CHAPTER 3
SJ4 Begins
And then August 26th arrived.
The fourth Squad Jam, also known as SJ4—the big day was here.
It was a rare weekday event, falling on a Wednesday. It had always been a weekend thing before. Was there some reason for that? The only way to know would be to ask the sponsor.
It was a sunny day in Tokyo. An energetic high-pressure front extended over the island of Honshu from the Pacific, promising a day of heavy, late-summer heat.
None of that had any effect on GGO.
As always, the large pub in the capital city of SBC Glocken served as the main gathering place for the event. And as always, there were dozens of players ready to risk their lives, thirty teams’ worth in all, and spectators coming together to drink, talk smack, and enjoy the proceedings on the monitors.
Unlike before, this time, there was no impromptu betting pool over how many bullets would be shot in total by the end of the game.
When the early spectators arrived and learned there wouldn’t be a total shots prediction game, they grumbled, “What? They got rid of that?”
“There’s an automatic ammo refill every thirty minutes, so they probably figured it’ll be impossible to guess with that many rounds.”
Another man said, “No…that’s not it. Remember how anyone who guessed the exact number would win the same number of bullets?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Well, if they can shoot as much as they want, it’ll be a ridiculous number, so if someone coincidentally gets it right, they probably won’t be able to cover the cost, even with the five-hundred-credit entry fee.”
“Stupid cheapskate author…”
The event started earlier than usual, at noon. Teleportation would begin at 11:50, so if all the participating players were not in the bar by then, they would be considered late and would be disqualified from the event. There was no getting in after the deadline.
It was 11:30.
Many had gathered in the building by this point, taking up spots to the sides of the main door and awaiting each new player’s entrance.
“Hello to my enthusiastic audience! I am your favorite commentator, Thane, from the squadron ZAT, short for Zangiri Atama no Tomo, or ‘Close-Cropped Friends’! You already know what I had for breakfast today—oh yeah, baby, that good melon bread with the cream filling!”
In came the man who always wore small cameras as he played, capturing footage of battles from various angles and narrating his experience in silly ways the entire time so he could later splice the footage together and upload videos to the Internet. His name was Thane.
His entire team got wiped out by MMTM in SJ2, and in SJ3, he said something just short of sexual harassment to SHINC before being completely riddled with bullets.
Here he was again today, and he was certain to keep up a running commentary until he died. This time, though, it was starting in the pub.
“Ooh! There he is!”
“Show us another beauty of a death today!”
People often found his videos more entertaining than the official ones, so the audience was delighted to see him. They cheered as though the match was starting already.
His teammates—Benjamin, Casa, Koenig, Frost, and Yamada—entered after him, but unlike Thane, they seemed a little sheepish about the whole thing.
Thane remained at the doorway and said, “All right! Let’s see what famous team will be next to enter the building!” as if he were now the MC. It turned out to be ZEMAL. “Whoa! It’s the automatic-fire lunatics, the All-Japan Machine-Gun Lovers!”
They were the team that had improved the most from SJ1 to SJ3. They had become quite popular, because their blaze-of-glory style encompassed both their actions and their (often foolish) deaths. Watching them was always entertaining.
Cheers arose from the men in the pub. “Whoo, about time!” “Hyaaaa!” “Get ’em, boys!”
But then the area fell pin-drop silent.
“Huh…?”
And it was no wonder. The five burly men of ZEMAL were carrying something together. It was…a palanquin made of rods and boards. They were carrying it as if this were some kind of traditional Japanese festival.
“Whaaaat? A festival?” Thane said in English, for some reason.
Sitting in the chair atop the palanquin was a woman, a pretty young lady wearing a beanie and a cryptic, old-fashioned smile. It was her, the woman with the RPD light machine gun whom ZEMAL treated like their goddess. Of course, the audience in the pub couldn’t possibly know that.
“Open a lane and open your bolts, gentlemen.”
“Lower your eyes. You are in the presence of the goddess of machine guns,” warned the two men in the lead: Tomtom, who had a bandana around his forehead, and Max, whose avatar was black. Thane and the rest of the pub pulled back without thinking. It seemed important not to mess with them.
It was a divine sight—or more accurately, a sight you didn’t really want to get involved with.
In the sudden silence of the pub, ZEMAL and the woman atop their makeshift palanquin moved to a private room and disappeared inside.
