of wind and bullets or the singing of an angel. The pleasure it elicited in the men was as satisfying as if their hit points had just been recovered in full.
Once her laughter subsided, the machine-gunning beauty said, “All right! I’ll join your team!”
“Reallyyyyyyyy?!” the five screamed. It was loud enough to shake the earth or knock out nearby monsters.
“I’m not a liar. You’re going to play in the next Squad Jam, I assume? That sounds fun! I’ll be the leader, and I’ll turn you into the toughest bunch in the game!”
The men shouted and bellowed. They were mad with delight. They danced; they cried; they prayed.
In fact, they seemed to have completely forgotten to read the rules of SJ4.
As the five men cavorted around her like children, the woman mumbled, “Ummm…isn’t anyone going to ask what my name is?”
As a matter of fact, yet again the special rules are going to remain a secret until the game begins! But you’ll figure it out right away once you start! Look forward too it, everyone!
Not only was the writer’s tone annoying, he’d also made a typo. He’d clearly meant to say “look forward to it.” That was something a proofreader would have to fix in a novel. How had he not caught that?
But I’ll let you in on a little secret right now!
I have two very special announcements about these special rules! And they’re very important, so read them carefully!
First of all, I’m allowing automatic refilling of ammunition! In SJ4, after thirty minutes have passed, all the ammo each player has used (bullets, energy charges for optical guns and photon swords, hand grenades) will be replenished!
But no damage done to weapons or armor will be repaired. And as for character HP, you only get the three emergency med kits, like usual.
There will be similar refills at the one-hour, hour-thirty, and two-hour marks as well, so use your ammunition freely.
Because if you don’t…oops! I can’t finish that sentence for you yet.
“What’s that supposed to mean…?” Ervin wondered out loud.
He was a member of Team T-S, the group of sci-fi soldiers wearing futuristic armor. They were seeded because they had taken advantage of circumstances to steal the win in SJ2.
Ervin was the one with the number 002 on his helmet who had been labeled the betrayer in SJ3, so he’d fought alongside Pitohui atop the luxury cruise ship. She was also the one who’d killed him in the end.
In last week’s playtest, T-S had worked with the other teams and made good use of their defensive capability to stand in the lead.
They were currently assembled in a ruined city, surrounded by partially collapsed buildings. It looked like the end of the world, and there was a subset of people who loved that vibe.
Nearby, his other teammates, who were distinguishable only by their numbers, sounded equally suspicious.
“Is he saying that’s how fierce the battle’s going to be?”
“I’d say the previous ones have been pretty fierce already. There were some people running out of ammo by the end in the past, right?”
“Exactly… So why is this one going to feature full ammo replenishing?”
“I don’t know. I don’t understand anything that goes through that writer’s head…”
Ervin chose to be positive. “Well, it’s nice to have all your ammo come back. It means you can shoot as much as you want. Let’s kick some butt.” He knew from past experience that no one could predict what was going to happen in Squad Jam.
Dealing with Pitohui had made everyone tougher.
And here’s the second part!
This time, every single player’s going to bring a pistol!
Why? Because a truly excellent GGO player needs to have mastery over all kinds of weapons. There are going to be multiple areas on this map where no weapons aside from pistols are allowed.
Any non-pistol firearm will be automatically locked and unable to fire in those places. All you’ll be able to use are pistols, knives, photon swords, hand grenades, and physical blows.
A pistol is defined as any weapon listed under the handgun category on its item properties window. You can use an ultratiny gun like a derringer or a big whopping S&W M500! Just know that you can’t use a modified rifle with the barrel and stock shortened, like some kind of mobster gun.
Don’t normally use a handgun? I have a bit of assistance for you!
For this event only, pistols, their holsters, magazines, and ammo will not count toward your character’s weight limit. In other words, you can bring all of your usual gear and add the pistols for free! If you use pistols as part of your regular repertoire, you’ll have room for more weapons!
Of course…if you don’t want to bring them, that’s your prerogative! Heh…
“Whaaat?”
Karen was reading the message on her notebook computer in her apartment in Tokyo, and she was not happy with these custom rules.
As Llenn, Karen had never actually used a handgun.
She got a lesson in shooting basics from the foulmouthed drill sergeant in the game’s tutorial soon after starting GGO. However, using handguns didn’t really click for her, and in the end, she’d stopped carrying a pistol.
The only gun she needed was P-chan, her P90 submachine gun. She could already shoot it with one hand like a pistol anyway. And the only sidearm she needed was her combat knife, Kni-chan. Plus the occasional grenade.
That was Llenn’s style, and it had a track record of success. Now she was supposed to add a pistol she couldn’t fire with any accuracy? What was the point?
“I guess I don’t need one…,” Karen decided. She looked up at the silent lights hanging from the ceiling of her bedroom and thought.
