CHAPTER 5
Let Me Pass
At 12:30, two things happened simultaneously.
One, the Satellite Scan started—of course.
The other was the appearance of a message displayed to each player reading, Ammo fully restored! All the bullets, energy, grenades and so on that each player had used thus far were returned to their initial amounts.
LPFM hadn’t used much, but being at maximum stock always felt safe. The members who benefited the most from this rule were Shirley, who had her own expensive and rare handmade explosive rounds, and Fukaziroh, who could blast plasma grenades at an astonishing rate.
They both glanced at their Satellite Scanners as they rode in the back of the trailer. The scan started from the northwest, the farthest possible distance from their position. It scrolled down over the map, revealing the locations of teams along the way.
Llenn checked all the dots in the vicinity of the airport, seeing if SHINC was still there.
“Found ’em! Oh, good…”
There were her rivals, below the airport and to the left, close to the very center of the map. They were on top of the runway.
The density of dots was heaviest just northwest of the map’s center, around the interchange and the lake. It seemed the fighting had been heavy there, but it was impossible to know the details at this time.
The next problem was figuring out if anyone was going to be near the end of the northern bridge, where they were heading now. The scan was approaching that spot.
The team named DOOM was in the middle of the residential area, having basically stayed in place compared to earlier. Would they be an obstacle when LPFM tried to cross the bridge?
“Shit!” M swore, a rare show of emotion. “We’ve gotta move! Hold on tight—don’t get thrown off!”
The women riding in the back grabbed on to the wires tying down the poles and handles on the trailer bed. The diesel engine roared even louder, and the massive semi began rolling.
It tore through the forest from the path back to the road. Then, axle turning, the front of its cab pointed north. From the back, Llenn asked, “What’s wrong, M?”
There had to be a reason he was in such a panic, some explanation she failed to recognize.
It was Pitohui who replied, “Did you see the map? That DOOM team.”
“Yeah. They’re still in the same place—,” she started to say, then looked down again. “Wh—eh?”
She couldn’t believe her eyes.
The dot for that team, still active as the scan was in progress, was now moving at an extremely fast clip from the middle of the residential area to the northeast.
In other words, toward the far end of the bridge they were about to cross.
“Why…?” Llenn murmured as they exited the forest.
From the bed of the trailer, they could see the railing of the bridge, the wetlands beyond it, and the glassy surface of the river reflecting the sky. The truck picked up speed as its engine rose in pitch, but it was a massive vehicle hauling tons upon tons of cargo. It could roar all it liked but could only go so fast.
The scan displayed their own location now, but the dot was traveling slowly enough that unless the map was zoomed in fully, it was hard to tell they were even moving. As indicated by the quickly scrolling indicator, DOOM was going at least three times faster.
“Dammit! Not only did they find a vehicle, they were just waiting to ambush a team crossing the bridge!” griped Fukaziroh, who was riding next to Llenn on the bed.
“That’s right,” Pitohui added. “They got their wheels and stationed themselves in the middle, where they could hit us no matter which bridge we took. That’s why they’re rushing toward the north bridge. At this speed, they’re going to block us before we can get all the way across.”
The bridge itself was a mile and a quarter long. Watching the movement of the dots on the map, they were going to be headed off before they reached the end. The scan completed, and all the indicators vanished.
“Four more teams died in the last ten minutes. All of them in the middle. Looks like it’s been a fierce battle,” Clarence observed.
“Thank goodness,” said M.
“That’s very considerate of you to check,” Fukaziroh added.
“Oh, shucks, no worries,” Clarence said. “Wait, don’t I get a thank-you kiss?”
“In your dreams.” Fukaziroh jabbed Clarence’s cheek with a finger.
“Aaah! Ow!” she yelped, but she seemed to be enjoying it regardless.
The trailer couldn’t accelerate further. Apparently, they’d reached the maximum speed dictated by either the mechanical design or the game’s programming, which was about fifty miles per hour. They were moving down a wide road in a spacious environment, making their getaway feel even slower.