“Um, so…what the hell was that?” Thane muttered, forgetting about his commentary. No one could answer the question.
“Was that…an abduction? Have they finally stooped to abducting women?”
“But…she was smiling, right?”
“They must be lying to her! That has to be it!”
“Y-you think we should call the cops? Like, right now?”
“But…what if she’s just CG or something?”
“Bro, we’re all CG.”
The pub buzzed with speculation for a while, and though many opinions were raised, no consensus was ever reached.
“Uh, ahem! Let’s get it back together now! Here comes one of the favorites to win it all! The Amazons are here!” Thane announced as attention focused on the doorway again.
SHINC walked through.
First was Boss, the pigtailed woman built like a gorilla; then Tohma, the black-haired sniper; Sophie, the dwarf; Rosa, the tough mom; Anna, the pretty blonde in sunglasses; and Tanya, the foxy silver attacker.
Six intimidating women, all dressed in bright, poisonous-looking green, strode into the building.
Thane screamed, “Whoo! It’s the chicks who wouldn’t let me touch their boobs last time!”
“Do I need to sue you for harassment?” Anna glared through her shades.
“I’m sorry!” Thane said, snapping to attention. “I won’t say that anymore, I promise! So now will you shoot me, please?”
“Do I need to sue you for harassment?”
“Wh-why?”
That was enough playing around with Thane. SHINC shot scowls around the pub and then retired to their own private room. They had a strategy session to conduct. Nobody wanted to do that out in the open.
After 11:40, the teams really started filing in through the door.
“Ooh, there are the Ray Gun Boys, abbreviated as RGB, who use only optical guns! Can they improve the reputation of laser pistols? Or do they have no chance? Behind them is the speedy TOMS, including Cole, who was on the betrayers’ team in SJ3! How far can they get on speed alone? And right after them is the military cosplay group, the New Soldiers! Their attention to detail is always impressive!” Thane’s enthusiastic commentary came rapid-fire.
Meanwhile, T-S entered as well, their faces exposed, not wearing their signature armor. No one realized it was them. No one had any clue.
“Next up is…”
Thane fell abruptly silent. A group had entered that was outside of the norm.
It was composed of all men. Every last one of them wore a mask and sunglasses. Masks weren’t entirely new here; the support members Pitohui and M brought for SJ2 had worn them, too. This was different, though.
“Um, how many of them are there…?”
“Ichi, ni, san, shi, cinco, siete, acht, neun, ten, eleven…” Thane counted, switching languages for no discernible reason. Eventually, he reached a total of eighteen.
Every last one of the eighteen wore a mask of thin green fabric that covered their whole face. They all wore the same single-lens sunglasses.
In GGO, sunglasses were nothing more than a fashion accessory for cosmetic purposes. The brightness level of the world could be adjusted by the player regardless of the shades, and the level could adjust automatically if desired. It was similar to screen brightness on a smartphone or tablet.
The masks weren’t stifling at all, either. Players could breathe like there was nothing on their faces and push their gunstock to their cheeks without worrying about it slipping.
The eighteen men split neatly into three groups of six, each with a different uniform. Presuming the three teams were labeled A, B, and C…
Team A had serious camo. Very effective, by the look of it—a mixture of fine brown, green, black, and pink spots. It wasn’t a real-life camouflage pattern, so this was probably a GGO -original pattern created with the clothing customization tool.
Team B was equipped with GGO -esque futuristic gear: dark-blue skintight pants and dark-brown jackets with protective armor inside. They seemed mobile, like space soldiers in lightweight gear.
Team C was in tracksuits—yes, the normal sportswear kind—dark-blue fabric with three white lines along the sides.
“What the…? Are they a baseball team looking for a pickup game?” Thane wondered, but no crew wearing masks and sunglasses played sandlot baseball. The closest might have been Team C.
The large group filed silently through the pub and went into a private room, still in an orderly line. Those rooms weren’t that large, so eighteen people at once would be very cramped, but this was a video game. The room would expand to fit the number of people inside, no problem. It was very convenient.
One of the men in tracksuits was noticeably taller than the others, but of course, there was no way of knowing who that was.
The men in the pub whispered among themselves.
“Who are those guys…? They came in together, so I assume they’re in Squad Jam…”
“I’m guessing all three squads are working together somehow.”