Pistols had a surprisingly short range as combat weapons. Even the best shot with a pistol couldn’t hit a target farther than fifty yards away. Realistically, the range was even shorter if both sides were on the move.
There were times when two people firing handguns could pass just one or two dozen feet away and still fail to produce a fatality. At that rate, Llenn had enough speed that she could fight with only her knife.
In fact, when she fought Boss in the first Squad Jam, the other woman had had a pistol, and Llenn only a knife. And it had turned out all right in the end for her.
“All right! I don’t need it!” Karen concluded neatly.
“Whaaat?”
Shirley was reading the message from her status window inside of GGO, and she was not happy with these custom rules.
She was in a rental space inside the game’s capital city, SBC Glocken. It was a small room—about the size of a karaoke box—that could be borrowed for free. This was where she always made her exploding bullets. They were her secret weapon, her surefire one-hit kill rounds.
To Shirley’s real-life player, Mai Kirishima, a hunter and nature guide in Hokkaido, summer was the busy season, when tourists seeking bountiful nature came to the northern island for guided experiences.
But on this day, she coincidentally had no engagements, so she was working on her ammo nice and early when the SJ4 announcement arrived. It was something she’d been anticipating, so it made her happy.
But like Llenn, Shirley wondered, “Pistols are required…?”
She’d started GGO to help practice her hunting skills. All Shirley needed was a bolt-action like her hunting rifle. Like Llenn, she hadn’t touched a pistol since the tutorial.
“…”
She also had a knife at her side, the ken-nata. If she could use that in close quarters like she had when she’d fought Clarence…
“Dammit! That’s not good enough!” Shirley spat, shaking her head.
If she fought, she fought to win. The whole point was to beat that hateful Pitohui.
Unfortunately, Pitohui was a crack shot with a pistol. She’d taken out Shirley’s fleeing teammates in SJ2 with one-handed headshots, which was about the least stable and least reliable way to shoot. That said something about her skill.
The thought of taking on an opponent like that with nothing but a ken-nata just wasn’t realistic. She had to acquire a pistol immediately and start practicing. Furthermore, if possible, she should make some exploding pistol rounds, too.
Then the face of the person she’d once fought popped into her head—a person who had an incredible quick-draw move. A person smiling, unbidden.
Shirley waved her left hand, hit a few buttons on her menu, then typed a message to someone registered as her in-game friend and sent it.
Hey, you’re good with pistols, right?
Maybe! I’ll help you buy one! Where you at? replied Clarence within seconds.
“Am I packing heat? Oh, you bet I got my piece on me…”
Miyu was standing in the middle of a crowded bus when she announced that after reading the message. She nearly got the cops called on her.
Automatic ammo refills every thirty minutes and obligatory pistol use.
Keep these two elements in mind when you prepare for SJ4, everyone!
Registration is open from now until nine o’clock in the evening on Monday the twenty-fourth!
Step right up and try your luck!
Karen had just finished reading the annoyingly informal invitation message when an Elza Kanzaki song began playing on her buzzing smartphone.
Few people knew her number—no one outside her family, Miyu, and Saki’s group. Obviously, Miyu was the most frequent of those callers by far, so coming immediately after the announcement of SJ4, this one caught her unawares.
In other words, she lifted her phone to her ear without checking the caller ID and said, “Yeah, yeah, I read it.”
“You read what?” asked her father. Karen nearly dropped her smartphone.
“Aaah—! Dad…? I’m sorry. I thought you were Miyu.”
“Oh? What did you read, then?”
“…It’s a secret.”
“All right…fine. Good morning, Karen. Do you have a moment?”
It was very rare for her father to call her directly, so she shut her laptop. After yesterday’s party, he’d presumably flown back home on the earliest flight this morning.
“Sure, what is it, Dad?”
He wasn’t going to ask her to join him for another party, was he? Guilt-trip her by saying she’d already bought the dress, so what was the harm in attending another…?
She was prepared for the worst. Instead, to her great surprise, he said, “Karen, do you know someone named Fire Nishiyamada?”
Karen had no response.
He continued, “Fire is his actual name. Written with the kanji for fire but pronounced like the English word. Very strange name.”
Huh? she thought before replying, “I know him… I talked with him for a few minutes at the party.”
“Oh? And what is he like?”
“Umm…he’s short. And…he didn’t make fun of my height.”
“Ah yes. He’s well known in our business for his name and stature. A very promising young man—smart, proactive, and hardworking.”
“Oh…I see…” Karen was starting to feel a little worried.
“Well, as a matter of fact, he just got in touch with me this morning.”
“Wh…what did he say?” she asked. Her apprehension increased.
“He said, ‘I would like to formally begin a relationship with Karen, with an eye toward our eventual marriage.’”
