CHAPTER 18
ZEMAL
Llenn saw the giant explosion in the rearview mirror of the Humvee, but not as much as she felt it.
The mirror was busted and cracked because of all the times Shirley had crashed, but enough of it remained for her to see the huge white shock wave orb appear and disappear, followed by a crimson surge of light and flames.
The seismic force rocked the Humvee when it hit and knocked loose the dying rear mirror.
Llenn looked forward and saw the X next to her teammate’s name on the list in the upper left.
“Clarence…”
Just moments earlier.
“If you want to die, I can let you off here.”
“……”
Clarence stepped in to fill Llenn’s silence.
“That’s a good idea.”
She used her remaining hand to access her inventory, selected a pure-white poncho meant to offer snowy camouflage, and equipped it.
“Wh-what are you doing?”
“Preparing to get out!” Clarence responded. She hit the ACCEPT button hanging in the air, which whisked away the backpack of explosives they’d won from Team DOOM into her inventory.
“All ready. Wait, just kidding. One more thing.”
Lastly, Clarence dumped all her many ammo magazines onto the floor of the Humvee. They were for her AR-57—and also a P90.
“You should use them again, Llenn! My magazines seem to bring you luck! Take them and win it all once more! Shirley, get revenge for me! I’ll be cheering you on from the afterlife! On the other hand, maybe you’ll stand a chance of winning if you actually work with Pitohui the tiniest bit, hmm?”
“…”
Llenn understood what Clarence was going to do but couldn’t find the words to say anything. She hadn’t actually won SJ2 after borrowing Clarence’s ammo, but she wasn’t going to correct her on that point.
“Are you going to die? You’re going to die, right?” Shirley asked.
“I guess,” admitted Clarence.
“Dammit! You’re not allowed to die without my say-so, partner.”
“But if I don’t bite it here, everyone else will.”
“……Dammit! I wanted you to bear witness to my killing Pitohui!”
“Look, I can hang out with you whenever you want. Now stop the car!”
“……”
Shirley said nothing more but granted Clarence’s request.
“Don’t worry so much, Shirley! You gotta take it easy and enjoy your life… Your gaming life, I mean!” Those were Clarence’s last words before she opened the Humvee’s left rear door. She slid out onto the ice and lay flat on her stomach.
Less than a minute later, she blew herself up.
The force of the explosion raced across the lake as a ripple of air pressure, throwing off the aim of one of the men about to shoot his RPG-7. It fired, but the grenade dipped and bounced uselessly off the ice many times.
The shock wave also hit RGB, forcing them to stop shooting briefly. The swelling crimson fireball climbing up into the sky as a mushroom cloud completely overwhelmed them.
It was a tremendous discharge, to be sure, but they had no idea why it had happened, and it was distant enough that none of the twelve of them suffered any damage.
“What the hell was that?”
“Dunno.”
Similar exchanges were happening all over.
Pitohui was made aware of the explosion when the sound reached the train.
Just to check, she asked Llenn, “Who blew themselves up? Was it Clare? Or Shirley? Or both?”
Llenn didn’t have the focus to answer that question.
“Oh crap oh crap oh crap, hurry hurry hurry!”
“That idiot! Was she trying to kill us, too?”
The two women in the Humvee were in a terrified panic. Llenn clambered up to the top of the turret to look behind them.
“Aaaaaaaah, it’s gaining on us!”
The source of her manic anxiety was a deep crack that was getting closer.
The whole thing was quite the spectacle for the audience in the bar.
The events being relayed—or re-created, technically—on their screens were displayed from a very high angle, offering a clear view of the vast, darkened hollow the explosion had created. The heat of the blast had instantly melted the surrounding ice and left scorch marks on the parts that had managed to stay solid.
And that created a series of black fissures that extended outward like bolts of lightning.
“It’s breaking!”
“That makes sense… I mean, when you hit the ice with that much power…”
While it might have supported heavy cars, the frozen water was not as firm as a thick concrete bridge.
And once the tense, frozen sheet had cracks in it, the change was irreversible.
Like on a glass window smashed with a rock, the fractures spread farther and farther.
“Why was that explosion so huge…?”
“What item was it? Where do you buy that?”