“Seems really weird that they’re not trying to hide the fact that they’re in an alliance at all.”
There had been that plan for teams to band together using the flare signals in SJ3, but those people had kept it secret until the game started. It didn’t seem to make sense that these guys would put out all the signs saying, “We’re three teams hangin’ out together!”
It looked strange to MMTM, too, the next team to enter the building. Their burliest member, Summon, muttered, “A coalition? Who gave them permission?”
“Was that supposed to be a rhyme?” asked Kenta, the black-haired one. Summon simply stared at him and shook his head slowly.
Their leader, David, ever the stern one, said, “We’ll beat all comers. But…we ought to keep them in mind. They’ll be a threat.”
The clock on the monitors in the bar said that it was 11:48. Teleportation to the waiting area would begin in just two minutes. The audience began to murmur and stir again.
“Not here yet, right?”
“Not here yet…”
Even Thane whipped up the nervous crowd, announcing excitedly, “The two-time champion has yet to arrive! She had a bye to participate in the final round; what could this mean? Is it possible she could wind up disqualified by not arriving in time?”
Yes, the fighter with the most glorious history of all, who was champion of SJ1, runner-up of SJ2, and champion of SJ3 with the betrayers’ team—the little pink shrimp, Llenn—was nowhere to be found. Neither were any of her teammates in LPFM.
When the clock hit 11:49, a woman’s voice announced, “One minute until teleportation! Is everyone ready? Do you have your team lineup all together?”
Normally, this announcement would cause the bar to cheer, but it only amplified the uneasy mood in the building now. Llenn and Fukaziroh had come rushing into the bar two minutes before SJ2. They were setting a new record.
“Whoa…you can’t be serious…”
“There’s no way they’ll go out like this, right…?”
A silhouette blotted the doorway.
“Ooh! Oh…never mind…”
Thirty seconds before the deadline, two people in tree-patterned camo jackets and all-black combat gear showed up: Shirley and Clarence. They were in no rush. It was like they were saying, No problem, we still have thirty seconds.
Shirley was scowling like always, while Clarence wore her usual enigmatic grin.
“Whoa! It’s the green-haired chick with the terrifying exploding sniper rounds and the handsome dude who got into a one-on-one duel with her! Are they a two-man team this time? Is that it? I couldn’t see the prelims, so I don’t know… Does this mean they made it through with just the two of them? That would be wild! That’s crazy!” Thane exclaimed, not realizing that Clarence was female. Meanwhile, the clock was now at 11:49:50.
Ten more seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven.
“Llenn’s not showing up!”
Six. Five. Four.
“You’re kidding…”
Three. Two. One.
“Oh man…”
At exactly 11:50, the newest arrivals, Shirley and Clarence, and every other participant, including Thane, blinked into a brief afterimage of light and simply vanished.
Naturally, the teams out of sight, like SHINC, MMTM, and ZEMAL, would have done the same from their private rooms.
“No way… My poor Llenn…”
“I know I say this every time, but she’s not yours.”
Llenn’s team did not show up.
Llenn was in the waiting area.
High overhead in the dark, empty space was a countdown reading TIME REMAINING: 09:59, which promptly ticked to 58.
This was the real waiting room before Squad Jam, the place where you could get equipped, go over a bit of strategy, and still have a good amount of time left over.
Next to Llenn was Fukaziroh. “Yeaaah! Let’s do it!”
So was Pitohui. “Let’s do iiiit!”
And M. “Let’s go.”
Each was dressed in their basic combat outfit, but they were empty-handed, not yet equipped for battle.
Next to the four of them was Clarence, delighted to be reunited with Llenn for the first time since SJ2. “Here I am! Let’s have some fun today!”
Shirley, who said nothing, was there, too, just bobbing her head with a stern expression.
The six of them were Team LPFM this time around.
Llenn bowed slightly to the two newcomers. “Hi…nice to see you.”
She’d had a nice conversation with Clarence in SJ2 but had no idea what to say to Shirley, whom she’d killed before. She had no clue what their team dynamic would be, and it felt quite awkward.
Whether out of keen consideration or total obliviousness, Clarence said cheerily, “Llenn! Nice to see you again! I’ve watched the videos of your exploits! I’m so happy to hang out with you again! In fact, everyone in the bar was sad that the ‘little pink shrimp’ wasn’t there. But here you are! Where were you?”