He’s filling in the moat! Karen’s mind was now trapped inside Osaka Castle.
“…”
“Hellooo? Karen?”
“…Wh…wh…wh…?”
“Should I give you a minute to calm down?” her father asked gently. Karen decided to take him up on that offer.
“Yes, please do… Give me ten years, in fact…”
“Well, I can’t do that. It wouldn’t be fair to him.”
“Wh-why is this happening? How did this…?”
“It would be a long story,” said her father, but he explained it all from the start.
An e-mail directed to his work address had arrived. In very clear terms, the message explained that its sender had met Karen at the party, was very smitten with her, and wanted to marry her.
“That’s it.”
“That was short! It wasn’t long at all! S-so what did you tell him?”
“Well, that’s why I’m calling you. To find out. Because how you feel is the most important thing.”
“A-a-a-a-a-a-a…”
“Affirmative?”
“A-a-a…”
“A-OK?”
“Absolutely not! Why marriage what is that about I can’t just go out with him what country do you think this is that makes no sense!” she erupted, nearly crushing the smartphone in her grip.
“Hmmm. So that’s a no, then?”
“What do you think, Dad? I’m only twenty! I’m still in school!”
“Well…can I answer honestly?”
“Ugh… Okay.”
“If you ask me, it’s not a bad idea. I know he’s a man who’s used his complex about his short stature as motivation and found success. I feel like his struggles are similar to yours in that sense. I think he’s someone who would understand your pain rather than merely sympathize or pity you for it.”
“Ugh… But…I’m still—”
“I’m not done yet. Plus, it’s not easy to say something like ‘I’d like to start a relationship with an eye toward marriage.’ That means he’s already thinking about the responsibility involved. He’s not asking on a mere whim. That’s a very worthy thing. I don’t think I could do that…”
Karen felt like that last comment probably deserved closer scrutiny, but she chose not to pursue it at this time.
“But of course, it’s ultimately up to you, Karen. What do you think?”
“So you gave the okay, right, Kohi?”
“I said no!”
This time she really was on the phone with Miyu.
As soon as the call with her father ended, Karen had gotten off the bus outside Obihiro Station and rang her.
“He really was filling in the moat! I was shocked! And Dad was all for the idea—what’s that about?! I can’t believe this!” Karen ranted.
Miyu said calmly, “Yeah, but I kind of understand where your dad is coming from… He’s much older than my parents. I mean, you’re his youngest daughter, so which guy is he going to prefer—some nobody out of nowhere or a man whose qualifications he already knows from work? It’s pretty simple.”
“I…I’m not denying the logic!”
“And you did talk with him, at least for a few minutes, right? Did you find him gross or unpleasant?”
“N-no, I didn’t think so!”
“So if you don’t dislike him, what’s wrong with going out with him?”
“Marriage is way off! I’m not thinking about it now at all!”
“But you want to do it someday, right? I didn’t think you were the lifelong single type. You said you wanted to have a normal marriage and family, right?”
“Th-that’s true…,” murmured Karen, cooling off after a conversation of unbroken exclamation points.
She had a desire to get married in the future, as much as the average person did. Her two older sisters had happy marriages and children, and they seemed to be enjoying their lives. It struck her as only natural that she should want the same.
“Then why don’t you try snagging a man who shows interest from the start? What’s his name, Fire? Was he not your type?”
“Huh? I don’t know…”
“What is your type, Kohi? It doesn’t hurt to say. Go on.”
Karen felt like Miyu was going to make fun of her no matter what the answer was, so it absolutely would hurt to say, but she went ahead and told the truth.
“Someone like P-chan…”
“That’s not a man. C’mon, at least make it a human being… What are you going to do, marry a gun?”
“I-it’s just an example! I mean, someone who’s reliable, has high specs, a good design…”
“Fine, fine, fine. Well, if you’re not interested, then I guess you don’t need to force yourself to go along with it.”
Wow, Miyu gave up on that one very easily, Karen thought, relieved.
“So introduce him to me instead. I don’t care if he’s short or fat—maybe I’ll think he’s cute when I get used to him. Appearance isn’t what men are about. The biggest draw of all is if he’s rich!”
“…”
“Then I’ll give him one date. I’m sure he’ll take me out to some swanky sushi place in Ginza! And I’ve been looking forward to getting a new bag! And if I’m really pushing it, a brand-new car. Ooh, I want a car! Like a Benz or a BMW!”
Karen had a sudden urge to go back through her memories and figure out exactly why she was friends with Miyu.
“And if you want, Kohi, you can watch us having a hot and heavy date, from far away or even up close—I don’t care!”
“Why…would I do that?”
“Hey, maybe you’ll come around to seeing the finer side of young Fire. Have you ever heard these famous, ancient words? ‘When a man is single, a woman looks for reasons he can’t be her boyfriend.’”