“Good thing it was so far away…”
“They’re driving off in the Humvee. Should we get ’em?”
RGB was stunned at the seemingly boneheaded maneuver.
“Dammit! I wasted a rocket!”
“Holy crap, that was powerful…”
“What kind of bomb was that?”
“Who cares? We’re all fine. It was way too far from us.”
“What the hell was the point of that?”
The members of PORL exchanged similar statements. The cracks in the ice were approaching both groups faster than the speed of a car.
By the time they heard the terrifying crunching sounds, it was all too late. Of course, even if they had taken off on foot after hearing the blast, they wouldn’t have gotten to shore in time.
The fissures grew and expanded like a living creature, snatching the solid ice from under the feet of all twelve of them at once.
“Gyack!” “Huh?” “What the—?” “Aaah!” “Bwf!” “Aiee!” “Why?” “Hnn?”
They toppled and screamed as they were plunged into the black waters beneath the ice.
Some of them were dragged down by their heavy weaponry, disappearing into the inky depths. Others desperately struggled to stay afloat but found themselves trapped by the chunks of ice. One or two used their guns as props over the holes in the ice before they ultimately fell in, too. Naturally, a few players from PORL tried to skate away, only to discover their feet were on separate pieces of frozen water. They collapsed into painful splits.
“First skating, now diving?! I didn’t think this was the Olympics!” someone shouted shortly before he disappeared from SJ4.
“Noooo! Crap, crap, crap! Hurry, hurry! Gaaaaas!”
Just behind the racing Humvee, the ice that had so faithfully served as a road was fracturing.
Llenn looked forward again and saw that she and Shirley were almost back to the shore. It was a distance of maybe a hundred yards.
We’ll make it!
Sadly, her hopes were dashed. A monstrous crack reached forward and snagged their rear tire. The left rear part of the Humvee was stuck in a crevice, coming to a lurching halt.
“Aaah!”
Llenn was up leaning over the turret, so the laws of inertia threw her forward. She would have hit the Minigun had it still been there. Instead, her tiny body slipped through the armor around the gunner stand and dropped out in front of the Humvee.
“Aaaaa— Ow!”
She did a somersault in the air and landed bottom-first on the ice, then slid forward with momentum, bouncing several times before she stopped. “Guh-guh-guh-guh!”
Her butt stung, but fortunately, she suffered no actual damage. She hopped to her feet at once.
“Huh?” Immediately, she learned that she was on safe ground. There was gravel under her feet. She’d been hurled so violently off the Humvee that the momentum had carried her across the ice like a curling stone to the lakeshore.
Relieved that she was safe, Llenn turned around to look out at the water…and saw the Humvee stuck in a fissure.
“Oh no…”
About fifty yards away, the Humvee had both wheels below the ice level, with just the front two trying to pull it forward. All they could do was spin in the air above the surface of the ice.
Through the bullet-pocked windshield, she could see Shirley struggling in the driver’s seat.
“Get out of the car and run!” Llenn screamed, but Shirley didn’t have her comm on and couldn’t hear her.
She looked to be panicking. Her mind was locked into jamming on the accelerator, not realizing that the sinking back end was pulling the wheels up into the air.
At least the Humvee was still on the ice; either the cracking was not as intense near the shore or the force of the fracturing itself was slowing.
I— I’ve gotta save her!
Llenn considered rushing over to tell Shirley what to do, or perhaps pull her to safety.
Oh, but…
Llenn’s little devil appeared. A tiny Llenn wearing black with pointed wings and tail poofed into existence over her head.
“It’s okay; forget her. You’ll be better off if Shirley dies right here, don’t you think?” it whispered to Llenn.
“But—!”
“Listen, she’s still after Pitohui. Who knows what she’ll do next? Do you really want that anxiety hanging over you at every moment? It’ll grind you down to the bone.”
“But—!”
“And what if you go out there to help and end up falling in, too? You’re gonna die. You’re so gonna die.”
“Aw…”
“Should I start playing the ‘Wedding March’ again? We could do Wagner’s ‘Here Comes the Bride.’ One, two… Dah, dah, da-dah, dah, dah, da-dah!”