“In the farthest room back. We showed up more than an hour ahead of time…”
“That’s so early! How come?”
“Uh…”
Llenn wasn’t really sure how to answer that—the truth was they’d set their meeting time very early as a countermeasure against Fukaziroh’s chronic tardiness. And once they’d formalized their GGO login and meetup at 10:30, giving her a whole fifty minutes of leeway, guess who showed up exactly on time? Fukaziroh.
So the four of them arrived at the bar at 10:40, well before any of the audience was there, and proceeded to kill time in a private room until the teleportation finally started.
“Well, putting that aside, why don’t we warm up with a little strategy prep? Dig out your waxy ears and listen up, folks!” said Pitohui jauntily.
Over an hour was a lot of time to fill, but the four of them hadn’t talked strategy at all. They had mostly spent the time bad-mouthing Nishiyamada and engaging in behind-the-scenes talk about Elza’s concerts, the mysteries of the cat sticker on Elza’s guitar, Fukaziroh’s potential future boyfriends, the bottom-up AI incident that shocked society, and so on. It was all girl talk. M had stayed almost entirely silent throughout.
Pitohui extended her palm toward Clarence and Shirley. “These two will be taking part this time…”
Yes. Yes. The perfect team balance, Llenn thought approvingly.
“And M will be handling the tactical planning…”
No complaints there. I’d be scared of Pito doing the planning. Llenn kept her commentary to herself.
“And as the representative to show up on the Satellite Scan—in other words, the team leader—we’ll leave it up to our decoy extraordinaire, Llenn…”
Guess that was inevitable, she thought. I’ll probably end up running through a hail of bullets again, but since we have two more support members, I guess it won’t really be that bad? In the end, it’ll give me a better chance of fighting SHINC.
Her heart was soaring at the thought of getting a true and proper duel against Boss and the rest. She’d been dreaming of the opportunity to have a battle for the ages, an epic confrontation in which either side could win—a chance to determine supremacy once and for all.
“And Shirley and Clarence, you two are free to rage however you like! Once the match starts, we can even consider you enemies, if you want.”
“Huh? What? What do you mean?” stammered Llenn, out loud this time.
“Whoa, whoa, Pito! Aren’t they supposed to be the loyal vassals who stand in the line of fire and die to protect us?” added Fukaziroh, also taken aback. Her extra interpretation of the situation seemed a bit on the cruel side.
“What? You kids didn’t hear? We only joined your team so we could skip the prelims. Once the match starts, we’re instant enemies. And if I get the chance, I’m gonna get Pitohui. Those were the conditions for joining, and Pitohui said yes. Don’t blame me for it,” said Shirley standoffishly, breaking her silence at last with the tiniest hint of delight.
“Yep, that’s right! I’m gonna beat you this time, Llenn!” added Clarence with a smile and a wink.
“Whaaat? That’s not…,” Llenn whined, dazed.
“Ah, that’s too bad. You’ll be fodder for my grenades!” taunted Fukaziroh. She jabbed Clarence in the side with her elbow.
“Ooh! That’s big talk, little girl!” Clarence jabbed her back.
But while the two of them bickered playfully, Llenn looked up at the dimmed ceiling in despair.
So we’re only going to fight with the four of us, after all… That was a fleeting dream…
“All right, let’s gear up,” M said when five minutes remained.
Each person waved their left hand to call up floating windows only they could see. All it took was the press of the EQUIP ALL button for their equipment to show up at once.
That led to a transformation scene. If this were an animated show about magical girls, this would be what they called a “bank” scene, the kind that’s meant to be reused over and over again, for every episode. Only in this case, no one was flying around or rotating or turning naked.
On Llenn’s body appeared a little jewellike anti-optical defensive field (technically, just the generator of said field) and pink gun magazine pouches on either side. By their design, the P90’s magazines were quite long, which made the pouches to contain them on either hip quite long as well, hanging down like some kind of miniskirt. Llenn quite liked that touch.
On her back was Kni-chan, her black combat knife. Lastly, P-chan, the pink P90, appeared, floating before her face.
“Here’s to another good fight!” she said, grabbing it and clutching it to her chest.
Fukaziroh’s transformation was the same as usual.