“Uh-huh.”
“And the second part goes, ‘But when she sees a man getting along with another woman, she looks for reasons she could have him for herself.’”
“You argued this one pretty passionately before, didn’t you? Basically, that the definition of a hot man is a man other women want.”
“That’s it. In other words, if I go on a date with Fire, you’re going to try to see his best qualities! So do I have the green light to date him? Do I?”
It sounded as though Miyu was trying to peer into her mind.
“Yeah, sure,” said Karen in all honestly. Then she added, “Can we talk about SJ4 now?”
Sunday, August 23rd. Midday.
At a table in a pub in GGO’s capital city, SBC Glocken, four people were seated: Llenn, in pink; Fukaziroh, in brown; Pitohui, in navy blue; and M, in green. Aside from them, the place was empty, so they didn’t need a private room. They occupied a booth for four along the aisle of the pub.
It was a simple teatime gathering, under the guise of the team’s first meeting since Friday’s announcement of SJ4.
“Thanks for showing up. The other two weren’t able to make it today,” said Pitohui, right as she arrived. Across from her, Llenn sipped her iced tea.
“The other two?” she asked. “Are we going as a team of six this time, Pito?”
Pitohui’s face suddenly darkened with alarm. “Llenn…can you…read my mind…?”
“It was really obvious from the way you said it! So who are they…?” Llenn asked, half worried and half excited.
Having a full team of six for Squad Jam would be a major boost to their power, but she couldn’t help worrying about what might happen if they didn’t click. Putting aside the question of whether Pitohui clicked with the rest of the team in the first place, of course.
“You’ve heard of them before, actually. It’s Clarence and Shirley,” Pitohui explained.
Llenn and Fukaziroh were stunned.
“Really…?”
“No frickin’ way!”
Fukaziroh knew about the plan to recruit more members but hadn’t been told who the candidates were earlier.
Clarence and Shirley. Llenn knew those names.
Clarence was the person who’d given up her P90 magazines in SJ2 when Llenn threatened—er, negotiated with her, for the price of a kiss.
Shirley was a very dangerous sniper who’d shot Pitohui from long distance in SJ2 and very nearly killed her. In SJ3, she used deadly explosive rounds and phenomenal aim to dispatch a number of unlucky victims.
As a matter of fact, those two had engaged in one hell of a battle in SJ3. Llenn had found that out when she’d watched the replay of the event with Saki and the girls.
When Karen saw the clip of Shirley driving the ken-nata into Clarence’s stomach, she’d grunted and turned her eyes away from it. Saki, who’d had her throat cut by Llenn while playing as Boss, just glared at her accusingly.
Fukaziroh asked, “Well, this is a big surprise, Pito, but how did you convince them to join? They seem like the two players least likely to join us.”
“They must have been struck by my vehement passion.”
“Not struck by your violent bullets?”
“A few of those, too.”
In the meantime, Llenn was thinking hard about their team balance.
She was a frontline attacker, someone who moved fast, scouting ahead and striking quickly. She was small and hard to hit but couldn’t take much damage. The P90’s maximum effective range wasn’t much more than six hundred feet, less than half that of an assault rifle, and its bullets were relatively weak.
Clarence was probably similar in build for offense. Her AR-57 used the same ammo as the P90, so her range was somewhere in the same neighborhood.
According to the stats that Llenn had glimpsed on her menu during SJ2, though, Clarence was slower than Llenn, with much higher stamina and strength. She must have played the game a whole lot.
M was the tough guy, of course. He was excellent at sniping with his M14 EBR, and his fierce physical stamina and powerful shield gave him very high defense. He could drive any working vehicle, and he calmly and intelligently gave orders under fire.
Fukaziroh had unparalleled firepower with her pair of six-shooter grenade launchers, which made her a very valuable support member. She was as tiny as Llenn but far hardier in terms of stamina. The only point of concern was her propensity for going rogue from time to time.
Pitohui could skillfully use a variety of guns and swords, and you could count on her to win almost any kind of battle aside from a long-distance one. She had very high health as well. She was a monster—a demon lord. Terrifying. The last person you wanted to fight. Thank goodness she wasn’t on the enemy’s side.
Shirley was an incredible sniper, capable of shooting distant targets without a bullet line, and thanks to her explosive rounds, any hit was a guaranteed fatal shot.
“Dang…isn’t this lineup kind of…amazing? Our team is really balanced now!” Llenn observed. She was delighted.
“Right? LPFMSC is going to be the best squad in the competition! The dream team!” said Pitohui, her smile distorting her cheek tattoos.
Squishing in two more initials into the team name only made it harder to say, but no one soured the mood by pointing that out. Besides, team abbreviations could only go up to five letters, so it wouldn’t fly in Squad Jam. They’d need to come up with something else.