“Dammit, this was a mistake… I should have gone off on my own,” spat Shirley, arching her head around the edge of the truck to look forward.
Clarence reassured her. “Hey, c’mon, you shouldn’t abandon your friends. Or friend, in this case. We’ll go together.”
Pitohui left M’s backpack on the trailer bed and nimbly climbed the pile of metal. When she reached the top, she kept her eyes focused ahead. “I’m keeping a lookout.”
From the cab, M said, “I’m coming clean. This happened because I made the wrong call. I’m sorry. If we had driven without waiting for the scan, I think we could have made it across the bridge before they reached us.”
“Hey, it is what it is. Everybody makes mistakes. You can pay us back for the low, low price of a bowl of ramen. Okay? With all the toppings, okay? And extra noodles, okay?” Fukaziroh insisted.
M continued, “If the enemy comes onto the bridge with some kind of vehicle, I’m going to ram them, so brace for impact. If they stop and wait at the foot of the bridge or in the city, we’re going to rush past their line of fire. Get on top of the cargo and lay flat. That should make you more difficult to target.”
That didn’t ease Llenn’s concern. “Hey! Either way, what about you?” If they had a collision, he would be hurt in the driver’s seat, and if they stayed behind to shoot, he would be a sitting duck.
His response: “If I die here, pay me back by playing well.”
“Got it,” Pitohui said.
“You betcha,” Fukaziroh fired back.
“Roger,” came Clarence’s brief reply.
And Shirley said, “I’ll do whatever I want, thanks.”
Llenn was the only one who protested. “No way!” Even though she realized it would mean delaying a showdown with SHINC, she suggested, “Let’s go back, then! To the forest!”
“When did you become such a child of nature, Llenn?” asked Fukaziroh. No one answered.
“We can’t do that. There isn’t enough space for this giant truck to do a U-turn, and if we try to go in reverse or run back on foot, they’ll chase us on their ride. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“Awww…”
“Hmm,” murmured Clarence. “In that case, couldn’t we turn the truck sideways to form a barricade so we can fight on the bridge? These metal poles are really tough,” she suggested.
“That wouldn’t be a bad idea in terms of defense, but it’ll prevent us from going anywhere. If another team gets behind us, we’ll be wiped out one way or another.”
“No good, huh?”
Dammit. Is there no way to avoid M losing a lot of HP or even being killed…?
Llenn gnashed her teeth in frustration as the semitrailer hurtled down the bridge. They’d crossed about halfway by now.
The forest looked hazy as it grew distant behind them.
On the biggest monitor back in the pub, two images were being shown side by side.
One was a rear-facing angle of the semi, with M driving in the front and the women behind—or on top, in Pitohui’s case. The wide surroundings made it hard to tell if the vehicle on the bridge was moving at all, the spinning tires and passing guardrail being the only indictors.
The other image was of motorcycles racing down a major street in a residential neighborhood. There were six of them screaming over cracked concrete, with hardly any obstacles impeding their path.
The deep angles of the motorcycles as they leaned around curves spoke to precisely how fast they were going: at least ninety miles per hour. The bikes were dirty and rusted, customized with all kinds of gaudy and inexplicable parts, just the sort of things a biker gang in a mad, post-apocalyptic world would attach to their rides.
They were so customized, in fact, that it was impossible to tell what model they’d originally been, but they were clearly large, probably at least 1,000cc engines.
All the players riding them were men. They wore simple green combat uniforms, with their weapons and gear stowed away for better mobility while riding. Nothing was visible, at least.
“That’s DOOM… So they’re gonna take a pass at the pink shrimp’s team, huh…?” muttered a man in the bar nursing a glass of bourbon with a large round ice cube in it. His avatar was middle-aged, with a black leather jacket, mustache, and ten-gallon hat. He certainly nailed a particular aesthetic.
“You know them?” asked the man with a mohawk sitting next to him, who was from a different team but had been watching the game alongside the first man.