“Awwww… Yeah, there’s a good reason I can’t let myself die… And I shouldn’t take risks that might endanger me…and Shirley’s still thinking about assassinating Pito… Awwwwww-wwwrrrgh!”
Llenn’s heart was just about to fall to the dark side when she heard a voice.
“Llenn, you don’t need a reason to save people!”
“P-chan!”
Llenn felt like the P90 slung over her shoulder was speaking to her.
“Yes, she’s got some problems, but Shirley’s an important member of the squad! Do it for the team!”
“That’s right! You gotta save your teammates!”
“Exactly! Plus…”
“Plus?”
“You’ll still have chances to shoot Shirley dead after this. And I’ll be right here when that time arrives!”
“Er, wait a minute.”
“Why aren’t we moving?!”
Shirley pumped the gas harder and harder, yet the car stayed put.
“Dammit! Move! Move!”
It was a common mistake among rookie drivers.
If Shirley had eased up, it might have improved the tires’ grip. As a resident of Hokkaido, a snowy region of Japan, she actually already knew that, but when she started to panic, logic went out the window.
The crack in the ice widened, dipping the Humvee’s back end farther down. The rear wheels were in the water now, the front ones in the air, though Shirley couldn’t see that from the driver’s seat. All she could see was the sky.
The next moment, the driver-side door was flung open.
“Give it up and run!” shouted a tiny pink person.
“Ah!”
Shirley came back to her senses. She grabbed the R93 Tactical 2 resting between the front seats and jumped out of the Humvee.
Once her combat boots were resting on ice, she ran for her life—sprinting, stumbling, sprinting again.
“Aaahh!” At last she reached the gravel on the shore. Her legs gave way, and she fell back onto her butt. “Huff… Shit… Huff… Shit… Huff…”
Once she collected herself a little bit, Shirley looked for Llenn.
No one to the right.
No one to the left.
All she could see was wide-open lake and shoreline.
“Ah!”
She spun around and saw the front grill of the Humvee, just barely visible above the floe. The fissure extended all the way toward the shore, the waters beneath appearing black and menacing.
“Oh no…”
“Get off. You’re heavy,” mumbled Llenn, her voice coming from under Shirley’s butt.
“Well, hello again, Llenn. Good to see you!”
It was 2:25.
Llenn and Shirley made it up to the train that was stopped on the bridge. They’d had to run the entire way. The bridge was only as wide as the train itself, so they were careful to go right down the middle of the tracks so they didn’t fall off the sides.
When they arrived at last, they were greeted by Pitohui and Fukaziroh, who exclaimed, “Llenn! It’s so good to see you alive, my child!”
Behind them were the smiling faces of Boss and the rest of SHINC. T-S was up on top of the locomotive.
Llenn managed to pry Fukaziroh off her and went to talk with Boss.
“I’m so glad… I’m so glad…”
“It’s been a really rough Squad Jam. But it’s not over yet!”
“Yeah!”
“Let’s beat Fire and finish our duel!”
“You bet! You’re on!”
Llenn and Boss were enjoying a passionate moment of friendship and rivalry. Meanwhile, Pitohui called to Shirley, “Hey there, nice to see you! I’m surprised you’re still alive!”
She still had the KTR-09 with the safety off hanging on her chest, though, so if she needed to shoot her sworn enemy, she was ready.
“Same to you. Circumstances conspired to make us work together again, but you’ll never see my attack coming. Just a warning,” Shirley snarled, her features as deadly as a naked blade.
Pitohui grinned back at her and replied, “Warning taken. Thanks for saving us from that disaster at the airport, by the way!”
“Huh? How do you know about that?” Shirley inquired, her face now as pale as crabmeat pulled from the shell.
Again, Pitohui smirked and answered, “Well, it really couldn’t have been anyone else. You sniped from the control tower, didn’t you? That was a serious long-distance shot.”
“The next one’s got your name on it.”
“Sure, sure. Well, all aboard! No one’s checking tickets!”
“Um…can it still go?” Llenn asked as she followed Fukaziroh onto the locomotive. She’d seen it get buffeted by rockets earlier, and it certainly wasn’t moving now.
“Dunno.”
“‘Dunno’…?”
They had climbed onto the catwalk on the left side of the engine. It was dented and burned from all the RPGs, but the walkway had mostly been spared.