All that aside, Llenn’s mind was filled with one thought: I can do it this time! I can fight SHINC head-on and compete with them! Having a full team of six was a dream come true for her.
She’d always assumed she and M had beaten the girls in SJ1 by sheer luck.
To have a proper rematch against SHINC, she needed a powerful team around her first. Even if that ultimately resulted in defeat.
And if this group of six participated in SJ4, they were going to try to win it all.
That meant that somewhere along the way, they’d have to run up against SHINC. Saki had already messaged her as if it was only natural they would be playing, too.
“I’m so happy. I might be more excited about this Squad Jam than any of the others… Just you wait, Boss!” Llenn exclaimed, as happy as a child, sipping her iced tea in delighted anticipation.
“…”
M silently elbowed Pitohui in the side. His expression imparted some kind of meaning, like he wanted to say something or have her say something.
“…”
But Pitohui was silent, pretending she didn’t notice.
She wasn’t going to tell Llenn that Shirley and Clarence were only joining the team as a means of bypassing the preliminary round. Once SJ4 started, Pitohui had agreed they were free to pursue their individual agendas.
“Well, now that we’ve finished the team’s bonding ceremony, what about the rest of the day? Wanna go slaughter some pitiable monsters or players?” Pitohui suggested, though it didn’t sound like a joke. Other people might walk past their table, so it would be nice if she didn’t chat openly about PKing.
“Yeah! Let’s kill ’em!” added Fukaziroh. Very violent, very disruptive.
Speaking of Fukaziroh, she’d converted her character over from her main haunt, the fantasy game ALfheim Online, for the playtest on the sixteenth and had been hanging out in GGO since then.
PKing aside, Llenn thought it was a good opportunity to get into a tough battle and shoot her P-chan a whole bunch. She drained the rest of her iced tea and stood up at her full, mostly insignificant height.
“Okay, let’s go!”
At that very moment, a man approached her from behind and said, “Hello, Karen Kohiruimaki!”
Karen was so shocked that she thought the software might boot her right out.
The sudden greeting was bad enough, but what made it far worse was that the person used her real name.
In the virtual world, full-dive or not, referring to someone by their real name was completely out of the question. It wasn’t merely a matter of poor manners. It just wasn’t done, period.
“Wha—?!”
Llenn spun around so fast it made a whipping sound. Fukaziroh, Pitohui, and M were clearly shocked, too. They stared at the man who had just arrived.
He was alone. Described as simply as possible, he was tall, handsome, and skinny. Over six feet? Because GGO was an American-made game, the average height for characters was on the taller side, but this guy had to be at the maximum player height. He was taller than M.
But his body type differed from M’s in that he wasn’t burly and buff. This man was slender, lithe—like a track athlete. He wore an olive combat suit, one of the pieces of starter gear that every new player had when the game began.
And his face, like something out of a painting—it was a CG avatar, so in a sense, it was a painting—was very handsome, indeed. The skin tone was somewhere between white and tanned, and his features resembled someone from both Europe and the Middle East.
But handsome was handsome. He looked like a movie star. As he approached, his white teeth glinted in a dazzling smile—whether that was natural or meant to disarm, Llenn didn’t know.
“Oh my good gravy, this is very impressive. What a drop-dead hunk,” muttered Fukaziroh. As luck would have it, that was a haiku.
“Wh-wh-wha…? Wh-wh-wh-wh—? Wh-wh—wh-wh-wh-who…who…?” Llenn stammered in staccato. Pitohui grimaced, possibly from secondhand embarrassment.
If she had immediately and forcefully denied that her name was Karen, she might have wriggled out of it, but it was too late for that now.
“It’s me! Fire Nishiyamada! We met at the party!” the man said, to her utter disbelief. He actually disclosed his own full name, right out in the open.
“Huh? No way. It can’t be…,” Llenn murmured, once again unable to plead ignorance.
Thinking quickly to prevent others from overhearing any of this information, Pitohui thoughtfully suggested, “If we’re getting into specifics, should we find a private room to speak?”
The player who called himself Nishiyamada just smiled, apparently clueless, and said, “Anywhere is fine as long as I can speak with Karen.”
“Let’s do what I said, then.”
They went into one of the pub’s private rooms, which the tall and handsome man observed with great interest. “Ooh… They even have facilities like this?”
It was a room out of a Western movie, where people sat around a table playing poker, and once a man was caught cheating, the others pulled out their revolvers and took care of him quickly.
Once the group had seated themselves at the round table, the man claiming to be Nishiyamada was directly across from Llenn.
“Now let’s start over. I’m so happy to meet you again, Karen!” he exclaimed, completely oblivious.
“…”
Llenn—or Karen—was silent with shock. She was frozen like a statue. Pitohui had to speak for her instead.