“Yep.”
“How?”
“Oh, that’s easy. Because my team lost to them in the prelims. They got a crazy way of fighting, I’ll tell you that.”
“Ooh! What’s that?”
“I could tell ya, but it might be more fun to watch. They’ve been waitin’ for a heavyweight team to pass by. If it works out, there might just be an upset in the makin’ here.”
“…”
On the monitor, the six motorcycles came to a stop.
They were at the outskirts of the neighborhood where two large streets intersected. The wind was blowing harder, rattling a street sign that was halfway falling off. The message on the sign pointed the way.
Straight ahead was the route to the airport. There was a chain-link fence, and far in the distance behind it was the hazy sight of a control tower.
Turning left led to the highway. The traffic light to control the flow of cars onto the ramp was dark and silent.
And turning right went to the bridge. The guardrail was clearly visible nearby next to the road it guarded.
The men seemed to have made their decision. They nodded to one another. With a major spin of their rear tires, they left large black skid marks on the road as they turned. Then they sped up so quickly that their front tires briefly lifted off the ground—toward the bridge.
No sooner had they started than the men waved their hands to call up their windows. Gear began materializing, glowing bits of light that hugged the riders’ bodies as they came into being. Within three seconds, the process was complete.
Everyone watching in the bar, aside from the man in the ten-gallon hat, was stunned.
“What the…? What are they…? What is that gear?!”
“I see them! Six motorcycles! Coming this way! Wait, they stopped!” Llenn reported.
After hearing M’s plan, she’d climbed atop the cargo to support him in whatever way she could. Pitohui said she could stay back, but Llenn refused to sit still.
She had her trusty monocular pressed to her right eye, trained on the vanishing point of the bridge ahead. With her tool zoomed to its maximum, she was the first to catch a visual of the enemy.
There were six motorcycles stopped at the end. According to the monocular’s distance reader, they were fourteen hundred yards away.
“Motorcycles? Good. What gear do they have?” M asked.
Llenn examined the equipment she could see. “They’re…wearing some body armor, it looks like. Kind of like T-S, but bulkier. Almost like plate armor.”
“…And the guns?” he said, pausing with what sounded like surprise.
“Well…nobody’s holding any. It’s weird,” she reported. She couldn’t believe her eyes, either.
“No…guns…?”
M and everybody else on the team had question marks over their heads. Llenn didn’t get it. They were coming to fight them head-on. How could they be empty-handed?
M had said “good” about the motorcycles, because it was a good thing for them. A gigantic semitrailer would completely obliterate a motorcycle on impact. They weren’t running, though, which suggested they had a plan up their sleeves.
M said, “I’m going to stop,” and immediately, the trailer began to slow. If he didn’t know what the opponent was likely to do, he wasn’t going to risk hitting them.
The trailer hurtling over the bridge began easing up.
“Motorcycles move quick, right? So if they avoid us, then turn around and pull out guns, they could shoot us from behind?” Fukaziroh guessed.
“We’d pump them full of lead before they could manage it,” Pitohui told her.
“Good point.”
With one last screech of the tires, the trailer truck came to a halt in the middle of the bridge.
“Distance at about eleven hundred yards!” Llenn announced.
The two teams faced off. Both were on the bridge. There was nowhere to run.
“If we show our ass, they’ll stick it right up the chute,” Clarence observed.
“Isn’t that sexual harassment?” Fukaziroh wondered out loud.
“Can you get us any closer?” asked Shirley, looking down at the R93 Tactical 2 in her hands. Their current distance was a little too far for a 7.62 mm rifle to aim properly. If she could get two or three hundred yards closer…
But M refused. “Not when we don’t know what they’re going to do next.” Instead, he asked Llenn, “They’re still not bringing out any weapons?”
“Nope!” she said. “Doesn’t seem like they intend to! They’re just watching us! Their armor’s creepy, kinda like a blank Noh mask!”