She wore a vest with bulletproof armor plates and pouches for grenades on the outside. Over her shoulders ran the straps of a backpack to hold all of her ammo for firing as long and quickly as possible. A helmet slightly too big for her rested on her head. On her right thigh was a Smith & Wesson M&P 9 mm automatic pistol, which she couldn’t hit anything with anyway.
Lastly, she had two MGL-140s, the six-shot grenade launcher—one for each hand. Fukaziroh’s experience with GGO had grown significantly, but she seemed utterly disinterested in switching to a different weapon.
As for the plasma grenades, which had been such a terror in SJ2, with M’s patronage, she’d acquired a full dozen of them, which was more than before. She didn’t have them loaded yet, just to make sure she didn’t accidentally waste them.
M wasn’t going to trade in his M14 EBR anytime soon, either. The sci-fi-aesthetic gun was very comfortable in his large hands. On his back was the bag that contained his phenomenal shield. On his thigh, an HK45 pistol.
Pitohui’s body was bristling with weapons.
Her primary, the KTR-09 assault rifle, had a seventy-five-round drum magazine; plus, Springfield XDM .40-caliber pistols sat in holsters on both legs. On her left side, to be extra prepared, was a Remington M870 Breacher shortened shotgun.
And though you couldn’t see them from the outside, there was probably a trio of lightswords in the pouch on her back, which she’d used in SJ3. There were also knives attached to the outside of her boots.
In order for her headgear to actually be equipped, Pitohui’s long ponytail had to be temporarily undone, then retied.
Clarence’s black combat outfit was equipped with a long vertical pouch for holding the same magazines Llenn used, while the Five-Seven pistol she’d use to shoot them was in a holster on her right leg.
Her gun was an AR-57. It attached to a sling, which she passed her head through.
Shirley didn’t change much. All that appeared was a ken-nata knife on her belt and her sniper rifle, the R93 Tactical 2. She liked to use ponchos for effective camouflage when needed, so this was all she wanted for now.
It struck Llenn as being reminiscent of her native Obihiro, as well as nearby Sapporo. Unlike the rest of Japan, Hokkaido’s roads had been built before the towns were formed, so the roads were straight, intersecting at right angles and keeping everything simple.
It would ruin the atmosphere to bring up real locations inside the game, though, and since she didn’t want Shirley and Clarence to know where she was from, Llenn didn’t say this out loud.
“Okay, let’s split the map into four and start with the northeast, yeah? What’s this?” Pitohui asked, pointing a long, graceful finger to the top right of the display. The map was always presented with north pointing up, so that meant she was indicating the northeast block.
Everyone could tell at once. When you saw multiple long, straight lines running parallel and perpendicular in a flat place, it could only be one thing.
“That’s an airport. And a very big one.”
Llenn was familiar with her local Obihiro Airport and Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The latter was very large, with four major runways, but based on the map she was staring at, this one seemed even larger and more impressive.
M noted, “That’s four runways in the two-and-a-half-mile range. That means a very open and flat area. Take a stroll out there, and you’ll get sniped in moments. Gotta be careful.”
Pitohui added, “This rectangular thing between the runways would be the terminal building. You can see the control tower here, too. That would be a very convenient location to control; you’d have a view of the entire area.”
The others nodded. Shirley secretly smirked to herself. This was a useful tidbit.
Fukaziroh read the sniper’s mind, however. “Yeah, but we’re not there right now, O Great Shirley.”
“Ugh…”
Clarence pointed at the block below that, the southeast area. “We’re down here, right?”
On the farthest right bottom corner of the map was a shining white point. When there was an indicator right after the start of the game despite the lack of a satellite passing overhead, that signaled the player’s location.
It seemed the unspoken understanding that the four seeded teams had to be placed in each of the four corners was still the going rule. The rule book claimed that “all teams are placed in perfectly random locations,” but nobody actually believed that.
That would mean they could expect a long and arduous journey before they ran into SHINC, but Llenn was already expecting that.
It simply meant she had to beat anyone who stood in her way.
The features of the southeast block were split neatly into three sections.
The farthest to the outside was forest, where Llenn’s team was located. A triangle consuming the bottom-right third of the block was painted in dark green. Once you went northwest for a while, a river ran diagonally, with multiple blue lines running parallel. The ground was pale green around them.