“Not so fast, pal. My name is Pitohui.”
“A pleasure to meet you. I am—”
“Yeah, we heard your name. And I’ve learned something else about you already,” Pitohui said, grinning wickedly.
Nishiyamada leaned forward with interest. “Like what?”
“That you’re an absolute beginner at VR games. You probably started within the last twenty-four hours, huh?”
“That’s right. How could you tell?” he asked. It seemed to be a serious question, eliciting a shrug of Pitohui’s shoulders. She asked him, “And what do you want with whom?”
“Oh! That’s right, I was here to ask Karen—”
“My name is Llenn! Llenn!” she snapped, a little more in control now that they were in a private space. In truth, she wanted to pull the P90 out of storage and pop a few bullets in him, but you couldn’t do that here. If only we were out in the wilderness, she wished in all sincerity.
“But you’re Karen, right?”
“Llenn! You have to call me that, or I won’t respond!”
“Oh… I see… So we have to play pretend like that, since this is a game… You poor thing…,” Nishiyamada said. He truly seemed to pity her. It wasn’t an act, and he wasn’t teasing her. He looked absolutely, 100 percent sorry for her.
Come outside with me, you son of a bitch, she thought, veins rising on her face.
“Hey, string bean. You seem to be under a terrible misconception. Let me clear that up,” said Fukaziroh, whose entertained smile was now replaced by a fierce glare. Llenn cheered up, imagining her friend was going to put Nishiyamada in his place with a withering statement.
“I’m the real Karen.”
Llenn never should have gotten her hopes up.
But Nishiyamada’s reaction to Fukaziroh was a surprising one. In fact, it was nearly unbelievable.
“Ha-ha-ha, that can’t be true. I looked it up.”
Huh?
Llenn wasn’t the only one stunned; so were Fukaziroh, M, and Pitohui.
But how? she thought.
“But how?” Fukaziroh asked, at the exact same moment.
“I can’t tell you that. I have my own means that I wish to keep secret,” he said, shamelessly avoiding the question. “But when I learned that you play this game, I decided to come meet you. I wanted to speak with you directly again. I wasn’t sure it was going to work, so I’m glad it did! I’m very pleased.”
“About what?” Llenn demanded as brusquely as she could possibly manage.
“You don’t mind me saying?” Nishiyamada asked, to her surprise. It seemed a strange question.
You’re the one who showed up here to talk to me. Why would you ask, “Should I say it?” at this point? Why are you here, really?
She jutted her chin out defiantly and said, “Go ahead.”
“It’s about how I want to go out with you and plan on marrying you in the future.”
Argh, I should have known!
Llenn anticipated Nishiyamada’s answer, but she did not anticipate (or understand) Fukaziroh muttering, “Oh boy… Never mind. I don’t got nuttin’ to do with this…”
“What?! What’s this? Hey, pal! Let’s hear some more about this!” Pitohui exclaimed with great excitement.
Oh nooooo! Llenn thought, realizing her mistake. But it was already too late.
“Aaaah! Arrrgh!” she wailed, cradling her tiny head in her hands, but Nishiyamada talked on and on and on.
He spoke at length about himself and what he did—about meeting Karen at an industry party just the other day, how he’d fallen in love with her refusal to judge others based on looks, how she was the kind of woman he wanted to marry, how he’d raised the question of a relationship with Karen’s father, how she’d turned down his offer.
And about how, after a full day of thinking it over, he still couldn’t give up on her. So he used his secret methods to find out that Karen played GGO, purchased a VR game and system for the first time ever, and came in to visit her.
Incidentally, the name of his first-ever video game character was “Fire.” He seriously picked his actual name.
“I see… Based on your story, I can sense your fervor. However,” Pitohui warned, her voice steely.
Oh? Is she going to tell him off for me? Will she be angry about his breach of online etiquette and privacy? Llenn wondered, another faint ray of hope budding in her heart.
“…That is not enough for me to give you my daughter just yet,” Pitohui finished.
The bud of hope withered before it could sprout flowers.
What do you mean, “just yet”?! And since when am I your daughter, Pito?! What is supposed to be “enough”?!
Llenn pummeled the table with her fists frantically out of sheer frustration. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam!
Fire Nishiyamada kept his focus on Pitohui, paying no mind to the irritated Llenn. “You said your name was Pitohui? When did Karen become your daughter?”
“That’s not important.”
Yes, it is! Wait…no, it isn’t? Ugh, I don’t know anymore…, Llenn thought. She was getting confused.
It was an already awkward situation that had become more awkward, and Pitohui wasn’t going to help things by getting personally involved. It was becoming clear that Llenn needed to turn him down herself and put a stop to this mess.