“What does this mean…?” M asked himself. “Is their plan to keep us stuck here on the bridge?”
“Oh! One of them moved! They’re racing toward us!”
“And the rest?”
“Just the one! He’s really speeding up!”
Next to Llenn, Pitohui steadied her KTR-09 against her shoulder, but her target was still out of range.
“Should I do it? Once it gets closer, I can get a good shot,” volunteered Shirley, but M ignored her.
“Everyone off the truck!” he shouted, as loud as he’d ever spoken.
“Huh? Why? What’s the—? Dwaaaa!” Llenn stammered when Pitohui kicked her to the side. It was a vicious blow.
“Hyaaaa!” She fell from thirteen feet atop the pile of metal to the street. But with her tremendous agility, Llenn was able to recover her balance in the air, landing feetfirst and spinning to diffuse the momentum of the kick.
“Guh!” She came to a stop when her back slammed into the railing at the side of the bridge.
She was worried about hit point loss from a shock that bad, but it turned out to be nothing. Pitohui then jumped off the cargo bed, crouching to soften the impact so she could maintain her grip on her gun.
Back behind the truck, Fukaziroh and Shirley had hit the pavement, followed by Clarence, who’d kicked M’s backpack off the edge.
At that very moment, the truck’s exhaust piped belched black smoke again as it resumed moving. M was driving it forward…without anyone else on board.
“Huh? W-wait, M!” Llenn shouted, but he didn’t respond. When Pitohui approached, Llenn demanded, “What’s going on?!”
“This is bad… I just hope it’s in time…,” the other woman said, her tattooed cheeks twisted into a grimace.
Even Llenn knew something terrible was happening, but she couldn’t tell yet what that was, exactly.
M jammed the acceleration pedal to the floor. The trailer’s pickup was as slow as a turtle. He could see a bike ahead of him on the bridge, very small—but rapidly getting larger.
Once he’d gotten up to a certain speed, he murmured, “Hope this is in time…,” as he gently turned the wheel right, then jammed it left as hard as he could.
What happens when you yank on the wheel of a semitrailer? Something you should never try in real life.
When the cab in the front turned left, the momentum of the trailer behind it, with all those tons of metal piles on the back, continued moving forward. The joint that connected the truck to the trailer shifted, causing the entire vehicle to go into a rapid left rotation. The tires screeched and smoked as the massive body wobbled.
The cab portion, with M inside, broke through the guardrail and off the bridge, though it didn’t fall. The cargo trailer was still on the move. It lost balance and began toppling to the right.
“Oh no…” Llenn gasped. As the semitrailer raced off, about two hundred yards away now, it was turning over. “Pito! Look! It’s flipping over!”
“Yes, on purpose! He pulled it off! Way to go, M!”
“Huh?”
The truck’s tires went airborne. The massive vehicle landed on its side, filling the air with a deafening array of sounds.
Zbwaooo! The engine suddenly roared at a higher pitch, as it no longer needed to roll the tires over the ground.
Grakk! The trailer bed collided with the road, smashing into the heavy concrete.
Gwonggg! The frame of the vehicle vibrated like a bell from the impact.
P-p-p-pchak! The cables holding the cargo in place snapped in rapid succession.
Shlagagagagagarang! The huge pile of metal poles rolled free over the surface of the bridge.
Combined into one orchestral movement, it shook the very world with a clamor rivaling any amount of gunfire.
Zabwagrakwonnngpchkagagagagarabooom!
The entire bridge rumbled beneath their feet. “Whoa. That’s gotta be at least a two or three on the scale,” Fukaziroh guessed.
On its side, the semi continued sliding forward, the metal scraping up a shower of sparks. From LPFM’s vantage, the underside of the vehicle became visible, with all of its wheels, axles, and ladderlike frame parts.
The trailer and all of its scattered metal cargo completely blocked off the road now.
“Hopefully that will be enough of a defense…,” Pitohui murmured.
“A-against what?” stammered Llenn.