Even so, there was only the handrail. If you slipped and lost your footing, there was a hungry lake waiting below. Llenn watched her step very carefully.
M and a member of T-S were a little past the midway point of the train. They’d opened up a vast hatch and were peering inside.
There were four T-S survivors. Ervin was 002, plus 001, 004, and 006. Three of them were on the roof, keeping an eye on the area. The one talking to M was 006.
Llenn reasoned that they’d put numbers on themselves because, otherwise, there would be no way for them to tell one another apart. Up close, she could hear 006 talking.
“It’s a good thing the trucks didn’t take any hits. That’s the wheels-and-axles part of the train. If the engine’s still working, and it’s not moving, then it must be the electrical system that’s damaged. There’s a good chance we can switch it to a backup line and get it running again.”
M looked surprised at this. “You can tell?”
006 turned to face M, although his face was hidden behind his helmet. “In another world and another time, I was just your average railway engineer.”
“Good to have you around.”
At just after 2:26, the audience in the bar watched as the train chugged ahead on a bridge overlooking the lake—its surface a mosaic of white chunks of ice separated by black water.
Despite its tattered exterior and the holes and charred metal where it had been blasted, the locomotive continued onward, carrying thirteen players.
It reached the shore and beyond, as the bridge continued aloft over the highway that ran from east to west. This was probably the highest elevation point of the bridge.
The view was very good here—which also meant that the train was at the spot most visible from a distance.
“I’ve found them, Goddess!”
“Shinohara. I keep telling you not to call me that. I told you my name, remember?”
“Yes! Forgive me, my queen.”
“Ugh… So what’s the situation?”
“They’re on a train. It’s pretty packed, from the look of things. I can see at least six. The Amazons, the pink shrimp, and the space soldiers.”
“That’s good news. You’ve identified three different teams. I assume Pitohui is their leader.”
“You can tell?”
“I guess. What would you call it, gamer’s intuition? There’s only one place they want to go. We’re going to set up a net. Execute my earlier instructions.”
“Yes, my goddess!”
“You’ve been through hell, missy. I’m glad to see you alive.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Fukaziroh and Llenn sat side by side, enjoying the breeze on the train.
Now that they had equal use of both catwalks, it wasn’t nearly as packed as it had been earlier. They were sitting on the right side at the moment.
With 006’s help, the train had regained power and was cruising at forty-five miles per hour. Not its maximum speed, but good enough.
Once over the highway, the tracks began to descend toward the ground again. On the right was a landscape riddled with craters like the surface of the moon, while on the left were low houses, then a diamond-shaped domed stadium, and behind them all, the gigantic shopping mall.
Pitohui popped her head out of the cab and called out, “Everybody over to the left side!”
The train promptly began to slow. Llenn and Fukaziroh did as Pitohui had commanded and made their way leisurely toward the rear of the locomotive. Through the comm, Llenn asked, “Are we stopping? We’re not going to the forest?”
As a matter of fact, she’d never heard what the train’s destination was. All she’d done was celebrate her reunion with the group.
Her initial assumption was that they’d travel into the forest, protected by the bridges, and fight there with the trees at their backs. It was a more passive approach, but with the damage they’d suffered, safety was best.
“Nope,” Pitohui replied over the comms, just as Llenn and Fukaziroh reached the back of the engine.
Immediately, a hail of bullets bore down on the train.
It happened without warning.
The projectiles were like a rainstorm that began without any clouds in the sky.
Kakakakakakakakakakakakakakan, kakakakan, kan, kakakan!
Bullets met the train’s right side and beat against it as though it were a metal drum.
“Gahk!”
In what could only be described as a terrible stroke of luck, one of them split the throat of Tohma, who was on the catwalk. She lost her balance, slipped, and fell from the narrow metal platform.
“Ah!” 001 of T-S grabbed her hand. The bullets hit him, too, but they all deflected off his armor. He pulled Tohma up with both hands and dragged her to the rear deck.
“Tohma!” Boss called, leaping over from the right side and passing Llenn and Fukaziroh.
The last thing Tohma said was “Boss…sorry! Drag… Use… Give M gun…back…” Her head lolled back, and a DEAD tag rose over her body.