“Excuse me…Fire? I’m—”
“That’s right! Let’s do this instead!” Pitohui announced loudly, interrupting Llenn and rising from her chair. She turned around and waved her arm theatrically, pointing an accusing finger at Fire.
“It’s not good manners to point at people,” said the man who had practically cyberstalked Llenn to this point, employing methods that remained a mystery.
Like you’re one to talk! Llenn thought.
“I know that. I don’t do it in real life. But this is a virtual world. In this game, I play the role of a very rude troublemaker. I have to keep up my act. It’s quite taxing, but I do it to preserve the mood.”
What a liar. She only pretends to be a pure, innocent girl in real life, Llenn grumbled in her head.
Fire replied, “Well, fine. Since we’re in a game, I suppose I can overlook a bit of rudeness.”
You’re the rudest one here. You’re being so rude! You’ll pay for this, Llenn thought.
“So what were you suggesting?” Fire asked.
Pitohui sat back down in her chair and told him—with a delighted smile. “This is GGO. A game where we hold guns and speak with lead. You must have looked that up when you learned Llenn could be found here, yes?”
“But of course. I learned all kinds of things about full-dive online games, too. There was a terrible tragedy called the SAO Incident that took the lives of thousands, and yet there are other devices and other games that many, many people are still playing today. That was quite a shock to me. I don’t understand this world.”
It seemed that Fire liked to editorialize, even when it wasn’t requested.
“Mm-hmm. And now that you have created your own account to get into the game, what do you think of it? Honest opinions only.”
“Oh, I think it’s quite barbaric. Shooting and killing people with guns in such realistic and vivid ways… I find it honestly frightening.”
I won’t deny that it’s barbaric, I guess. I had that impression at first, too, Llenn thought.
Once again, Fire couldn’t help but add to his statement. “So if we start a relationship, I will forbid my future wife, Karen, from playing this or any other VR game, in fact. Human psychology has absolutely no need for a realistic simulation of the act of murder. It can only have ill effects. My opinion is that they should strictly regulate this space, as they did after the SAO Incident.”
Come outside with me, you son of a bitch, she thought again, nearly blurting it out loud this time. Something that had existed only in her head as a vague possibility was now rapidly coalescing into a firm, determined event.
I think I’m going to have a very easy time disliking him after all. I’ll be more than capable of mercilessly rejecting him. Oh, thank goodness.
“Oh my! What a fierce opinion!” said Pitohui, making a show of acting shocked.
Her clarity returning, Llenn considered the situation. Is Pito using this conversation to dig up his opinions and show them to me? Is she trying to get me to hate him?
She reconsidered her negative opinion of Pitohui. At the end of the day, when she saw a teammate in need, Pitohui would step up to help out.
“What do you say to this idea, then? You asked her out inside the game, so we’ll decide the answer in the game. If you can beat Llenn, then I’m sure she’ll fall in love with you.”
Llenn abruptly reconsidered her reconsideration.
“Whaaaaaat?” she yelped. This time, she couldn’t hold it in. “I don’t even like—”
Before she could finish saying “this man,” though, Pitohui interrupted. “She doesn’t like making up her mind without a competition!”
“I didn’t say—”
“A competition, eh? Interesting.”
Hang on there, Fire. Aren’t you interested in what I have to say?
But Llenn was too annoyed and exhausted to interrupt. She sank back into her chair, sipping a fresh iced tea and listening to Pitohui and Fire’s exchange, keeping her pointed commentary to herself.
“Right? You might not realize it from her appearance, but Llenn’s actually a serious gambler—she lives for the thrill of competition. Even I’ll admit it. She shows respect to a powerful opponent and will faithfully obey the winner if she loses.”
That’s not true.
“Ooh. Isn’t that endearing?”
It’s not.
“So this is what I propose. Next Wednesday, we’re going to compete in a team battle royale called the fourth Squad Jam.”
Oh, right, we were talking about that.
“Hmm. First I’ve heard of this event.”
It is?! You researched everything else about me! You couldn’t look up that?!
“So here’s what I say, Fire. You put together a team and enter the competition! If you can beat our team, Superbabe Pitohui and Her Merry Henchmen (summer 2026 version), then you will have my tacit approval to have one or two dates or marriages with Llenn!”
Since when was that our team name? Why do I need your permission to go on a date, Pito? And don’t talk about “one or two marriages,” please.
There were so many things threatening to make her snap, Llenn was getting lightheaded. It was hard to know how serious Pitohui was being about any of this, but knowing her, it was probably all for real. How could she do this?
“Is this true, Karen?”
Aside from the fact that he was still calling her by her real name, Fire seemed to be listening intently to the conversation. So she earnestly answered his question.
“Do you…think you can win? I’m not saying this to brag, but our team is really good.”
“Can I take your reply to mean that we have a deal?” asked tall, skinny Fire with a smile.