“Those are wetlands, then. Aw, man,” groused Clarence.
It was common in GGO for the area around rivers to be swampy muck, where your feet regularly sank down to the shin. The worst part was they weren’t impassable by any means. If it were completely impossible to deal with them, they could just eliminate crossing the mud from their options, which would be much simpler.
The rivers and swamp covered the middle part of the block on a forty-five degree angle.
“Doesn’t this mean…we have to cross the river…?” Llenn wondered out loud.
If they wanted to leave the forest, they would have to come this way. Crossing the river and swamp would be very difficult for little things like Llenn and Fukaziroh.
M operated the controls on his device to enlarge the swampy region.
“Yes! Bridges!”
There were bridges crossing the river. Based on their size, they were probably two-lane roads. Llenn was relieved.
But Fukaziroh was outraged. “Only three of them?! And they’re all straight!”
As she said, there were only three bridges spread out across the length of the four-mile-plus river. They were located on the north, the middle, and the south. Each was at least two-thirds of a mile apart.
Also, as should be expected of a bridge, they were absolutely straight. You’d be a sitting duck walking on top of one of them. Anyone with a long-range rifle could pick you off.
Based on the number of teams in the event, there was probably at least one other group in this forest, so the first skirmish might occur over access to the bridges. And there would be more foes waiting on the other end.
Struggle and wade through the wetlands and river, or cross the bridge and be an easy target? Whichever option they chose, one thing was clear: This was the worst possible starting location.
“This had to be on purpose! That stupid sponsor is messing with us! He’s picking on the favorites to win, the bully!” Fukaziroh raged. She was in quite a mood. She even added, “Once we beat everyone to win, shall we go and kick his ass next?”
“That can come later,” said Pitohui, checking the watch on her left wrist. About three minutes had passed so far.
The last section of the southeast block, once you crossed the river, was city. The lattice of cross streets became much finer, and small buildings were packed end to end, suggesting a residential area.
Nearly in the center of the map was a truly massive yet oddly shaped building, like a giant rectangle ending in octagons on each corner. In terms of sheer size, it was larger than the airport terminal.
M zoomed in to get a better look at its shape and guessed, “This is probably a shopping mall. The middle part is the main building, and the ones on the corners are the department stores. The empty space around it is the parking lot. It’s designed to be easily accessible from the highway.”
Ahhhhh, thought the rest of them.
In Hokkaido, where Karen lived, there were lots of large malls with supermarkets as the anchor store. She’d been to such places many times, but based on the scale of the map, this one was far larger than any of them. The entire lot, including the parking area, was well over a mile along each side.
Everything tended to be larger in Hokkaido, but they had nothing on the United States, Llenn concluded.
“Hmmm…” Pitohui focused her stare on something.
There was a small track running between the mall and the airport. It looked like a railway connecting the two locations.
“It’s running over the road. A tram, I’d guess,” said M.
“I know what that it is. It’s the thingy that makes noise when you hit it with a stick,” said Fukaziroh. Llenn ignored her.
“What’s a tram?”
“They also call them LRT, light-rail transit. It’s basically the latest form of streetcar. If we find a car, we might be able to operate it. Let me know if you spot one.”
“Okay, got it.”
“I knew that. That’s what I said—if you hit the car, it makes a sound!”
“Are you serious?”
“Can I ask something…? Do you always treat everything like it’s one big joke?” asked Shirley in all seriousness.
“Huh? Oh, sorry,” said Llenn. Her apology came on reflex for some reason.
Shirley exhaled. “Fine, whatever. I suppose that even when you’re having the stupidest conversations imaginable, the big one or Pitohui are always keeping an eye on the surroundings. Well done.”
“You bet! Do you even know how many times we’ve won?” bragged Fukaziroh, puffing out her little chest. Shirley ignored her.
M returned the map zoom to normal and enlarged a different area this time.
“Now let’s look at the lower left, the southwest block…”
It was a region with some very strange markings.
The screen was entirely brown, so it was easy to tell it was just exposed earth, but with many circular marks like octopus suckers arranged at random. There were several hundred of them, perhaps even more. Some of the lines even overlapped.
“What is that?” wondered Clarence. Nobody knew the answer, so they waited for M to reveal it.
“My assumption,” he said, avoiding a definite answer, “is that they might be craters. Holes left by some kind of attack. Perhaps they were carpet-bombed?”