Boss took the Dragunov sniper rifle off Tohma’s back. “Thank you. Drop her,” she said to 001.
“…Got it,” he replied, understanding her meaning. To prevent it from getting in the way of the living players on the narrow catwalk, he carefully, gently threw Tohma’s body off the train.
Slowing or not, the train was still moving. Tohma’s body bounced off the rails once, then tumbled away and out of sight as the locomotive continued onward.
“Aw, there goes another teammate…”
The train’s passengers now totaled twelve. Another group of red bullet lines appeared, followed by the shots that had created them.
There were nearly thirty every second—more than one gun could produce. At least three people were firing simultaneously.
“Tsk! I didn’t expect them to try this!” Pitohui snapped, staring to the southwest through binoculars as the bullets clanged off the roof of the cab over her head.
Everyone knew what squad was shooting.
It was the firepower fanatics of the Squad Jams. Every member was equipped with a machine gun: the All-Japan Machine-Gun Lovers, known as ZEMAL, for Zen-Nippon Machine-Gun Lovers.
However, they were nowhere to be seen.
It was nothing but brown wasteland with no cover for several hundred yards to the right of the tracks. Shots from a machine gun would have produced a visible muzzle flare.
“Long-distance machine-gun high-angle suppressing fire… That’s the best possible tactic,” said M from the driver’s seat, crouching low.
Suppressing fire, of course, was shooting to block the enemy from moving. Jake’s attack at the airport had been an example of such, but this was a more direct case of the concept. ZEMAL had chosen high-angle shots—launching their bullets into the air like artillery so they would fall down on their target—from a distance far enough away that they were out of sight.
It was much like using a grenade launcher, though this was more extreme.
They were firing from hundreds of meters away, possibly even as much as a kilometer. That meant they probably weren’t shooting by hand and were instead using tripods for stability down in the bottoms of the craters.
When an automatic weapon was fixed on a stand, the legs absorbed all of the recoil, significantly increasing precision and stability, allowing the gunner to concentrate on a very narrow range.
Naturally, if the group on the train couldn’t see ZEMAL, the opposite was likely true as well. This raised the question of how exactly ZEMAL was aiming and timing their shots.
The solution was a spotter. Someone was watching from a different location and telling the shooters when to pull the trigger. That would produce bullet lines, which the spotter used in turn to guide the gunners toward their target. In GGO, you didn’t even have to shoot a bullet first.
Over an hour had passed since ZEMAL stood supreme in the crater area. That was plenty of time for them to set up and test their plan. Perhaps that was why they’d never left the place to begin with.
They had set up a net, a trap that would hurtle a rain of bullets from incredible range down on any enemy that approached. Naturally, as the train tracks were the widest artery into that area, ZEMAL made sure they could cover that spot. And the train had traveled right into their snare.
It was the perfect tactic for ZEMAL, making the most of their three 7.62 mm machine guns.
“They’re too good at this. What the hell happened to them? Did they eat something expired?” wondered M. It was a mystery to him how the muscle-brained idiots on that squad could execute such a cunning plan.
“Aw, they got me. I guess they must have had someone with a little brains. They got me!” Pitohui lamented, grimacing happily.
She’d glanced at the scan earlier and seen that ZEMAL was smack in the middle of the crater zone, as though they’d grown roots and settled in permanently. There hadn’t been time for them to come to the edge.
It was probably a classic leader-position trap, leaving one member at the center of the area to draw attention while the rest set up elsewhere. Still, ZEMAL was the last team you’d expect to try that.
Over and over, Pitohui’s strategies in SJ4 were backfiring. “Guess today just isn’t my day,” she said, shrugging. It didn’t seem to bother her that much. “Well, it happens sometimes.”
“I only ask this for clarification,” M prompted, his big, ugly face looming closer, “but you didn’t do this on purpose to force Llenn to marry Fire, did you?”
M trusted Pitohui. He worshipped her. So this was a very daring suggestion on his part. She shook her head and her hands in protest.
“No, no. Definitely not. I mean…”
“You mean what?”
“I’m the one who’s going to marry her!”
“……”
M said nothing.
The train would be stopping soon. They had passed beyond the bridge onto flat land, with roads on either side of the tracks. On the right was cratered wasteland, while on the left were low-lying residential homes.