The video screens in the bar offered the clearest picture of what had happened. They had a diagonal aerial shot overlooking the bridge.
The semitrailer zoomed forward, then turned hard and toppled over sideways, while a single motorcycle rushed toward it with incredible speed from the other side. It didn’t budge from its course.
The man riding the bike had on bulky armor that covered his body and head. Unlike the protection T-S wore, this armor left his back completely exposed. It only offered cover for his front.
On the man’s back jutted a large pack that closely resembled M’s.
While the rest of the audience watched, holding their breath, the man in the ten-gallon hat muttered, “Get ’em.”
The bike shot forward like an arrow, and just before it made contact with the metal poles that covered the road—the man riding it exploded.
The first thing Llenn noticed was the rumbling beneath her feet.
“Huh?”
She felt a shock wave—from something happening on the other side of the toppled semitrailer.
“Huhhh?”
Finally, a shock wave knocked her tiny body backward.
“Aieeeeeeee!”
The audience in the pub had the perfect view of the blast.
Orange flames filled the screen, wreathed by a white sphere. The force of the blast changed the density of the air, compressing the water vapor into a momentary piece of natural artistry.
The wave pushed outward to the sides and above as crimson flames and black smoke burst from the center in a sphere like the face of the devil himself.
Then the entire fireball turned into gray smoke that rose toward the sky.
The drink glasses and windows in the bar rattled with the sound of the booming explosion through the monitor speakers.
“Eep!”
“Whoa!”
“Damn!”
A number of people in the crowd tensed in shock. The screen went completely gray—everything was hidden by smoke.
Nearly a minute later, the haze slowly cleared to reveal…the charred surface of the bridge, guardrails missing on either side, a number of twisted metal pipes, the body of the trailer truck pushed a good thirty feet back, and a massive mushroom cloud above it all, climbing and climbing.
It was a mammoth explosion.
A large plasma grenade, nicknamed “the grand grenade,” was the greatest single weapon players could wield in GGO, and whatever caused this was at least as powerful as those—in fact, it dwarfed their effects.
But in this case, the lack of a pale-white plasma surge made it clear this was a typical combustion explosion.
“What was thaaaaaat?” the audience screamed.
“Exactly what it looked like—an explosion. Though it also came with a shock wave, so I guess technically you’d call it a detonation? I suppose we don’t make much of a distinction in Japanese…,” answered the man in the ten-gallon hat. When the shocked crowd said nothing, he continued, “You saw that big ol’ backpack he had on? It was packed full of high-powered explosives.”
“Y-you mean…that’s how they attack?”
“You bet. DOOM wears armor only on the front. Explosives are on the back. In other words, they’re all suicide bombers.”
“Ee-eep?”
As soon as Llenn recovered her wits, Fukaziroh’s face was right in front of hers.
“Yo, you alive…?”
The pink girl was lying on top of her friend whose body was directed upward, propped up by her large backpack. It practically looked like they were about to kiss. A light veil of smoke filled the air around them.
“Somehow…but my head’s all woozy…”
“That was an unbelievable explosion. You got blasted all the way over here like a leaf. If I hadn’t stopped you, you’d have gone back to the forest all by yourself.”
“Oof. Thank you…”
Llenn slowly lifted herself up for a quick inspection. Fortunately, her P90 was still present in the sling. However, she couldn’t find her trusty monocular. That might have been jarred loose from her hand when Pitohui kicked her. In which case, it had probably fallen off the bridge already.
Well, there was no use mourning it now. She checked the state of her hit points. Being blasted a few dozen yards and hitting Fukaziroh had depleted some, but it was only about five percent.
Then she glanced at the team’s totals. All of the women were fine.
“What about M?!”
She expected him to be dead. He’d been closest to the explosion, after all.
To her surprise, though, his HP gauge was all green. He was completely unharmed.
“Whew…” She sighed with relief.
“I’m…all right…,” M said through the comm, although his voice sounded weak.