“Ah, I see. Yeah, it seems kind of like that.” Llenn imagined the surface of the moon. They weren’t that dissimilar.
M continued, “That would mean that while the ground is generally flat, the craters will be depressed, and the lip of each crater will rise a bit. It’ll be tough to traverse, and you won’t be able to see far. Not a good place to get into a fight.”
“It’s the worst! I’m glad we didn’t start there!” exclaimed Fukaziroh, updating her previous definition of the “worst possible starting location.”
M said, “There’s a straight line crossing it,” and pointed to a two-way track bisecting it from the bottom right of the southwest block to the upper left corner of the northwest block—a diagonal line across the entire left side of the map. “This is a train track. If there aren’t any obstacles, then like the highway, it will be a convenient travel lane. However…”
“It’ll be easy to get shot there,” Llenn finished. She was the smallest and fastest target, so her standards were a bit different from M, the largest and slowest. It would be deadly for him.
“And then the map right above it,” prompted Fukaziroh, causing everyone to examine the last block in the northwest.
The time was 12:05. Five minutes had passed since the team came to a halt.
The audience in the bar knew that the first ten minutes were a general strategic planning period, so they weren’t expecting any flashy action at the beginning. This was the time for them to speculate and chat about who would win, which team to pay the closest attention to for good combat, and what new weapons might make an appearance.
Bing!
When the clock hit 12:05, a loud sound drew all eyes to the message on the screen out of sheer surprise. This was new.
The message started off: I’ll announce the special rules early for those of you watching from the bar! Starting five minutes into the event…
“Ruins, you think?”
“Yeah, ruins.”
“So nobody lives there.”
“I mean, I’ll shoot ’em if they do.”
Llenn and Fukaziroh chattered back and forth about the details on the map.
The northwest block depicted a ruined city, a place with many high-rise buildings, much like the city from SJ1. It seemed that quite a large number of these had toppled over, however. A number of the rectangles on the map were elongated and horizontal.
The train track ran right through their midst, like a road. On the lower right side of the northwest block, a little under half its size, was a white, blank space.
“Whuz dat?” asked Fukaziroh.
“A lake. But it’s frozen,” answered Pitohui without turning around. She’d been paying more attention to their surroundings than anyone, keeping her KTR-09 level and even with her eyes.
Now that they’d seen the entire map, M started in with his usual strategy announcement segment. “All right. As for our route—”
“Everyone, be on alert!” Pitohui snapped, drowning him out.
These were GGO warriors, even when they were relaxed enough to be telling jokes to one another.
“—!” Llenn held up her P90 and crouched down on the spot.
“Mmm!” Fukaziroh grunted, kneeling behind Llenn’s left and pointing her cannons to either side.
M closed the map and watched the opposite direction along with Pitohui.
In character as a sniper, Shirley pulled the string holding the R93 Tactical 2’s bipod legs together, immediately popping them open, then settled down on the dirt with it. She didn’t forget to open the caps on both sides of her scope.
“Oh?” Clarence was the last to react. She flopped down next to Shirley.
After the five of them rustled into position, the forest was suddenly deathly still. A few seconds without movement later, Llenn murmured in a voice too quiet to hear without the comm device, “Wh-what is it, Pito?”
“I sense something approaching,” Pitohui replied, just as quietly. Both tension and enjoyment laced her voice.
“Sense,” huh…
Llenn was conflicted about that answer. In a full-dive game based on signals to and from the human brain, was it possible to “sense” things like this?
Llenn didn’t believe it herself, but Pitohui had been playing since the SAO beta test, so there were times when it seemed like she might be capable of such things.
Calm and collected, M initially argued, “The enemy can’t have reached us yet, and we can’t see anything,” before lovingly adding, “But I trust Pito’s hunches.”
“So stupid…,” grunted Shirley, who did not love Pitohui. She stood up and engaged the R93 Tactical 2’s safety mechanism. “I’m leaving now. C’mon, Clarence, we’re going north.”
“What? Isn’t it dangerous?”
“Nowhere in Squad Jam isn’t dangerous.”
“Well, I know that, but…”
Clarence took her time getting up. She was about to take a step forward—but couldn’t.
“Huh?”
A hand reaching up out of the ground had a firm grip on her right foot.
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