Pitohui exited onto the left catwalk and called out, “Once we stop, get off at once and run as fast as you can to the east! Keep an eye out for bullet lines until you’ve reached the nearest home for cover! And be wary of ambushes!”
Run in a straight line at maximum speed, while watching for lines and bullets coming from the rear and possible ambushes from the houses they were moving toward? It was an impossible order to obey.
“Why are we getting off here, Pito? Shouldn’t we be riding into the forest?” Llenn asked.
“We’ll be even worse off in the woods! We need to run to the place that offers us the best chance of winning!”
“Where is that?”
“Obviously, it’s the ma—,” Pitohui began, but only the first sound of the word was audible.
There was a huge rattling of gunfire and sparkling bullet lines as a new wave of lead flew closer. These did not come from overhead, but the nearest home, just eighty meters to the east.
What had started as a sprinkling of rain from overhead was now a fire hose blasting from one side.
The projectiles’ density was intense, choked closely enough together that every person present suffered at least one hit. It all happened in the blink of an eye.
Llenn took a shot to the outer part of her left thigh right as she started running, causing her to tumble spectacularly. Fortunately, her tumbling to the ground kept her from suffering anything further.
Fukaziroh took one bullet to her side and another to the helmet. That happened after she’d already hit the ground, then she started crawling across the dirt like a particular despised insect whose name began with the letter R. One more shot hit her on the sole of her foot before she found shelter behind a train wheel.
Pitohui was lifting her KTR-09 to counterattack when she was shot through the right hand. Though she dropped the gun, she managed to land on the ground and curl up to minimize the target she created. One bullet hit her back and bounced off her armor.
As M left the train cab, bullets passed through the thin door and hit his back and legs, causing him to topple over. It dropped him to the floor of the shrapnel-filled cab, where he cut his face on the metal scraps, but the next wave of projectiles passed over his head.
One bullet grazed Shirley’s left flank, but another hit her right ankle. As she fell, she fired the R93 Tactical 2 once at Pitohui, but her desperation shot only exploded uselessly on the ground. As she attempted a second, a bullet hit the plastic body of her gun and ripped it out of her hands.
Tanya was the unluckiest of the group. As usual, she was running ahead and took the most fire from the closest range, riddling her with holes. The sixth shot was enough to label her DEAD, but ZEMAL didn’t stop there. Her soaking up more rounds than required to kill her actually helped the people in the back.
Rosa was lifting her PKM machine gun to fight back when she was struck. No bullet actually hit her; they only grazed her shoulder. Still, several of them burrowed into the machine gun’s ammo box, doing enough damage to the part to obliterate it into virtual pieces. It tore loose the belt that was supposed to ferry bullets into the gun.
A shot went clean through Boss’s right knee. She buckled forward on the spot, and another projectile hit her considerably sized bottom.
“Eeeek!” she shrieked, given the sensitive nature of the spot.
Only the four members of T-S made it through the triple-machine-gun onslaught unscathed—saved by their high defenses.
That didn’t mean they could just keep taking hits indefinitely, however.
“Hyaii!”
Ervin and the others had to scurry around behind the train for safety. Their armor spat sparks with each bullet they took. It was the right decision; if they had stayed put and tried to return fire, their weapons would have been blasted to pieces in their hands.
All told, it was five seconds of shooting, but it was enough to ensure that not a single person remained standing near the train.
Amid this execution atmosphere, Llenn glanced at her 40 percent health and the HP bars of her teammates and tried desperately to think of a plan that might get them out of this.
Oh crap, oh crap, crap, crap…
It was about fifteen feet from where she’d fallen to the train.
If she could get up, run, and hide under the wheels—but a single shot the moment she rose would be the end of her.
What if she burst forward into enemy territory? She might be able to dodge one or two people shooting at her, but three was asking too much.
They weren’t shooting now, but not because they were exchanging ammo belts. ZEMAL used their own belt-reloading system that allowed them to fire continuously. They must have stopped on purpose.
After a second of silence, Llenn had mostly given up. She’d been through a lot of perilous situations in the Squad Jams, but nothing had ever felt as urgent as this.