“You jumped down into the swamp from the cab when it was jutting over the side, didn’t you?” Pitohui confirmed. “The blast can’t push down through feet of concrete.” She walked closer. “What’s the state of things down there? Can you get back up?”
“Nope… I’m stuck up to my neck…completely trapped in the muck. I’d appreciate you scooping me out after it’s done.”
“Then wait there for now.”
“All right…”
Nearby, Clarence and Shirley were getting back up, each holding their weapon.
“What the heck was that…?”
“An explosion… Shit!”
Then Pitohui warned, “Everyone, back up on the truck right now! The next one’s coming!”
“N-next one…?” Llenn asked. She still didn’t have a grasp on the situation.
Pitohui turned to her, grinning with delight. “They’re suicide bombers! And there are five of them left!”
“When the battle in the preliminary round started, they kept their distance, so we thought somethin’ was funny…,” said the man in the ten-gallon hat with heavy inflection. He had the audience in the palm of his hand now. “As you know, the battlefield’s one long corridor, to ensure you get the battle goin’ and over with. It was a rocky canyon with plenty of cover. They didn’t attack, so we went after ’em. And then, when we reached the middle of the canyon…”
He closed his eyes. No one could tell if this was an affectation or if he really was reliving the terror and regret of the battle.
“Huh?”
“Aaah!”
The third and fourth riders saw it happen clearly. The little pink shrimp had rushed forward, swinging photon swords in both hands, hacking up their teammates.
The third rider said rapidly, “I’ll dodge her! You blow her up!”
“Got it!”
With the best possible strategy in hand, the third rider tilted to his right, using the entire breadth of the road to avoid Llenn. Even with her agility, she couldn’t reach him or rush over to catch him in time.
“Heh-heh!” he cackled, certain of victory, as Llenn shot him a baleful glare as he passed.
“Welcome, little bug. Have you come to fly into the flames?”
Fukaziroh’s grenade hit him smack on the mark.
Perhaps if he hadn’t been staring at Llenn, he’d have noticed the glaring bullet line. Or if he’d stuck to diligently weaving along the road, he could have avoided the shot.
Even those burly protective layers couldn’t withstand a direct hit from a 40 mm grenade, though. The explosion separated his armor and body, and the man was dead before he even had a chance to detonate himself.
“Dammiiiiit!”
From the corner of his vision, the last surviving member of DOOM saw his friend explode. He was faced with a split-second decision.
Should he blow up the little pink one right in front of him like the other guy said?
Or should he plunge into the trailer, hoping to take out as many of them as possible?
He made up his mind. He glared at the tiny pink figure approaching with incredible speed, let go of the handle with his left hand, and reached back to pull the little rope on his backpack.
“You!”
“Jump!” Pitohui shouted, and Llenn obliged.
She launched herself off the surface of the bridge to her right.
Toward the swamp thirty feet below.
“Hyaaaaa!”
The moment her body fell below the bridge, a shock wave hurtled past her, level with the ground and just over her head.
As usual, the audience at the bar had the perfect view of the entire sequence.
The second one had gotten hacked up by Llenn’s lightsword, the third took a direct hit from a grenade, and the fourth had detonated himself right beside Llenn.
“Aaaaah! So close!”
But she dived off the side of the bridge barely in time to avoid the force of the blast. She made a tiny splash in the river, and by the time the explosion was turning into a mushroom cloud, she resurfaced.
“Goddammiiiiiiiiiiit!”
The man in the ten-gallon hat screamed like his soul was leaving his body.
Meanwhile, in the waiting area where the dead had to hang around for ten minutes with nothing to do, the other five members of DOOM welcomed their sixth.
“Awww, you didn’t make it, either?”
“Sorry. I thought I had a pretty good chance.”
“I guess they’re the favorites for a reason… They’re tough.”
“Yeah, super tough. They were formidable opponents! That was fun!”
“Guess we should root for them now!”
“Yeah! Good luck, little pink shrimp!”
The boys of DOOM wore pleased, irrepressible smiles.
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