I’m not going to lose this one, she thought. I’m going to stick a knife into his head. Inside the game.
Out loud, she said, “Yes.”
“I eagerly await next Wednesday,” said Fire as he made to leave the room.
Pitohui told him, “You can watch video replays of each of the previous Squad Jams, so I would recommend doing that. At the very least, you’ll get to see Llenn in action.”
Fire turned back and said, “I don’t need to bother. I don’t want to watch murder being committed, even virtual game murder. That’s a very respectable opinion that respectable people share.” He made it sound like that was the most obvious thing in the world.
“I just have to win on the big day, right? Good-bye,” the tall man said, waving as he left.
“You don’t want more information on your opponent? Very confident of you. Suit yourself,” Pitohui added with a smirk.
Right after Fire proudly marched out of the pub’s private room, Llenn’s tiny body exploded.
“I—I don’t believe this! What was that?! What was that?!”
Roaring, she thrust her arms thrust to the sky at tremendous speed.
“He is a very unique gentleman,” Fukaziroh admitted, grinning. She didn’t even bother hiding that this was all very entertaining to her. “You two would make a good couple, right?”
“Wha—?! You—! I—! Let me be clear—I am not letting him beat me! If I see him in SJ4, I’m murdering him right on the spot!”
“Ooh! What an extremist! Don’t say that in real life, though. They’ll call the coppers on ya,” said Pitohui before she gulped down the last of her virtual beer. She slammed the empty glass on the table. “That’s my Llenn.”
“For one thing, I’m not yours, Pito! For another, this all escalated because you were telling him nonsense! Geez! This is not my fault!”
As she guzzled down a second glass of iced tea, Llenn fumed in general, but not at any one person. Pitohui had suggested the idea, of course, but it was Llenn herself who had agreed to it. Apparently, she was easily swept up by peer pressure.
“Well, I don’t believe you’re going to lose. Not in the least!” Pitohui declared, albeit lazily. She flashed Llenn a big wink.
Fukaziroh added confidently, “He started his account recently, right? What a wuss. I bet you could kill him with a flick to the forehead.”
M hadn’t said a word the entire time, until now. “I would expect, knowing that he’s a resourceful man, that he’ll make use of real-money transactions to hire a team of talented players.”
“Oh, I already knew that,” said Pitohui.
GGO was a game where such things were possible. Pitohui and M had hired some very capable mercenary teammates for SJ2. To this day, neither of them would reveal the identities of those four soldiers. Who could they have been?
“He’ll be able to attract people who wouldn’t normally give Squad Jam the time of day but would fight in the BoB for a hefty price. If that team turns out to be tougher than us—or even if they aren’t but happen to get lucky—things could turn out badly.”
“You’re such a worrywart, M. But you’re right—you never know what’ll happen in a competition. There’s a greater than zero chance we could just get our butts kicked. Or maybe Llenn will die right off the bat. Even if the two of them don’t fight, that probably still counts as a loss as far as the bet is concerned.”
“What will you do, then?” M asked her in all seriousness. It helped Llenn cool her head a bit.
GGO was an unforgiving game when it came to death. If you took an unlucky hit, you could easily die in one shot, even in Squad Jam. For that matter, what if the head-on fight with SHINC ended much faster than expected? What if she died in that?
That might meet the requirements for Llenn’s participation in Squad Jam, but Karen would have to go on a date with Nishiyamada.
With that despicable man! Leading to an eventual marriage! And then he’d probably tell my dad about it! It might blow my cover on the entire GGO thing with my family! They might even force me to quit playing!
“Oh no…”
Worry was starting to eat away at her heart like storm clouds rolling in. But as usual, it was Pitohui who put a stop to it before she got carried away.
“Did anyone record that?”
“Wh…what?”
“Did anyone take a clip of that verbal agreement? From what I saw, Fire didn’t seem to know about that item or capability, and he certainly didn’t show any signs of using anything.”
In GGO, there was a camera item that could record the user performing gameplay feats from multiple angles. Most people used it to record themselves doing cool stuff in battle, or dying miserably, so they could play it back whenever they wanted. Essentially, nobody used them in town.
“No,” murmured M, shaking his head.
Llenn and Fukaziroh understood what Pitohui was getting at, too. “Heh-heh-heh-heh. Oh, Pitohui… You are a wicked one, indeed…” Fukaziroh leered at her, looking positively sinful.
“That’s right! Let’s fight against SHINC and all the other rival teams and use whatever attention is left over to deal with Fire. I’ll let Llenn murder him in the cruelest, most sadistic manner possible. And on the one-in-a-trillion chance that she dies…”
Pitohui twirled her index finger around, as if the answer was the most obvious choice in the world.
“…then we play dumb—like our lives depend on it!”
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