From her spot on the ground, she could see the wheels of the train, as well as Fukaziroh huddled between them and T-S running away.
Her racing mind caused everything to move in slow motion.
T-S could handle a few hits just fine, but rather than fighting back or supporting their companions, they were sprinting for their lives toward the right side of the tracks.
Well, I guess that’s all right, thought Llenn, who couldn’t muster the strength to get angry.
If they had fought back, the next round of attacks would have inevitably destroyed them. At least this way, if they fled from the scene of this slaughter, they might have a chance for revenge against ZEMAL later.
They’d shot Llenn’s team from behind in SJ2, but this time they’d helped out, to a point. If the squad’s fate was to die here, at least T-S would survive a little longer.
However, no sooner had Llenn mused as much than those hard, armored sci-fi soldiers all perished in an enormous blue surge.
It was a trap…
ZEMAL had set up a booby trap on the right side of the train tracks. A plasma grenade buried in the dirt exploded like a land mine, tearing up T-S’s powerful armor. The four men lost their lower halves almost entirely, and DEAD tags appeared on their airborne bodies, signaling the team’s elimination from SJ4.
Five seconds passed without gunfire.
Instead, there was the sound of approaching footsteps.
Llenn turned her head and saw a woman standing about fifty yards away.
She had never seen this person before.
Not up close—and not on any video.
It was a female avatar who looked about twenty years old. She had delicate features and smooth skin. Her gray eyes were piercing beneath wine-red short hair and a navy-blue beanie on top.
She was small and delicate, though not as much so as Llenn. Her combat fatigues had a green tiger-stripe pattern.
Dangling over her front was a short and unfamiliar machine gun with a drum magazine that looked like a cookie tin attached.
Um, who is that?
It was undeniable that their opponents were ZEMAL, but had they always had this woman on their squad? Probably not. She wasn’t one of the usual guys in drag, either.
The bigger mystery was why she’d chosen to walk into the open and expose herself so brazenly.
Her teammates were surely keeping their aim behind her. But did she not consider the possibility that someone might recover from the pain and shoot her first? These questions and more flooded Llenn’s confused mind.
A full ten seconds after the shooting stopped, the woman said, “So would you do us the favor of resigning?”
Everyone was so taken aback that they forgot about counterattacking.
Not that anyone in LPFM or SHINC was in a position to strike back at the moment. If they had tried, they doubtlessly would’ve been shot by the two men behind the woman. So the group had no choice but to hear her out.
“We could be ruthless and wipe you out, of course, but which would you prefer? I’d feel better about it if you chose to surrender instead. A nice, clean resignation, like in chess. Or would you favor dragging this into a checkmate? “
Llenn was stunned. Situations like this were why the phrase mouth agape existed. In a game about virtual killing, who demanded the other side surrender before the fun part?
She noticed that the numbness in her legs was starting to fade. Once she was able to move better, she could at least get to the woman. If she could grapple her, the two men behind her wouldn’t shoot. And once Llenn had sliced the woman up good, she would probably bite it herself.
It was at that moment that someone behind Llenn called out, “All right! As the leader, I accept your offer!”
It was Fukaziroh.
Pardon?
Llenn spun to find Fukaziroh emerging from beside one of the large locomotive wheels. She had no weapons in her hands as she approached.
When did she become the leader? Llenn wanted to ask, but she was patient enough to wait. Things became clearer when Fukaziroh turned her head in Llenn’s direction and, in a voice only the comm would pick up, muttered, “Run.”
Fukaziroh quickened her walking pace toward the space between Llenn and ZEMAL. If Llenn started sprinting as soon as Fukaziroh got in front, her friend would be shot to pieces like a rag doll, but Llenn might be able to get behind the cover of the wheels.
Whatever would happen after that was anyone’s guess, but Llenn, the one person who really couldn’t afford to die here, was appreciative of her friend’s sacrifice.
“Fuka…,” Llenn mumbled.
“Fuka?” repeated the woman from ZEMAL, who heard her.
Fukaziroh answered, “That’s right! I am the leader of Team LPFM, the charismatic and talented Fukaziroh! In case you were curious, our team name is short for Lovely Pretty Fukaziroh the Monstrosity!”
You could have picked a better word. I mean, Marvelous and Magnificent are sitting right there, Llenn thought as she prepared to make a break for it. Fukaziroh would soon pass by her. The numbness in her leg had faded to a negligible amount.
The first and final chance.
Then the machine-gun woman asked, “Wait, Fukaziroh? The Zweihänder Sylph?”
Fukaziroh came to an abrupt stop six feet in front of Llenn.
I can’t run away if you stop there!
However, at the same time, Llenn was intrigued by the woman’s question. It seemed like she knew who Fukaziroh was.
“Ohhh…hoh-hoh-hoh… So you too…have been reincarnated…from the world of fairies? You’ve spoken an epithet that was never meant to be said here,” replied Fukaziroh, looking truly wicked.
She let her right hand slink closer to the M&P holster on her side, just like a gunman in a Western, despite the fact that there was no way she’d land an accurate shot with it.
“I knew it! I’d heard you hadn’t shown up much in ALO recently, and now it makes sense. You were here in GGO! Your fairy was a real bombshell, but in this world, you’re just a little cutie-patootie!” the woman exclaimed, looking delighted for some reason. She lifted her hands, but rather than fire her machine gun, she spread them apart to offer a better view of herself.
“How are you doing? It’s me! Ah, well, I suppose you don’t recognize me. I do look completely different here, after all!” the woman continued, speaking like this was a reunion between old friends. Actually, that’s probably what it was.
“Oh? Ohhh yeah! Hang on; I’ll guess! You must be someone I met in ALO!” Fukaziroh said. She was entirely out of battle mode now. “Are you Mabel? Sorry about knocking you off the top of the fortress that one time. I didn’t think you had so much trouble flying!”
“Bzzzt! Wrong.”
“Then you’re Exure! I feel bad about splitting your head in two that one time. But that’s just what happens if you run past me when I’ve got my sword.”
“Nope, wrong.”
“Villares! My bad for kicking you into the flames that one time. I know how chilly you can get, so I wanted to warm you up.”
“Um, no. Not me.”
“Maybe Elaine! Sorry for luring all those monsters toward you that one time. I thought you loved animals. Also, that was the most peaceful way to get you to die.”
“Close! Just kidding; you’re way off.”
Fuka, how many people have you killed? Llenn wondered. She kept her mouth shut, however, not interested in getting into this conversation.
“Okay, maybe this is harder to guess than I figured. The correct answer is Vivi,” the woman admitted at last.
“Ohhh! Vivi!” Fukaziroh said with a beaming smile. Then she erupted into a furious roar. “Youuu! You crushed me with a giant stone pestle! You sliced off my wings in midair! You grilled me to a well-done crisp at the mouth of that volcano! You shot me in the head with an arrow! You let me sink into the bottomless swaaaamp!”
Fuka, how many times have you been killed? Llenn wondered. She kept her mouth shut, however, not interested in getting into this conversation.
“Fuka, do you know her?” asked Pitohui. Llenn craned her neck and saw her teammate standing beside the tracks, gleaming damage light on her empty hand.
“You bet! This is Vivi. She killed me tons of times in ALO. She’s a salamander, sworn enemy of the sylphs—a fire fairy! She wore this goofy red vest, though. Looked like a bodybuilder!”
“I see. Well, since you know each other, can I ask you to talk to Vivi and make her see reason?”
“Sure thing. I’ll send her head spinning so fast that she’ll become our henchman!”
“Can you ask her to let us go, this one time?”
Huh?
Llenn was stunned, and she could sense in the atmosphere that everyone else—Shirley, M, the two SHINC survivors—was equally taken aback.
Who would have guessed that Pitohui, of all people, would make such a request?
Even Fukaziroh seemed stunned by the appeal. “Sure! Wait…what? Are you serious, Pito?”
“Dead serious. If they’re just going to shoot us anyway, why not gamble on the tiniest chance of survival?”
“Um, well, I guess…”
“Just ask. What’s the harm?” Pitohui insisted quietly.
“F-fine…,” answered Fukaziroh, giving in to the pressure. She turned to Vivi. “Um…”
She wasn’t quite sure how to proceed.
“Sure, that’s all right,” Vivi acquiesced, answering before Fukaziroh had even gotten the words out.
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